28 réponses à ce sujet

[cliff_g]

Hi Everyone,
        I am looking to move from my GTX280 to a new graphics card.  The main game I play is NWN2.  I am trying to decide on either a 5870 or GTX480 based card.  I know the GTX480 is slightly faster but it does generate a lot of heat.  I have also seen people complaining about the GTX480 drivers with NWN2.  I have been with NVIDIA for years but I am looking to get the best and most reliable card.  The 5870 has been out longer and I am hoping those drivers are very stable.  I would like to play at 1920x1200 with all settings maxed.  Anyone out there currently using either type of card that can tell me your experiences using them?  Also, I had heard that NWN2 just played better on NVIDIA cards.  Is this true?

 Thank you for your input...

[Shallina]

NVDIA current drivers have a problem with NWN2. I have a 495 serie card and with older driver NWN2 works without any problem.

ATI card are also very good. Beceause of the curent driver problem I'd advice ATI.

Modifié par Shallina, 21 juillet 2010 - 02:08 .

[dunniteowl]

I also would recommend ATI simply because I've had both and my ATI cards have always been a little longer lasting and a bit more robust in terms of the heat they can handle. I live in Texas and dang it gets HOT out here. Even with the A/C on, there are times when I can't keep my house at less than 80 degrees unless I win the lottery to pay my electric bill.



However, the Nvidia issues with drivers is a BIG HIT across the board for credibility in my book. That's going to hurt for a while I'm betting. That said, I just got word that Nvidia has now gotten a WHQL driver certified, I cannot recall the number, but obviously it should show up as their lates WHQL on their website. I believe it targets specifically the card you mention above.



dunniteowl

(ATI Radeon X1650 Pro PCIe w/512M DDR3, I run w/AA 2x, all settings either High or Medium (shadows sometimes low to off, just because they don't really affect the visuals all that much and do increase performance) and my resolution is set to 1280x1124 I believe it is. That's a 4 year old card, so FWIW I think it's pretty darn good, considering.)

[Solitude_Aeturnus]

I, as well would recommend ATI. I have never been dissatisfied with any ATI I have owned. I have yet to pull one out and replace them for anything else but upgrading. Nvidia on the other hand, I have burned up all three on stock clock settings which led me to go back. And yes, their recent driver debacle wasn't cool at all. You loose accelerated Physx ability going ATI (CPU only), and you will have hard time getting into the 3-D technology, but Physx is possible and perhaps a future support deal, and 3-D monitors are not really my cup of tea.

[Jet_Truebow]

NVIDIA rolled out recently 258.96 drivers, and they are working fine for me in NWN2 (as compared to 257 drivers where I was getting screens with inverted colors) for those with NVIDIA driver issues for NWN2



I am using a GTS250 now.

[kamalpoe]

I run an ATI 4770. A $100 card when it was first released. Things look fine for me. Any modern card is going to be even better.

[nicethugbert]

Both cards are a lot of card for NWN2. So, you need to look at other factors.



Last I checked, the 5870 was $100 cheaper than the GTX480. SLI scales much better than crossfire. NWN2 does not use more than 1 vid card. So, if there is a chance that you might use 2 or more vid cards for some other game, or you might play some other game that has nvidia optimizations, or you want to use nvidia's 3d tech, or you want the extra frames for a real beast such as crysis, or crysis 2 presumably, I would save myself the $100 and go for the 5870.

[NWN DM]

5870 here. I've been an Nvidia fanboy for years, but this new ATI card is everything I was told it would be.

[KrisM77]

I just ordered a 465gtx fermi 1GB.
Beta drivers 258.96 work just fine in NWN2,

Modifié par KrisM77, 25 juillet 2010 - 09:06 .

[MindYerBeak]

I can't stand the noise of fans, so I went water cooling. I use passive heatsinks on my vid cards. I also have a quiet PSU running a PAPST fan. Sheer bliss. Not a sound to be seen anywhere. Mind you, you have nice temps, but 3 hooj fans? I had 6 fans on the go once and developed tinitis as a result, me ears were boggled. Never again. You'll end up deaf you know, and the way you're gripping that sword you'll go blind too.

[KrisM77]

hmmmm?

Modifié par KrisM77, 25 juillet 2010 - 09:07 .

[cliff_g]

A lot of people say NWN2 does not take advantage of SLI or multiple GPUs. I have read an older review here of a GTX295 that seems to indicate it does?



http://www.geforce3d...review?page=0,2

[cliff_g]

I would like to thank everyone for their well thought out input. I ran this post in this forum and one other. The overwhelming response in both? Go ATI 5870. I will be picking up my 5870 today. It will be the first ATI card I owned since ATI still made their own cards (X1600XTX).



BTW Anyone in the market for a used GTX280?

[nicethugbert]

cliff_g wrote...

A lot of people say NWN2 does not take advantage of SLI or multiple GPUs. I have read an older review here of a GTX295 that seems to indicate it does?

http://www.geforce3d...review?page=0,2

Hmm, good news!

[cliff_g]

My 5870 arrived today. Thank you again everyone for your insight.

[dunniteowl]

Do you mean to tell me, that my All In One-der ATI EVGA card I bought back in 1987 wasn't made by ATI? Oh man?!? Say it ain't so!



It had ATI stamped on it everywhere I looked. Even on the card silkscreening.



dunniteowl

[nicethugbert]

cliff_g wrote...

My 5870 arrived today. Thank you again everyone for your insight.

GRTZ, good gaming.

