Nvidia and ATI have really shaken up the 3D market in the past couple of months. While the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 hold a number of speed records (simultaneously making the GeForce 9-series look geriatric), AMD’s Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 provide good performance at aggressive prices. We have been seeing prices steadily sliding in the past few weeks. The GTX 280 started at $649, and it can now be purchased for just $419.
To find the best performing and least expensive combination, we put the fastest graphics cards through a series of tests consisting of 60 benchmarks, numerous side-by-side comparisons, and a price analysis.
This story seeks to answer a number of questions. First, is it worth changing from a Radeon HD 3850, HD 3870, or GeForce 8800 GTS 512 to one of these new GPUs? Second, how well do the old GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS 512 cards hold up? Third, which of the current cards is fastest? Fourth, are the drivers for CrossFire and SLI already well-optimized? Fifth, where can you expect increases in performance? And finally, how fast is the card you want at 1280x1024, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200?
If you’re not sure about the right power supply to drive your graphics setup, we have recommendations for power supply sizes. These should be considered guidelines, as PC configurations differ considerably.
The CPU in our test system reaches its limits here—the Core 2 Extreme X6800 at 2.93 GHz is barely capable of keeping up with current dual-card graphics setups. These twin-configs often show little or no improvement in overall 3D performance. Your resolution of choice often determines whether it is worth purchasing a pair of your favorite cards or if an individual board would be better.
The highlights of our comparison are the factory-overclocked models from MSI. As a result of the faster clock speeds, there is additional performance guaranteed by the manufacturer. Special drivers or tools are unnecessary, as the improved specifications are automatically set in each board’s BIOS. To ensure a fair comparison, each graphics card runs at its normal rate, with a detailed analysis of the overclocking given as an additional feature. All overclocked variations are tested at 1920x1200 pixels with anti-aliasing, and the performance differences over standard clock speeds can be compared directly using the frame rates with percent evaluation.
- Taxing Modern CPUs With Powerful Graphics
- Comparing The GPUs And Test Setup
- MSI Radeon HD 4850 (R4850-T2D512)
- CrossFire With MSI Radeon HD 4850 (R4850-T2D512)
- MSI Radeon HD 4870 OC (R4870-T2D512-OC)
- CrossFire With MSI Radeon HD 4870 OC (R4870-T2D512-OC)
- MSI GeForce GTX 260 OC (N260GTX-T2D896-OC)
- SLI With MSI GeForce GTX 260 OC (N260GTX-T2D896-OC)
- MSI GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked (N280GTX-T2D1G-OC)
- SLI With MSI GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked (N280GTX-T2D1G-OC)
- Assassin’s Creed v1.02
- Call of Duty 4 v1.6
- Crysis v1.21 High Quality
- Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
- Half Life 2: Episode 2
- Mass Effect
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
- World in Conflict v1.05
- 3DMark06 1280x1024 v1.1.0
- How Overclocking Affected The MSI Cards
- Overall Performance
- Price/Performance Comparison
- How About Graphics Image Quality?
- Power Consumption, Noise, And Temperature
- Frames-Per-Watt For The GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series At 1280x1024
- GTX 200-Series and HD 4800-Series At 1680x1050
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series at 1920x1200
- All Cards Compared At 1280x1024
- All Cards Compared At 1680x1050
- All Cards Compared At 1920x1200
- Is the Upgrade Worthwhile?
- Swapping Old Chips for New
- Evaluation of the New Generation
- Conclusions – Radeon HD 4850 is the Winner

(Or pop over to the USA website for spoilers!!)
Bob
Under 3D full load, the GeForce GTX 260 consumes 336 watts. A solid power supply with 280 to 320 watts of overall power and 23 to 27 A on the 12 volt rail should be sufficient here.
Uhhmmm isn't 336 Watts > 280-320 Watts ??
Bob
Could THG get any worse?
Another copy and paste from the US site - and a half-arsed effort at that.
Utter bollocks - just read the US Toms site. All the pages are from there anyway (UK 'staff' can't even bother to change $ to £ in articles) and they're complete.
Has been going on for a long time iJacks...
+1
Yeh the review is pretty much pointless cos drivers are several months out of date.
Yet another TomsHardFail.
as also the 280 in TRI SLI
and as others have mention the GDDR5 4870
Maybe these other top dogs will appear in another review.
Why is it back at the top of the list? Because we have the missing 29 pages?
8800GT
Use:
We can see the whole GPU article on the UK website now anyway... Yippie!!
Bob
Use:
http://www.tomshardware.com/us/
Bob