Posted on Saturday, November 15 2008 @ 6:21 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
If you are looking for more performance than that, the GeForce GTX 280 looks to be a good option now and we¡¯d dare say it¡¯s a better option than the Radeon HD 4850 X2, especially as a stock GTX 280 is a good ¡ê50 cheaper. Admittedly there are times when the 4870 X2 will completely blitz the GTX 280, but there are just as many examples where the dual-GPU behemoth will suffer from performance inconsistencies like those we saw in our Far Cry 2 DirectX 9.0 tests thanks to unoptimised drivers or engine limitations. The bad news is that official driver support from AMD isn¡¯t coming until January, so 4870 X2 owners may well feel a little let down by AMD's drivers here.
The other interesting thing we¡¯ve learned from our new testing is that the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is now a much more compelling option compared to the Radeon HD 4850. OK, so it¡¯s not as clear cut as, say, choosing the 4870 1GB over either the 4870 512MB or GeForce GTX 260+ and there are times when the 4850 is quite a lot faster than the 9800 GTX+, but there are now some scenarios where the 9800 GTX+ is notably faster ¨C we just couldn¡¯t say that just a few short months ago.
Check it out
at Bit Tech.
