Ok, after poking around more on TomsHardware, I see what you mean. I also found ratings/suggestions for SLI combos, something cpubenchmark has been somewhat lacking.
Speaking of which, I thought I might pick up a 2nd GTX 470 for SLI gaming, but nobody has them anymore! I just bought it a little over a year ago, but the 470s have just about disappeared, it looks like. Did they get "dumped" because nobody wanted them or maybe they were "inferior"?
Gaming Graphics Card Rankings and Video Game Card Basics
Débuté par
Gorath Alpha
, mars 14 2010 03:30
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#52
Posté 29 septembre 2011 - 01:23
Gorath Alpha
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If nVIDIA has been releasing their profit and loss information to their stockholders, it hasn't gotten out into public media lately. I don't know what kind of profit margins they get from selling their cell phone parts to those producers, but they have a limited time to make the switch from PC chipsets and graphics processors to other areas of specialization.
The 470 and 570 are essentially the same product, just refined further in the case of the 570. They were late with their Fermi generation, and had to release still-uncertain products in order to have anything available to sell with Dx11 functionality. They really are putting the major efforts into opposite ends of things. Their 580 represents one area, the massively parallel Scientific CPU, and the Smartphone hardware is the other. It's really hard to be sure whether they purposely limited 470 production to be sure that the 570 had a market, or what, exactly, is the reason you aren't easily finding another one now.
If you have previous CF / SLI experience, you may feel more favorably toward that type technology; personally, I haven't felt that the value on a frames per dollar basis has been adequate, nor has the technology been well received by the gaming developers (I don't think games support either of the CF / SLI setups particularly well).
Gorath
The 470 and 570 are essentially the same product, just refined further in the case of the 570. They were late with their Fermi generation, and had to release still-uncertain products in order to have anything available to sell with Dx11 functionality. They really are putting the major efforts into opposite ends of things. Their 580 represents one area, the massively parallel Scientific CPU, and the Smartphone hardware is the other. It's really hard to be sure whether they purposely limited 470 production to be sure that the 570 had a market, or what, exactly, is the reason you aren't easily finding another one now.
If you have previous CF / SLI experience, you may feel more favorably toward that type technology; personally, I haven't felt that the value on a frames per dollar basis has been adequate, nor has the technology been well received by the gaming developers (I don't think games support either of the CF / SLI setups particularly well).
Gorath
#53
Posté 29 septembre 2011 - 06:23
Baramon
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Well, honestly, I've been leaning more toward the "one current card is usually better than two slightly older cards" philosophy for quite awhile. For some reason, I had an unexplainable urge recently to purchase a "backup" GTX 470 and go ahead and SLI them and upon further thought, have decided against it. For the most part. Availability being the final limiter anyway.
To me, at the moment, it just doesn't seem like there's all that much out there in the way of improvement over my GTX 470 unless I want to spend a TON of money. I might be better off saving my $$ for a new Bulldozer cpu. I will probably wait even longer, because I don't like to buy the first of anything "new" if I can help it....
To me, at the moment, it just doesn't seem like there's all that much out there in the way of improvement over my GTX 470 unless I want to spend a TON of money. I might be better off saving my $$ for a new Bulldozer cpu. I will probably wait even longer, because I don't like to buy the first of anything "new" if I can help it....
#54
Posté 06 octobre 2011 - 02:58
Gorath Alpha
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The latest die shrinks at Global and TMSC have been less than fully successful for AMD so far, with poorer yields than expected for both CPUs and GPUs, pushing release dates further out until they can get the yields up (and resulting costs down, per chip). The current predictions, for mid-November, of both of those newest generations, may end up being pushed out another month.
Meanwhile, I saw a recent new member asking questions about a Geforce 7900 GS. That was the last GPU sold by nVIDIA in the (relatively) High End for the old AGP video bus. The truth about the Geforce 6800 and 7800 / 7900 is that those had raw speed, combined with poor shader implementation. Drivers have *NOT* been kind to those old dinosaurs.
