GeForce 9800 GTX -> Radeon HD 5830

[Spectere]

I just got my shiny, red Radeon today and figured I'd run through the benchmarks with my old card and it.  The new card is better than I thought it would be:

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System Specs
============
Asus P5N-D Motherboard (nForce 750i)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.5 GHz)
2 x 2GB Corsair XMS2 DHX RAM (4-4-4-12)

Old Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX - 512MB GDDR3 (512-bit)
New Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5830 - 1GB GDDR5 (256-bit)

3DMark Vantage Benchmarks (only GPU tests were performed)
=========================================================
Preset: Entry (1024x768, no AA, no anisotropy)
----------------------------------------------
Old: 25651
New: 31615

Preset: Performance (1280x1024, no AA, no anisotropy)
-----------------------------------------------------
Old: 6040
New: 10786

Preset: High (1680x1050, 2x AA, 8x anisotropy)
----------------------------------------------
Old: 3813
New: 7797

Preset: Extreme (1920x1200, 4x AA, 16x anisotropy)
--------------------------------------------------
Old: 2501
New: 5688
The card yielded surprisingly good framerates even on the "high" preset, ranging from just short of playable (~15fps) to quite playable (~45+), whereas my old card couldn't even manage that on "performance."

In particular, the 104.4% increase in the "high" preset and 127.4% increase in "extreme" pleased me.

Oh, and best of all, the drivers don't fucking suck like the Forceware 200 series.  I didn't suddenly lose 1280x960 and lose the ability to change refresh rates on my CRT and the text doesn't look like complete shit on my secondary display anymore (don't know what the fuck NVIDIA did to cause that to happen).  And finally, the best change of all is that aspect ratios are preserved in hardware on the new board.  Even my initial boot screens show in a proper 4:3 ratio, even on my widescreen monitor.  My NVIDIA card literally didn't do anything right in regards to that.  I've actually seen it smash 1280x800 into a 4:3 ratio when it pumped it out to my monitor, necessitating me to change my refresh rate from "59hz" to 60hz...which doesn't make a lot of sense considering my monitor only supports the latter.  Guess what?  The ATI card got that little bit of autodetection right, too, and that's an issue that my 9800GTX and my 6600GT before that couldn't seem to get right.

Gotta love it.  Oh well, time to play some games!

[Bobbias]

Great, s.net is going to be without it's illustrious leader for another long haul

[Spectere]

Bah, I'd be more worried about me playing WoW.  I'm starting to grind rep for the Horde factions...

I see many Stratholme runs and Argent Tournament grinding in my future.

[Bobbias]

Bah, I'd be more worried about me playing WoW.  I'm starting to grind rep for the Horde factions...

I see many Stratholme runs and Argent Tournament grinding in my future.

:<

You know, those phone reviews you promised on your blog still aren't up *hint hint*.

[Spectere]

Yeah, that's mostly because I reflashed my G1 several times (running Android 2.1 on it...going to cross my fingers and try 2.2 again some day if I'm feeling brave) and kinda got on the busy side.

Then there's the disaster that I'd like to refer to as "iOS 4."  My 3G runs iOS 4 like complete ass, so I reverted to 3.1.3 with a bit of funtastic tomfoolery.  I suppose I could lump them into an "obsolete smartphone review" or something.

[vladgd]

5830 huh?

i was thinking of replacing my 4850x2.  i mean it preforms fine, but fucker gets damn loud, and not everything uses both gpu's. 

when i am running a recent ish game (dawn of war 2 for example) i don't want my video card to sound like a freight train and make me paranoid of it overheating. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102878&cm_re=radeon_5830-_-14-102-878-_-Product

something im eyeing at. 

[Bobbias]

"obsolete smartphone review" or something.

lol. I'm thinking of saving up for an upgrade on the desktop in my basement again (or maybe I'll just build another computer, and cannibalize another old case), but I have no idea what sort of price range/models I should be looking at for graphics. I want something that isn't a pile of junk, but I'm looking for something that I could maybe OC just a bit to get some more performance out of, rather than pay for the real good stuff.

