question for geforce users (and video card enthusiasts)

[Finity1]

Greetings all,
I'm looking to upgrade my current geforce 7900 GS (pci-e x16) to the next level in the geforce series graphics cards, but I seem to have reached a dilemma. My mobo, an asus P5LD2, doesn't support PCI-e x16 2.0 (I'm pretty sure) so that limits my choices of cards to normal pci-e x16.
So I've been looking at geforce cards, and I've come to the realization... I can't seem to win. Some of the 8000 series cards have more memory with a higher memory clock speed, but then the GPU core clock is lower than the 9000 series that I've been looking at... and then some of the 8000 series has a faster gpu clock and lower memory! So confusing. So this brings me to the question-what is more important, a lot of video memory that is fast or a faster GPU speed?
I know someone will suggest buying a new mobo so I can purchase PCI express 2.0 cards, but I'm just looking for a cheap and quick upgrade, not so much a new system. Does anyone have some solid recommendations?
Thanks!

[MidKnight]

A: PCIe 2.0 is backwards-compatible with PCIe 1. You just won't be able to take advantage of the higher bus speeds.

B: Mare important than both the VRAM and the clock speed is the chip itself. I'd prefer a 512mb 600mhz 8800GT to a 1gb 650mhz 8600GT any day! Remember
that if a card is faster than other cards with the same chip, it's probably overclocked.

C: before buying anything, look for reviews. Often, you'll find one for just that card, with in-depth stats and comparison to competitors.

Good luck and happy shopping! Be sure to tell us what you get!

[Finity1]

Thanks MidKnight!
So then would it be better anyways to just go ahead and buy a PCIe x16 2.0 card and run it (even though it may not be running at its best) or would it be better to buy a card that is designed for PCIe x16 normal?

[SpliFF]

The main difference between mid and high-end chips these days is the number of stream/shader units. These are tiny little CPUs that let games generate textures and geometry on the card itself. This is MUCH faster than transferring large amounts of data from RAM (or even VRAM) and allows a great range of special effects (like hair, water, etc). Since eye-candy like that sells games most new games use as much of this as they can. If your card doesn't have enough of these units then it needs to queue the instructions instead of performing them simultaneously. If you want to play dx10/dx11 games you'll want plenty of stream processors.

You're not going to see a lot of benefit going over 512Mb of VRAM at the moment because most games will very deliberately stay under this limit until 1GB cards are the norm. If they don't then any 512Mb cards or lower will be constantly shuffling textures across the PCIe bus. Even with its fantastic transfer rates moving that much data is still a major burden.

I honestly don't think much of the current generation of cards. I have a 8800GT which still manages excellent framerates and detail on my 2560x1600 display. Most of the new cards single-GPU cards only manage a moderate increase in performance (like around +20% at best) but are about 5x more than what I paid for the 8800GT. I'd get a much better deal spending $50 for another 8800GT to use in SLI and I'd get close to the same results.

I'm going to wait until I can afford an i7 (or whatever AMD choose to challenge it with), DDR3 and a Serial SCSI drive array before I consider a video card upgrade. Then I'll take into account the requirements of the games I want to play.

[Finity1]

So SpliFF, in short.... you recommend the 8800 as well. Buying something like a 9800 with 1gb of ram would be a waste of space because most apps don't run more than 512 anyway? Or would it put me ahead to have one in the future?
I guess I still don't know what's better for my situation... although it seems that the 8800 series is a dying breed and the 9800 is taking it by storm, at least on newegg.

[Peet]

Bear in mind that texture space is not the only thing vram is used for; high antialiasing levels eat vram like candy.

[SpliFF]

Skip over the 9800, it isn't as good as it thinks it is. Best value atm would be a GF 260 or 280 since both are superceded by the only marginally better 295. Performance is around 45% better than the 8800 Ultra in benchmarks and you avoid some of the SLI overhead/bugs/heat issues that you'd get in an SLI or dual-GPU setup.


Right-click and "View Image" in FF to read properly

Some benchmarks

You can already pick up the GTX260 896MB NEW for around US$200. Wait another 3 months and that will probably halve, especially if AMD bring out some decent new tech (they've been pretty slack lately). Then go second-hand and you score a sub-US$100 graphics monster that'll last you 3-4 years.

[rattle]

8800 GTX/Ultra if you happen to find a cheap one and anything GTX260+ is fine too.

[Cabbage]

So SpliFF, in short.... you recommend the 8800 as well. Buying something like a 9800 with 1gb of ram would be a waste of space because most apps don't run more than 512 anyway? Or would it put me ahead to have one in the future?
I guess I still don't know what's better for my situation... although it seems that the 8800 series is a dying breed and the 9800 is taking it by storm, at least on newegg.

The 8800GT is pretty much the same a 9800GT. Its just had minor tweaks and was rebranded when ATI/AMD bought out their 4xxx series.

[SwiftSpear]

Although, it is worth noting that one of those minor tweaks was to correct an overheating issue that somewhat drastically increases the chance of an early life failure in the 8800 cards.

