How are ATI cards faring these days?
By
BayBlast,
Posted on: 2009-05-03 01:53 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Read this thread and see if you still want to (bickering aside). 
.
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Are there any threads in the forum *without* bickering these days??
So ATI is fine as long as one is ok with AA/AF or high water, but not both. What about Crossfire? Can I assume that since SLI doesn't work that Crossfire doesn't either?
I did read the last page of the ATI Recommended Settings sticky and there were quite a few posts saying how the latest drivers were wonky and crash prone. I'm wondering, is this still the case with 9.4?
CoH doesn't work very well with dual-anything-video. It CAN work but, honestly, I wouldn't push it. Honestly, I haven't been real impressed with dual cards in any game system. They just don't seem to help enough to be worth the extra hassel or cash. It's getting better but I think I would still rather spend that extra money on a different component.
Regarding the graphics settings - let's see, you can get an nVidia card that works with all the options or you can get an ATI card that works with some of the options. Seems an easy choice to me.
Well it's not really that simple, is it? If it were I wouldn't need to ask. Nvidia has no acceptable offerings at the $100 price point, and that's what I'm looking to spend. And while I could, in theory, bite the bullet and expand my budget by $20-$30, that will only get me a nearly two year old product, the 9800 GTX that Nvidia is sneakily now calling the GTX 250 (even tho it's NOT a 200-class processor). The next option would be $185 for a GTX 260 -- much more than I can afford.
So I must ask myself, how much is "high water" worth?
Well you've answered your question. There isn't an nVidia alternative for that level of general performance at that price point.
BillZBubba's sticky thread pretty much sums up the problems with ATI and CoH/V. As of his last post in that thread in Feb 2009, it appears nothing has changed in regards to the AA and the advance shader effects like Water, DoF, Bloom.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
?? I thought the 9800 was about one year old? Yep, Wikipedia says it was released April 1, 2008, so it's just 13 months old. The GTX250 is pretty much the same thing, though it should use less power to run.
Though honestly, the 8800s are pretty good cards, too. Unless you are willing to spend more like $200, I wouldn't expect a big difference. Or maybe ATI made a big breakthrough? Have you seen the stats on this card compared to your current video card?
The GTX250 is a rebadged 9800GTX. It's a G9x part, not a GTX200 part.
I have an original 8800GTS 320. The 9800GT is faster, and the 9800GTX is faster than that. The Radeon 4770 is somewhere between the 9800GT and the GTX.
But I think I've decided to put off buying anything until I can go for a 260, sometime in the fall. Who knows, by then something new might be out.
I run an ATI HD 3870 X2, and I love it.
My brother runs a Crossfire set up of two of these cards. He had problems at first, but got them worked out, as ATI released newer Drivers.
Looking at his Display, though, it isn't much better than mine. Mine is crystal clear, and very sharp. I have all the in game graphics settings maxed.
Of coarse, this card has been replaced by a newer version now, and the cost is around $250.00.
But I have no complaints with the Card I'm running.
Water in the game does sometimes have a wierd effect, but I like it actually.
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I have been an ATI customer for a very long time.
Starting with the first system I built being a Cyrix 200 mhz, I have been through the Rage, Rage pro, Xpert 128, All In Wonder Rage 128 pro, Radeon 7200, 8500, x1600, and finally a x2600xt.
The straw that broke my back was ATI's lack of support when they broke cox in the pcie 8.10 driver, and did nothing to fast track a patch.
It even went as far as a ATI mod on their forum banning a fellow COX player that was drumming up support for people to report the issue via the catalyst feedback form to fast track the issue.
That thread played out here, and still can be found.
In that thread I vowed to never buy another ATI card, and just the matter of two months ago I purchased a 9800gtx+, my first Nvidia card ever.
I have been very pleased with it.
I can say when your ATI card is running full tilt, the image quality cannot be beat. I notice that my old ATI did produce a more cinematic image overall, but my 9800gtx+ blows it out of the water in frame rates overall.