[Spectere]

5830 huh?

i was thinking of replacing my 4850x2.  i mean it preforms fine, but fucker gets damn loud, and not everything uses both gpu's. 

The one that I nabbed is quite stylish and doesn't run any louder than my 9800GTX did.  It doesn't seem to run particularly hot, either.  I was playing WoW for several hours last night and it seemed to stick around 60-70C.

I probably wouldn't go with a Sapphire branded card, though.  I've installed a few of them at work and wasn't particularly impressed with their thermal design or noise level.  I wound up getting this XFX one (incidentally, my 9800GTX is also an XFX, so now I have two "GO AWAY, I'M FRAGGING" door hangers):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150497

It's pretty quiet, looks nice (if you have a window), and the hood doesn't have the cheap, flimsy feel that the Sapphire cards that I've worked with have.  Oh, and it comes with the new Aliens vs. Predator game (if FPS titles that earned mixed reviews appeal to you).

I'm thinking of saving up for an upgrade on the desktop in my basement again (or maybe I'll just build another computer, and cannibalize another old case), but I have no idea what sort of price range/models I should be looking at for graphics. I want something that isn't a pile of junk, but I'm looking for something that I could maybe OC just a bit to get some more performance out of, rather than pay for the real good stuff.

It looks like the NVIDIA GTX460 and Radeon HD 5830 are right at the sweet spot for performance vs. price at this point.  I did my homework and it seems like the two of them are about neck and neck in benchmarks and they both cost right around USD$200-230.

[Bobbias]

Good to know. I haven't been doing any homework on the hardware front lately.

It'll still be a bit yet before I do anything though. I'm still in classes for now, and I still need to find a co-op placement, before I really worry about spending money. Plus, I'm gonna have to save a lot of what I make, so I may end up really budget limited.

[Spectere]

Good to know. I haven't been doing any homework on the hardware front lately.

Yeah, me neither.  The abysmal failure of the Forceware 2xx drivers and the various annoyances that I've been having with my NVIDIA gear pretty much drive me to researching the new stuff.  Until last week my knowledge of video cards was about a year and a half old. :x

Edit:

Oh, and it comes with the new Aliens vs. Predator game (if FPS titles that earned mixed reviews appeal to you).

GOOD GOD that game is a piece of shit.

* Spectere runs off to look for his copy of AvP2...you know, one of the good games in that franchise.

Edit²: Using the default settings, videos appear to be much less washed out, with much more vibrant colors on the ATI card.  Movies and videos look awesome on this thing.

[vladgd]

depending on if i can run starcraft 2 full everything and my card retains quiet, if not im probably going to pick that card up. 

IF i can find a buyer for my current card, or not.  i may have a few local people interested. 

[Spectere]

I've been pushing this card hard and the fan speed hasn't gone above 30%.  It stayed at a reasonable volume even when I put it through both maxed out 3DMark tests as well as extended gaming sessions, so I'd say you should be in good shape.

[Bobbias]

Time to OC? lol.

Then again, I'm kinda obsessed about OCing anything I can. Even a minor OC on a POS video card can make a world of difference. Of course, it's less useful on a badass card like that, unless you actually find a bottleneck that happens to be from the card.

[Spectere]

Definitely not time to OC.

The company who designed my motherboard's chipset (their name begins with the letter N) is a miserably failure and fucked just about everything up.  It has definite problems with the PCI-E interface (my old card used to hard lock the system if I tried doing anything that involved a fullscreen overlay, and my new card comes up with artifacts at the stock clock speed when I do memory stress tests...only in this board, naturally).  I also cannot install any major World of Warcraft patches on this machine, otherwise it'll corrupt game files.  I literally have to patch WoW on my laptop and transfer the files over.

Pretty pathetic.  Naturally, nVIDIA's supposed "fix" didn't work on very many boards, which kind of leads me to believe that it's a manufacturing issue (my dad's nForce 7 board works just fine, mine is junk; his was manufactured about a year after mine was).

Maybe I'll consider doing something like that after I get rid of this piece of junk and replace it with a Core i7 with an Intel motherboard chipset.  You know, something stable.

[Bobbias]

Ouch, that sucks. I've personally never run into crazy problems with nvidia, I guess I've been lucky.