Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870

BlueMak · Dec 27, 2008, 11:17 PM

I wonder if it or something similar will appear in a near future version of Direct X.

ChaosMinionX · Dec 28, 2008, 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

Whats not to like about additional image quality? lets be honest. Most hardware publications messed up their coverage of PhsyX because all they explained were "frame rates" and people seem to be under this impression that "its slower than without it". Which is going to be pretty obvious if you analyse it.

Isnt everyone on the holy grail now for IQ? I know I am. I would rather have a game running at 40fps with particle effects, debris and other extras than at 60fps without. Cyrostatis for example is a wonderful indication of what is possible if the developers tackle it. GRAW2 still looks great (Ageia island in particular) and the tornado in Unreal Tournament is another. The upcoming Mirrors Edge on the PC uses it as do a few others on the horizon.

We covered it pretty well in the past I think. http://www.hardwareheaven.com/articles.php?articleid=122

I don't think we can give a negative view on something because it has yet to be adopted by the masses. Will it be a success? I dont know, id like to see more developers using it but lets see how it goes in 2009. As a technology its extremely appealing to me, it always was, even when it was just a hardware solution before Nvidia bought it over.

Fair enough

I guess put in the sense that it does add to IQ the Framrate hit is acceptable, I guess its too young a tech to really judge it fully. Was more shooting it down because that guy was using it in his arguements for why a 260GTX is better to have than 4870.

As far as I know for DX implementation of a PhysX type deal, Windows 7 would have something similar in the works on the basis of WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) which uses the processor to do some rendering, processors with SSE4.1 instruction set will be faster at the rendering (Namely Penryn/Nehalem are the only Intel Processors with this, as far as AMD goes I dont think they will ever be SSE4.1 Compliant, since they opted for their own SSE4a set.)

WARP works with DX10 and DX10.1, as to how good it will be? I would say marginal at release, but it definately has potential.

If you havent heard about WARP a good article on it can be found here...

Windows 7 WARP brings DX10 rendering to the CPU -- Gamers.com News

tanka12345 · Dec 28, 2008, 05:52 AM

I wonder what ATI will use to counter PhysX, or are they even going to counter-attack at all?

Zardon · Dec 28, 2008, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChaosMinionX

Fair enough

I guess put in the sense that it does add to IQ the Framrate hit is acceptable, I guess its too young a tech to really judge it fully. Was more shooting it down because that guy was using it in his arguements for why a 260GTX is better to have than 4870.

Well, even though the guy was ranting nonsensically, I would rather have an OC'd 260 GTX compared with a 4870 myself. Partially due to PhsyX and the other due to the Forceware drivers.

Quote:

As far as I know for DX implementation of a PhysX type deal, Windows 7 would have something similar in the works on the basis of WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) which uses the processor to do some rendering, processors with SSE4.1 instruction set will be faster at the rendering (Namely Penryn/Nehalem are the only Intel Processors with this, as far as AMD goes I dont think they will ever be SSE4.1 Compliant, since they opted for their own SSE4a set.)

I don't think this is going anywhere inside a gaming environment. CPU based solutions like this just won't be useful enough to power in game effects - the bandwidth just won't be high enough (in some cases less than a tenth of a standard GFX which will lead to massive slowdowns even without a lot of particle support etc). This is more for windows eye candy featuresets such as Aero for users with GFX without acceleration support.

BlueMak · Dec 28, 2008, 01:13 PM

THen thing I don't undersand about the WARP is they claim that if for example your graphics card fails, you will still be able to load windows, but, how on earth is the monitor going to receive the signal if your graphics card is fried?

WARP seems like a good solution, I just don't know for what.

As for PhysX, I was never impressed with it, but it has the potential.

Knight_Breed · Dec 28, 2008, 01:43 PM

Now that this thread has settled down some poking my head in here for a sec. On PhysX I think it does have potential but is still new and has teething pains much like Vista did initially.

A buddy of mine came up with the great idea of using my modded 9600gt as a dedicated PhysX processor along side my new HD4870. But unfortunately Vista only allows one display driver to be installed at a time because ATI and NV use WDDM drivers and not XPDM. So basically for this to work I would need two NV cards using the exact same WDDM driver.

Another buddy of mine said someone found a workaround on Guru(ATI & NV) but I am not a member there and because of the facts I am skeptical ... BUT ... if anyone has some ideas let me know

BlueMak · Dec 28, 2008, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Knight_Breed

Now that this thread has settled down some poking my head in here for a sec. On PhysX I think it does have potential but is still new and has teething pains much like Vista did initially.

A buddy of mine came up with the great idea of using my modded 9600gt as a dedicated PhysX processor along side my new HD4870. But unfortunately Vista only allows one display driver to be installed at a time because ATI and NV use WDDM drivers and not XPDM. So basically for this to work I would need two NV cards using the exact same WDDM driver.