P. S. I don't know about anyone else playing the ME games, but I had just great fun with both NWN1 and KotOR. I have preserved an older PC, with a Radeon 9800 Pro card in it currently, but I also have a Geforce 6800 GT in a drawer, if that card is actually needed with any particular expansion / mod of those oldies. Since it is readly possible to go to almost any thrift shop in any American metropolitan area and buy much better PCs than what NWN / KotOR required, for peanuts (because the public is besotted with laptops, and buying low grade replacement laptops for their high grade desktops), just stuff oldies that are badly in need of upgrades under the computer desk for occasional use with nostalgia class games.
Meanwhile, I saw a recent new member asking questions about a Geforce 7900 GS. That was the last GPU sold by nVIDIA in the (relatively) High End for the old AGP video bus. The truth about the Geforce 6800 and 7800 / 7900 is that those had raw speed, combined with poor shader implementation. Drivers have *NOT* been kind to those old dinosaurs.
P. S. I don't know about anyone else playing the ME games, but I had just great fun with both NWN1 and KotOR. I have preserved an older PC, with a Radeon 9800 Pro card in it currently, but I also have a Geforce 6800 GT in a drawer, if that card is actually needed with any particular expansion / mod of those oldies. Since it is readly possible to go to almost any thrift shop in any American metropolitan area and buy much better PCs than what NWN / KotOR required, for peanuts (because the public is besotted with laptops, and buying low grade replacement laptops for their high grade desktops), just stuff oldies that are badly in need of upgrades under the computer desk for occasional use with nostalgia class games.
Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 06 octobre 2011 - 05:31 .
#55
Posté 07 octobre 2011 - 04:04
Baramon
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The life (and death) cycle of PCs in my household: old PCs get passed down to the kids, because they primarily play on laptops or consoles anyway, and the older PCs work for some of the stuff they want to do on them....and then they kill them. I don't know what they do to them, but they don't survive long. I kept telling myself I'd hold a "legacy" PC (or three) in reserve, but it just never seems to happen. The main problem with that: having one PC to play DOS games, one to play Baldur's Gate stuff, one to run Thief, one to run Jedi Knight II, one to run KotoR....you get the picture.
Besides, I just recently installed NWN1 on my current PC and it runs....okay. I swear my 2005 system ran it better though. Maybe I could commandeer my previous system from my youngest son, the one with the 7950GT in it, WindowsXP....ah, the good ole days. ;-)
Besides, I just recently installed NWN1 on my current PC and it runs....okay. I swear my 2005 system ran it better though. Maybe I could commandeer my previous system from my youngest son, the one with the 7950GT in it, WindowsXP....ah, the good ole days. ;-)
#56
Posté 22 mars 2012 - 11:56
Gorath Alpha
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This forum is quite slow now, and has been since last spring, however, we did have someone asking about one of AMD's "trick" namings of an onboard chipset video chip, their HD6480 G.
(I had answered) It's not going to have the speed to allow him / her to open the locker in the very first scene of ME-2 to get the pistol. The game uses a feedback from real graphics cards that onboard chips cannot match. ME-1 is harder on PC graphics hardware than either ME-2 or ME-3, so if a given integrated excuse for video is unable to run on ME-2, it won't work on ME-1.
(Hmm? I suspect the question rose from someone brought here after the ME-3 release, asking about both, but I'm not going back into the thread to see why I answered about ME-1.)
(I had answered) It's not going to have the speed to allow him / her to open the locker in the very first scene of ME-2 to get the pistol. The game uses a feedback from real graphics cards that onboard chips cannot match. ME-1 is harder on PC graphics hardware than either ME-2 or ME-3, so if a given integrated excuse for video is unable to run on ME-2, it won't work on ME-1.
(Hmm? I suspect the question rose from someone brought here after the ME-3 release, asking about both, but I'm not going back into the thread to see why I answered about ME-1.)
