Evening Reading: Listen to the Podcast

If you haven't heard, the new Shacknews podcast, Weekend Confirmed, has launched today. If you do one thing this weekend, it should be listening to it and leaving some feedback in the story.

Weekend Confirmed - Episode 1

See you, Monday!

From The Chatty
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      March 26, 2010 5:03 PM

      Thoughts? Too hot, too expensive - some good speed at times though and nice minimum frame rates in Crysis at least.
      I'll wait for the GTX475 which is refreshed in 4 months, runs cooler, uses less power and costs less.
      I hope for nvidia's sake that ATI don't release the ATI 6870/6850 though because I got a feeling a lot of people are still going to hold off.
      (My 4890 is still fine :/ )

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        March 26, 2010 5:05 PM

        You dont think ATI will release a 5890?

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          March 26, 2010 5:16 PM

          I think it's probably quite likely. For competitions sake I think this card comes too hot, too expensive and too slow for the money and what that means is the 5870 isn't going to see a major price drop any time soon :(

          That's what I think :(

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        March 26, 2010 5:05 PM

        yah I'm waiting 8 months to a year for something... my GTX260 is fine for everything now. Anyway just upgraded to an i7-860, so spent my PC upgrade budget on a much needed CPU upgrade.

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          March 26, 2010 5:15 PM

          [deleted]

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          March 26, 2010 5:16 PM

          Yeah still nothing thats a real step up at <$200

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          March 26, 2010 9:13 PM

          I'm probably going to get the 5770 while I wait. I think it'll be a fair upgrade from my current 9600gt

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          March 26, 2010 9:36 PM

          Same here, my GTX 285 is da bomb for everything I play right now

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        March 26, 2010 5:06 PM

        [deleted]

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      March 26, 2010 5:05 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 26, 2010 5:06 PM

      I'm glad they finally have their new stuff out but it's pretty underwhelming for being as late as it is.

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      March 26, 2010 5:06 PM

      GTX 480 is the fastest, but the price and power are too much. The 5850 is the better value over the 470 (and easily overclockable to above 5870 speeds), the 5870.

      I see it as thus: The top 3 card to choose from are
      5850 (Best bang for buck if you overclock)
      5870
      480

      Between the 480 and 5870? I like some of the stuff I see in Fermi, but the power and HEAT makes the 5870 slightly better looking. I wouldn't sneeze at a 480 though.

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        March 26, 2010 5:11 PM

        yeah it's pretty crazy that a single GTX 480 draws 50W more power than a dual-GPU 5970

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        March 26, 2010 6:07 PM

        [deleted]

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          March 26, 2010 6:07 PM

          [deleted]

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            March 26, 2010 6:08 PM

            5850\5870? You can go up to 1000\1200 (which is more or less the max you can get) with the stock cooler. Aftermarket cooling would only make it quieter.

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              March 26, 2010 6:09 PM

              [deleted]

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                March 26, 2010 6:11 PM

                Yep. I'd say it's a given to hit 850mhz, with 900mhz requiring a bit more voltage (I had to bump mine from 1.083 to 1.125). Above 900mhz, you'll probably need 1.2-1.25v

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      March 26, 2010 5:07 PM

      I'm thinking the fans on those things are crazy loud. Will be sitting this round out and coasting with sli 260's.

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      March 26, 2010 5:08 PM

      i have a evga 275 co-op, if i bought a 480 would I be able to use the 275 to its full extent?

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        March 26, 2010 6:13 PM

        I wouldn't think so since you'll have effectively have three different cards.

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          March 26, 2010 6:31 PM

          i wonder if i could disable the 250 and use the 275 as a physx card then.

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      March 26, 2010 5:10 PM

      It looks like I'll be ordering that 5850 then! I would wait a little longer but my 8800GT just died :(

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      March 26, 2010 5:12 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 26, 2010 5:16 PM

      Obviously that intertube guy from a few weeks ago was full of shit, clearly the 480gtx outperforms ATI's stuff.

      At the same time Nvidia the whole thing is obviously out late, and thus priced somewhat higher than what might be perfectly competitive. If these cards had been out 3 months ago things might have been dead even against the two, if not with a slight favor to Nvidia

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        March 26, 2010 6:47 PM

        Yeah, it's interesting to see that the performance is there, and the power draw is lower than rumored (215/250 vs 225/295) but those card seriously get hot as fuck. I think Nvidia's next series of cards is going to be a lot more competitive, assuming they can get the size down.

