Mainstream Graphics Card Roundup
Table of contents
- 1. Give Up A Little Performance? Sure.
- 2. Graphics Chips Compared Plus Test Configurations
- 3. HIS H487QT1GP ICEQ4+ (Radeon HD 4870 1,024 MB)
- 4. Sapphire HD4850 1G (Radeon HD 4850 1,024 MB)
- 5. Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4870 2G (Radeon HD 4870 2,048 MB)
- 6. Zotac GTS250 1 GB (GeForce GTS 250 1,024 MB)
- 7. Zotac GTX 260 (GeForce GTX 260 896 MB)
- 8. Benchmark Results: Fallout 3
- 9. Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2
- 10. Benchmark Results: F.E.A.R. 2
- 11. Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead
- 12. Benchmark Results: The Last Remnant
- 13. Benchmark Results: Tom Clancy’s Endwar
- 14. Benchmark Results: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
- 15. Benchmark Results: 3DMark06 1280x1024 Default
- 16. Overall Performance
- 17. Power Consumption, Noise Levels, And Temperature Readings
- 18. 3D Performance, Ranked By Resolution And AA Settings
- 19. GeForce GTX 260: Small Price, Big Performance
When it comes to graphics cards, the upper crust of the mid-range is perhaps your best bet for snagging great performance at a reasonable price. In order to deliver the goods without breaking the bank, vendors usually equip their cards with enhanced cooling solutions or a bit of extra graphics RAM.
If you're only comparing 3D performance, the difference between these mid-range cards and those you'd find at the very top of our latest graphics charts is less than what you might think. While the GeForce GTX 285 may be the fastest single-GPU card around, a GeForce GTX 260 or a Radeon HD 4870 doesn't lag behind by much. If you can live with that relatively minor difference, you stand to save between $100 to $150 or more.
If you're a smart shopper (we've been trying to help out as much as possible lately by tracking down the lowest prices on a number of different models), you can get decent 3D performance for under $250--and at that performance level, you should be able to stave off an upgrade for at least a year or two.
In particular, GeForce GTX 260 prices have slid sharply of late, so you can find older models with 192 shaders (newer ones have 216) for up to $50 less. If you're less-worried about a couple of $20s, you can opt instead for better models with 1 or 2 GB of graphics RAM that are also SLI- or CrossFire-ready. This means you can buy one card now, then purchase another one in a couple of months and use both in tandem to power your games at higher resolutions with more demanding graphics settings.
wtf?!
no 4850X2, are you people MAD?!
article after recent article tom's has recommended the 4850X2..so why isn't it in this chart???
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum
Good article. Can you do the same for SLI and Crossfire including the older cards? Then in the summary show the single and dual card tables side by side?
you guys should go see the comments on the US page...
Surprised that Sapphire submitted the old HD4850 model for testing, the newer one has a much better cooler and with the altered p-states (lowest is 160/250MHz!) its passive at idle.
LOL! Just had a gander at the US page as xizel suggested...
Wondered how Toms had suddenly reversed the set-in-stone law of HD4850>GTS250 and HD4870>(old)GTX260... Well, now we know. They cheated and used dodgy benchmarks (yet again, and I've been forced to say that line A LOT lately!) and then did their usual plug routine.
Looks like Toms is part of nVidia's TWIWMTBP program. Y'know, The Way It Was Meant To Be Paid. Mmm, payola time!
No idea why they still employ Kriess or Roos, no-one in their right mind can believe anything Toms says until those two are locked up on corruption charges in nVidia's inevitable Intel-style anti-competitive suit... XD
Tom's just wrote an article on the 4850X2, yet they fail to include it in the test.......smoke another one guys.
Yeah I agree Solitaire, they have always been Intel/Nvidia biased.
Seems The Last Remnant isn't Radeon optimised...wonder how much nVidia paid them
Upgrading soon, still debating whether to go Phenom II or Core i7 as the cost difference isn't as much as it used to be, but is still around 150+ quid more mainly because the motherboards are more expensive for Intel, plus the need for at least 3 sticks of DDR3...and it seems to me that using SLi/Crossfire on Intel chipsets appears to affect their performance compared to a dedicated chipset for SLi or Crossfire, as i get surprisingly similar results with a 4890 and an OLD Phenom 9850 @ just 2.8GHz...weird, isn't it? Pretty sure some driver trickery is going on here, too.
God, how big must their stockpile be? Or it's just a cheap easy way to make more money to bribe people. Lol.
God, TH has gone downhill hasn't it? I miss the old site layout too!
Also interesting that the Phenom/II based rigs still do really well in games...of course if i were encoding lots of porn to DVD i'd probably get a Core i7, like battle times of old Intel seems slightly faster at encoding.
Also, LOL @ nVidia for getting rid of more G92 based GPUs marked as a GTX250
Hmm.. down here, you can get 2x 4870 1Gb's for 150€/each, totalling the best thing you can get for under 300€. How's that for you?
well i like getting a good deal and i bought a radeon 4830 running it with a fx62 @2.8Ghz and i can play all games at HD with very playable framerates and i reckon if i crossfire it then i'll get about the same as a gtx280 for under £200 so why isnt the best budget card in the bench mark ?
ps toms hardware been using your site for years and years and its a great site well worth reading, sometimes does seem a bit biased one way or another which is fine cos if i was doing the job these big companys could buy my vote for a month or two as well
6gb ram on 32bit windows?
I am a big ATI Fan but upgraded my vga card about 7 months ago... went for the Asus 4870 1gb also tried the Shapire version but could not get it going on my dual screen vista 64 pc so had to swap it at the supplier for a Asus gtx 260 896mb .. must say great card and great software ... pitty I could not get the same support from ATi
I think the normalization is lacking a bit.
What I suggest is a method of weighing the average fps rates based on relevance: supposing the refresh rate of most monitors around these days is 60Hz, i would give 100 points to a card that achieves that value (60fps). A card that achieves less than that would get a percentage of those points (30fps->50 points), but for higher values the 'bonus' should not be as high (ie: for 120fps the card should NOT get 200 points because those extra 60fps are mostly irrelevant; maybe one point/fps over 60 resulting in 160points for 120fps or even half a point resulting in 130).
This would make extra 'power' more relevant in titles that actually NEED it.