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VGA Charts 2008: 101 Configurations Tested

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¿What meaningless excuse there may be to say "we couldn`t do any tests on any ATI cards with more recent drivers"? If you are testing new hardware, then test it with it's proper drivers. If you have to delay the release of the article a month in order to do the test with newest drivers, then DELAY IT UNTIL THE TEST ARE RIGHTLY DONE. Also, i have to doubt about some results in the (SUM TOTALS) charts, like 4870CF doing under gtx280 (and GTX280SLI under GTX280 "solo", or 9600GT over 4850CF). Look, those results are ridiculous, i don't mind (and THG shouldn't mind either) if the article has to be delayed some weeks in order to get it right. I don't want to think THG "likes" those results just how they are.
 
yeah I would rather they sacrificed some older generations to include the newer models like the 4870X2. Its not likely that you would ever recommend a forth or fifth generation model or even be able to purchase them so why waste valuable time on something nobody really wants other than nostalgic merits.
 
catalyst 8.6 again?

Man, come on now, how many times does AMD have to update drivers for you guys to get even remotely close to using accurate ones?
 
I've been looking forward to the updated charts, but I really wish you guys had used the newer catalyst drivers. I understand the time constraint factor, but it results in what is an unusable product in regard to the 4xxx series. Maybe you could've saved time by skipping over the x1300 and other obsolete cards.
 
like a constipated elephant it's a little late in comming, but man there's a lot of 5417 here! Thanks for the hard work, that's why i keep comming back.
 
"If you want to realize the true 3D potential of the GTX 260, GTX 280, and HD 4870, you will soon need to start using a quad-core chip"

How can a quad core be recommended when there are few games thatuse that many cores? You say 'soon,' but what games are coming out that we know are optimized for 3 or 4 cores? It seems the E8600 can easily get up over 4.0ghz on air, why choose quad over that? (I'm usually an AMD man, but if I was building now it'd be the Intels with E0 stepping).
 
"If you want to realize the true 3D potential of the GTX 260, GTX 280, and HD 4870, you will soon need to start using a quad-core chip. A slightly faster dual-core CPU isn’t going to buy you a lot of extra scaling, as you can officially only purchase chips running between 3.2 GHz and 3.33 GHz, and the additional 300 to 400 MHz clock speed of the test CPU is not going to significantly change the 3D results."

I would like to see an article devoted to this. You should overclock a dual core chip to 4Ghz or higher and then see what the results are. I think a lot of people would like to see you prove your statement.

Plus you are saying we will need a quad.....well do you mean a quad over 3Ghz or it does not matter or what>>>>>>>>? You make a statement with no proof or evidence to back it up.

 
[citation][nom]Rocky1234[/nom]Not to nit pick but ummm where is the Radeon radeon 4870x2 2GB card in those charts or did I miss it you know the one with 2GB memory umm 800x2 shaders GDDR5 memory 3.6Ghz rated at & 750 core x2 whatever.[/citation]

Umm yeah.

And dont throw out the "well it takes time" or "we didnt have it" excuse.

The 4870X2 is the most powerful card at this time. You need to get the benches for this card posted. The charts look pretty green at the top end without the 4870X2... I really dislike biased reporting...

The rest looks good and really is an eye opener as to what your going to need at the top end. Other than the 4870X2 being absent, this review is pretty solid.
 
Yeah i'm going to have to say again that Tom's is an obvious green team bias.

Further i'm kinda sick of reproduced numbers.

Finally try doing us a favor and test maybe 6 different games in 6 different genres. Rather than 6 games from one genre and 2 from two different ones.

Additionally to the prior statement, make them recent games; or if you're going to do more than 1 game per genre make it 1 older and 1 newer title.

Save yourself time, reduce sloppy set-ups, and produce better results. (and at least try to appear like your writing and testing is not-biased)
 
"3870 3CF" refers to a 3870 + 3870X2 in CF correct?

If so......THANK YOU TOM'S!!!!!
I have been looking all over for benchmarks on that configuration
 
Please include updated drivers and the most up to date graphics cards when you do future tests. We would appreciate that. Catalyst 8.6, 4870X2 (And no, 4870 vs 4870x2 we'd like to see an X2 and an X2 crossfire irregardless of it "being close" in comparison), and also the 9800GX2.

It's really hard to take this with anything other than a grain of salt; you did a lot, but you missed a lot. Still decent review.
 
Its not that it is free info, that is great. The issue is that the info that is free seems to be biased... or slanted in one direction. They dropped out the most powerful video card on the market because, why? It didn't meat the specifications? What are those specs? Not only that, they are comparing ATI cards with 2 gen old drivers (8.6, they are at 8.8 now) with limits the cards. The new drivers are faster. I did not pay attention to the Nvidia drivers, but if they are the newest than that is very slanted in synthetic tests with physics (if those were run... i did not look at all the benchmarks).
 
Ok from my last post I didn't mean to sound totally negative I do think that there was a lot of work put into this article & it is pretty good as it gives a genral idea about each chip. I do think however that the 4870x2 should have been squeezed in since it is one of the fastest single cards at this time. I am not sure if the 8.6 drivers were the ones
that were out when the 4870 series came out but since you used the latest drivers for the gf280 series at their release because this driver was optimized for that chip the radeon cards should have had at least the 8.7 release drivers or 8.8 as these are the drivers that are optimized for these chips & even more so for the xfire configs.

& know a 4870 in xfire is not nearly the same as a 4870x2 main reason is the memory foot prints of each card single 4870 512mb or single 4870x2 2GB. The X2 walks all over the 512MB 4870 in extreme resolutions

But still it was a good read & keep up the good work thanx.
 
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THANKS FOR THE HARD WORK CHAPS

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I appreciate you going back several generations, it's good to see where we've come from, and how the improvements have been the last several generations. Also, I'm just now upgrading my X850XT, so this is very useful to me, and anyone like me who waits several years before buying a new card. (FYI I bought a 4670 last week.)
 
Thanks for all the work! I've been needing to see how my present older card is stacking up to assess the value of an upgrade and now I have it.

However, I would really like to see Tom's substantiate their claim that processing power is really important. I'm not buying this claim at all. How about an article that takes a few of the faster cards out there in single and double card configurations and then tests those cards with several teirs of processors so that those of use we can actually see the data (instead of an insistence that the neck and neck performance at the top tier is caused by the proc)? Also, SLI and Crossfire are irrelevant for the masses, so they're not really a measure of the importance of processor power.
 
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