The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[Dahmer]

Apparently you haven't a clue what it is even about, since you mention "green boy" and it has nothing to do with Red or Green or even a video card. So ya.. "Heh" yourself

BTW please explain and show me when 7900 GTX SLI, 8800 GTX SLI, GTX 280 SLI or GTX 480 SLI has "stutter" problems? Huge power consumption, I can afford $50 extra a year for power, noise? with home theater sound or headphones people aren't listening to their fans spinning up while gaming.

You're so green it makes my eyes hurt...

One major point though, real gamers spend more money on games than on hardware to run the games. A real gamer will spend money on a system good enough to play it and that's it.
Find me one person that has everything you mentioned and uses all that JUST for games then you have found yourself an idiot with too much money for his/her own good.

I've got two friends that have a home theater system and they both use for....guess what....watching movies! Who would've known, using massive screens for movies =o

[pentium777]

You're so green it makes my eyes hurt...

One major point though, real gamers spend more money on games than on hardware to run the games. A real gamer will spend money on a system good enough to play it and that's it.
Find me one person that has everything you mentioned and uses all that JUST for games then you have found yourself an idiot with too much money for his/her own good.

I've got two friends that have a home theater system and they both use for....guess what....watching movies! Who would've known, using massive screens for movies =o

Perhaps you are speaking of kids I'm not sure but most adults with a decent income can afford the best PC hardware at least the people I know of anyway. Define "real gamers" anyway are there "fake gamers"? When you say "spend more money on games" do tell me in the course of a year do you think they purchase 5 games? 10 games? Not very many "real gamer" titles come out.

Also you proved my point as well when you say "uses all that JUST for games" a lot of people with 30" monitor and high end hardware just might use the PC for more than games shocker!

[saaya]

Perhaps you are speaking of kids I'm not sure but most adults with a decent income can afford the best PC hardware at least the people I know of anyway.

yes, we got it, your in the money and so are your friends :P
its not about affording it, its about chosing to spend money on something you dont actually need or see no real gain from...

Define "real gamers" anyway are there "fake gamers"? When you say "spend more money on games" do tell me in the course of a year do you think they purchase 5 games? 10 games? Not very many "real gamer" titles come out.

i wouldnt caegorize gamers based on how many games they buy or how much they spend on hw but how many hours a day they play games... then again, for hardware and software companies those gamers are actually not interesting at all as they dont make a lot of money off of them

Also you proved my point as well when you say "uses all that JUST for games" a lot of people with 30" monitor and high end hardware just might use the PC for more than games shocker!

yeah but once you go 30", for whatever reason, you HAVE to play at 2560... or else the image quality will suck... well not suck, but why spend so much on a big screen and then play below its native res with a slightly blurry image? thats what i mean... once you go 30" you HAVE to play at 30" and you HAVE to invest more on hardware... and you might be able to get 99% the same game play experience as on single gpu 24" screens, but it wont be the same or even better... show me any pro gamer that plays on a 30" screen... ANY! see what i mean? ask most benchers here on xs... they bench on tri or quad sli... but when they play games they prefer single gpu rigs...

that about sums it up. looks like they didnt have enough time to really figure out how to utilize the new architecture for older games. and honestly why should they care, who wants 10 more fps when u already have 150fps, but for newer games, those extra 5 will really help when your at 45fps. ill probably take a look at the hard ocp review to see what settings they found playable (i do like how they do that kind of thing) id bet you can enjoy every old game just fine, and with a few driver enhancements, up the 4xaa to 8x (woopty dooo. lol)

maybe... or maybe its that older games are texturing limited on fermi... the newer the game, the more pixel and geometry heavy games get... mostly pixel shader heavy...
i think fermi is definately texturing limited...
maybe it has enough texturing performance so they focussed on pixel shader and geometry performance... but tbh im not very happy with the texturing in current games, and many people arent, just look at all the texture mods and hacks out in the wild... would be interesting to make an article about this... cant wait for some beyond3d or techreport or xbitlabs analysis of fermi

