The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Well like an idiot I waited to buy it (after the holidays) and now the card I wanted has been deactivated. It's available on amazon for $230 but for the price I might as well just get a GTX275.

Any other recommendations for a card?

New budget of $250 can go a bit higher if needed

 

Well...it's way out of most peoples price range, but it sure is making ME drool LOL! I can't begin to imagine it's potential in Crossfire XD
HD 5970

 

Wow. It's just plain never gonna end! 4 Times Full HD!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD

 

Actually Rich, my score of 7000 is fast approaching three years ago I'm hoping to break 24,000 within the next month. You're also cheating - the HD3850 wasn't available when I got that score, by the time it was out, I had an HD3870 and was scoring in the tens - not to take any fun out of this or anythng
You will still ultimately be limited by the CPU in 3dmark06, even with a couple of steps back in hardware, your CPU needs to be much more powerful compared to your graphics card in order to see a linear benefit, and even with the 3.8Ghz CPU, the situation is still the reverse with your system. An HD3850 is still a reasonable card, a single core of any form has long since stopped being a reasonable CPU
The only test that really uses GPUs (to the extent that I can turn Catalyst AI off and run 1 of 4 GPUs and get an identical frame rate everywhere else) is Canyon Flight, and primarily the second half (from the point where the dragon appears onwards)
Andmill: Unlucky, but I forget what it is you were buying. If you can stretch a bit, get an HD5850, they're fabulous cards, and bust even the GTX285, let alone the 275.
Omega: Having seen a dual 5970 rig on aD last week, I was sorely tempted to switch back to the LGA1366 idea to run two, but after realising I would have to wait another 5 months to be able to afford the second card if I did (and bought nothing else for my PC in the interim) I figured I'd leave it. As it stands I'm not even buying one, I'm going for a new server case and the i5 setup, that's it for the time being.
UHD's been around for a little while now, there's a 2160p sample clip out there somewhere to download, to see how "well" your PC can decode it. Since the current codecs for that are rubbish, no PC actually can, and more to the point, only SSDs can keep up with the raw data rate most of the time. Let's just say it's an 'infant' format that will have to bring about several technological changes to work well. Disk drives aren't fast enough, Storage mediums aren't big enough, external interfaces have only just become fast enough (USB3), etc. etc.
Not to mention, there are very few, very expensive 3840 horizontal displays out there right now.

 

I was simply marveling at how quickly our species is advancing

 

There's a lot more to technlogy than pixel count
But pixel count is nice!

 

LOL! I suppose. Like shoddy coding for instance...

 

I agree, technology is advancing exponentially. In 100 years we have gone from the incandescent light bulb to blazing fast computers capable of high quality 3D graphics and that can sit on our desks.

A computer is a series of on/off switches. In the past, radio tubes were these switches. Do you realize that transistors replaced radio tubes? And that we have put almost one billion transistors on a single micro chip? Not only that but as part of that advancement, transistors are more efficient as well. Scary huh?

 

On that note,
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/functional-molecular-transistor/

 

Sorry but I don't really agree with flaunting of how awesome our tech is when we ignore so much!
A Charlie Brooker quote taps into this quite well:
'We clearly peaked about 40 years ago, and it's all been downhill ever since. For all this talk of the dazzling modern age, the two biggest advances of the past decade are Wi-Fi and Nando's. That's the best we can do. Meanwhile the environment's crashing, fundamentalists and morons are at each others throats, God's so disappointed he's wished himself out of existence, and the rest of us are merely pottering around, distracting ourselves by fiddling with out iPod settings.
Ooh look I've changed the menu screen wallpaper. Ooh look I've changed it back. Ooh look I've - oh. A mushroom cloud. That's annoying. How am I going to power my iPod now? The charger's just melted. As have my hands. And I'm thinking these thoughts with a boiling molten brain bubbling through a fissure in my freshly carbonised skull. Oh well. Night night.' Taken from Pointlessness abounds intended for the 3rd September 2007 but spiked prior to publication 'for being slightly too bleak for Monday morning Guardian readers to countenance'

 

I think that is excesively bleak. There are a lot of things that simply weren't achievable 40 years ago. As nice as Nando's is, 40 years ago effectively predates video games of any sort, predates the internet, predates mobile phones - which have probably saved countless lives. No, I'm sorry, as frivolous as a lot of modern inventions are, needless they are not.

 

Sam,

Interesting read. What is the current transistor count record BTW? On a consumer chip at least?

Keith,

Well computers are one of the single most important advancements in the history of human kind. They let us do anything and everything. With computers we will someday leave the Earth and spread to the far corners of this near-infinite universe; with technologies we can't even imagine. I don't think that's a useless idea or a waste of our effort. Us hobbyists and consumers are benefiting because computers are useful.

