{"id":1401,"date":"2008-11-16T01:57:02","date_gmt":"2008-11-16T01:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2008-12-22T16:24:16","modified_gmt":"2008-12-22T16:24:16","slug":"the-big-gpu-review-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/the-big-gpu-review-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big GPU Shootout: Part I, Upgrade Now or Wait?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Do I need to Upgrade?<\/strong> This is perhaps the most commonly asked question by today’s\u00a0gamer.\u00a0 Now with stiff competition between Nvidia and AMD, prices have fallen on the new video cards, Nvidia’s Tesla Geforce series\u00a0and AMD’s HD Radeon series, and a lot of the newer DX10\u00a0games seem to be lagging on old standards like 8800GTX.\u00a0 We also note rumors of newer refreshes of the current Nvidia line coming up\u00a0soon, and many gamers want to know if it makes sense to upgrade now<\/em>.\u00a0 We will try to answer these and many more questions in\u00a0our 5-part and potentially ongoing series that cover video card, motherboard and CPU upgrades.\u00a0 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\u00a0vs. today’s latest and greatest, including Crossfire X-3 combinations.<\/p>\n


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Do I need<\/em> Crossfire X3?\u00a0 You will spend close to $700 for 2 video cards!<\/p>\n

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Thankfully not for 19×12\u00a0for most games<\/p>\n

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Perhaps you are upgrading from a midrange card like 2900xt, 3800 or 8800GTS series.<\/p>\n

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The 2900xt is pictured above along with 8800GTX, the reference card for nearly 2 years<\/p>\n

What about 8800GTX for 19×12?<\/p>\n

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Should you consider\u00a0upgrading to 280GTX or HD4870 as pictured below?<\/p>\n

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Is it more than just a new look?\u00a0 -Oh yes. Read on!<\/p>\n

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Explore with us as we make a complete platform change and\u00a0analyze the performance increases as worth it, or not, for yourself.<\/p>\n

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Check out\u00a0some of\u00a0the\u00a0latest\u00a0hardware we will be exploring over this 5-part series devoted to upgrading for DX10 games.<\/p>\n

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You are now invited to\u00a0explore 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<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Test Configuration<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u00a0are testing at 1650×1050 and 1920×1600 resolutions. These are probably the most common resolutions that most gamers would be upgrading their upper-midrange and top cards from the last generation or so for. We decided to test 2900XT,\u00a0which is\u00a0largely unsurpassed by 3800 series – and is also the near-equivalent of the 8800-GTS series – as representative of upper-midrange cards of that generation. We also picked the venerable 8800-GTX, which has been a top choice standard for almost 2 years and mostly unsurpassed\u00a0by Nvidia’s offerings, except for the higher-clocked Ultra, until Tesla architecture launched a few months ago. We took some of the very latest games and we benchmark them for you at the most demanding in-game<\/em> settings, with Vista 32 and in DX-10 whenever possible with 4xAA\/16xAF. These settings are probably the most commonly chosen and difficult settings for new games that a video card will run. The games we are testing include, Crysis, Call of Juarez, F.E.A.R., STALKER, Half-Life2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ET:QW), Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3), Lost Planet, GRID, FarCry2, PT Boats DX10 demo, as well as the synthetic benchmarks, 3DMark06, Vantage and Fur<\/em>.<\/p>\n


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We’d like to give our opinion here about benchmarking for this article. We prefer to use built-in benchmarks whenever possible. As a second choice, we use custom recorded time-demos and FRAPS. We find that ‘real world’ testing has too many variables to truly paint an accurate picture of differences between closely competing cards, and especially when performance is sometimes only a frame rate or two different between 2 closely competing video cards. We also found that non-repeatable real world testing may skew conclusions. We will let you know when we do this kind of testing and exactly how we set it up. Of course we feel that the video card manufacturers will not ignore the built-in benchmarks or established recorded time-demos and will of course make sure that they run decently on their respective hardware. So you may find that these benchmarks run slightly better than your own in-game experience might. Take this into consideration, but also remember that the other cards will run well on these benchmarks also; you will get a very good comparison of relative performance <\/em>for each game tested. Finally, we also use synthetic benchmarks, such as Futuremark’s 3-D Mark 06 and Vantage, as well as the OpenGL Fur benchmark. For the later Futuremark benches, pay particular attention to the two mini-games that are benchmarked within<\/em> these synthetic benchmarks – where the actual frame rates can be compared. If you take all of these benchmarks together, then you will get a pretty good and accurate picture of the current state of the performance of each of the video cards as they relate to each other. Each card has been tested for weeks and you will also get impressions of relative performance beyond benchmarking to actual game play – which is<\/em> subjective and will be clearly stated as personal opinion or preference.<\/p>\n


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We will also be testing crossfire combinations which include crossfire X-3 = 4870×2 + 4870-512MB vs. crossfire X-3 = 4870×2 + 4870-1GB, to see what penalty – if any – Crossfire X3 (CFx3) experiences when limited to 512MB. We will also be testing our Gigabyte crossfire P-35 motherboard’s performance – 1.0 PCIe specification and 16x+4x PCIe crossfire slots – vs. ASUS p35e deluxe x48 Mother board performance with its 2.0 PCIe specification and 16x+16x PCIe crossfire slots. We also compare Intel’s core2duo, e8600 at 3.33Ghz and also at 4 GHz, with each of our top cards, motherboard and crossfire combinations to look a little bit at CPU “bottlenecking”.<\/p>\n


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So let’s begin with our first round of tests. We are using Catalyst 8-8 and GeForce 177.41 – final certified drivers are used for our testing all through this first part of this review. Identical 250GB hard drives are set up with the latest version of Vista32-SP1; each with identical programs, updates and patches – the only difference are the video cards. We used a Gigabyte P35 Crossfire MB – 1.0 PCIe spec and CF 16x + 4x for this Part One. The testing hardware is detailed in the chart:<\/p>\n

Test Configuration- Hardware<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n