[Pxtl]

So SpliFF, in short.... you recommend the 8800 as well. Buying something like a 9800 with 1gb of ram would be a waste of space because most apps don't run more than 512 anyway? Or would it put me ahead to have one in the future?
I guess I still don't know what's better for my situation... although it seems that the 8800 series is a dying breed and the 9800 is taking it by storm, at least on newegg.

The 8800GT is pretty much the same a 9800GT. Its just had minor tweaks and was rebranded when ATI/AMD bought out their 4xxx series.

Does this extend to the budget (8600/9600) as well? I'm shopping for a budget-card, personally.

[overkill]

Not at all. The 8600 was a disgrace in terms of price/performance compared to the 7600gt and 9600gt. The 9500gt whoops the 8600gt iirc. GO with the 9600gt, man. That thing is pretty sweet for the cost.

[Finity1]

Wow, I got a whole lot more information than I was expecting to get... I suppose knowing is half the battle anyway!
If I'm going to spend the money on a card like the gf 260 or 280, is it really worth it if I'm going to be running it in a standard pcie x16 slot anyway? To me it doesn't make sense to buy a killer card if it won't be running at it's max anyhow (unless I upgrade my mobo, which I probably won't be doing for some time yet).
I'm gonna browse prices now, though... still unsure what I want just yet. Maybe I'll stay away from the 9800 though.

[SpliFF]

No cards are PCIe limited. At worst you'll see the load time for a game or game level go up by a fraction of a second while the textures are loaded. A 16x PCIe like you have has a throughput of 80Gbps which is 7.4 Gigabytes / sec !!

PCIe Throughput

Now given the VRAM on the GTX260 is 896MB that means the entire card can be loaded up in about 1/10th of a second! The geometry generated by the CPU is miniscule in comparison (a few kilobytes at most). You'll only ever see issues if a game decides it wants more than a gigabyte of compressed textures on a single map (and doesn't use incremental loading).

So yeah, get the GTX260 now and you can still use its full potential.

[MidKnight]

Yup, GTX 260 gets a nod from me. It was my second choice when I was buying myself a card (I ended up buying an ATi HD 4870, regret it now ).

[SwiftSpear]

Yup, GTX 260 gets a nod from me. It was my second choice when I was buying myself a card (I ended up buying an ATi HD 4870, regret it now ).

Really? Does spring not run as well or something?

[MidKnight]

50 fps max on an empty map on ATi's best single-card solution?
10 FPS in most large matches?
With 8x AA (rather than 16x) and bumpwater?

[Finity1]

A long time ago I was a pretty big fan of ATI cards, and I used their flagship card (at the time) the Radeon 9800 Pro for some time. But when I swapped back to the nvidia chipset, I've never looked back. I've been very happy with the geforce series, personally..
Anyways, by no means am I trying to turn this into a debate of nvidia vs ati, I would like to avoid a flame war if at all possible...
SpliFF, I read that PCI article and according to what you said, the conclusion I came to is that the games that are out there right now can't even utilize PCIe x16 2.0... because right now they don't even fully take advantage of the standard pci e x16? So it is moot point to even worry about it.

[[Krogoth86]]

50 fps max on an empty map on ATi's best single-card solution?
10 FPS in most large matches?
With 8x AA (rather than 16x) and bumpwater?

Then you've done something wrong imo. I have fine performance with both a HD4830 and HD4870. If you have shadows activated turn them off - their current form is not really suited for a RTS game from a technical view as it eats performance like crazy...

Still even with a NVIDIA card you won't get more performance at the same settings (when choosing a comparable one). I chose the ATI because of a better performance per money ration when buying them and cannot complain. Plus I wouldn't buy a NVIDIA card recently as "punishment" due to their naming policy which is like the most crazy things I've ever seen on this sector and fools customers with little knowledge...

[SwiftSpear]

50 fps max on an empty map on ATi's best single-card solution?
10 FPS in most large matches?
With 8x AA (rather than 16x) and bumpwater?

Then you've done something wrong imo. I have fine performance with both a HD4830 and HD4870. If you have shadows activated turn them off - their current form is not really suited for a RTS game from a technical view as it eats performance like crazy...

Still even with a NVIDIA card you won't get more performance at the same settings (when choosing a comparable one). I chose the ATI because of a better performance per money ration when buying them and cannot complain. Plus I wouldn't buy a NVIDIA card recently as "punishment" due to their naming policy which is like the most crazy things I've ever seen on this sector and fools customers with little knowledge...

I have an 8800GT and I use shadows and very nearly full settings in spring to get about 50-60 FPS. The lowest FPS I've seen in normal play conditions is about 20, of course maps like speedmetal still fuck me on those settings (although, honestly, I think it's the CPU drain that does it)

[edit] That being said, from the reviews I've read the ATI cards tend to handle DX games better than OGL... and the drivers are written significantly more optimized to specific titles than Nvidia tend to be. So for the majority of games, per the dollar spent, ATI cards are a better value. Spring just happens to be a somewhat poorly optimized openGL game that isn't specifically supported under any ATI driver.