dreamnugget Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Hi Guys (and Gals ), Just a quick one....not looking for major discussion or disputes here. As most of you know, I have recently aquired a new (second hand) mobo and CPU with PCIE graphics slot (2 of). I am a little stuck on whether to go for an Nvidia single card or ATI single, (or 2 in crossfire mode). From brief research I am guessing that a DDR2 512 graphics will not be as good as a DDR3 256 graphics card....also will 2x 256 meg ddr 3 ATI cards in crossfire run as good or better than a single 512 DDR3 ATI? Okay, maybe a simple answer wont be coming from my question, maybe more specificly, if you have had personal experience between Nvidia, and ATI cards, single ATI cards to crossfire mode (2 cards), I would appreciate your opinions, on your own experiences. Thanks in advance Jason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heiko Glatthorn Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 What are your PC specs and budget ? As for myself i always prefer a strong single GPU over SLI or CF headache. Anyways, 256 MB vRAM won't cut it anymore nowadays, that for sure. Which resolution are you planning to use ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgutteri Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Gday Jason Unfortunately you are bound by the chipset on your mobo as to which GPU you can use. If I was buying a card now for my AMD chipset, I'd buy the ATi 4850, which also works in many Intel boards too. The 4870 has GDDR5 memory, but it depends on your budget. Ultimately the best card out now, which is essentially 2 GPUs on one card, is the 4870 X2 which MSY is about to stock - no crossfire to worry about. If you are using an Nvidia or a certain Intel chipset, you'll have to buy an Nvidia GPU, which means a 9800 is a good buy (similar pricing as the 4850). A good place to check all this out is www.tomshardware.com. Find the recommended GPU charts for each month, and you'll have an answer according to your budget . Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about the Intel chipsets not being swappable with Nvidia or ATi. I'm certain about the other combos though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun Snyman Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Unfortunately you are bound by the chipset on your mobo as to which GPU you can use. Well you kinda right, this only applies to SLI & Crossfire. If you want to run Crossfire you will need a mobo that supports it and the same for SLI. For the OP. It's not really a case of ATI vs nVidia, it's more of a case of which model between the two currently offers the best performance for the price. Short answer is to stick to a single card. But if you want the best of both worlds you can go for something like the ATI HD 4870x2 as mentioned above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Short answer is to stick to a single card. I couldn't agree more as I have had the opertunity to test on a couple of occaisions SLI and Crossfire and to be perfectly frank, while they may offer a performance advantage (FPS etc) I'm am NOT convinced that the results achieved by SLI/Crossfire are in any way shape or form worth the enormous monetary outlay for the hardware. IMHO a cracking MoBo and top end single PCIe (name Brand NOT generic ) graphics Card coupled with a TH2GO will give you a far better game play experience for a far lower cost than ANY SLI combination. That being said if you want performance from a TH2GO then the nVidia range of cards IMHO has the edge over ATI BUT they are VERY close in performance ratings. Bottom Line if your wanting to build a cracker of a system " DO YOUR HOMEWORK " some hardware work well together and some not, with patience and care you can build a fire breather by selecting the most compatible pieces of the performance puzzle, this of course may not necessarily be the most expensive parts either as many times you may find cheaper items that actually work better together than more expensive units. Bare in M=mind that not many games and sims are actually SLI capable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macca22au Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 FSX is not written for SLI so the improvement is marginal only. Wait for FS11, which seems to be somewhere out in 2010, before two cards will be worth it. Also FS11 will be fully threaded so that all cores can be used equally, although SP2 does have textures threading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heiko Glatthorn Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 FSX is not written for SLI so the improvement is marginal only. It's more about the drivers not the application. Also FS11 will be fully threaded so that all cores can be used equally. I hope they hear you... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dreamnugget Posted August 21, 2008 Author Share Posted August 21, 2008 Thanks for your thoughts guys. After checking out a few of the links...especially toms hardware..thats a cracker (for overseas people that means good ). I see that crossfire mode will provide an increase in marks06 of up to 50% without AA, and a marginal comparison on FSX, So I guess I'll stick with a single Nvidia card on the wish list. The budget isnt big, but I've been playing around with my AGP 7 series card with decent rates (considering), so I should be able to work with 8 or 9 series with a little mucking around quite well. Thanks again Jason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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