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          March 26, 2010 8:37 PM

          yeah, this is my guess. Unless ms throws another curveball with dx12 specs, I'm guessing the 500 might just be a tweak of this design on a smaller chip. Or atleast, I hope that is their plan to help recoup the cost on the extra r&d time spent changing out the design this much.

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      March 26, 2010 5:16 PM

      Very meh like most (sane) people predicted. They aren't competitively priced with ATIs cards even though they have some serious trade-offs for a tiny bit more speed.

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        March 26, 2010 5:29 PM

        yah I'm sure they will drop in price a bit eventually... but it will probably be a few months.

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      March 26, 2010 5:19 PM

      ATTN: Potential 5850/5870 buying menz.

      If you've looked at Fermi and decided to buy ATI instead, here are a few things you should know about the 5850/5870 series

      1.) The 5870 and 5850 are essentially the same card with the 5850 having some shaders clipped off and running at lower clock speeds.

      2.) You do no have to flash the BIOS on the 5850 to overclock past 900 core.
      This was true months and months ago, but you can use MSI Afterburner (works on all 58** cards) to overclock well past 900. Afterburner lets you change voltage as well, something you'll need to tweak to get the highest overclock. My 5850 is overclocked to 950/1200 at 1.237 volts, well past the standard clocks for the 5870 (meaning my card out-performs a stock 5870 when I overclock).

      3.) On the 5850/5870, core overclocking in king. You'll get the most out of overclocking core over memory. You'll want to do both, but the biggest advantages come from overclocking the core, so try that out first.

      4.) The 5870 and 5850 OC pretty much the same, but you'll get a higher memory overclock on the 5870 because it uses better quality memory. With equally overclocked 5850 vs 5870, the 5870 will use it's little extra memory overclock and extra shaders to be about 5-7% faster.

      Finally, check out these benchmarks showing overclocked 5850 vs 5870 for the best idea of what to expect.

      http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18112756

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      March 26, 2010 5:20 PM

      Looks like I'll be waiting for the next generation of cards to replace my 4870. I wouldn't be thinking about replacing it at all if I didn't have the 512MB version.

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        March 26, 2010 5:26 PM

        heh, I'm in the exact same boat, but then I again I got a 4870 as soon as they came out

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          March 26, 2010 5:27 PM

          Same

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            March 26, 2010 6:42 PM

            also feeling the early adopter 4870 pain :(

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              March 26, 2010 7:14 PM

              same here

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                March 26, 2010 10:35 PM

                same here but the card (underclocked) still plays all my games at very high and +60fps.

                so yeah, I'll upgrade next gen

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      March 26, 2010 5:27 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 26, 2010 5:33 PM

      Holy crap, my 5850 smokes the 480 on BC2 at 1680x1050 even before I overclock it.

      http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=14

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        March 26, 2010 5:43 PM

        Something's wrong with the anandtech BC2 numbers... Could probably be a driver issue since that article goes on to say the nvidia cards have better minimum fps but worse average fps.

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          March 26, 2010 5:56 PM

          BFBC2 isn't good to benchmark anyway... there isn't any demo or benchmark tool. So every run is basically different.

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            March 26, 2010 6:11 PM

            Well the reviewer said that he used the rail sequence in the game where you get on a truck and ride at the back in the first chapter. ~its a good way to judge things but no there isnt a benchmarking tool ingame.

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            March 26, 2010 7:17 PM

            As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.

            I would say that would be consistent.

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        March 26, 2010 5:50 PM

        One huge advantage the 470/480 have is minimum frame rates. In the same article the min fps on BC2 is much higher on the Nvidia cards. Personally, I think minimum fps is much more important for the user experience, but the power usage and heat are huge downsides for me.

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      March 26, 2010 5:35 PM

      Can anyone save me some time and tell me if any of those reviews have FSX benchmarks in them?

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      March 26, 2010 6:36 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 26, 2010 6:43 PM

      nice job nvidia at f'ing up, don't go under.

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        March 26, 2010 6:53 PM

        [deleted]

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        March 26, 2010 7:15 PM

        Actually this is really good, because AMD need all the fucking help they can get right now.

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          March 26, 2010 10:48 PM

          yeah I know, I am cheering for AMD but we can't have a single graphics card supplier. It would suck like the P3 and P2 days

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            March 26, 2010 11:04 PM

            And when nvidia was king from 2006-2007. Stagnant prices with no product refreshes for a year because the other guy has no competing parts sucks.

