DiabloFans

Too long ; Didn't read.

Quote from "Varth" »

sorry pal but you don't know what you're talking about. There is a little thing called Crossfire X where you can put two 4870 X2's together though I'm not even going to bother going into that. The Geforce GTX280 in a card to card comparison does NOT stack up to the 4870 X2 at the ultra high end which was what I was talking about to begin with. In SLi, two GTX280's outperform a single 4870 X2, as it should. However dual 4870 X2's outperform two and and match three card SLi GTX280's in most games. As always, it boils down to scailing and drivers which are always in a state of constent evolution.

REALLY, WHAT'S CROSSFIRE?!?! Durrrr. Alright... So why are you comparing a $400 card to a $600 card? Then you're comparing a $800 card (Two 280's) to a $1200 card (Two 4870 X2's) what's your point - oh I see what your point is... Two 4870 X2's, yeah a WASTE OF MONEY. Agreed, it does come down to drivers but not in this case because your comparison is bogus, on the plus SLI drivers > Crossfire drivers. I find it absolutely hilarious that you try to act smart by comparing two completely different cards and proving that one is better. Really sir, shucks, I didn't know a DUAL GPU card was better then a single GPU card, jee thanks!!

HOWEVER! What I was talking about before you decided to erroniously correct me was in a SINGLE card to SINGLE card comparison, the 4870 X2 wins by large margins at the ultra-high resolutions. And by ULTRA-high, I mean 2560x1600 AKA: 30" monitors where the GTX280's 1GB of RAM bottlenecks the card.

CORRECT, you're absolutely right but the 4870 X2 is about $230 more expensive here than a 280 - quite the far comparison? I don't think so. You're comparing a single card that has one GPU to another card that has two. You SERIOUSLY think the reason why the X2 is superior to the 280GTX is because of a RAM bottleneck? I thnk you're forgetting those 1600 SHADERS. Again an unfair comparison and again, pointless.

The reason I made a single card to single card comparason is mainly cuz, who do you think here is going to drop 1300 dollars in Tri SLi? (slightly more than that but I'm going with easy to quote numbers). Hell, people aren't even going to spend 1100 on Dual 4870 X2's because spending 550 on a single card is a bit of a stretch for the common Computer User. If anything I should have expanding my post to include the 4870 and the 4850 and explain my recommendations for them though my original argument was to suggest to Diablo 3 fans to WAIT before investing in a graphics card until the game actually comes out. It's not a question of "can the card run Diablo 3 now or not" but "Can it play all games in the future or not." As good as Diablo 3 may or may not be, people use their computers for more than just to play one game. They're going to pick up other games and they're going to want to play it with reasonable performance and I want them to know that they don't have to run out and buy a card now when the game isn't even out yet because if they do, they're only going to get screwed in the long run because something is going to come out that they are going to be interested in and instead of waiting, they have to deal with poor graphics performance in a 2 year old card.

Hope that wasn't directed at me because tl;dr.

If by "Tom's hardware has so and so leading and Anandtech has who cares leading" you have to look at real world tests and you have to look and see what they are testing the cards on. 3Dmark06 and 3Dmark Vantage are cute little tests with big numbers to make overclockers feel special and that's about it. It doesn't really prove anything mainly because ATi and nVidia can fudge the numbers very easilly with drivers. For the longest time ATi had higher 3Dmark06 scores than nVidia and the 8800 GTX was mopping the floor with ATi's cards. Why is that? Cuz ATi wrote better 3Dmark drivers. Hell, nVidia is doing it right now with their current drivers by having the card offload PhysX from the CPU onto the GPU during the physics test in Vantage. It drastically boosts their scores in Vantage. However, if you know how a game works, in a single card configuration, you don't have your GPU offload physics from the CPU and have it do the graphics processing at the same time because it only slows down framerates and isn't very effecient. In SLi or Crossfire, it works and works very well, but in single slots, it doesn't work very well. Is it cheating to boost scores? Probably, but the fact that the test itself is a flawed representation of real-world performance, you take it with a grain of salt

.