Both cards ran COX full tilt, but I enjoy playing other games now at higher fps.
My ATI made a great picture, but with my Nvidia it is a little less and I dont have to skew my mouse to select an enhancer.
Bottom line is both cards are going to have issues in the future as both has in the past.
Put the pros and cons on paper and decide what is best for you. Consider support, price, image quality, and performance.
I like both card makers for different reasons, and my most recent purchase was decided by a shocking lack of support in my opinion on ATI's behalf.
Thats why I spent my money on Nvidia, and thus far it has been worth every dime spent to me.
Also take in the reviews on sites like newegg on the hardware you are thinking about buying, they go alot farther than the bickersons can offer here.
nVidia released the 512MB 8800GTS back in Dec 2007.
Then, three and a half months later, bumped its clocks up a few percent and renamed it the 9800GTX in Q1 2008.
Then another three and a half months later they bumped up the clocks by another 10% and called it the 9800GTX+ in July 2008.
Finally after seven and a half months, they renamed the card the GTS250. The GPU is now a smaller, lower power version of the same GPU they had since Dec 2007, the G92.
Compared to the original 512MB 8800GTS, the GTS250 clocks are 13% faster, is available with twice the memory, uses less power (only one 6-pin power connector is now needed) and is 60% cheaper.
The price drop, the clock speed boost, the doubling of memory are all the result of ATI's HD 4xxx series arriving on the market.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
I have to wonder what you're gaming on these days, FX.
Be well, people of CoH.
Well speak of the cigar chomping devil.
Honestly, I haven't yet upgraded from the nVidia series 7, Dx9 yet (7900GS to be specific). I don't play many other 3D action oriented games and my 80lbs monitor is still limited to 1280x960. But I read reviews nearly everyday on the latest and greatest CPUs and video cards.
I'm waiting on the next big full rebuild that will be targeting Vista SP3.. I mean Windows 7. Looking at the Core i7-920 since I do coding as well as playing a few games.
It's frighting who much faster and cheaper video cards have gotten in 3 years.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
As an aside, the word on audio production sites is very favorable to the i7 (and even the Phenom II) for performance boosts and multi-core use. Win7 is also viewed very favorably, and this from a group who normally reccomends XP as the OS of choice. Nvidia is slightly preferred for video cards due to some audio issues with Nforce chipsets and drivers in the past.
If CoH is your main game, I think that slants your choice towards Nvidia, whereas if you play lots of different games, it evens the balance towards ATIs cards. Thank goodness for the competition between them though....
Rend this space....
[ QUOTE ]
It's frighting how much faster and cheaper video cards have gotten in 3 years.
[/ QUOTE ]
The technological singularity is about to roar, perhaps? (Vinge's book is incredibly dry reading, but I dug the concepts presented.)
Be well, people of CoH.
Nah, it's just ATI finally showed up with a design that competes well with nVidia, market forces did the rest. Amazing what real competition can do to a stagnant market. Same is true with Intel and AMD now that the Phenom II is out.
ATI has nVidia over a barrel, the G200 GPU is to big and costs to much to make compared to the R7xx series of GPUs. nVidia is relying on the G92, which is nothing to sneeze at, to provide a midrange alternative (128sp Vs 240sp, 256-bit wide memory Vs 512-bit) than issue a similarly reduced GPU based on the G200.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
I for one really don't like nVidia's practice of rebadging old parts as new models. I got all excited when they announced the GTX 250 and then got really pissed when I found out they were not 200-series GPUs. I think it's a blatantly deceptive marketing strategy that borders on fraud.
I also think nVidia is going to get caught with their pants down in the upcoming year. They are so concerned with the high end market they have severely neglected the midrange market. Their "midrange" products are basically repackaged chips from the last 2 years. The problem is that I think for most people today's midrange is "good enough", especially when money is tight. But who wants to spend good money on old technology?