[Manicdan]

yeah but once you go 30", for whatever reason, you HAVE to play at 2560... or else the image quality will suck... well not suck, but why spend so much on a big screen and then play below its native res with a slightly blurry image? thats what i mean... once you go 30" you HAVE to play at 30" and you HAVE to invest more on hardware... and you might be able to get 99% the same game play experience as on single gpu 24" screens, but it wont be the same or even better... show me any pro gamer that plays on a 30" screen... ANY! see what i mean? ask most benchers here on xs... they bench on tri or quad sli... but when they play games they prefer single gpu rigs...

single gpu isnt too scary, u just cant use the ultra textures or 4x+AA, but with that kind of resolution, and dot pitch, u may not need to use more than 2xaa.

and yes if u can drop 1000$ on a monitor, it may just be better to drop 500$ on a good IPS around 25" and put an extra gpu in ur pc. thats what i was telling myself with the SSD drive i had, i could buy 2 more 4850s, or a 60GB SSD. but i was happy with my gpu performance (especially for WoW) and the SSD felt more worthwhile, even though its retarded expensive still. but back the point, a 1000$ on a monitor probably means an extra 200$ on GPU power.

and keep in mind its only 40% more pixels.

[saaya]

We get the point already.

oh come on, dont be such a party pooper :P

single gpu isnt too scary, u just cant use the ultra textures or 4x+AA, but with that kind of resolution, and dot pitch, u may not need to use more than 2xaa.

and yes if u can drop 1000$ on a monitor, it may just be better to drop 500$ on a good IPS around 25" and put an extra gpu in ur pc. thats what i was telling myself with the SSD drive i had, i could buy 2 more 4850s, or a 60GB SSD. but i was happy with my gpu performance (especially for WoW) and the SSD felt more worthwhile, even though its retarded expensive still. but back the point, a 1000$ on a monitor probably means an extra 200$ on GPU power.

and keep in mind its only 40% more pixels.

yeah... only 40% more pixels but for some reason perf collapses when going to 2560x1600 with current hw... i expected a lot from the 480s in that regard... i thought theyd be really really nice at high res and a prfect companion for a 30" screen...

yeah, if you buy a 2560 display you basically have to take into consideration that if you play games, you have to add some extra money to the cost of the display for upgrading your pcs graphics...

Its weird those. In anandtech review, 480 does significantly better at crysis warhead 11-17 percent better with 33 percent higher minimums than the 5870. The SLI results are a complete beat down in those results with SLI gtx480 likely matching CF 5970s.

what drivers did anandtech use? what cpu speed and what windows version? i noticed big differences during the 5800 launch in reviews using a 2.66ghz 920 or a 4ghz 965, and there were weird differences in 32bit vs 64bit as well, some games seem to perform better on 64bit than others, and iirc ati was slightly better in 64bit than nvidia vs 32bit? cant remember...

+1,
i think its alot of balancing the new gpu/memory power. the 4870s had much stronger ram to gpu power than we do now. i dont know much about building drivers, but when it comes to billions of calculations a second, i bet its alot of trial and error testing, and then boom, they find the sweet spot

yeah... and that sweet spot is probably different for every game, every res... if you use aa and af its different... and then they find another tweak and the sweet spot is different again...

@saaya, I personally think that 1920x1200 is the perfect res to game at, on a 24" screen, tho sometimes i do feel like even 24" is a little large since i tend to subscribe to the "nose up against the screen" CS style of play school.

I think that this thread has devolved into nvidia vs ATI, which is all I've read on any forum lately and I'm getting a little tired of it, I personally don't lean towards either camp but I also will not write off the gtx480 as quickly as some people on this board will, I will give it a fair amount of chance, for all we know this new architecture might be the future, look at where the pathetic 2900xt ended up

lol@nose at the screen hehe
well tbh, if the pixels are big and the space between them is tiny, then theres no problem looking at the screen from close up i think
but yeah, 24" 1920x1080 or 1200 sounds like the best res to me as well...
i didnt know there were 27" screens with the same res tho... those might actually be very interesting as well

about ati vs nvidia... like i said before, i dont think theres a big difference between 5850 5870 470 and 480... what can you do on one of those that you cant do on another? if wed build 4 rigs one with each of them, would any of us be able to tell them apart by playing games on it? i doubt it...

for me it comes down to cost, driver preference and whether power and heat is important to the user...

i dont think even the most radical ati fanboy would call fermi a slow card... its hotter and costs more than a 5870, but i doubt any ati fan would refuse to use one if youd give him one for free