Great... It's a shame that I look at gaming benchmarks and don't give a rats ass about 3dmark garbage. I really hope you weren't directing that at me either, because for one, I don't care I'm aware how computer hardware functions and two it's irrelevant, almost a tl;dr.

Also you have to look to see if they actually stress the cards. Big deal if you can get 100 FPS in Crysis if you don't have it completely maxed out with high amounts of AA and AF at a resolution of 1920x1200 or higher.

Oh and why would you need high amounts of AA and AF on high resolutions? Here's a little tip, at 1920x1200, the most you'd need is 2x because the image has already been scaled so high, the jagged edges that need to be smoothed are well, not apparent. Anything higher than that doesn't need AA, you're just adding an extra layer of fail and slowness. Read up on it. How come Mr "I do this shit for a living" didn't know that? Oh Snape.

Also you have to look at the test bed. What processor was it paired with? What motherboard? Ram? Clock speeds? What good is the data if it isn't gathered on an appropriate test bed?

Why would I waste my time on something so trivial? As long as both GPUs use the same components which I check, minus the motherboards for SLI/Crossfire, I really don't care because it won't make a difference. Either way, you wont get a single shred of extra frames on a $300 motherboard vs. a $150 motherboard. If for some reason it does make a difference, the difference will be TRIVIAL.

I do this shit for a living.

I do this for a hobby, it's easier to get by in life when you have a REAL job and do this sort of thing on the side. Working at a computer store doesn't make you smarticus.

I know what I'm talking about. If I say something is better than something else, I'm rarely wrong. Not because I magically know it is better, but because I make sure I'm not wrong. I gather information, I look for proof, I do tests, I interview people, and then I make my decision to recommend a product or not. However I'm man enough to say "If I'm proved wrong, I'll take what I said back." Only thing is what you said has nothing to do with what I said and I think I deserve an apology for you claiming my information to be erronious especially since in my argument, I said nothing about Crossfire or SLi and was only speaking of single card configurations.

Are you on crack kid? You're comparing a DUAL GPU card to a single GPU card, who the hell did you expect would take the crown and you want an apology? You weren't talking about SLI or Crossfire, but I was, two 8800 GT's perform similar to one 4870 X2. Two 8800 GT's cost $200 total, one 4870 X2 costs over $600. Not only that, I was implying that you were incorrect in the terms of one 4870 X2 vs. 280GTX being double the performance at 1920x1200+, it clearly is not - it clearly does NOT get smoked as you put it, at $230 cheaper I would EXPECT it to get beat not smoked - which stands true. Seriously, don't you have a better comparison? You're just a fanboy trying to make Nvidia look bad. If those benchmarks look like DOUBLE to you, or even close to DOUBLE, you should get your eyes checked and/or go back to school. I'd also like an apology for having to read through all of your rubbish, please and thank you,




EDIT:

Quote from "Varth" »

I laughed long and hard over that....and then looked over and remembered I payed full price for my 9800 GTX only to have it worth 200 a month later...lol that's how it goes though. Anyone who's been in the Computer Game as long as me knows that when you buy stuff when it first comes out, it's going to be inflated and cost considerably less down the road....though normally it isn't slashed in price a month after it comes out...

You bought a 9800GTX at full price right when it first came out? Even though the trend was obvious right in your face that the video card market was going to tumble? Surely someone with your experience and sheer cunning could have thwarted such a mistake. Shame, I picked up my 4870 at such a discount, see I KNEW how the market worked so a week BEFORE the 4870 was planned to be released, I sold my 8800GTX while the prices were still inflated and pretty much got my 4870 FREE with cash to spare.

Quote from "RayAllen" »

I have a Raedon 1050 card. Its horrible. Lags on WoW with 1600 resolution so i don't play WoW on this computer anymore.
I have to play on my computer with the Geforce instead. Really wish Blizzard did this with nVidia instead of ATI.

The Radeon X1050 is, say it with me now, AN ENTRY LEVEL CARD. A translation for the illiterate, a GARBAGE CARD, what did you expect trying to run it at high resolutions? Nvidia has entry level cards too - but that doesn't mean Nvidia is better.