ATI hasn't had much luck at the high end, and has focused a lot on the midrange, so I think they are in a much better position, and are definitely going to put some heat on nVidia to compete in that area.
Well the G92 was introduced in Oct 2007 with the 8800GT with only 112 of the 128 streaming processors (SP) enabled and in Dec 2007 the 512MB 8800GTS arrived. Since the G92 was their 9th generation GPU they should have been called the 9800GT and 9800GTX from the start but the problem was that it didn't really exceed the performance of their top end 8th generation GPU the 8800GTX/Ultra. Actually at very high resolution the 512MB 8800GTS was a bit worse due to lower memory bandwidth and less video memory. So nVidia waited until they had their $600 video card, the 9800GX2, in March 2008 before they hung the 9 on the name of the original G92 cards.
Now the 9800GX2 is sort of cheating to have that as your high end card. People were looking for a boost in performance for a single GPU like when the 8800GTX replaced the 512MB 7900GTX. But that wasn't coming until the G200 GPU arrived in June 2008, only 7 1/2 months after the G92 came out and only 3 months after they formally introduced the 9xxx series. And while the G200 did seriously outperform the 8800GTX/Ultra and the G92 including the 9800GX2 twin GPU card, it wasn't anything revolutionary. They simply increased the number of SP per cluster to 24 from 16, the increased the number of clusters to 10 from 8 and doubled the width of the memory bus to 512-bits so all those SPs could be fed.
Now nVidia may have had midrange G200 based parts on the drawing board built around 4 to 6 of the 24sp clusters with 128 or 256-bit memory bus but ATI dropped the HD 4850 and HD 4870 a few days after nVidia's G200 based cards were introduced. What shocked the market was ATI's previous top end card, the HD 3870 was barely competition for the 8800GT/9800GT and suddenly the HD 4870 was outperforming the 192SP version of the GTX260 and at the price point of $300, $100 less than the GTX260, and the HD 4850 easily beat the 9800GTX and was priced only at $200, also $100 less than the 9800GTX. So from a consumer standpoint, in the same time between the introduction of the G92 to the G200, ATI nearly caught up but also redefined the price/performance point for video cards.
nVidia was forced to lower their suggested prices for the GTX260 and GTX280 right out of the gate. So nVidia needed to punt. A 4 to 6 cluster (96 to 144 SPs) based G200 part wouldn't provide much improvement over the mature G92/G94 part (the G94 is found in the 9600GT). It took a year for nVidia to refine the G80 into the more profitable G92, why bother developing a "new" part that would perform just like the "old" cheaper to produce part?
As it was, nVidia had to tweak the GTX260 by enabling a 9th 24SP cluster for 216SPs just to stay ahead of the HD 4870 (which caught up some by going to 1GB of memory). nVidia couldn't waste the time developing a refined G200 beyond a straight forward die shrink so they are pushing ahead to the G300, rumored to have a whopping 384SPs with GDDR5 memory like the HD 4770, 4870 and 4890 have.
Currently nVidia is fighing ATI at the high end with GTX295, a twin GPU card, the GTX285, an OC GTX280 and the GTX275, which is half of a GTX295 or a GTX280 with a GTX260 memory bus to choke performance. ATI introduced the HD 4870 X2 twin GPU card that easily outperforms the GTX280 and the GTX285 and the HD 4890 which competes nicely with the GTX275.
So do I blame nVidia's marketing department renaming the same set of video cards twice? No, I've long assumed, and direct experience proven, marketing does not relate to our reality of facts and specifications, they simply look forward to the next artificial "season". Do I blame their engineering department? No, they had all indications that they were at least a year ahead of ATI, I'm sure they were planning a refinement of the G200 with midrange versions of the design. They were simply caught the same way AMD was when the Core2 arrived, they didn't expect their competition to leapfrog ahead the way they did.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Well I think I've changed my mind again.
Toms Hardware just did a comparison between the 4770, the GTX260 and 280, the 4890, and two 4770s in Crossfire.
