ATi 3800 Series Cheaper and Better than nVidia 8800GTX?

[Rubius-sama]

Browsing through some video cards and noticed the new ATi 3800 series cards seem to have much higher spec ratings than it's nVidia 8800GTX counterpart.

I compared BFG's nVidia 8800GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 to Sapphire's ATi RADEON HD 3870 512MB GDDR4 and here's the specs:

8800GTX OC (RP: $500)
----------------------
-768MB GDDR3 memory
-Core clock: 600MHz
-Shader clock: 1400MHz
-Memory clock: 1800MHz
-Stream Processors: 128
-RAMDACs: Dual 400MHz

HD 3870 (RP: $270)
----------------------
-512MB GDDR4 memory
-Core clock: 775MHz
-Shader clock: ?
-Memory clock: 2250Mhz
-Stream Processors: 320
-RAMDACs: Dual 400MHz
-Integrated HD audio controller (pretty cool)
-A bunch of other extra features.

So my concern is, why would a seemingly better card be half the price? Especially when it only came out a month or two ago? Sounds too good to be true, so I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with these two cards or can shed any light on the topic.

I would also like to see some benchmarking test results if anyone knows where to find them.

[VioletSkye]

The 8800 GT, GTS, GTX and Ultra all out perform the HD3870 in most tests according to early benchmarks. Considering that an 8800GT can be had for around $210 for 256MB and $260 for 512MB I can't think of a reason to recommend the 3870. The 3870 does have support for DX10.1 though.

http://www.modders-inc.com/reviews-story--183.html

http://www.iax-tech.com/video/350bucks/01.htm

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=6

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2007-12-18 19:13 ]</font>

[ngagerebel]

I always prefer ati over Nvidia, never had a problem with ATI. Always had compatiblity issues with Nvidia!

[VioletSkye]

I've had great luck with both companies products over the last several years (although some of the ATI HD2000 series cards ran WAY too hot and required WAY too much power. I won't mention names but the offending cards know who I'm talking about lol.) I'd like to see some better competition from ATI however as they still don't have anything that outshines Nvidia's flagship cards. The 3870 is a decent card but the price needs to come down a bit if it is to be a competitor with the 8800GT.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2007-12-18 20:48 ]</font>

[ngagerebel]

true, I will say this however everysince they teamed up with AMD they have been running hotter. And if you run AMD there heat sinks are like freakin battle tanks and huge PLUS A HUGE FAN. I'm behind the times and I have an ATI9550 and the heatsink and fan cover the whole card lol. but the life of the cards last a while even though they come out with a newer model like every six weeks.
I dunno maybe its just my luck with nvidia, I would give them another shot i just dont want to fork out the money for another card yet lol



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ngagerebel on 2007-12-18 20:55 ]</font>

[VioletSkye]

On 2007-12-18 20:53, ngagerebel wrote:
I would give them another shot i just dont want to fork out the money for another card yet lol

Heh, I hear ya, especially with Christmas breathing down our necks lol. BTW, welcome to PSOW!!

I just realized you joined March 8th 2007. I saw the 3 posts and figured you were new Oh well, welcome to posting

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2007-12-18 21:01 ]</font>

[ngagerebel]

On 2007-12-18 20:59, VioletSkye wrote:

On 2007-12-18 20:53, ngagerebel wrote:
I would give them another shot i just dont want to fork out the money for another card yet lol

Heh, I hear ya, especially with Christmas breathing down our necks lol. BTW, welcome to PSOW!!

I just realized you joined March 8th 2007. I saw the 3 posts and figured you were new Oh well, welcome to posting

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2007-12-18 21:01 ]</font>

lol thanks. ive known and visited the website for years but never created an account or took part in message boards. till i ran out of things to do at work lol!

[Blitzkommando]

Considering in a number of situations the 8800 GTX outperforms two HD 3870s I'd say not. The 8800GT on the other hand gives performance tied with or slightly below a vanilla 8800 GTX and is an excellent purchase at the price. I've been running a GTX myself since last November and it has been the best graphics card I've owned since my 9800 Pro and might just win over that in the long run. Just keep in mind that the results get further and further skewed in favor of the 8800 GTX/Ultra as the resolution increases. I'd say the sweet spot for the 8800 GT is 1600x1200/1680x1050 as after that there is a rather appreciable difference in performance at 1920x1200 which is the sweet spot for the GTX/Ultra.

My personal opinion is that the current best buy goes to the 8800 GT (512MB) by and far. It has incredible performance at less than $250 and should serve very well in most situations. However, if you play at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 I'd say the GTX is a very worthy investment as that is what I currently run and I've yet to have a game not playable at maximum settings at such a resolution. I understand Crysis makes short work of that though, but one game out of all is hardly reason for calling it a bad choice.

[Rubius-sama]

Thanks for the info VS and Norvkeh.

Seems like I was right and it was too good to be true Thought one of those tests shows the 3850 doing a better job then the 8800GTS, I'm only interested in the 8800GTX. ATi is coming out with the HD 3870 X2 in Jan '08 which combines 2 GPUs on one card... and I guess we'll see then if it can give nVidia a run for its money.

I'm hoping ATi comes out with something better soon because I'm looking forward to using an AMD chipset montherboard on my next PC (with the Phenom CPU), and it'll have extra features for ATi cards.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rubius-sama on 2007-12-18 22:11 ]</font>

[Blitzkommando]

I'm just curious, why Phenom? Even the current Kentsfield chips beat them out performance-wise and with the Penryn quads thoroughly whallop on them and run cooler and with less power. Current Phenom chips also have a known errata that will be fixed with future revisions but at potentially another performance loss which will occur with the current chips with the BIOS updates that fix the issues. (AMD said the cost is between 10-15% in most cases. Something to do with the way the new L3 cache is handled) Phenom, like the HD 3800s, look great on paper but lack in performance and have some stability issues at the moment.

A good rule of thumb about the 8800GTX is that it outperforms the older 8800GTS (320/640 models, not the new 512 that is based on the G92 core instead of G80) by between 15-20%.