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GTX 285 simulated review (GTX 280 clocked to 285 speeds)

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A bit of on-topic news for this thread (;))

Gigabyte's first GeForce GTX 285 card has hit the retail market as of January 2nd, at least in Hong Kong.

The pricing from two separate shops are HK$3399 and HK$3200, which roughly equates to €296 and €314, or $439 USD and $412 USD.

Just wondering how these Hong Kong prices compare to what the standard 280's go for over there.
 
Soldato
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My X2 has been amazing, I don't need any driver hacks and it's far from a "poor user experience". The problems people seem to have stem from earlier driver releases but I've never had 1 problem with my X2!

The X2 is a better attempt at dual GPUs than the GX2 IMO.

Erm, I'm talking about the tech itself not NV or ATI. Both manufacturers basically have to write profiles for individual games and/or engines to make it work. These are the 'hacks' which are on top of another 'hack' that is dual GPUs to start with. Rather than proper load balancing, each GPU takes it in turn to render a frame (with AFR). Of course the game doesn't know its running on two GPUs - and even if it did it wouldn't help much.

'Taking it in turns' to render a frame is a bit of a misnomer, since if that happened it would be no faster than a single GPU. Instead, both GPUs each have to render a frame at the same time. The driver accomplishes this by saying 'rendering complete' to the game, so the game sends another frame to be rendered. Of course this raises serious timing issues - for example, how do you sync up input? What if a future frame needs data from a previous frame? Worse still since you're effectively rendering frames in pairs - how do you slightly offset the frames so that you get a nice smooth frame delivery (aka. avoid microstutter). Other methods like SFR are even worse.

Until proper load-balancing is set up, that is the GPUs are made far more modular where the units themselves are just spread out - multiple GPUs will give wonderfully high framerates in benchmarks, but not massively improved actual gameplay - certainly not performance increases commensurate with double the price and double the power consumption.

Not sure how the X2 can be classed as an 'elegant' design though. Its very clever, but not elegant imo. Its a massively complicated PCB with more layers than a single-GPU board. Basically its a single PCB with two GPUs put side by side, memory around them and a PCI-E bridge in the middle. Worse, the heat from one GPU is blasted over the other GPU heating it up more - and increasing noise. Can't see it being any more elegant than NV's new dual GPU board which doesn't suffer from heating one GPU more than the other, or the excess noise. Neither solution is elegant imho.
 
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Because the review above is basically showing off that the 4870x2 is better then all the cards, yet they fail to point out that all the other cards are single units, rather then 2. Which already shows the comparisons there doing is flawed.

How can you compare something which is vastly different?

Its like comparing Crysis to Duck Shot.

Uhh, you've got me confused now, don't you mean than? :eek: :D

By your logic, you can't compare a GTX260 to a HD4870, because they are vastly different, completely different technology.

You also can't compare a 10k raptor to a 7.2k HDD, because they're different. You also can't compare plasma to LCD to CRT, because they're, all different.

Considering the 4870X2 is in the same price bracket as a GTX280, The average GTX280 price is about £330, you can get 4870X2s for about £340, then you can actually compare them.

Realistically, you'd have to be mad or a fanboy to get a GTX280 over a 4870X2 when you're talking a difference of a tenner. That, or some one who's paranoid about dual GPU technology. Either way, it'd be a waste of money buying a GTX280 when you can have so much more performance for an extra £10, which is a price difference of about 3%. :rolleyes:
 
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Realistically, you'd have to be mad or a fanboy to get a GTX280 over a 4870X2 when you're talking a difference of a tenner. That, or some one who's paranoid about dual GPU technology. Either way, it'd be a waste of money buying a GTX280 when you can have so much more performance for an extra £10, which is a price difference of about 3%. :rolleyes:

There's more to GPUs than raw benchmark figures. In fact especially more than benchmarks.
 
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Do you think these reviewers just run benches or do you think they actually play games also. They all say a 4870x2 is the better card why can't people get there head around a 4870x2 being a better gaming card than a gtx280. My mate had a 8800gtx now he has 2 he loves the extra performance its no different to having an x2 it does give better gaming performance than a gtx280. If it didn't why are nv releasing the gtx295. I suppose when the gtx295 comes along it will also be not as good as the gtx280.
 
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It seems to be getting harder and harder to have a reasonable rational debate about gfx cards anymore as people are so defensive about the brand they prefer. For me i looked at what card gave me the best for the money i had at the time it could easily have gone either way but at that point in time it was the X2 and while i wouldn't call it a perfect card it has been good for me just as the 280 has for it's owner's.

I am not an expert in anyway shape or form and come onto forums to find out new things and lately on a few forums it just isn't happening as this brand war seems to be spreading to the point i might stop going on gfx sections of forums soon. Way i see it is there is no such thing as right or wrong if the person that spends the money is happy then who cares.
 
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It seems to be getting harder and harder to have a reasonable rational debate about gfx cards anymore as people are so defensive about the brand they prefer. For me i looked at what card gave me the best for the money i had at the time it could easily have gone either way but at that point in time it was the X2 and while i wouldn't call it a perfect card it has been good for me just as the 280 has for it's owner's.

