I'm in need of better graphics processing and i need to know if a single video card with 2gb of video memory is better than dual video cards with 512 mb each.
Here are the video cards I'm referring to:
Single 2GB GDDR5 ATI® Radeon® HD 4870 X2
Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800 GT
thanks for the help :)|||always get the single best card you can afford. It will save you headaches in the end...whether from flakey sli/crossfire drivers or the overall cost of buying 2 cards just to watch something else come out 2 days later that will smoke them. The 4870X2 is a beast...it outperforms 2 9800gt's.|||Agreed...1 card is going to be better then 2...just mostly based on expansion.
2 years down the road when you want a better video card, at THAT point you can go out and buy a second 4870 x2 and CrossFire THEN and you will be killing once again.
Unless you want to be dropping $200 every year for minor steps up in performance, get 1 good one now.
Also...it is 2 GBs vs. 512x2 MBs (1GB)...2 is going to be better then 1.
At least make it a fair fight! haha|||the GTX 280 1gb is better than dual 9800 GTs, and the 4870X2 mopped the floor withn the GTX 280 a few months back. it's not just the video RAM, it's also the processing capability of the card that matters, the number of stream processor, shaders, and what have you along with the memory and stream proc clocks. the memory on the 4870x2 is also far superior to that of the 9800GT. this is a no brainer. GET THE 4870x2, I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THAT POINT ENOUGH, it's currently the second most powerful card on the market, the most powerful one right now being nvidia's GTX 295, but that had worse performance in crysis at a resolution of 2560x1600 than the 4870x2, so the 4870x2 scales a bit better. go with that one.|||First things first...what's your mobo's chipset. If it is nVidia, you're more or less stuck with a nVidia card, because mixing non-nVidia cards with nVidia chipsets frequently leads to problems and conflicts. (nVidia doesn't like playing with others.)
If your chipset is ATi, you're better to go with an ATi chipset, for similar reasons...the mis-match of chips rarely leads to issues similar to the above example.
If you're using a VIA or other generic chipset, you can choose either card(s) .
If you're using an Intel chipset, you can use either card(s), but you will see better results from the ATi card (no one, not even Intel or ATi know why, but there you go...).
Now, going on a straight side-by-side comparison. There is a very good reason the X2 was called the "King of Cards". Include the fact that the 9800's are using GDDR2 memory. In fact, the 9800 X2 was a direct response to the 4870 X2, and bombed so badly that they publically admitted they could not beat the 4870 X2. They then released the 285 series and came close to beating the 4870. It wasn't until nVidia released the 290 (which is a dual GPU card) that they managed to regain a tenuous grasp as "Best Card"...tenuous, because the 290 was a limited release item, where the 4870 X2 was a main-line all market release. (Even then, the perfomance numbers are not that much better...especially to justify the $200 higher price).
As for the 9800's themselves. They better compare to the 3870's (even though the 3x cards are a generation newer) than the 4870's (which are TWO generations newer), since the only difference between the 8800's and their 9800 clones are the bugs, higher clockspeed, higher prices, and/or more memory found in the 9800's.
Incidentally...if you can't find any 8x, or 9x cards, that's cause you're looking in the wrong box. nVidia recently re-labled them as the 250's, and jacked the price. (See article here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news… )
Good Luck!
EDIT: The new Dx10 standard is 10.1, which (nVidia) only the 295 actually kinda supports, where as (EDIT: almost) the entire HD series from ATi can support it with a simple driver update...and for Gaming on Vista, 10.1, frame rates have soared as much as 25% with some games, and the average being around 10%!
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