The Crossfired 4770s spanked every single card except the 280, and was only about 10% slower than that despite being at least $100 cheaper.
And I was able to see that the GTX260 (the card I've been itching to buy but is more than I want to spend) is only about 33% faster than a single 4770, but 80% more expensive. Doesn't sound like a very good bargain to me. And since the price of the 260s have already dropped since the introduction of the 275s I don't expect the price to come down anytime soon.
So now my next question: what brands of Radeon should I avoid? I've seen Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and XFX. I'm assuming any of the last 4 would be fine, but I have no knowledge of the first 3.
[ QUOTE ]
[ ... ]I'm waiting on the next big full rebuild that will be targeting Vista SP3.. I mean Windows 7. [ ... ]
[/ QUOTE ]
Just to point out (running Windows 7 beta) that Windows 7 is in no way a "refinement" of Vista. It's a complete new beast and I have to say I am impressed. IMO it's what Vista should have been.
� Taosin [Sydney, Australia]
Servers: Virtue, Justice, Exalted
[ QUOTE ]
So now my next question: what brands of Radeon should I avoid? I've seen Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and XFX. I'm assuming any of the last 4 would be fine, but I have no knowledge of the first 3.
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Of the first 3, I have a Sapphire x1600 that is in my second computer, it was great out of the box. Powercolor was an option at the time, but the reviews if I recall at the time made me steer away from them.
Avoid Diamond at all costs. They have a habit of not allowing enough cooling/large enough heatsinks for their cards ala my 2600xt.
My current card is a Nvidia XFX, and I am very pleased with them.
OK, I bit the bullet:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec_...iteria=3005196
Everyone keep their fingers crossed 
I've been using an ATI HD4850 for a while with no problems. Great performance at 1680x1050 resolution.
They're down close to that $100 price you're shooting for (after rebates). NewEgg has a number of them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...eon%20HD%204850
Virtue:
Rockburner, Fire/Stone Tanker (50)
Doc Disaster, Earth/Storm Controller (44)
Icewall, Inv/Ice Tanker (42)
Wings, MA/Inv Scrapper (42)
Shockblast, Elec/Elec Blaster (36)
..and many others.
Well the 4770 arrived today and so far so good. I did some quick testing in Vantage and here is what I got (Forceware 185.85 for Nvidia, CCC 9.5 for ATI in Vista64)
1280 x 1024 (default setting)
8800GS 384MB = 3753
8800GTS 320 MB = 5072
HD4770 512 MB = 6705
That's 32% faster than the 8800GTS and 79% faster than the 8800GS
1920 x 1080
8800GS = 2460
8800GTS = 3363
HD4770 = 4478
And that's 33% faster than the GTS and 82% faster than the GS
Yeah, it's just a single benchmark, but it does give you some idea of the performance difference.
The 8800GS was nVidia's attempt at something to fill the gap between the 8600GTS and the 8800GT. By going with an odd 192-bit memory bus and a 96SP version of a G92 they essentially choked the performance out of the card with only 60% of the bandwidth of a G80 based 320MB 8800GTS.
The HD 4770 has twice the texture fill rate and four times the raw FLOP performance of the 320MB 8800GTS. However its potential performance gain is muted by a relatively small bandwidth to memory.
Still it is an amazing $99-109 video card.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
I've been a long time Nvidia user and now find myself considering buying the new Radeon 4770 to replace my aging 8800GTS 320.
I know that ATI cards have long had problems in CoX and I'm wondering if going this route is going to cause me more headaches than it's worth.
In case it matters I use Vista64 with 4 GBs RAM, an E8400 Core2Duo @3.6GHz, and run at 1920 x 1080.
One of the things that appeals to me is being able to buy a second of these cards down the road and using Crossfire (my mobo doesn't support SLI). Does Crossfire work with CoX? In general does Crossfire work well in games that support it or is it too more of a pain than its worth?
Thanks.