Another buddy of mine said someone found a workaround on Guru(ATI & NV) but I am not a member there and because of the facts I am skeptical ... BUT ... if anyone has some ideas let me know

Wouldn't it be cheaper or at least less problematic if you just bought a dedicated physx card?

Knight_Breed · Dec 28, 2008, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueMak

Wouldn't it be cheaper or at least less problematic if you just bought a dedicated physx card?

I suppose it would be but the 9600GT runs 780/2000/1050 stable with the cooler and I already have it lol. Was an idea but your suggestion might be something to check out in the New Year ... those cards are around 100CAD pretty cheap actually ...

Thanks for the reply

blibbax · Dec 28, 2008, 10:30 PM

I heard something a while ago about the possibility of adapting physx to run on any ATI card, but I don't know what came of it.

I too have a modded 9600GT lying around, but no SLI motherboard to hook it up alongside the 9800. Besides, I've yet to get into a game that makes any real use of it. I'm still hopeful though - physx (and CUDA for that metter) has great potential.

ChaosMinionX · Dec 28, 2008, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

I don't think this is going anywhere inside a gaming environment. CPU based solutions like this just won't be useful enough to power in game effects - the bandwidth just won't be high enough (in some cases less than a tenth of a standard GFX which will lead to massive slowdowns even without a lot of particle support etc). This is more for windows eye candy featuresets such as Aero for users with GFX without acceleration support.

True I was not expecting much out of WARP, discrete graphics will always be exponentially better in terms of processing power, but it does give way to some other ideas on how to make games run better in terms of CPU loading and getting every bit out of your system.

I would also add that I use 7 beta as my main OS currently, and I have not really seen anything better for performance in gaming scenarios.

I do agree though about it being "eyecandy".... it will probably take the same route as ReadyBoost to be honest.

DJ BIG T · Dec 29, 2008, 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TT2

Yes that's right, there is only a 20$ difference b/w them right now but what was the price of GTX260 and GTX280 when they were released ?

Its a defensive measure and perhaps a very hard decision for Nvidia to reduce the prices of their high end cards (GTX260 and GTX280) and they were forced to take this decision (thanks to ATI).

ATI is wise in developing their gfx cards, they choose GDDR5 to achieve high performance in 4870 while Nvidia choose GDDR3 for their new gfx cards. GDDR5 is expensive but not as expensive as developing a 512-bit or 448-bit bus for gfx cards.

1. 4870 deliver high performance through GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus.

2. GTX260 deliver high performance through a bus of 448-bit with GDDR3.

The first option is cheaper and has higher performance than normal GTX260 plus great memory overclocking potential.

Its important to mention that 4870 clearly outperforms normal GTX260 so Nvidia secretly tweaked their GTX260 and released a new card (GTX260 core 216). There is no architectural improvements in that card they just tweaked it by turning on a disabled core and now its just a card closer to GTX280, nothing special (Now that is a defensive measure indeed). So who is the clear winner now ?

You should read this article by AnandTech

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299

If you are not interested in reading full article then make sure you read the last page, it has pretty interesting facts about the price as well as performance of 4850 and 4870.

ati is also loosing a lot of money doing this... you need to read about it...

ChaosMinionX · Dec 29, 2008, 12:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ BIG T

ati is also loosing a lot of money doing this... you need to read about it...

Got a link?

Bolletje · Dec 29, 2008, 02:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

Well, even though the guy was ranting nonsensically, I would rather have an OC'd 260 GTX compared with a 4870 myself. Partially due to PhsyX and the other due to the Forceware drivers.

Hmm, I don't know the prices exactly in the UK, but isn't the HD4870 cheaper than de HD4870 in most cases, especially a OC-version of the GTX?

On the other hand the HD4870 has DX 10.1 and you can easily combine it with another with various Intel motherboards...

Zardon · Dec 29, 2008, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bolletje

Hmm, I don't know the prices exactly in the UK, but isn't the HD4870 cheaper than de HD4870 in most cases, especially a OC-version of the GTX?

On the other hand the HD4870 has DX 10.1 and you can easily combine it with another with various Intel motherboards...

The UK market at the minute is fluctuating so much right now its hard to nail prices. However the 512mb 4870 is very inexpensive now at around £190 HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

A GTX 260 MAXCORE can be bought for around £212 inc vat Zotac GeForce GTX 260 "Maxcore" 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

and a 1gb 4870 is around £218 HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

So it is pretty close with regards to pricing ...

