As you might have read in my earlier post , I received an ATI 5870 video card and I had to nickname it “the beast”, because this sucker is big, and that’s just how I like it. I’m upgrading from an ATI 4850, which is another fabulous video card, but I’m certainly not going to deny myself the opportunity to try out this latest one.
If you are interested in all the fancy numbers, you can view the technical specs here , but here are the main features from the ATI site.
As you can see in the images above, this is obviously a dual-slot card, meaning it’s going to take up two spots on the back of your PC. This wasn’t a problem for me as I don’t have any other PCI cards installed, but it’s something you need to take into consideration. Installation was quick, just make sure both slots are free, snap in the card, and hook in the power. After making sure it was securely in, it was ready to go. Next step was booting up and installing the latest Catalyst drivers, which is a straightforward installation and I didn’t run into any issues whatsoever.
On the card it has two DVI outputs, an HDMI output, and a DisplayPort output. In my current setup I have two 22” widescreen monitors hooked up to the DVI ports. I’m still contemplating on what to do with the HDMI port. Anyways, after the driver installation I had to go into the display properties and easily configure Windows 7 to setup the dual-monitors to display as I want them to which is the main monitor on the right, and the second on the left.
I just installed this a day ago, so I’m going to break it in for a bit, and then follow-up with a review on the performance of the card from a user point of view, not the super technical number crunches you often see.
So... 60ms lag. That is not even 1/100 of second. I bet pro like you can cast 5 pots and 3 fireballs in Wow or other Pro game .
What else do you recomend?? Should I cut my keyboard and monitor cable to 100 mm so it will have better response time? that will give another 1/100 second advantage againts those pros. And maybe i should sit closer to monitor so i will see the action faster again.
I also heard that when you graphic card can render over 500 fps you can actually see what other players do before they even decide to do it. Its so worth it to get latest 5870 x2 and put them in 4x SLI so i will get 8 gpu working same time.
Back to original post. I really think it is no point to get the 'latest' graphic cards when there is no games to fully utilize its power and potential.
It's best to have a handle on maths when attempting to make a point. 60milliseconds is 60 one-thousandths of a second.
Divide 60 by 1000 and you get.....?
Good question.
Anyway, I've been looking forward to upgrading for quite a while, but I've recently come across reports from a sizeable number of people whose 5xxx cards suffer from the "gray screen crash" issue which still hasn't been resolved. I'll probably wait a bit longer and see how the situation unfolds.
Jafo
Thanks for correcting me. If only stardock team was soo good in math when it comes to demigod lua (minons sumoned with half hp for example). Thanks mate great work
NP, BTW....60ms, or about 1/16th of a second would be well and truly noticed....
more close to 1/17th. Sure mate if you can react in that amount of time (recive information, anylyze, decide what action to take and transfer it onto keyboard) then you must veery 'special'. I wonder in which department Brad keeps such a special people???
It's an Antec 500w I believe.
I'm strictly talking about first person shooters here. WOW is not a FPS.
Imagine this scenario. You have a fairly small target moving across the screen, it takes 1 second for it to cross it. If every frame shows you where the target was 8ms ago, you have a very much higher probability of clicking on it than if you see where the target was 33ms ago.
If I had any talent in coding, I'd make small game to test it. Just have a 4x4pixel dot moving over the screen in 1 second, the aim of the game would be to click as fast and accurately on the dot as possible. 9 runs should be done, random order on the FPS but 3 times on each framerate (30, 60 and 120FPS, framerate not revealed to the player). Then just show the average distance the clicks was from the dot for every framerate. I'm confident that the difference would be quite apparent.
(I figured out a better way to do this test, but as I don't think anyone is really going to take a crack at doing it, I won't bother with changing this.. )
Electrical signals travel at the speed of light, there's no way you can cut a cable and have anywhere near a 1/100th of a second gain.
