34skyline

Do you guys think it's really worth getting the Geforce or ATI which is the better card for your money.

GPU Engine Specs:
Processor Cores 240
Graphics Clock (MHz) 602 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz) 1296 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 48.2
Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz) 1107 MHz
Standard Memory Config 1 GB
Memory Interface Width 512-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 141.7
Feature Support:
NVIDIA SLI®-ready* 2-way/3-Way
NVIDIA PureVideo® Technology* HD
NVIDIA PhysX™-ready*
NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology
HybridPower™ Technology*
GeForce Boost
Microsoft DirectX 10
OpenGL 2.1
Bus Support PCI-E 2.0 x16
Certified for Windows Vista

ATI Radeon HD 4870

956 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
256-bit GDDR3/4/5 memory interface
Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
Shader Model 4.1
32-bit floating point texture filtering
Indexed cube map arrays
Independent blend modes per render target
Pixel coverage sample masking
Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
Gather4 texture fetching
Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
800 stream processing units
Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
128-bit floating point precision for all operations
Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
Shader instruction and constant caches
Up to 160 texture fetches per clock cycle
Up to 128 textures per pixel
Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
Re-Z, and Z Range optimization
Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
Up to 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing
Accelerated physics processing
Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
High performance vertex cache
Programmable tessellation unit
Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
Anti-aliasing features
Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
Gamma correct
Super AA (ATI CrossFireX™ configurations only)
All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
Texture filtering features
2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
OpenGL 2.1 support
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform6
Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) for H.264/AVC, VC-1, and MPEG-2 video formats
High definition (HD) playback of Blu-ray and HD DVD video
Dual stream (HD+SD) playback support
DirectX Video Acceleration 1.0 & 2.0 support
Support for BD-Live certified applications
Hardware DivX and MPEG-1 video decode acceleration
Accelerated video transcoding & encoding for H.264 and MPEG-2 formats
ATI Avivo Video Post Processor6
Color space conversion
Chroma subsampling format conversion
Horizontal and vertical scaling
Gamma correction
Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
Detail enhancement
Color vibrance and flesh tone correction
Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
Bad edit correction
Enhanced DVD upscaling (SD to HD)
Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
Two independent display controllers
Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
Full 30-bit display processing
Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
Fast, glitch-free mode switching
Hardware cursor
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2
Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content3
Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x15362
DisplayPort output support
24- and 30-bit displays at all resolutions up to 2560x16002
HDMI output support
All display resolutions up to 1920x10802
Integrated HD audio controller with support for stereo and multi-channel (up to 7.1) audio formats, including AC-3, AAC, DTS, DTS-HD & Dolby True-HD4, enabling a plug-and-play audio solution over HDMI
Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder
Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
Underscan and overscan compensation
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
VGA mode support on all display outputs
ATI PowerPlay™ Technology5
Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
Performance-on-Demand
Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
Clock and memory speed throttling
Voltage switching
Dynamic clock gating
Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required
ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
Scale up rendering performance and image quality with two, three, or four GPUs
Integrated compositing engine
High performance dual channel bridge interconnect1

Sazar

The 280 will be the superior part in pretty much every conceivable situation. The true competitor to it from AMD would be the 4870X2 which is the top performing single-card out on the market.

The 4870 (1GB version) will still be pretty competitive in many games though and it's cheaper.

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slugbug

For the money the GTX 260 216 is a better buy.

Terrahertz

What the hell lol? Its like you wanted us to say go ATI/AMD with that list you put up.

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Mizzle

Of the two, I'd get the 280 GTX, as explained by Sazar. The only GPU I can think of that is better is the ATI 4870X2.

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Johnny

It is all based on preference and what you want. I have read numerous things about the 280 gtx being better than the 4870 x2. But the down side with the nvidia is that you can't run daul monitor with it, and you can with the ati.

This is one of those Ford Chevy type things. I personally like them both - I will probably never run a dual monitor, although I would like to. But after reading what I read and such, I would probably go with the nvidia.

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Johnny

Here is a nice one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130370

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failurbydesign

that's a good deal bet it kicks cs4 in the ass!

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epk

thats a really good deal

and free far cry 2 hehe (:

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Aprox

What do you mean you can't run dual monitors with it? If you were in SLI, then yes you would not be able to do that. However if you are running a single card you can drive dual monitors with absolutely no problem.

To the OP, I'd have to agree with slugbug here. The GTX 260 216 core is an absolute steal for the money. Its performance is approaching that of the GTX 280 for significantly less money. I have one myself and absolutely love it.

Johnny

Yes, aprox, you are right. In SLI you can not run dual monitor, but in single you can. I should have made that more clear in the regard that I would not be using sli anyhow, as I have no need for it or dual monitor; which is another reason why I would go for the nvidia.

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Aprox

Last I heard was that Nvidia was planning on adding dual monitor support for SLI platforms. No idea how long ago that was, or how far into the future we will actually see that.

Johnny

Yeah, I been hearing that also. I think ati will left in the dust when it does comes out.

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epk

not really, they still have strong contenders in the lower markets

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failurbydesign

Those cards do rock, but i could see ATI stepping up the game...though ill stick with nvidia cards

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LeeJend

The latest scuttlebut says ATI/AMD are going after the "performance integrated chipset market" since they have been unable to keep up with Nvidia on pure performance and AMD can do the math. The desktop market is flattening out and the laptop market is growing.

ATI is still the leader if you want decent performance and multimedia capability.

BTW I'm giving 2:1 odds AMD/ATI does not survive 2009 as an independent company. They either get swallowed or die out due to the recession.

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epk

by the way... have you guys seen this?

XFX may start making ATi cards
yeah, they're not switching sides.. but xfx was one of the flagship brands for nvidia GPUs, so its kinda surprising


oh, and leejend.. i think amd is doing way worse than ati
the hd4xxx series have been selling quite well


edit: its official

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