Quote from "Shisou" »

Radeon usually isn't compatible in some way with every game. It's not as good as an all-rounder as nVidia.

Can you prove this? You can't because it's like a coin toss. I've had ATI and Nvidia now for 10 years and I have to say they're pretty equal when it comes to compatibility. Each generation of cards have either a) Been equal in the terms of performance Been dominated by their competition or c) Slightly dominated.

Back when the 9700 came out from ATI, Nvidia was shaking in their boots for a good year and a half (see - then after that the natural balance of technology evened the cards out everything was almost dead on equal(see a). TILL the 8800 GTX slammed itself in, was a beauty, ATI couldn't touch it for(see b)... Guess? A year and a half, now? (see c) Ati is back in the game with a slight advantage. Your statement unfortunately is a few months late, now it's based on preference.

Quote from "RayAllen" »

Too bad ATI raedon is horrible. nVidia is wayyyy better.

Really, can you please explain why other then obvious fanboyism.

Quote from "Krow" »

Well, the 4870 will probably run Diablo III at even high resolutions, but I have my doubts with the 4850.

Are you kidding me? The 4850 will CRUSH that game with max settings and the largest resolution, as well as an 8800GT. After reading every post you made in this thread, you're obviously lacking hardware knowledge, no offense. This is a Blizzard game after all.

Quote from "Varth" »

yes, right now AMD/ATi have the fastest graphics cards. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a high resolution beast that makes the nVidia GTX280 look like a joke. However, the 4870 X2 only gets to strut its stuff at ultra-high resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 where all other graphics cards struggle considerably (in some games at those resolutions, the 4870 X2 is twice as fast as a GTX280). However, in low resolutions, the 4870 X2 is overkill.

Sadly you're incorrect, Nvidia still has a performance edge on ATI thanks to SLI - when it comes down to money and single card configs, your best bet by far is to go with ATI's 4870 for $260 or 9800GX2 for $310. Unless you can do SLI, then by all means pick up two 8800GT's for $220. I do say this because as of late there is many conflicting webpages that sway to both ATI and Nvidia. For example, on tomshardware Nvidia is crushing ATI and on anandtech, ATI is crushing Nvidia - which is it? Good question, we won't really find out for a couple more months. But so far, after trading in my 8800 GTX that I've had since the card was released for an ATI 4870, I could not be more happier.

Quote from "Anzy" »

I am hoping for a worrior player, I love them >.> Something about the armor looking good on them for once.......All the others the Armor doesn't suit.

You mean a Warrior? Yes, we have one already - the Barbarian! And by "worrior" you probably mean a Knight, with full plate armor - I see that as a high possibility but who knows.

I believe gold should play an important role in Diablo III, it was 99.9% useless in Diablo II and if Blizzard ninja removed it in one of the patches I don't think anyone would even notice or really care.

Quote from "Daemaro" »

A lot of the members have probably been ran away by the arguing and trolling.

I actually think the majority of people were just looking for a fight and when Blizzard stuffed it in their mouths they shut up and left. Yeah, that's probably the reason too - what's the point of coming to this forum when 1/2 the threads are about some zealot ranting on how he'd make Diablo III such a better game. Though, it's getting better now but expect it to get much much worse after Blizzcon.

If that article is true, that potions can only be found and not bought I think it will make the game more interesting and immersive - it'll keep you on an edge, I kind of like that. Either way, LL/ML Whirlwind for the win, who needs potions?

Excellent video, pretty much what I wanted to hear.

I believe that Diablo III's shoulder pads are way too small, please increase by 3 fold, thanks.

I think it looks good, but I won't be running around naked so you wasted your time doing that. Full armor and complete headpiece.

Probably won't get it live, but I bet an hour or so after it ends I could snatch it from usenet.

Quote from "angelmaz" »

You'd be complaining if it had gone the other way, jerkoff. Try not to fall off your high horse man, wouldn't want you to splatter.

Actually, you're wrong there buddy, I've already stated many times that I don't give a crap how the game turns up as. Dark, bright, colorful - I don't care as long as it plays good, which it will obviously. I refuse to derail the current production of this game for something so trivial, step outside for a moment, what do you see? COLORS.