1 Geforce GTX280 or 2 ATI HD4870 crossfire for less the price ?

I am a big fan of NVIDIA for a long time now(i have myself a EVGA 8800GTS 640mb and love it), but i used to be a ATI fan before the beging to make like the worst products. I have to agree that i was recently suprised by the new products ATI has brought us, such as the HD4850(200$ or less) and the HD4870(300$ or less). The Geforce GTX280 is by far the best video card ever made and much better then the ATI ones i was just talking about, but its over 600 bucks and going to almost 900 is you get the Cooling editions like EVGA provides with a water cooling(that's just WOW ! =D EVGA rocks my world). I was looking up the specs and the bencmarks of both video cards and i kind of realised that i would be cheaper and more powerfull to have 2xHD4870 crossfire then one Gefore GTX280. My question is: "is ATI crossfire any good and is it really worth it to switch back to ATI for price and performance wise?"

Give me your opinions,

Thanks Peace =D

A single HD4870 is 85-90% of the performance of the GTX 280 and sometimes even beats it. If you want links just let me know.

So yeah two HD4870 in CF beat a 280 hands down.

I am going 4870 Crossfire because i have a x38 board and the 4870 BEATS the 280gtx, about same price range for both, very well in all of the games I enjoy. I have no reason to go with the 280gtx. Since i also dont plan to change the gpu setup for awhile, past a year easy, then I am fine since SC2 and D3 seems to have DX10.1 support. If I was rebuilding alot then I might just go with a single 4870.

280gtx is the fastest single gpu out there right now. You do avoid, where it happens which isnt in every game at all, micro-stuttering and a few other issues such as scaling. That is why you should research to see.

In some setups the 4870 CF setup is cheaper and better in everyway. In others it isnt. If you have a modern SLI nforce board then it would be cheaper overall to get a 280gtx vs the 4870 CF because of needing to replace the mobo.

All things considered I would rather stay with a 8800GT than go to a 280gtx if I didnt own a x38 board. 4870 CF just dominates the 280gtx in performance/price ratio in too many good modern games to not love the setup.

starcraft 2 wont need such a power full computer :P, its well made but not that crazy.

But my point on my other post was really to get objective about the price versus performance wise price for one or 2 video cards. I know SLI is much better but it is much more expansive too ;).

peace

yeah but im talking on 1920x1200 starcraft 2 with max player and thousand of unit we gona make map like night of the dead 3 : on starcraft 2 wich gona require lot of power also new game like the demi god and any other good game i find and by same time crysis at big setting so im staking up cash for since now. about 7 month it will be around 11 month or 12 month iv being saving money by time i build it waiting best cpu : motherbord deal & then gpu upgrade ! and water cooling it if possiblemarcthpro

Honestly running Starcraft with thousands of units will be more demanding on the CPU and RAM then the video card.

and btw your posts are really incoherent

Edit: And to the original post, perhaps you might want to wait for the R700, which will be coming out later this summer. and according to speculation, will be a beast. :o

The Geforce GTX280 is by far the best video card ever made and much better then the ATI ones i was just talking

s00kah

10-15% is much better ? Ok.

it not only for starcraft 2 =) sorry if i type too fast il use more checking of my own eye of error i make ?if you talking about my spelling wrong and and i said btw that id seek run crysis really high at same time so not only one game. several game at once.
when i upgrade marcthpro

Crysis is so optimzed for Nvidia, it's beyond ridiculous. Besides cutting Crossfire support out of their game, they also ditched DirectX 10.1. If you look at the rest of the benchmarks, it's interesting to note that Crossfire adds almost zero performance going from one HD4870 to another. If you look at games that are actually fun to play, it's a whole different story. Crysis is an interactive benchmark, not a game. And it's a biased benchmark at that.

2 4850's in Crossifre will perform almost as well as a single GTX280 for a fraction of the price.

Crossfire doesn't work well against GTX 280 or 260 even
and secipaly not tri-fire compare to nvidia tri-sli relay kick ass but too expensive =)
the most expensive video card build without water cooling on it is 2200$ : 3 sli gTx 280 I hope the Price Drop soon for GTx 280 By time i build my pc around november for Starcraft 2 im patient =)
world is full of nut =)
and sometime peanut butter. !
marcthpro

You dont know what your talking about. And to TC. Definatly take 2x4870 or maybe wait additional 4 weeks for 4870X2 which should be priced at 500$.

If you get crossfire 4870's your going to be massively dissapointed.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1481/9/sapphire_radeon_hd_4870_in_crossfire/index.html

At this point don't even look at nVidias cards because they are simply too expensive. Buy two 4870 and Crossfire em is probably the best way to get as much performanse as you can get right now. It's way faster than one single GTX 280. But you can also wait for the new edition of the 4870 (black ed) which has 4GHz GDDR5 memory speed and 1GHz GPU speed plus some other improvements like bios upgrade. It will blast the GTX 280 out of the house.

At this point don't even look at nVidias cards because they are simply too expensive. Buy two 4870 and Crossfire em is probably the best way to get as much performanse as you can get right now. It's way faster than one single GTX 280. But you can also wait for the new edition of the 4870 (black ed) which has 4GHz GDDR5 memory speed and 1GHz GPU speed plus some other improvements like bios upgrade. It will blast the GTX 280 out of the house.

jernas

OK I just checked out a different review, and it seems that CF IS Massiviely faster than a 280, but only when it works. If you dont mind lower framerates in certain games, such as Bioshock and Crysis, you'll be fine.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/734/1/

Don't forget that Crossfire is Crossfire. You can't treat two cards as if they were one becouse they're not. GTX 280 may look worse on charts but it offers consistant performance whilsst two 4850s do not. It still not justifies buying GTX 280 for 650$, though.Ptosio

The fact is for a fraction of the price the 2 4850's are far better in terms of price to performance whether its consistent or not.

If you get crossfire 4870's your going to be massively dissapointed.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1481/9/sapphire_radeon_hd_4870_in_crossfire/index.html

Guru_G4M3R

Well, i am not sure about this benchmark since the HD4870 is a saphirre one and they make like the worst video cards, but thanks for the answering correctly on the post.

Peace

Don't forget that Crossfire is Crossfire. You can't treat two cards as if they were one becouse they're not. GTX 280 may look worse on charts but it offers consistant performance whilsst two 4850s do not. It still not justifies buying GTX 280 for 650$, though.Ptosio

I agree haols but i was comparing 2xHD4870 Vs 1 GTX280 performance and price wise.