            We'll be stuck here for a while too, there is no reason for ATI to boost performance or drop prices right now, not when they currently offer comparable performance at lower prices.

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      March 26, 2010 8:34 PM

      Interesting. Prices on the 5870's are going UP. There is a 5850 on newegg that's at $279 though with free shipping.

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      March 26, 2010 8:50 PM

      tl;dr: I would like to upgrade to an ATI but have personal suspicions against doing so. Help convince me otherwise.

      I would like someone to break down my brand loyalty with nVidia. I'd like to upgrade sometime in the next few months. I currently have a GTS250 and an Intel E6600. It's obvious that nVidia won't have a lot to offer when upgrade times rolls around but I haven't puchased an ATI/AMD card for my computer ever. Every time a friend or my dad requested one I had nothing but horrible software issues with it. I can remember one specific example where I was trying to get CCC to install because he needed to to control the secondary output on the card. I would continually try to install and then crash with no error. After searching around I discovered that a specific version of Visual C Runtimes needed to be installed to run their installer. These were not included in the disc and not mentioned in the readme. I've been in driver hell with ATI several times in the past where it would routinely unload the driver at boot. I remember watching people have visual texture glitches while playing counter strike and it was always an ATI card in the machine. I remember all the little patches for ATI cards around the DX7 and DX8 days. The current game of interest (BF:BC2) sports slow load times for ATI users for instance. At the same time I have barely had any problems with any of my nVidia products, starting with the TNT2 Ultra. So I've been using nVidia exclusively for over 10 years now and would like to upgrade, but this loyalty is preventing me from doing so.

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        March 26, 2010 8:56 PM

        Wait another 3-6 months dude. Honestly. I've switched back and forth between ATI and Nvidia over the (Rage 128, Radeon 8500, Nvidia 6600, Nvidia 6800gt, Radeon 4770) years and realistically you get what you get and there isn't any magic voodoo. Keeping in mind I've never experienced any video card crippling drivers, so I'm lucky in that respect. But you will be better off served to wait to see what else comes out (Ie 58xx 2gb?)

        Your processor should be your focus for upgrading though, realistically. You will get more mileage out of going to a quad core in the next 6 months to a year. Check the numbers for BC2 to see what I mean.

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        March 26, 2010 9:00 PM

        Buy an NVIDIA card then. If you get an ATI card, the first time you have problems you'll be back here yelling about how everyone who told you ATI was good was full of shit.

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          March 26, 2010 9:10 PM

          And I don't mean for that to sound like a dick post (well okay maybe a little). If you like NVIDIA and you feel more comfortable with their products then I'm not sure what anyone could say here to sway your opinion. You can read reviews and benchmarks and product analysis as well as we can; go read up and decide for yourself. FWIW the last three ATI cards I've used (9700 Pro, 512MB 4870, and 1GB 4890) have all been great and given me zero problems. I had more issues with my 640MB 8800GTS than with the three ATI cards combined.

          • bld legacy 10 years
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            March 27, 2010 12:49 AM

            I flip-flop between Nvidia and ATI, about every "new computer" cycle, 2-3 years. Recently bought a 5770 (pretty good board), but I wanted a 5850. I would still have a hell of a time advising a Nvidia card at the heat/power cost.

            The real question is how much is PhysX worth and do you own an 8xxx series Nvidia card? You can hack it to do PhysX with an ATI graphics board.

            I have had driver issues with both (I bought a Nvidia card due to HDMI issues with my ATI card on my last rig), but the 57xx and 58xx ATI cards are great, drivers get updated frequently enough. For price/power/heat performance a 5850 would be the best buy.

            I don't have my hands on a Fermi, so I can speak for Nvidia side. PhysX is a bigger deal than better tesselation perfomance, but the better minimum framerates is damn good thing the Fermi have going for them.

            • bld legacy 10 years
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              March 27, 2010 12:50 AM

              So I can't speak for Nvidia's side, how did I miss that on the proof read.

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        March 26, 2010 9:07 PM

        I've been using ATI since the All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro days and haven't had any driver issues whatsoever.

        I am currently loving my 4870.

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        March 26, 2010 9:13 PM

        i had an 8800 GTS. that died. bfg replaced it with a 9800gt. bf2bc made me upgrade hungry. got a 5850. and am totally stoked with it. no driver issues that I've experienced. great performance.

