The Big GPU Shootout: Part I, Upgrade Now or Wait?
by apoppin on Nov.16, 2008, under Technology
Introduction
Do I need to Upgrade? This is perhaps the most commonly asked question by today’s gamer. Now with stiff competition between Nvidia and AMD, prices have fallen on the new video cards, Nvidia’s Tesla Geforce series and AMD’s HD Radeon series, and a lot of the newer DX10 games seem to be lagging on old standards like 8800GTX. We also note rumors of newer refreshes of the current Nvidia line coming up soon, and many gamers want to know if it makes sense to upgrade now. We will try to answer these and many more questions in our 5-part and potentially ongoing series that cover video card, motherboard and CPU upgrades. This first article sets the stage for what is coming from us and shows the performance comparison between last generation’s top and midrange cards vs. today’s latest and greatest, including Crossfire X-3 combinations.
Do I need Crossfire X3? You will spend close to $700 for 2 video cards!
Thankfully not for 19×12 for most games
Perhaps you are upgrading from a midrange card like 2900xt, 3800 or 8800GTS series.
The 2900xt is pictured above along with 8800GTX, the reference card for nearly 2 years
What about 8800GTX for 19×12?
Should you consider upgrading to 280GTX or HD4870 as pictured below?
Is it more than just a new look? -Oh yes. Read on!
Explore with us as we make a complete platform change and analyze the performance increases as worth it, or not, for yourself.
Check out some of the latest hardware we will be exploring over this 5-part series devoted to upgrading for DX10 games.
You are now invited to explore with us and comment on this first article in a series of our video card reviews. When we started benchmarking well over 8 weeks ago with Catalyst 8-8 and Geforce 175.19, we were not quite certain exactly where we would go or what we would find. We did have a clear idea that we would try to determine if video cards from the last generation or so need upgrading; and we are referring particularly to Radeon 2900/3800 series, and Geforce 8800/9800 series. Our review is in several parts and will cover comparisons of Catalyst Drivers 8-8, 8-9, and 8-10 with 3 sets of GeForce 177.41, 178.24, and180.48
December 12th, 2008 on 2:40 am
You are wrong DX 10 games are not lagging
thank you highwon
December 21st, 2008 on 7:30 pm
[...] our last benchmarking for Part One [here] of our GPU shootout, Catalyst 8-9 and new certified Geforce drivers, Nvidia 178.13, were [...]
December 21st, 2008 on 7:45 pm
Sure they are lagging
Check out part two of my Shootout .. even top cards have issues playing some of the latest games at 19×12 resolution – fully maxed out
January 3rd, 2009 on 9:22 pm
[...] is our third installment of “Big GPU-Shootout”. Part I covered Cat 8.8 (8/20/08) vs. Geforce 177.41 (06/26/08) on p35 MB platform as we examined the [...]
February 9th, 2009 on 6:25 am
[...] Part I, The Big GPU Shootout: Upgrade Now or Wait? covered Catalyst 8.8 vs. Geforce 177.41 on Intel’s P35 platform as we examined the performance of five video cards. The new cards we tested were: HD4870-512MB, HD4870X2-2GB, GTX280; while 8800GTX & 2900XT represented the top and mid-range cards of the last generation. In our conclusions, we realized that last generation’s video cards are not sufficient for today’s Vista DX10 maxed-out gaming – even at 1650×1080 resolution. We even started by comparing Core 2 Duo E4300 at it its overclock of 3.33Ghz to E8600 at its stock 3.33 GHz and found the older CPU rather lacking in comparison. We then continued on for the rest of our series with our E8600 which we later overclocked to nearly 4.0 Ghz for the next 3 reviews. This changes in the next review, when we use Core 2 Quad Q9550S. We also started to bench with crossfireX-3 in Part I which ran on fairly immature drivers and we have continued to chart its progress until now. [...]
June 26th, 2009 on 2:50 pm
[...] We are updating our first “Big GPU Shootout” review that we published back in November. We now feature ten video card configurations which are four more than the last time and we also [...]
June 26th, 2009 on 4:56 pm
[...] Shootout, Revisited. We are updating our first ?Big GPU Shootout? review that we published back in November. We now feature ten video card configurations which are four more than the last time and we also [...]
July 27th, 2009 on 8:28 am
[...] lanes. We got great framerates in a lot of modern games that we benchmarked here at ABT for you in this review. However, by simply upgrading to the newer Core2Duo E8600’s architecture at the same 3.3 GHz, [...]