I am not an expert in anyway shape or form and come onto forums to find out new things and lately on a few forums it just isn't happening as this brand war seems to be spreading to the point i might stop going on gfx sections of forums soon. Way i see it is there is no such thing as right or wrong if the person that spends the money is happy then who cares.

Yeah, it's getting boring now, just because someone has a bad experience with a X2 means that we all must, the X2 has been the first card that blew me away since the GF2 GTS...gaming experience has been first rate with it.
 
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It seems to be getting harder and harder to have a reasonable rational debate about gfx cards anymore as people are so defensive about the brand they prefer.

What's amusing is that you're acting like it's a new development, and has only just started happening. Newsflash, the forum is no different now to what it was over 3 years ago... the exact same arguments have always been there... if anything it's got slightly better over the last year.
 
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When i first came on this forum there was quite a bit of reasoned debate about all components and it only seemed to get really bad with the release of the 4xxx from Ati. Since then the amount of personal insulting seems to me at least to have gone beyond a joke and any debate is hijacked by fanboys from either side. If as you say this is what i should expect all the time then maybe it is time to leave this section of the forum because there are forums out there where it isn't like this and i can have more of a laugh and learn something then i can on here now.
 
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When i first came on this forum there was quite a bit of reasoned debate about all components and it only seemed to get really bad with the release of the 4xxx from Ati. Since then the amount of personal insulting seems to me at least to have gone beyond a joke and any debate is hijacked by fanboys from either side. If as you say this is what i should expect all the time then maybe it is time to leave this section of the forum because there are forums out there where it isn't like this and i can have more of a laugh and learn something then i can on here now.

I would have to agree with that as i have seen many well informed members who have stopped posting for the reasons you described as too many members now are not interested in facts weather good & bad as nothing is perfect & are only focused on pushing the importance of what good for themselves down peoples throats.
 
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There's more to GPUs than raw benchmark figures. In fact especially more than benchmarks.

Well, considering that a 4870 1GB isn't that far away from a GTX280 in performance, and sometimes tops it, how on earth is a 4870X2 not going to be massively better?

For pretty much the same money, you get a lot more performance.

And if it's not all about benchmarks, what is it about?

Price to performance ratio, X2 wins. Performance? It wins again. It's obviously going to win because it's up to twice as fast as a 4870, but the fact is that it's pretty much the same price. People who want as much performance for their money as they can get should obviously get one over a GTX280. It's common sense, the GTX280 is still pretty overpriced, especially when the GTX260 isn't that much behind it and the 4870 either.
 
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Well, considering that a 4870 1GB isn't that far away from a GTX280 in performance, and sometimes tops it, how on earth is a 4870X2 not going to be massively better?

For pretty much the same money, you get a lot more performance.

And if it's not all about benchmarks, what is it about?

Price to performance ratio, X2 wins. Performance? It wins again. It's obviously going to win because it's up to twice as fast as a 4870, but the fact is that it's pretty much the same price. People who want as much performance for their money as they can get should obviously get one over a GTX280. It's common sense, the GTX280 is still pretty overpriced, especially when the GTX260 isn't that much behind it and the 4870 either.

Some people get problems with them, but I haven't had any with mines. There was stuttering when I got it but with the newer drivers there has been no stuttering in games and it's been a great gaming experience.

When I had 4850s I had problems but this ended up being problems with my system (old BIOS, too low vcore etc) which didn't show up with a GTS512 before, mainly the display driver stopped responding error. When fixed it was fast and great in games. Perhaps the ATi cards show up problems in the system more, who knows.

Unfortunately on these forums there is a few who make it out like ATi are crap, drivers are crap, they don't support PhysX etc. I find CCC works perfectly, I am running a 2407WFP-HC and a Sony 40X3000 over HDMI with no problems, I can game on either screen and both GPUs work fine in games. 4870X2 has been the best GPU I have bought in terms of "wow" of recent, but the GF2 GTS was my favourite :D
 
Caporegime
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When i first came on this forum there was quite a bit of reasoned debate about all components and it only seemed to get really bad with the release of the 4xxx from Ati. Since then the amount of personal insulting seems to me at least to have gone beyond a joke and any debate is hijacked by fanboys from either side. If as you say this is what i should expect all the time then maybe it is time to leave this section of the forum because there are forums out there where it isn't like this and i can have more of a laugh and learn something then i can on here now.

Then leave... because with a forum this busy, it's not going to change any time soon. And as I said, it's always been like this.
 
Soldato
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When i first came on this forum there was quite a bit of reasoned debate about all components and it only seemed to get really bad with the release of the 4xxx from Ati. Since then the amount of personal insulting seems to me at least to have gone beyond a joke and any debate is hijacked by fanboys from either side. If as you say this is what i should expect all the time then maybe it is time to leave this section of the forum because there are forums out there where it isn't like this and i can have more of a laugh and learn something then i can on here now.

It is the first time in a few years (before 8800gtx/ultra) that both camp are almost equal in price/performance on most levels,so will get more views on what is best it was too one sided when the 8800gtx came out as it had a quite a good lead and ati had nothing to compare with it and was playing catch up with nvidia all the time and hardly anyone would say that the 2900 was a better card even to the 640(i know without aa it was quite good and with later drivers they did improve performance a lot) nevermind the gtx.
 
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