[Jet_Truebow]

dunniteowl wrote...

Do you mean to tell me, that my All In One-der ATI EVGA card I bought back in 1987 wasn't made by ATI? Oh man?!? Say it ain't so!

It had ATI stamped on it everywhere I looked. Even on the card silkscreening.

dunniteowl

as far as I know EVGA is a submanufacturer of ATI and NVIDIA.

Both ATI and NVDIA have a lot of submanufacturers, (aside from their own original production)

Inno3d EVGA Palit XFX Sparkle MSI Zotac PNY... the list goes on... (I'm using Palit GTS 250 and it runs fine)

The cards are the same usually the difference is only in the fans/casing/input avail. (dvi/vga/hdmi etc). etc. as far as I know it should work as well as the original ATI/NVIDIA.

Modifié par Jet_Truebow, 24 juillet 2010 - 11:20 .

[Haplose]

Do "original ATI/NVIDIA" even exist?



I think they only provide the chipset...

[Jet_Truebow]

they do. they have pictures of actual cards in both their websites.

Original NVIDIA tends to be more flashy with their casings in their graphic cards than the submanufacturers.
(latest models atleast)

here are samples of original NVIDIA cards

http://www.amazon.co...976398&sr=1-113

http://www.amazon.co...9976370&sr=1-97

Modifié par Jet_Truebow, 24 juillet 2010 - 01:02 .

[dunniteowl]

Jet, EVGA used to be a standard, not a company. Extended Video Graphics Adapter. When EVGA came out, it was brand new in 1986. I got my first computer in mid 1987. The Ati All-In-One-der was how it was written on the box and was produced/manufactured by Ati (that's how they had their logo back then.)



Now, all cards are SVGA (Super Video Graphics Adapter --- woo hoo, we've all got Super Cards!)

EVGA as a company showed up much later than EVGA as a standard. That was back when the major competitors were: IBM, Matrox, Hercules, ATI and this new contender called Tseng Labs. Beyond that, there wasn't really even a blip. No Sony yet, no Mitsubishi, no Goldstar (they'd be out a couple years later), and several others that showed up, flashed and splashed and either failed or got eaten by other fish in the pond.



Them's was the days. I remember all the tricks I had to pull to get some of the old CGA games to display properly. Then again, I still have to go through a few tricks to get some of my old CGA games to display properly. Actually more now then before. Fortunately, someone's out there with programming skilz that agrees that some of those old games are still worth playing. Less work for me.



I'd still choose Ati over Nvidia in general. It's like someone else posted above -- I've never changed out an ATI card except to upgrade. The other 3 Nvidia cards I had all failed sooner rather than later. Oh sure, they looked great when they worked, but they just didn't last as long under the stress of what I put them through, I guess.



These days, though -- meh. I'd really be happy to see someone else come onto the scene with a whole new way to produce video and a new way to process it. We need some more new ideas and competition through innovation. Not just more powerful chips, more pipes and more cores -- not that those are bad things. I'd just like to see some really new innovations in the mix.



dunniteowl

[Jet_Truebow]

@dno: oh you mean that EVGA oh sorry. you may have gotten one of the first personal computers ever. that must be awesome, seeing technology grow from that first personal computer to what it is today.



we've seen single cpu's become dual core's, dual core's become quad-cores now I'm hearing 6-core PCs coming out soon.



Maybe the next generation vid cards will be dual core vid cards, we are already starting to see it with crossfire and sli,

[dunniteowl]

Actually there are already several multi-core GPUs available. You might not want to pay the price for them just yet, though. Yeah. My first computer was loaded with this HUGE 20M Hard Drive and all my peers and friends said, "You've got a 20Meg Hard Drive?! What are you going to load up on that thing? That's Humongous!" And they were just as amazed by my 1Meg of RAM and I had both a 5.25" and a 3.5" floppy drive. I was just about the baddest kid at the party at the time.



It cost, though and it was actually a mid performance system. I had a 286/10MHz processor with no math co-processor. I couldn't upgrade the memory without desoldering the chips off the board (which I did when I upgraded it to non-soldered DIPPs and put in there not 2 but 4! Meg of RAM) and I later got to add in a coprocessor. Fortunately I had held a job at Stanford's Atom Smasher upgrading and modifying old 80186, 80286 and some 80386 boards so that they could more stably and quickly control the Beam Current Magnets to increase the accuracy (and thus the power of) the electron beam emissions being used to collide into each other. Awesome stuff.



You folks, some of you anyway, you don't realize how far, how fast computing has come in such a short time. My first computer was not the first available by any stretch, but it was one of the earlier home PCs you could just buy and not have to build yourself. That was in June of 1987.



I joked with my friends when they were awestruck by the power on my desktop, that, "In a few years, you're going to be asking, 'Hey, do you still have that old boat anchor of a PC?' " 23 years later, computers today that fit in the palm of your hand are Orders of Magnitude more powerful, require less power to run, and have the ability to run something as complex as an Apollo Saturn IV rocket's entire series of systems.



And we pretty much take it for granted that more is coming. And that it'll be cheaper, faster and easier to use. Sometimes, it's a really good idea to reflect on just how fast things can change. If for no other reason than the perspective of then versus now.



dunniteowl

[Jet_Truebow]

that was wonderful dno. I must admit I've seen Apollo 13 and saw the kind of computers they had back then. My dad also bought one of those 1st personal computers. anyone else know what wordstar is? haha.

[cliff_g]

DNO, you make me not feel so bad I am still hanging on to my old 3DX Voodoo2.