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still expensive with 500 i prefer to buy 2 4850 crossfire and 100 left

Concrum, see bad advice isn't much better than trolling so cut it out.

If people ever wonder why I suggest AMD cards as often as I do, this is why. I see this mentality at work, I see it on the forums, I just can't understand it at all. As already pointed out, the GTX cards are not more futureproof. Game boxes might have a "the way its meant to be faked" on the box, but that DOESN'T make it automatically faster then AMD's cards. If you want to know what is faster, look at a review. Reviews say the 4870 is faster then the GTX260. I'm sorry if that makes your head hurt Concrum, but facts are facts.

On a different note, I just noticed that Nvidia has dropped they g@y@$$ price scheme. (that or newegg stopped doing it.) You no longer need to add the card to your shopping cart to see the price. Thank god, there is a reason why people like up front pricing.

don't worry about concrum he's just trolling as usual...

ok without making everyone berserk....I just want to be subjective here, so please spare me the insults if I am wrong.

Has anyone considered heating issues with the ATI cards. I have been a victim of heat damage before and considering the stats on the heat the ATI cards produce and the power they consume at idle, I think its something I would consider when purchasing my card. When did cheap become everyone's game. HEat kills... and unless your planning on spending the bucks on properly cooling it... I would be weary of the physical performance of ATi cards. Nobody knows yet, but we could be in for an interesting ride.

Considering the price drop of the GTX cards now, Im more inclined to purchase one of these. I dont believe in SLI or crossfire. People often forget the scaling of this technology in practice.
And two 4870's is going to run red red red hot!

I dont think it is unreasonable to consider the GTX 280 card now, for good single card performance.

I think we are at a major crossroad here guys... one which people havent thought through and through. ATI is changing the face of the competition.
They are concentrating on a price war... not performance war. Nvidia will play this game soon enough. But surely this means the technology of Video cards will slow down in the long term for the worse. There is a reason why we need cards like GTX 280... they spearhead the technology.

What most of you dont understand is that SLI and crossfire is a technology that is ripping all of us off. You are paying twice the price for the same Research and Development. ANd ATI's ambition is to slow the technology and concentrate on price... This is all looking great at first... but given time... this ambition is going to carve more and more from the quality they produce.

The heat issues on AMD gpus are solvable through software/hardware mods - so it is definitely a consideration but for enthusiasts its typically irrelevant.

Most people who install their own video cards likely have the rudimentary knowledge to do these sort of updates with minimal supervision as well~

not too mention simply looking at nvidia's 65 nm chips are being pushed to some limits alright, they also reach very high temp's i don't understand why ppl don't see this, besides these 4850's and 4870's the stock cooling is able to handle it, so it means that they were simply engineered to handle the heat, now if it makes u feel better go ahead and install a 3rd party cooler alot of ppl do that now a days and its a good way to keep the the GPU lastign longer, but the stock cooler will work well, saying u obviously have some decent cooling to begin w/, ppl cannot simply expect there Matx cases with 80mm fans which are running silent to cool something like this, u should look into maybe better cases, something w/ better airflow as well, sheesh everybody wants to blame, blame, blame, but no responsibility on the end-user, tsk-tsk!

I don't know if the GTX280 is anymore of a spearhead than the 4870. Sure the 280 puts up nice numbers, but the 4870 is the first to use GDDR5 memory: something that will most likely change video cards to come.

I'll agree with you on dual GPU setups, but ultimately what consumers want is the best bang for their buck. Most won't care if they can get two cards for less money that will outperform a single card.

Even more to support your point, let's wait until the 4870X2 comes out and see what happens to the GTX280... It will be a 'single card' and most likely destroy the world of the 280. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia does then.

I could not agree w/ u anymore ovaltine, nvidia's pocketbooks are well added at this point, and they sure are making some decent change w/ all the ppl that just had to have a GTX28 as soon as it cmae out regardless of how well it performs in regard to its value.

What I dont understand is, the idle temps really mean nothing, and I mean nothing at all, as these will soon change. What I also dont understand is, regardless of how cool the nVidia cards run, your case temps will always be hotter because nVidia doesnt push the heat totally from the case like the ATI cards do. These arent cpus, gpu can be run hot, as some in the past ran 10c degrees hotter than the 4xxx series do currently under load. The ULTRA runs hotter than the 4870s do, and they havnt collapsed. The next rendition of these cards will see a significant heat reduction, just like the 2xxx series to the 3xxx series. The 2900s ran hot, and didnt burn up, and they certainly didnt take anything with them, as like Ive said, they remove all the heat from the case, unlike nVidias solution

much wisdom one learn, can!

young padwan!

if it keeps going bad for nvidia how long do you think it will take them to open up SLI on an intel chipset

That probably depends on how long it will take them to do a card refresh. They've already started slashing prices, I'm not sure what the next step is for them. I'm not sure how enabling SLI on Intel chipsets will help, but I suspect they are looking at everything.

To me, not know nVidias next step is a good thing. This probably means it wont be the same ol same ol, but truly something different. We dont know how the refreshed 55nm G200s will do, or what price theyll come in at. I think that if nVidia is truly to compete on the high end, itll have to drop the 280 to under 400 USD. Maybe the refresh will allow this with a few tweals. And, theyll have to come uo with a super 9800GTX x2 to even attempt the high end, thats if they dont have something else around the corner