nvidia 9800 GX2 or gtx 280?

[jammoboss]

If i had the money i would get the new ati 4870 x2 but i havent and i have always been a nvidia fan.

looking through reviews and even though the 280 is newer the 9800 gx2 beats it on over half the benchmarks on most reviews i have read.

I need a card soon as im lending a mates pc, which would you recommend, pay a bit more and get the 280 gtx or get a 9800 gx2?

p.s the machine i have built so far has

ocz game extreme 1010 watt psu
4 gig ddr2 1066 ram
asus p5q deluxe mb
750 gig sata2 hd
i have on order a intel extreme q9650 (3 ghz 12mb 1333)
sata 2x pioneer dvd drives


thanks

 

[MFCGMFC]

9800 mate definetly, it kicks the arse of the 280

Cheers
MFCGAVMFC

 

[little_pob]

If going with Vista go for the 4870 or 4870x2, unlike the 9800GX2 they're DX10.1 capable. If sticking with XP go for the 9800GX2.

Side notes:

With 4Gb RAM you need to go for a 64bit OS, especially if going for a graphics card with 1Gb of GDDR.

If you've not already ordered I'd drop one of the DVD drives and get either the Pioneer BluRay or the LG BluRay/HDDVD combo, both are DVD+/-RW and SATA.

 

[jammoboss]

Im running windows xp pro sp2, 32 bit i havent got a 64 bit os

Might looking into the lG bluray thanks.

i have looked at a few reviews and its clearly showing the 9800gx2 winning most test apart from higher resolutions. I just through this is the next generation in cards (200 series) why is the results so bad.

 

[little_pob]

Biggest problem seems to be is nvidia still using GDDR3, extra pipes can only make up for so much. To contrast ATI's newest use GDDR5.

As to why the the 9800GX2 is roughly comparable to the 280 at lower res benchmarks, the "bleeding edge" cards like the 280/4870x2 tend to loose their advantage at resolutions of 1680*1050 and lower, most people don't need to run Crysis/GRID at 1920*1200. Also the 9800GX2 has "on card SLi" as it actually has 2x9800 GPUs on there.

I cannot stress enough the need to go for 64 bit OS if you want to use all the 4Gb. 32bit has a memory addressing limit of 4Gb, out of this all the buses take the first slice. If you put a graphics card in there which has 1Gb or GDDR you instantly limit the maximum amount of RAM windows can use to 3Gb at most, values of 2.5Gb are not unheard of. 64bit does not suffer from this problem. There is a 64bit version of XP Pro, and as far as I know a licence key is interchangeable across the 32 and 64 bit versions.

 

[jammoboss]

thanks for all that info, as my motherboard is p45 express chipset it only supports crossfire and not sli so i either waste more money and get a ati 4870 x2 or stick with a single 9800 gx2 or gtx 280.

After looking at all the pros and cons, i cant really afford to waste more money on an ati and i have always been a nvidia fan i decided to go for a .... wait for it ........... riva tnt2 lol.... GTX 280 is for me