Incidentally ive been asked what DX10.1 "is" exactly as I notice a lot of people are talking about it:

What are the changes? DX 10.1's goals are to offer the "complete" DX 10, giving developers better control over image quality and making mandatory some of the things that are optional in DX 10. For example, 32-bit floating point filtering is optional in DX10 (16-bit FP filtering is mandatory), but will be mandatory in DX 10.1. Also, in DX 10, the number of multisample anti-aliasing samples is optional ”DX 10.1 will make 4x AA mandatory, and require two specific sample patterns. Graphics cards can offer more sample patterns, and developers can query them in their shaders. Graphics cards that are DX 10.1 compliant will have to offer programmable shader output sample masks and multisample AA depth readback. Game developers will be able to index into cube maps and perform bitwise copies from uncompressed textures to block-compressed texture formats.

Knight_Breed · Dec 29, 2008, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blibbax

I heard something a while ago about the possibility of adapting physx to run on any ATI card, but I don't know what came of it.

I too have a modded 9600GT lying around, but no SLI motherboard to hook it up alongside the 9800. Besides, I've yet to get into a game that makes any real use of it. I'm still hopeful though - physx (and CUDA for that metter) has great potential.

Nor do I perhaps there were driver issues there as well but if he couldn't figure it out I know few who can ...

On the 9600gt I don't believe you actually need an SLI board just one with 2 PCI-Ex16 slots. As far as I have read the idea is the cards continue to run independently of each other one dedicated to processing Physx.

As has been mentioned several times on this thread there are still quite a lack of applications using this so not getting to crazy with it .... but those applications will come

blibbax · Dec 30, 2008, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Knight_Breed

Nor do I perhaps there were driver issues there as well but if he couldn't figure it out I know few who can ...

On the 9600gt I don't believe you actually need an SLI board just one with 2 PCI-Ex16 slots. As far as I have read the idea is the cards continue to run independently of each other one dedicated to processing Physx.

As has been mentioned several times on this thread there are still quite a lack of applications using this so not getting to crazy with it .... but those applications will come

Foxconn P4M9007MB - google it and pity me!

Dec 27, 2008, 11:17 PM	#61
BlueMak HH's Asteroids' Dominator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Hellas->Macedonia->Thessaloniki Posts: 13,242 Rep Power: 326 System Specs	Re: Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870 I wonder if it or something similar will appear in a near future version of Direct X. __________________ The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm *Sic semper tyrannis.*

Dec 28, 2008, 05:52 AM	#63
tanka12345 HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: New Zealand Posts: 441 Rep Power: 30 System Specs	Re: Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870 I wonder what ATI will use to counter PhysX, or are they even going to counter-attack at all? __________________ My New Rig - Windows 7 RC Build 7100 Intel Core i7 920 OCed to 3.2GHz \| CoolerMaster V8 \| Patriot Viper 3x2GB DDR3-1333MHz \| MSI Eclipse X58 \| LG W2261V 22" 16:9 \| Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB \| MSI ATI 4870 1GB \| Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W PSU \| CoolerMaster HAF 932 \| ASUS DRW-22B1LT Lightscribe \| Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme \| Logitech X-540 \| Razer Carcharias \| Razer Lachesis \| Razer Destructor/ Razer Goliathus Speed/ Fnatic SteelSeries Qck+ XL \| OCZ Alchemy Elixir

Dec 28, 2008, 01:13 PM	#65
BlueMak HH's Asteroids' Dominator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Hellas->Macedonia->Thessaloniki Posts: 13,242 Rep Power: 326 System Specs	Re: Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870 THen thing I don't undersand about the WARP is they claim that if for example your graphics card fails, you will still be able to load windows, but, how on earth is the monitor going to receive the signal if your graphics card is fried? WARP seems like a good solution, I just don't know for what. As for PhysX, I was never impressed with it, but it has the potential. __________________ The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm *Sic semper tyrannis.*

Dec 28, 2008, 01:43 PM	#66
Knight_Breed DriverHeaven Addict Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Canader EH !! Posts: 281 Rep Power: 27 System Specs	Re: Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870 Now that this thread has settled down some poking my head in here for a sec. On PhysX I think it does have potential but is still new and has teething pains much like Vista did initially. A buddy of mine came up with the great idea of using my modded 9600gt as a dedicated PhysX processor along side my new HD4870. But unfortunately Vista only allows one display driver to be installed at a time because ATI and NV use WDDM drivers and not XPDM. So basically for this to work I would need two NV cards using the exact same WDDM driver. Another buddy of mine said someone found a workaround on Guru(ATI & NV) but I am not a member there and because of the facts I am skeptical ... BUT ... if anyone has some ideas let me know __________________

Dec 28, 2008, 10:30 PM	#69
blibbax What does this do? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 3,674 Rep Power: 169 System Specs	Re: Gaming Today: GTX 260 V Radeon 4870 I heard something a while ago about the possibility of adapting physx to run on any ATI card, but I don't know what came of it. I too have a modded 9600GT lying around, but no SLI motherboard to hook it up alongside the 9800. Besides, I've yet to get into a game that makes any real use of it. I'm still hopeful though - physx (and CUDA for that metter) has great potential. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!