ATI 3870 - Cheap!, Low Power!, and still has Full Performance!
 

I might actually buy this board. It consumes absolutely no power, yet outperforms the x2900 XT! And to top it off, it will come in at about $200!!! THis will kill the 2900 XT market, and considering the screenshots I have been seeing - the image quality is night and day better than the 8800 GT!

The 8800 GT has ugly rendering, especially in games like Crysis as compared to the 3870. THe 3870 has much more vibrant screen geometry, and also fully supports the new DX10.1.

Anyone looking at buying a new vid card should at least consider this 3870 that is due to arrive shortly.

Here is the data slide from ATI on power consumption vs. performance. Notice the power req's of the older 2900.

http://images.vnu.net/gb/inquirer/ne...re-diesize.jpg

-S

PS. I will go find those slides on the image quality difference over the 8800 GT. It's night and day.

Here it is. Notice how more vibrant the ATI is over the 8800 GT.


ATI rendered scene:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/3870crysis.jpg


8800 GT rendered scene:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/8800crysis.jpg

The power aspects look amazing, but I prefer the washed-out feel of the 8800 to the colour-saturated ATI. (that's only going on those screens, I'm sure that can be tweaked)
Let's say I prefer the coloration of Half-Life 2 to Far Cry :)

I prefer nvidia cards ive stuck with them since the Geforce 2, but if an ATI floats your boat then go for it. I got this old computer up and going and it has a ATI 9600XT which aint bad at all for an old card, It runs COD 4 in low/medium settings at 1024x768 res lol

There's a review up at Legion Hardware comparing the 8800GT and the HD 3870, and the GT aparently destroyed the AMD offering in every benchmark.

err.. proof?? if your talking about the DUAL gpu 3870... :shifty: if its the single gpu 3870 then its probably wrong.. dont froget drivers.. drivers are a part of performance in benchmarks.. get good drivers, and the 3870 will kill the 8800 gt...:arrgh!:

Article mention by JSLTIGER. The article also shows power consumption compared to the 8800 GT.

I'm no NVIDIA fan boy and I ran ATI cards for years. I buy whatever is the best for money when I'm upgrading or doing a new build. Just happened to be the 8800 series was on the top of the heap during my latest build. Been very happy with it so far. It just saddens me to see how ATI has slipped since they were acquired by AMD. :cry:

i believe that is the single GPU version of the 3870... the X2 version is supposedly 30% faster then the 8800 ultra.. :hmm:

Look at what you post and think it through thuroughly, because you are spewing quite a bit of bull**** here.
Err, those two screenshots look to be taken of the same general area, but the 8800gt one is taken from much further away. The same can be seen from the timedemo text, the Nvidia cards screenshot looks so horrendeous because the level of detail displayed is reduced. These two screenshots are misleading at best, flat out trying to look Nvidia worse than it is more likely. But yeah, the image quality on the ATI card will be better because water reflections (and i think light refracting on water) is not rendered every frame on the nvidia card. The difference is nowhere near that great as these two screenshots would have you belive. That being said the upcoming Ati card shows a lot of promisse and at the price point they are dringing it out it will be a great card.

Thanks Nightmare, for posting the link.

As to what antikristuseke has to say, I agree. First and potentially more importantly:

ATI FPS: 0.06
nVidia FPS: 14.64

ATI is Frame 84
nVidia is Frame 59

Given that the player is skydiving, that fog you see in the nVidia shot obscuring the water and the color is a cloud as the ATi card is taken from a lower vantage point. Unless it's the same frame, the comparison is invalid.

It's nVidia for me all the way.
 

Not only is nVidia the performance leader, but I also do not appreciate over-saturated colors masquerading as somehow "better" than realistically rendered ones. But the real deal killer for ATI is the difference in warranty between them and EVGA, arguably the best maker of nVidia cards. EVGA has a lifetime replacement warranty on all, including overclocked (!) cards they sell.

Even if the ATI card were marginally better, if it augers in you're going to wish you had an nVidia card from EVGA. :damn: I just had a nasty experience where 6 the electrolytic caps on one of my 7600GT cards exploded:
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...T/100_6177.jpg
Kaboom! That card is toast!. Now this would be considered physical damage not covered by normal companies, but not EVGA. "We'll be glad to replace your card" they said after examining this very photo, which I sent to ensure that they understood what happened. Why would I consider any other company? ATI's out of business in my house.:up:

Any recent nVidia card will give you trouble on some older games.

I have an 8800 on this PC only because there wasn't a comparable Ati product at the time I purchased it, but I'm keeping ATI on my second computer to be able to run all my old games with no glitches.

I have had several motherboards from diferent manufacturers with defective capacitors and they all cover that by their warranty, even the x850xt that poped a cap from asus was replaced. Allso dead caps =/= dead card, capacitors are easy to replace.

business as usual
 

In his review of the 3870, Steven Walton of LegionHardare.com (thanks for the above link) outlines the relative market strategies of ATI and nVidia very nicely. To paraphrase, ATI overpromises and underdelivers. nVidia underpromises and overdelivers. Here's Walton's summary quote.
Nuff said. Another case of selling promises and hype instead of delivering a great product. It's great to have competition, but it would be better have GOOD competition in the marketplace. Come on AMD/ATI! You should do better.:up:

Also, in te Nvidia screenshot, there's a cloud covering pretty much all of the screen. :rotfl: