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USC
28th October 2009, 01:08 PM
What Graphics card are you guys using?

Also, which one is better...GTX285 or ATI5870?? I think ATI drivers are quite buggy and they do not have an official one for Windows 7 yet..can anyone confirm?

GTX295 runs too hot and is not efficient with power consumption.

When does the 300 series come out?

gman
28th October 2009, 06:10 PM
No idea on the GTX300..

I run a GTX295 series card from BFG...

Tried a few other brands, but I like the BFG cards....They do a liquid cooled one right from the box now too. All self contained....

Maybe look at the BFG GTX 285 OCX 1GB PCIe 2.0 (http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgrgtx2851024ocxe.aspx)

poita
28th October 2009, 06:13 PM
oooooo that sounds sexy :D

*goes looking*

gman
28th October 2009, 06:23 PM
The BFG cards are way cool... :D

The GTX295's they do are awesome and always get good reviews and 3Dmarks scores. Overclocking sometimes right out of the box and watercooling built in...Thats why I bought mine... ;)

poita
28th October 2009, 06:28 PM
i've had quite a bit of success with my asus video cards and motherboards.

matching them up seems to go quite well.

currently only running an EN8800GT, seems so archaic now :lol:
was a $400 card wen i bought that

poita
28th October 2009, 06:30 PM
oh btw wats a rough rice on your piece of dirt?

going for around the $600 mark here, non watercooled though

Calibrated
28th October 2009, 06:44 PM
I run a Sapphire Radeon 4890 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5. will get a 2nd for crossfire at some stage.

and 5870 > 285. on performance and price.

gman
28th October 2009, 06:56 PM
oh btw wats a rough rice on your piece of dirt?

going for around the $600 mark here, non watercooled though

From HK mine were around AUD$675 each...In Oz they "were" about another AUD$100+ more...These are the water cooler ones.

The stock air cooled BFG GTX295's are much cheaper and almost as quick, but you'll need to get decent case fans/ventilation or aftermarket watercooling to keep them humming along nicely....

USC
28th October 2009, 08:54 PM
Im currently using a GTX275..thinking if I should upgrade to a 5870..or wait until the GTX300 comes out.

BFG looks great..Ive never heard of that brand before. Where can you buy it in OZ?

gman
28th October 2009, 09:17 PM
I used to get mine from a place in Chinatown in Sydney...Check online and there should be places to get them...

dieselhead
28th October 2009, 10:36 PM
I run a Sapphire Radeon 4890 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5. will get a 2nd for crossfire at some stage.

and 5870 > 285. on performance and price.

just got one of these for $259 the other day. awesome speed and cooling for the money! beats cards that cost $200 more and have noisier cooling. might get one later on for some crossfire goodness.

USC
28th October 2009, 11:37 PM
just got one of these for $259 the other day. awesome speed and cooling for the money! beats cards that cost $200 more and have noisier cooling. might get one later on for some crossfire goodness.


did you get 5870 or 4890?

gmonkey
28th October 2009, 11:38 PM
and this is why i just use a console for my gaming needs now days :rolleyes:

Calibrated
29th October 2009, 07:19 AM
did you get 5870 or 4890?
pretty sure he got a 4890 vapor-x

it really is a brilliant piece of kit. i wouldnt be bothering with DX11 series cards just yet. wait at least 12-18 months. unless you really have to have one...

USC
29th October 2009, 10:00 AM
who is running windows 7? What are your PC scores? I get 7.3 for Graphics but 5.9 for Hard drive!!! I think I need to get SSD!!:D

Agree...I reckon it will take some time (at least 12months) before games start making full use of DX11. I read GTX300 is not coming out for quite some time!

Calibrated
29th October 2009, 12:44 PM
who is running windows 7? What are your PC scores? I get 7.3 for Graphics but 5.9 for Hard drive!!! I think I need to get SSD!!:D

Agree...I reckon it will take some time (at least 12months) before games start making full use of DX11. I read GTX300 is not coming out for quite some time!
i score 7.1

definitely get an SSD. my g.skill falcon scores 7.4

USC
29th October 2009, 01:49 PM
How do you manage to get 7.1 from HD? What kinda of setup do you have?

I get 7.3 for everything (my RAM is Kingston HyperX) except for HD:(

gman
29th October 2009, 02:04 PM
SSD Drive... ;)

USC
29th October 2009, 02:07 PM
SSD Drive... ;)

ohh..I really need to get myself an SSD then :D

I wonder if Raid 0 would give me a better score.

gman
29th October 2009, 02:29 PM
Raid 0 should increase the score, but I'm not sure how Windows does the scoring.

Raid 0 is non parity though, so no backup...

USC
29th October 2009, 04:53 PM
yeah..thats true! I could do a Raid 0, partition it and do manual back up.

gman
29th October 2009, 05:11 PM
Easier to go for 3 drives and use RAID 3 or 4...Dedicated parity and with drives so cheap easy to do..As long as its not a laptop.. ;)

Or do an external backup of important files every week etc....

delemonte
29th October 2009, 06:22 PM
If it's your HDD that's letting you down, then test it to see what actual transfer speeds you're getting... If you're getting less than ~65MB/s, then just buy a new HDD and install your OS onto it, and use your old HDD as a data or main backup drive where performance isn't critical. A new HDD (with the exception being cheap or 'energy efficient' drives) should be able to transfer general data from 95MB/s up to 115MB/s, depending on the drive.

They do seem to slow down after a few years of use. Depending on the cause of this deterioration in speed, you can sometimes 'speed it up' again using various methods.

If you really want ongoing performance, RAID all the way.

As far as SSDs go, I'm really not a fan yet. Absolutely fantastic concept, but the limitations of today's existing SSD technology turn me off straight away. I've no doubt that I'll get one eventually, but I reckon that'll be when they've gone down in price and have become more practical for continuous use e.g. caching/buffering, recording video onto, logging data.

dieselhead
29th October 2009, 06:44 PM
Yeah, I got the Vapor-X. It might take 3 months until the 5850 becomes available at decent prices and even longer before something like 5850 Vapor-X hits MSY's shelf.

I'm going for 2 X 1TB Samsung F3 HDD in RAID 0 for now. SSD is not mature enough yet, learned that on my own money when bought a G.Skill 64GB with JMicron controller... Besides, there's a trend towards PCI-e SSDs at the moment that will solve the limitations of the SATA bus and would allow you to reach close to 1 GB/s read and write. Well, not yet, these are just as immature as the 2.5" SATA versions. Giveém 12-18 months and they'll be OK. For now, 2 to 4 fast and quiet Samsungs will do the job nicely for less than $90/TB :D

USC
29th October 2009, 09:53 PM
Both 5850 and 5870 are already at CPL. It shouldnt take too long before they reach MSY.

I have two fairly new Seagate SATA II hds in my desktop. I have another larger wireless HD for storage & Backups but that shouldnt slow down things as it is not part of my system. I will try raid 0..the problem is I am too lazy to re-install windows.haha

dieselhead
29th October 2009, 10:49 PM
I wouldn't be so sure about 5000 series availability. OK, the 5700 ones are, but supply of 5850 and 5870 will be scarce this side of Xmas I reckon. No biggie, the Vapor-X 4890 I just got will go in the HTPC to make room for the 5870 in 12 months or so :D