How will this handle Ultra Mode?

A quick look at Price Watch shows that GTX 260's are around the $200 mark: http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=GTX+260

Radeon HD 5770 is around the $160 mark: http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=R...5770&gallery=1

That's not a "little" less. That is a LOT less. Also, the 5770 can drive Ultra Mode all details (sans Ambient Occlusion) maxed in 1920*1200 with in-game 8x AA.

I'm running an old system with a Core2Quad 2.4 (OC to 3.0), and I just upgraded from an NVidia 9800gt to the Radeon 5770, and it runs everything on full Ultra Mode at 30+fps reliably. Missions are usually capped at 60fps, and some busy areas or certain parts of villainside drop it a little lower, but I'm happy with the performance. FSAA is turned off due to conflict with Occlusion though. I can raise the average fps even higher if you keep occlusion on the performance setting as well.

I'm not sure how the gtx260 would have performed if I picked that one instead, but I wasn't hearing much of an improvement over what I had before, so I went for the "better" card as well.

Is Occlusion on low, or are you saying you went with FSAA instead of Occlusion? I like the effect, and I'm hoping the conflict gets fixed. I haven't been keeping tabs on it. lol

Well, the FSAA + AO conflict has been fixed on AMD's OpenGL 3.x series of cards, so RadeonHD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series cards should be able to run the two together.

The conflict has not yet been addressed on the OpenGL 4.0 cards (the 5000 series), as the implementation of AA is... different... Well, new architecture, new ways of doing things. So, yes, it was supposed to be implied that the performance figures were given without AO. I also directly stated sans AO when covering UltraMode options. Some people like AO, some people don't...

What is it about CoH that is different from other games?
Just from doing a quick review comparison on the 5770 and the GTX260 for games like Crysis, Just Cause2, Fallout, it seems like the 5770 falls a tad short to the 260.

The 260 also comes with a free game and movie.

OpenGL versus DirectX

First, I'm calling B.S. on that. The GTX 260 would NEED to come with a free game and movie because it's a Freaking Rip Off

That being said: which one? I just clicked through all of the GTX 260's I linked earlier from PriceWatch, and not a single one claims it comes with a "free movie" or a "Free game" :: Of the 3 "new" GTX 260's Newegg lists, again, none come with a "free movie" or a "Free game"

So, either show me where you get a "free movie" or a "free game" with a GTX 260, and I mean something that's actually worth more than $5 from the used section at Fry's.

Okay, with that little distraction out of the way, one of the base problems here is that comparing the GTX 200 series to the HD 5000 series is comparing Apple's and Oranges.

First, there are two different models of the GTX 260. There's the base 260 and the Core-216 260. You'll also find that most of the 260's being sold today are branded "Superclocked" to indicate a factory overclock.

Second, there is another major problem with comparing the cards:

HD 5000 series supports DirectX 11 / OpenGL 4.0
GTX 200 series... does not

That's a pretty major feature shift that does result in better in-game image quality; so you really need to look at games that support DX11 / OpenGL 4.0. Given that no commercially released game yet supports OpenGL 4.0, that's a bit of an unfair comparison. Unigine DOES support OpenGL 4.0, but the Heaven Benchmark isn't really a live-game test. However, several games on the market already feature DX11 support a: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ctX_11_support

So, you need to take a look at these games instead

Dirt 2: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/...ce_iq_preview/

Metro 2033: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid..._11.html#sect0 :: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/04/0...performance_iq :: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/04/0...performance_iq

You might notice that the GTX 260 is MISSING from these games because... oh yeah... it can't do DirectX 11 or OpenGL 4.0

Now, if you've already GOT a RadeonHD 4870, 4890, or a Geforce GTS 250, or a Geforce GTX 260, a RadeonHD 5770 isn't going to bring anything new except it's DX 11 / OpenGL 4.0 support.

If you are buying new to have, why on earth would you want a card that costs more and has less features?

The RadeonHD 4890 is one thing. "SuperClocked" editions can punch out GTX 285's. Most of the ones available now still have excellent overclocking potential, so even if you couldn't find a factory overclocked version (and I'll admit I haven't seen any for a while), chances are you can still overclock the living daylights out of a stock card.

If you have $200 to spend and don't care about DX 11 / OpenGL 4.0 support, the GTX 260 is STILL an awful buy compared to the RadeonHD 4890's that are left on the market.

Yeah, I saw that, but all that meant to me was that it was the only option you didn't have cranked all the way up... not that it was completely off. For all I knew you might have had it on low, and it gave me hope that the conflict was already fixed... well I hope it comes soon. weeee! lol

as far as I'm aware, no "floated" driver (meaning one that has been passed to OEM's / ODM's or sent out to the Catalyst beta testers) has AA+AO working on the 5000 series. This doesn't mean there isn't a driver build that enables the two together, but my guess is support is probably 2 / 3 months off. It took about that time for the AA+AO fix on the OpenGL 3.3 driver to filter from the floated driver to the stable release.

I'm under the impression that both Unigine and Source use AA+AO in the same manner that CoH uses the two, so there is some pressure on AMD/ATi to get the support fixed.