GTA IV on ATI Radeon

[YankeesPwnMets]

I read a lot on the Internet that GTA IV works much better on nVidia cards, and SLI does good to its performance and Crossfire actually worsens it. I don't know how much is true, but in order to stay on budget, I need to decide the best option (performance wise for GTA IV) out of these two

 

Build a rig with one ATI Radeon HD 5970

Build a rig with dual nVidia GTX 470 cards in SLI

 

Both cost about the same on Newegg, but performance is the most important thing in my opinion

[lazloisdavrock]

 

I read a lot on the Internet that GTA IV works much better on nVidia cards, and SLI does good to its performance and Crossfire actually worsens it. I don't know how much is true, but in order to stay on budget, I need to decide the best option (performance wise for GTA IV) out of these two

 

Build a rig with one ATI Radeon HD 5970

Build a rig with dual nVidia GTX 470 cards in SLI

 

Both cost about the same on Newegg, but performance is the most important thing in my opinion

GTA4 runs fine on AMD cards. Its up to you if you want to buy two 470's. While there great cards, you going to have to buy a nice Quality PSU to power them. two 470's slightly outperforms one 5970, but two 5970 rapes them.

 

Also whats your cpu? Dont want to have a slow cpu and bottleneck the cards.

 

I say, grab the 5970 and call it a night.

 

single slot, potentially less heat, and also i think it would draw less power. While most games are optimized to run on Nvidias architecture, its only an increase by maybe 5-8 frames, maybe not even that. Just a marketing tool.

Edited October 23, 2010 by lazloisdavrock

[IronHide-AW]

If you go the nVidia route and not doing the GTX480 then 2 GTX460 is probably a wiser choice because of gf104. They are probably the best bang for buck (in a big way) video cards that exist at the moment from what I've seen looking around.

[yoječ]

Why don't you just wait till GTX580 / HD6970 comes out on the market?

[OverTheBelow]

If you wanted an answer right now, I'd go with the SLI 470's simply because the DX11 performance is unmatched by the 5970 and also one card can be used for physx if you're desperate. I'd expect the 470's to be slightly faster in FPS too, but thats just my assumption.

 

 

I think you should wait for AMD's new line of cards and see what they have to offer rather than jumping in and buying a year old card.

[YankeesPwnMets]

Why don't you just wait till GTX580 / HD6970 comes out on the market?

With something as powerful as the GTX 480/Radeon 5970 at 500 - 600 dollars, if the GTX 580 or Radeon 6970 out performs both its most likely going to cost way too much for just one part

[yoječ]

When next generation of GPus will come out, the older ones will probably have their prices cut down, making room for the new ones. It has been always like that.

Edited October 23, 2010 by yojo2

[rodrigox]

My GTA IV and EFLC runs great here on mine 5850.

[YankeesPwnMets]

It seems that a lot of people have trouble with running SLI, so I think imma go get a Radeon 5970 for now

[IronHide-AW]

It seems that a lot of people have trouble with running SLI, so I think imma go get a Radeon 5970 for now

Not sure what "trouble" you refer to exactly? My 2xGTX295 QSLI shreds the game. I'll throw in a couple GTX480 soon but that's because of other games not GTA-IV. I don't even see (at all) any stutter which can be common for some with QSLI. This is likely due to the rest of my components though.

 

However, GPU are only half the battle with this game. If you have serious CPU horsepower, enough RAM and bandwdith, it's the total package that shreds the game into liquid smooth play. Having blazing fast video while skimping on other components will not produce a stellar outcome.

[YankeesPwnMets]

Full specs:

 

Intel Core i7 930 @ 2.8 Ghz, I'm gonna overclock it to around 3.5 Ghz

12 GB RAM, I use Virtual Machines a lot

Radeon 5970 or GTX 470 SLI, gonna overclock either one as well

And two 2TB Drives, and in case of failure I also have a spare 320 GB drive

 

People said when they turn SLI off they get a better performance than if SLI was turned on

[IronHide-AW]

^ ok that's excellent, especially once you get the CPU over 3.

 

3.5+ is the sweet spot for the game from personal experience, so if you can get the rig perfectly stable at 3.5 or better it should play extremely nice no matter how busy the world gets with AI/objects battling for a slice to execute (unrelated to screen render).

 

As far as video I've had flagship boards across a number of generations from both nVidia and ATI/ AMD. Over the last few years I lean heavily toward Intel and nVidia for a number of reasons but most importantly total raw performance and games (of which I own an absuird sh*tload of, most of which are optimized for) nvidia and not ATI now AMD.

 

The GTX470 is a very nice mid range performant part. One would probably be plenty to crank settings generally. 2 of them should be more than enough to surpass any heavy hitting moments and keep things smoooth no matter what is on the screen. I am partial to overkill, in a big way because having far more total horsepower than something actually needs for optimum performance is a way to ensure everything runs as good as it possibly can no matter what. My 2 GTX480 should arrive by Tuesday with the 980X6C so once I get things rolling I'll post results for another set of references.