LOL I have a somewhat cynical view of mankind myself but that's pretty dark.

 

2.15 billion on the HD5870 I think. Imagine that many vacuum tubes

 

I have my thoughts on mankind as well.

"Can't we all just get along"

I've never hit a person, never even been in a fight...

 

Sam,

Also remember that the 5870 is faster and more efficient that that many vacuum tubes would ever be

Omega,

I'm pretty peaceful but I've had a few fights. Nasty ones too :S

 

I just read on Tomshardware that:
The 790FX Northbridge can handle 4 Gpus, and at least 2 Gpus in X16 mode, where as the 790X Northbridge can only handle 2 GPU's and only 1 can run at X16 mode at a time.

Now im not an extreme gamer, so bare with me. What is the difference between running one card at 16X and running 2 at 8X? I would imagine that you most certainly do NOT double the performance with figures like these. In fact I would imagine its not even close. But I really don't know that much about these things

Basically I see potential, and a long living board, in the GA-790FXTA-UD5. But is it really worth it? 16X 16X 8X...

I am aware of what im getting myself into, if I ask of the potential of this board. Basically, my measly 700W OCZ ain't $h!t anymore LOL! I'll cross that bridge when I get to it

 

Never been involved in an actual fight, ever. Been "attacked" a couple of times by idiot kids, but nothing causing me any injuries, and certainly nothing I started.
Omega: That's partly true. What they actually mean is that the 790FX has a total of 32 lanes, the 790X (and GX) only have 16. This means you can run the following setups:
790X/GX: 16, 8+8, 8+4+4 or sometimes 8+4+1 (though not all motherboards allow combinations like this)
790FX: 16, 16+16, 16+8+8 or 16+8+4 (again, not all motherboards play nice with three slots)
This merely shows the bandwidth of each slot - so the bandwidth to each GPU with single cards, with dual cards you merely split the bandwidth in half. Using 2 GPUs in, for example an HD4870X2, does not penalise you for bandwidth in the other slot any more than a single card would.
For instance:
with a 790GX, a 4870X2 in one slot means the X2 still gets 16x, 8x to each GPU (roughly). A 4870X2 in one slot and an additional 4870 in the second slot means the X2 only gets 8x (4x to each GPU), and the solo 4870 gets 8x to itself.
In a 790FX, if you had one or two 4870X2s attached, both X2s would always get 16x, so 8x to each GPU, in essence.
Bandwidth requirement is really on a "per-GPU" basis, but suffice to say, a 4870 almost doesn't care about 16x or 8x. An X2 will care, but only lose you maybe 20% performance at the most. A 5870 is likely to be somewhere in between. A 5970 I couldn't say, I've not seen it benchmarked. Suffice to say you'd get away with a 4870X2 in an 8x slot (4x per GPU), but I would not recommend doing the same for an HD5970.
Believe it or not Omega, 700W is the rough DC output of my PSU when I'm running both my X2s at full tilt with my Core 2 - probably less now I've downvolted the CPU. 700W is a lot of power, but a 700W OCZ I'm not so sure. Buy a ZM850-HP and have done with it - you'll never hear your PSU, or need to worry about its capabilities again!

 

While I won't defend it, I will make the point that an OCZ GameXStream 700W is, in fact, a true 700W PSU.

But also so are the StealthXStream 600W, StealthXStream 700W and the GameXStream 850W. They're all based on identical internals but have different ratings on the labels. I wouldn't call this a fault exactly, because the <=700W PSUs are all solid performers. But if looking for higher wattage, you should look elsewhere.

Oddly enough, the GameXStream 600W and StealthXStream 500W are based on entirely different internals than the rest.

All of this learned in a private chat directly with an OCZ employee. Asking for info about the SXS 600W.

 

Finding that isn't surprising. Corsair do much the same thing, the VX450 and HX520 are quite similar, yet the VX550 and TX650 are nothing alike.
Also doesn't surprise me to learn that the 850 is a 700 with an 850W sticker on it, that much was proven in testing, and it's that reason why I will never recommend anyone buy a GameXStream.

 

I'd definitely recommend the SXS 600W if only for the fact that it's an overbuilt 600W i.e. no system within its rated specs can overdraw from it. It is surely a higher quality PSU. It's just that the internal design is flawed, thus my only recommending the 600W and no other model.

OCZ has been getting a bit better as of late though. Their Fatal1ty Edition PSUs are supposed to be very good for the price. They also seem to be bringing their RAM quality back up as I'm seeing more high performance DDR2 kits recently. Compare to last year when there were mostly only mid-range kits because their process was having issues and they couldn't attain the correct performance numbers.

I would love to see them start making better peripherals though. I have a friend who got a mouse/keyboard gaming bundle and both were of poor quality.