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          March 26, 2010 10:22 PM

          Gah, I want to believe so badly. I know it was forever ago but I never had so many problems as I did with the Radeon 9800 Pro I had for six months in 2003. Fucking hell, I never got so many BSOD in any post-Windows 98 operating system. I went to an Nvidia again the day the 6800GT dropped and never looked back.

          I know it is completely irrational for me to think that ATI still has driver issues but that's how bad my experience with them was.

          So, no problems eh? :)

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            March 26, 2010 10:35 PM

            sounds almost like my experience with the two times i went ATI in the past. it was also at least 5, 6 years ago. nvidia has been better for me, my brain just shuts off when i see ATI (and also Seagate but that's a different story).

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            March 27, 2010 4:17 AM

            My 9800 Pro lasted until mid-last year, and I don't recall a single BSOD in its time. It was a remarkably awesome card, so remember YMMV goes both ways.

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          March 26, 2010 11:00 PM

          How much RAM did your 8800GTS have?

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        March 26, 2010 9:25 PM

        [deleted]

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        March 27, 2010 3:07 AM

        Honestly, I've had less problems with ATi drivers than Nvidia ones.

        I've had two NVidia cards and now 3 ATi cards.

        With my 9700, I had zero issues.

        With my X800 Pro, zero issues until I needed a SM3.0 card. :(

        With my 7600 GS, I had TONS of 2D problems. The 2D performance on that card was absolute shit. 3D performance was fine, though.

        With my 8800 GTX, I had crazy driver crashing and overheating issues up the wazoo until I got RivaTuner and cranked the fan up to 100% literally all the time. Then it was smooth sailing.

        So far with my 5850, I've had no problems at all.

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      March 26, 2010 9:04 PM

      i'm a huge nvidiot. but I think i'll wait for the 2nd model to come out before I go back to supporting nvidia

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      March 26, 2010 9:10 PM

      Looks like all those dire predictions for Fermi held up. Roughly the same performance ATI introduced six months ago, but for more watts and dollars. The only tangible benefit is with 4x/8x MSAA at extremely high res, except that will cost you $1000 for an SLI setup. Considering that the real money to be made is with mid-range solutions, Nvidia is just not going to be competitive with this generation of hardware. They need a die shrink, stat.

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      March 26, 2010 9:22 PM

      [deleted]

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        March 26, 2010 10:27 PM

        I think that's what everybody is hoping, that this is just growing pains based around a radically new part.

        Fermi isn't the absolute clusterfuck that the GF 5000 series was, but it isn't wowing anyone based on the fact that it is so power hungry and gives similar performance to a six-month old part while costing more. Who knows, maybe in a year it'll all pay off.

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          March 26, 2010 10:29 PM

          I have a feeling the next revision will be pretty good, especially if it also includes a die shrink.

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        March 26, 2010 10:42 PM

        Not really. The FX series was just terrible all around. This is at least the best in most benchmarks.

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          March 26, 2010 10:59 PM

          this one seems to (just) need a 32nm shrink and it will be golden

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            March 27, 2010 1:23 AM

            How realistic is a die shrink, considering Fermi yields are already horrible as it is?

            • bld legacy 10 years
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              March 27, 2010 1:38 AM

              Better than ATI in the 5xxx series yeilds at launch isn't it?

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                March 27, 2010 3:03 AM

                Not really.

                They're both being fabbed by the same 40 nm process by TSMC.

                The problem with the Fermi chips is that they're fuckin' huge. So whenever they spit out a wafer, the larger the chip, the more chance there will be errors.

                The smaller the chip, the less chance there will be errors on it. The 58xx series is a bit smaller than Fermi, so yields should theoretically be better.

                I think this is right.

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        March 27, 2010 3:15 AM

        Well, yes and no.

        So far as I've seen there's nowhere that the ATI part vastly outperforms the Nvidia part.

        the main failing is the heat of the thing, and the cost. but from the looks of it, anyone who buys a GTX480 isn't getting a bad card, which WAS the case for the 5800 Ultra

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      March 26, 2010 9:46 PM

      seems kind of meh

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      March 27, 2010 5:21 AM

      Better average FPS, much better minimum FPS, CUDA, PHYSX, better DX11 performance. Looks very nice.

      What I really dislike is the noise (don't care about power consumption).

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