Help me choose a video card

[Fykins]

I'm going to be building a new pc with a i7 processor in about a month, in the past I'd tend to go with nvidia over ati, however no nvidia chipsets are scheduled right now for the i7 processors. So I have 3 cards picked out, I'm spending about 250-300 on a video card (I'm not going for sli just yet)

XFX GeForce GTX 260 Video Card - XXX Edition, 896MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0 x16, SLI Ready, (dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, VGA Support GX260NADDU at TigerDirect.com
(I probably would get the overclocked version of this one, right now they are the same price with rebate)

HIS Radeon HD 4870 1GB PCIe wDL DVI H487F1GP at TigerDirect.com
(I've heard this one has some stability issues with factory settings, I could tweak it down but I believe messing with the clock voids your warrenty)

PC Connection - 9800 GX2 Graphics Card, PCI Express, 1GB
(I'm having alot of trouble finding this card, tigerdirect and newegg don't have it.)

Any advice? Right now I'm leaning twards nvidias 9800 gx2 but its hard to find.

[SpoonMan999]

I'd go with the GTX 260. Why?

-It's made by XFX which means you can over clock and not void the warranty
-It's made by XFX so the warranty is a life-time warranty
-It's an awesome card
-A very good price for a card that young

[Fykins]

Oh I didn't know its warranty wouldn't be ruined by overclocking.

Alright cool, now I don't need to go through the hassle of getting a rebate and I can play with my own settings.

[SpoonMan999]

XFX and BFG both offer lifetime warranties that support overclocking. Which is why I always buy XFX and BFG...that and they're great cards.

[Fykins]

But still, not by warrenty or price, how does the 9800 gx2 hold up against the 260? It has more memory and its clock is slower, but it has 2 gpus.

EDIT:
A gx2 by XFX is over $400 bucks still, and the only place I saw it was Amazon. But still, I'd like to know which is better.

[SpoonMan999]

Ok I can start getting technical if you like.

The 260 has 192 processing cores versus 256 in the 9800. What does this mean? It basically means the 9800 GX2 can process larger quantities of information at once BUT the faster clock speed on the 260 means it processes less information at faster speeds.

It's like a 2-lane highway with a speed limit of 75 versus a 3-lane highway with a speed limit of 65. With more lanes more people can get where they're going at once but they get there slower than they would on the 2-lane. If you're playing something crazy like Crysis, which really isn't that great of a game, then you would benefit more from a dual GPU card.

That said, in this particular case you have a very small difference between the core count despite that the 9800 has an extra GPU over the 260. So with massive amounts of information flowing you will not see a huge difference from those extra cores, you will see a significant difference from the clock speed though. And that, is how I came to my conclusion.

[Fykins]

Their specs just seamed to close to call for me, the last computer I built I spent no where near as much as I'm gunna spend now. So I figured I better get a second opinion. But thanks dude.

Anyway here are my other specs so far:
Processor: i7 920
Motherboard: I'll just get a motherboard with 2 pci-e slots, 6 ram slots, I'll try to get up to 24 gb ram supported but 12 gb is fine. Intel chipset -UNLESS nvidia gets off their ass and makes me a chipset before january.
Memory: I'll start off with 6 gb ddr3 1333 for now, tigerdirect has 6 gigs for $220 bucks.
Storage, power supply, dvd drive, case: just whatever is a good deal, I know I'll need a pretty big power supply since I'll probably get another card to sli when they come down in price.

Also I'm going to buy a aftermarket cooling system for my processor and probably an extra case fan. I've heard these i7's like to run hot.

Thats what I have for now, but AMD does have its AM 3 socket coming out soon, so I will probably wait to see how those do against the I7's. If they can come close to the performance and beat the price, I'll be runnin AMD instead. But I think its unlikly that AMD will catch up so soon.

[ZxSlippy191]

I hope your going to OC that DDR3 if you get it.

I recommend the HD 4870, it's going to perform better than the GTX 260

[FrogMan]

HD 4879 will only out preform the GTX 260 if ATi keep making fake benchmark tests, currently running two 9800gtx's in sli I can run anything full res like some baffon but yea the GTX 260 are better plus althougth the 9800gtx's has the new physics engine I hear that Gtx 260/280 will be better at it.

[Fykins]

I hope your going to OC that DDR3 if you get it.

I recommend the HD 4870, it's going to perform better than the GTX 260

Nope, most motherboards don't support over 1333 mhz right now anyway. (or atleast they don't say they support over 1333 mhz)

I could be runnin DDR2 800 mhz and be fine, ddr3 is sorta overkill rightnow.

I've heard of people who had to downclock the 4870 because of stability issues. The other version of the card has less memory and gets blown out of the water in the charts against nvidia. I haven't found a chart with the 1 gb 4870 on it though.
I'm not really an ATI fan in the first place, so I think I'm effectively swayed back to nvidia.
That 4870 is the card my die-hard ATI friend is going to be putting in his soon. If I was an ATI fan, it would be my only choice right now.

[The Mob]

if your willing to go 20$ over your budget, get two HD 4850 and cross fire them.
PCIe Interface: $310 and Up - Tom's Hardware : Best Video Cards For The Money: Dec '08

according to tom's its a tie between HD 4870 1gb and GTX 260+ at roughly 265$ each
PCIe Interface: $150 to $300 - Tom's Hardware : Best Video Cards For The Money: Dec '08

[Pamela]

*blinks* God I hate this damn section.....

[ZxSlippy191]

Nope, most motherboards don't support over 1333 mhz right now anyway. (or atleast they don't say they support over 1333 mhz)

I could be runnin DDR2 800 mhz and be fine, ddr3 is sorta overkill rightnow.

All LGA 1336 socket motherboards support DDR2 and DDR3, so go for DDR2 since DDR3 is pretty useless (and expensive) unless your going to overclock it.

[Fykins]

6 gigs of ddr 3 is about $170 at newegg, which isn't a bad price at all.

[The Mob]

eh. it doesnt matter in the end. everything will depreciate down to nothing in like 6 months. lol