Hey guys, my question today is relatively simple: if you could get the Radeon 4870 and Geforce 9800GX2 for the exact same price, which one would you pick?

My motherboard is a P35, so both crossfire and SLI are out of the picture. In case you want to know, the games I currently play include: The Witcher, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Stalker, and Sins of a solar empire.

My Rig (besides GFX)
E4300 @ 2.8 Ghz
ASUS P5K delux
4Gb RAM

Performance wise 9800gx2 makes more sense. The 4870 is a very good cost effective card but for just power i would go with the 9800gx2, which is comparable to the gtx 280. But remember the 4870 isnt far off.

9800GX2 if the prices are the same

9800gx2 with your processor overclocked over 3ghz if you can

Personally I'd go with the 4870 even if the prices were equal. The raw performance of the 9800GX2 will be a little higher in most cases, but it will be a dual GPU solution which means you may run into microstuttering problems in some games. That may or may not be a big issue depending on what games you play and what Nvidia does with their future drivers. Their future "Big Bang II" driver may improve this problem.

As stated before, the performance of the two cards is pretty close, but the thing that would push me towards the 4870 instead of the 9800GX2 would be the inclusion of AVIVO with ATI cards. Having the GPU video transcoder is extremely handy if you do any video work at all. I record a lot of TV with my tuner card and AVIVO speeds up the process of converting the MPEG2/WMV9 output to DIVX/H.264 much quicker (about 5-6 times faster than the CPU even with my old X1950 Pro). That added functionality is enough to make me prefer ATI, but your priorities may be different from mine.

Before anyone mentions it, yes I am aware that Nvidia will be adding this capability with Elemental's "Badaboom" GPU encoder at some point, but this is still not available and if you look at the vendor's website you will see that it won't be free like AVIVO currently is. You will need to buy the encoder from them when it becomes available.

For future purposes it does not support direct x 10.1 and NVIDIA stated thier next gen cards will support it and some article state games will use this and increase performance by quite a bit.

Gx2 is stronger if priced the same:

COD4


Gx2 15% faster w/ AA, 1920x1200
Gx2 23% faster w/o AA, 1920x1200

Crysis


Gx2 2% faster w/ AA, 1920x1200
Gx2 22% faster w/o AA, 1920x1200

Unreal III


Gx2 30% faster w/ AA, 1920x1200
Gx2 20% faster w/o AA, 1920x1200

Thanks for all the quick replies guys. I forgot to mention that i game at 1680*1050 and will for the foreseeable future, but thatks for the charts anyway l1qu1d.

I am seriously leaning towards the GX2 since it clearly bests the 4870. I am curious about this "mircostuttering problem" though. I've heard of it a few times but don't really know anything about it. Can anyone enlighten me please?

Microstuttering is a combination problem between the two gpu cores as they combine the images and therefore as you play you will notice stuttering in certain games. happens with dual card setups as well but little rarer.

Personally. The 4870s just came out and the benchmarks are based off of beta hot fix drivers. with future driver releases its probably going to be a more efficient choice. Not to mention you avoid the stuttering problem. and have room for future upgrades if you wanna do a duel card setup. Considering this single gpu card can just barely keep up with the dual 9800 card its kind of impressive.


(toms test system for the above benchmarks)
Test Configuration:

* Asus P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)
* Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850 (3 GHz)
* Crucial 2 x 1 GB DDR3 1333 MHz 7-7-7-20
* Western Digital WD5000AAKS
* Asus 12x DVD drive
* Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W

o Windows XP, Vista, Vista SP1
o ForceWare 177.39 beta (9800 GTX +)
o ForceWare 177.34 beta (GTX 260 and 280)
o ForceWare 175.16 WHQL (9800 GTX, 9800 GX2, 8800 Ultra)
o Catalyst 8.7 beta (HD 4850, HD 4870)
o Catalyst 8.6 WHQL (HD 3870)
o Catalyst 8.5 WHQL (HD 3870 X2)


It comes down to this. at 1680x1050 either of those cards are going to play any game your interested in at probably maximum settings. Considering this i would go by features. the 10.1 dx version and the avivo tech on the ati card is nice and teh stuttering problem on the nvidia card makes me look to the ati card.

that and the 9800 gx2 is on average over 100-150 dollars more expensive

Id grab up the 4870 and then later on if you want you can dual em up and extend their life immensely for a lot less.

i actually grabbed up two of the 4850s and i can play crisis completely maxed out at 1920x1200 very comfortably.

http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?showtopic=26151
Direct X 10.1 can be burried now...Direct X 11 will be here by the end of the year,and will work with all DX 10 cards
Here is a link to a good GX2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133231

here are charts from guru3d that are updated, and the gX2 still comes out on top. I rarely get micro-stuttering, but when it happens I barely notice it. Either way its always best not to have it at all.

here are charts:

I'm not really worried about DX10.1 because I still game on windows XP, but i would like to ask some more about the mirco-stuttering problem on the GX2.

L1qu1d (and anyone else who owns a GX2), when does this problem usually occur, how long does it last, and when it does occur, is it really that bad?

I'd go with the 4870. Lower power requirements and it's physically a smaller card, plus you don't have to worry about a game not having good scaling in SLI. Either way, you're going to get a great video card.

Did some immature idiot just go and mark down the posts highlighting microstuttering?! That's really moronic...[/off topic]