The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Yayayayaya want!
This excites me far more than the Ares, because look at the innovations Sapphire have produced in the past, versus the innovations Asus have produced. Asus have genuinely produced some remarkable stuff I've been impressed with, there is no doubt about that at all, but look at it. The ROG Ares, a limited edition with a 1000 euro price tag estimated. The ROG MARS, a £1000 limited edition card with very poor driver performance, the HD3850X3, an as -yet unbested technical achievement, but by the time of release using a hopelessly outdated GPU and thus performing in the areas of mediocrity.
Sapphire on the other hand are slightly less ambitious, but far more successful, their recent products include stuff like the 2GB versions of the HD4870 and HD4890 with Vapor-X coolers. It wouldn't surprise me if Sapphire do not choose to go full clock speed with their 4GB HD5970, but somewhere in between, such that they don't need excessive power and cooling, and probably not excessive power connectors either (though they may resort to two 8-pin connectors instead of 8+6). Most importantly, none of Sapphire's modifications have ever been stupidly expensive. With luck, this will be no different.

 

I don't think I'd go quite that extreme. But yes the card is mediocre even compared to the lowest end offerings of the past several generations. I'd put it about equal to a 7100GS.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the card per-se, but don't expect to run any games on it.

 

Because I feel stupid for jumping in too quickly to the 210 purchase. Which is fine. "Stupid is as stupid does" eh LOL!

I guess I was hoping for light to mediocre gaming. I really should have done SOME reading on the 210. Had I ran even 1 search on the subject, it would have put up a red flag. I remember Sam mentioning its dire performance NOW, that this situation has come up. I guess before it went WAYY over my head LOL! I have rather selective hearing, selective memory...

I'm still ok for now though. As I said, his PS3 will no doubt be his rig of choice for months. If a game is released on PC that intrigues him, we'll deal with the situation at that time. Perhaps next time, I'll have the Cojones to try ATI on a board that seems to not like several series of.

 

So if the 210 is no good for gaming, why in the Frick does it insist on a 300W power supply? Sure wants a bit of power for not doing any gaming...

 

Because some PC systems could be using 250W just for the CPU and other components. Not too hard, if you run 6 hard drives and several burners with a massively overclocked 130W quad core you'll pull that off.

 

Ahh, ok. So basicallly, since the standard HTPC comes with 250-270W they recommend that I have a few more watts to spare an add-in card. Good lord, if I go with an actual gaming card then, I may not be able to find a suitable PSU. Though the 300W seasonic may be able to handle a moderate card...

 

If you used a molex to PCIe adapter, you could run a 5770 off a 250W PSU no worries, as long as it's a good brand. I wouldn't recommend doing so with a 95W TDP CPU though, just in case

 

Its an 89W CPU, and a 300W seasonic, so I should be good. Feels like a very good PSU

 

You'll be fine. Could run a 5850 off that!

 

I realize this is not the best or accurate test for testing a GPU, but I was curious
It had me scared for a moment. When I first opened the test, it had already done it, and was scoring a big fat one! But said that it need updated. Probably due to my installing the GPU drivers LOL! If im not mistaken, the 210 just scored almost as good as my old 8600GT. If thats true, than its not nearly as bad as I thought...

 

and my four 4870s score 6.3.
Still trust the system?

 

Excellent example! You've just proved the point LOL!

 

Sweet my 8800GTS scores a 6.8, I'll be sure to use this "benchmarking" system if I ever try to sell it

 

6.8 over sams 6.3? Must be favoring Nvidia then...

 

Well, that is exciting news then. With the SSD, $3000 probably won't quite handle the whole thing with twin 5970s - you're recommending an i7 board, right? .. with full 16x pci-e bandwidth for each 5970 card, as I recall from prior posts.

Wow, no I hadn't see your latest 3dmark6 - 27,150!! Hahaha.

I see you cranked your cpu up past 3700 to 3920 - virtually 4ghz! (Correction, over 4ghz, 4116 to be exact with turbo-booster, as I now read the rest of the post.) I recall you saying something a few months ago about targeting 27000. Congratulations!!

Wow, Shaff, the PC walkthrough trailer of BC2 was awesome!!

And Omega is still killing Niko!! Hahahaha. So other than that, Kevin, have you started stealing cop cars yet and shooting the "most wanted." That was the most fun I was having at my 10-12 fps, lol. (There's a corner police station that's easy to get to and easy to memorize where it is on the map, where one black veteran cop waits outside on a cigarette break, looking in the other direction, and doesn't bother you too much as you swipe a patrol car. As I recall from the map, the top of the map being the strip club, if the total map is 10" high, the station is about 1" below the bridge that goes to the strip club island, about 60% over to the right - look for a triangular intersection.)

Hey guys, what are the ramifications of 4gb of memory on that new sapphire 5970 card? - it holds more texture information? -less need as in crysis to stream textures to the card, since there's room to leave them there once you first streamed them? I know that more memory is always better than less, but what benefit will we actually see from that much memory on the card?

- Rich

 

That would be best, since there's a lot of bandwidth required to run four GPUs. I haven't gone i7 as there's no other performance gain from it, and for X2s at least, the lack of bandwidth is not much of an issue. I'm hoping the same is true of 5970s. Using an i7, other than costing me an extra £150 I don't have, would raise my power usage substantially, to the extent that overclocking a pair of 5970s would push me too close to my PSU's limit. At 4.12Ghz, it would take an i7 920 to be 4.2-4.25Ghz to be as good in games, which is a tricky speed to reach without a huge voltage, heat output and power consumption.
As for graphics memory, there is a certain amount of info a graphics card can store in memory before it will have to swap it around, which cuts performance hugely. 1GB is fortunately masses of video memory, but some games at 2560x1600 (or worse, in eyefinity setups) with high levels of AA (which ups texture memory usage a lot) use a lot of memory. In GRiD, a 512MB HD4870 will only get 4-5fps at 2560x1600 with 4x, whereas the 1GB version of the same card will get 40+. There are almost no games for which 1GB is insufficient with 4xAA or less yet, but that may soon change. GTA4 is the only current game I can recall that requires more than 1GB of video memory. It does not require as much memory as stated (if it says you need 1100MB, you actually need about 450-500) but at max settings (which require you to disable the limiter bar) you will need around 1200MB.

 

I'm afraid I started the missions over. I achieved enough last time to enter into vigilante missions, but I only did it once or twice. I plan on playing a bit this weekend though. Right after one of my shows Caprica

 

I remember when the i5 family came out - there was talk at that time, as I recall, that the i7 family would primarily be for servers. But I forget why.

So which i5 do you have, Sam, and why is your i5 faster than an i7 for gaming? (It uses less power also, is that right?)

Are you talking GTA4, Kevin? I was referring to looking up the Most Wanted criminals on the police car computer, then going after them, lol.

 

I have the i5 750, the only quad core i5 at present. They are faster CPUs for gaming (only slightly) due to the lack of all the server-grade bonuses i7s get, and the lack of hyperthreading.

 

Oh wow. using the police computer? Maybe I'm remembering San andreas missions then. Now I don't believe I entered vigilante missions on GTA IV