X1900XTX vs 7900GTX
Sorry if this is a double post.
I'm toying with the idea of getting a new card. I already have an X800XT Plat. which is a stonking card for the price. Still, I'd like to get a card I can play games like Oblivion, and up coming games like ET QW, BF2012 etc with decent settings.
The cards in my mind at the moment are the two daddies: The ATi X1900XTX and the nVidia 7900GTX. I've read reviews, looked at some benchmarks (like the ones here at Digit-Life.com) and spoken to people too. Both cards are neck and neck and I'm serisouly looking for anything, even minute, to seperate them. One such thing is that all SLi mobos have nForce4 chips, whereas I haven't found a Crossfire mobo that does. What do the Crossfire mobos use?
Also, the X1900s brag 48 PPs, but I'm told they only really have 24 (like the 7900) though the card uses them differently... or something. Dunno, any light on this matter would also be helpful.
What I'm asking is for your personal preference and why. I'm really grateful to any feedback. Thanks
I'm toying with the idea of getting a new card. I already have an X800XT Plat. which is a stonking card for the price. Still, I'd like to get a card I can play games like Oblivion, and up coming games like ET QW, BF2012 etc with decent settings.
The cards in my mind at the moment are the two daddies: The ATi X1900XTX and the nVidia 7900GTX. I've read reviews, looked at some benchmarks (like the ones here at Digit-Life.com) and spoken to people too. Both cards are neck and neck and I'm serisouly looking for anything, even minute, to seperate them. One such thing is that all SLi mobos have nForce4 chips, whereas I haven't found a Crossfire mobo that does. What do the Crossfire mobos use?
Also, the X1900s brag 48 PPs, but I'm told they only really have 24 (like the 7900) though the card uses them differently... or something. Dunno, any light on this matter would also be helpful.
What I'm asking is for your personal preference and why. I'm really grateful to any feedback. Thanks
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Comments
1. Personal preference-pretty much self-explanatory. Some people are really biased about their GPU. Some people hate Nvidia, so they love ATI and for others it is totally opposite. And there are also many folks (like me) who don't favor one company's product over the other because both make quality product.
2. If you are going for a single card solution, then the chipset doesn't matter because either the NF4 or R580 chipsets will run a single card from either company just fine. It's when you decide to go SLI/Crossfire where chipsets matter greatly. For Nvidia, only Nvidia based chipsets will let Nvidia based video cards run in SLI mode. On the ATI side, the ATI based chipset boards with 2 pci-e 16X slots and also some Intel chipset based boards with 2 pci-16X slots can run in Crossfire mode. As for ATI chipset boards and Crossfire, they are now readily available from manufacturers such as Asus and DFI.
3. This is a telling factor right now and in my opinion, must have a lot of weight in your decision if you are sensitive to noise. As it stands now, the 7900 series consumes a bit less power than the X1900 series and Nvidia's stock cooling solution is definitely much quieter than the stock ATI solution. But if you plan to do watercooling, this noise advantage can be nullified with watercooling the GPU with either vid card series and both will see much lower temps with watercooling, leading to better overclocks (if you overclock the GPU) and longer life.
Of course if you want to go either SLI or Crossfire, you are going to have to get a very high end psu for your machine as both the 7900 and X1900 are real power hogs and need lots of amps.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAzMywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Just another quick question. Reading down the speclist of the X1900XTX and ""XT, the only noticeable difference is that the XTX's GPU is 25mhz faster and the memory clock speed is only 50mhz faster. I wouldn't have thought this made a lot of difference, but XTX is flying off the shelves. Am I missing something?
However, none of these cards is of no use if you haven't a monitor capable of producing a resolution of at least 1600X1200.
Are they testing two of these cards at a time on Crossfire/SLi or something?
P.S. Thanks for posting that review, Sledgehammer70. Though it seems heavily biased towards nVidia, it still brings up some important points.
I was going to plump for the Sapphire X1900XT, but my friend suggested HiS. Does anyone have any experience with HiS? He said they run better and cooler, but to me all the cards look like they have the same spec and the same heatsink. Does anyone know anything about this?
Thanks again
P.S. I was looking at the Sapphire PURE RD580 CrossFire Advantage mobo. It seems the best value Crossfire mobo I can find. My only doubt is that I have never heard of Sapphire's motherboards until now. Does anyone have any info on this?