I'm pretty sure that if you use the 9.12 hotfix version drivers this is a nonissue. The drivers are somewhat awful atm. 10.1 9.11 F-.
the i7 with an ati 260 seems to run real nice for me. Demigod in full tilt. sins though will slow down on large maps about mid to late game, but that has been the case for some time with sins, regardless of the rig
In 1/16th of a second an F1 car will have travelled about 18 feet. On start/finish in 1995 F1 GP Adelaide [the last one] I worked out the view-angle of the car numbers on the sidepod.....I had 0.2 seconds 'window of opportunity' to recognise the car...locate the number position and read/register the number. It was my job to let Race Control know when [and the car number of] the last car before the chequered and the first car to receive it [win]. [It was Hill, BTW]. 'Terminal' speed at S/F in Adelaide is about 160mph or about 234 feet per second.
Next weekend it's the World Superbikes at Phillip Island....where the fastest terminal speed [front straight] was recorded at 336kph [MotoGP]. Being a Comms Observer for the FIA/FIM is not a job for a 3 toed sloth ....
I have an interesting situation because my LCD monitor actually refreshes at 120hz regardless of my computer's refresh rate setting (apparently it was designed to reduce the "ghosting" effect some lower-end LCD's have).
I figure that having a 60hz refresh rate set on my computer is actually limiting the framerate. True, the game itself may actually be running at 75+ FPS, but if the monitor is only refreshing 60 times per second, then your framerate is effectively reduced to 60, right?
With that in mind, of course you would hardly be able to tell the difference between 100 FPS and 30 FPS on a monitor, because the monitor is displaying a solid 60-75hz anyway. I believe the main contributor to playback smoothness would be V-Sync, to make sure the action moves at a constant speed.
To make my point, all DVD's are recorded at 24 FPS, yet the action looks smooth enough because of motion blur. Yes, you would be able to tell a difference between 24 and 60 FPS, because action sequences (or anything involving fast movement) would look much cleaner at 60 FPS, due to less motion blur being needed to simulate the same effect. However, in my opinion FPS rates above 60 don't make as much of a difference when talking about fluid motion, but rather makes movement seem clearer.
Don't get me wrong though. Games in my opinion require at least 60 FPS to display smoothly. I don't think it's because of the actual framerate though, but rather the lack of motion blur.
Not quite right.... there's Pal and then there's NTSC ....
Oh, true. I guess what I meant to say was that film is generally encoded at 24 FPS (though animated films are 30 FPS).
EDIT: Double post. This site really drives me crazy.
For FPS games fps is the be all and end all.
Try flipping your POV 180° in a fraction of a second and see how 30fps gets you disorientated due to drawing lag.
For FPS games 100fps is about the minimum usable for serious combat.
Anyone who thinks WOW is a pro game needs to get out more...
The 5870 is nice.
But for my nephew's current dream machine I opted for the 5970.
Nearly as good as 2 5870's, but in a single slot with less cost than two 5870's. And he has the option of adding another.
Here are the specs of his 'wish machine':
Thermaltake Spedo VI9000Intel Core i7-920Kingston HyperX 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333MSI X58 Pro-EThermaltake Toughpower W0133RU 1200WDiamond Radeon HD5970 2GB PCI-Express Video CardIntel X25-M 160GB (SSD)Seagate 500GB Serial ATA/300 16MB Buffer Retail Hard Drive Kit - ST3500641AS-RKMicrosoft Sidewinder X8 Gaming Mouse with BlueTrach TechnologyLogitech G15 Gaming KeyboardSamsung 2243SWX 21.5" 1080p Widescreen LCD MonitorPlextor Internal 6X Blu-Ray Combo Super Multi Drive
Win7 Pro x64 as the OS
I haven't spec'd out a system in several years, but this combination seems (to me) to be about the best for a ~$3,000 system that is for gaming. Any suggestions are welcome.
Maybe he means pro because once you start playing WoW, you leave all other professions behind!
Definitely a nice card. I'm going to stick with my year and a half old GTX280 until N'Vidia puts out a new "Top of the Line" though. N'Vidia and ATi always bounce back and forth between who's on top. N'Vidia's next one will trounce this one, ATi's one after that will trounce that one, etc etc. I stick with N'Vidia. You can't argue with the power of the new ATi card though. It's definitely the current king of the hill.
If I may:
I'm really debating picking this or the 5850 up to replace my 260GTX. Loved my nvidia card, but its upgrade time.
Nice to see that people get new graphiccards every other year
PCPrincess
"Still using"?? You make it sound like it's something old you can throw to the dogs. Yes I still got my GeForce 8800GTS 512MB G92....
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