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    ATI 4870s/Crossfire vs. nVidia 280M/SLI in M17x

    Discussion in 'Alienware' started by SagerMeister, Nov 16, 2009.

  1. MaoMau

    MaoMau Notebook Consultant

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    Wow u guys were lucky to get ATI 4870's/Crossfire... It doesn't have in the upgrade session in my country :mad: ... Can u do a poll to compare the ATI vs NVIDIA?
     
    MaoMau, Nov 17, 2009
    #51
  2. lewdvig

    lewdvig Notebook Virtuoso

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    the 4870 x2 option is available again in Canada after going away for a while.
     
    lewdvig, Jan 10, 2010
    #52
  3. Speedy Gonzalez

    Speedy Gonzalez Xtreme Notebook Speeder!

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    ATI :notworthy:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2015
    Speedy Gonzalez, Jan 10, 2010
    #53
  4. Aranthira

    Aranthira Notebook Consultant

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    I'll give credence to folks who have had both. Frankly i'm blown away to be able to play games 1900x1200 with everything turned on. First time for me with a laptop and i had the M1730 x9000 + 8800mgtx's and it couldnt so im pretty pleased.

    12 man raids in LOTRO with no lag on a laptop is sweet. So overall i'm very happy with my Nvidia gtx280's. Ati might be better but i got my system off the outlet (delivered on friday) for 2799+ tax and 3 yr warranty+ complete care. 3400 out the door. pretty cheap for the specs.
     
    Aranthira, Jan 11, 2010
    #54
  5. Kade Storm

    Kade Storm The Devil's Advocate

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    I can still do quite a bit with an X9000 with SLI 8800m GTX. With the 9800m GTX and its 1GB Vram, I can do even more. I preferred knowing the limits of the machine and then configuring games to run fast and look almost just as good as the stock maximum settings. My inspiration: Magnus72.

    Anyway, 4870s are still available, even more in UK, since you can configure a single 4870 with the M17x as a basic setup. 280m is still the more expensive of the batch on the UK front. LAWL. ATi cards are certainly better in terms of potential, but for commercial and realistic reasons, I'll favour the 280m GTX SLi.

    As for which is better: This is entirely a dead-beat subjective debate, and no amount of synthetic benchmarks will establish a rational argument for any one brand. Both brands have their vantage points. The 4870s only improve upon the new ATi approach of incorporating a very large number of shaders, which has great potential. Note: Potential. Also, they use proper DX10.1, which is a shame for Nvidia. Nvidia cards utilise fewer but stronger and faster. Also, the CUDA-factor does help with games using PhysX. Not to mention, driver support. On the whole, in real-world gaming, you're going to be splitting petty frames trying to determine which one is better. I'd rather have the card that can support the larger variety of features with equally good driver support to boot.
     
    Kade Storm, Jan 11, 2010
    #55
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