HD 4890 vs GTX 285

[xfxrising]

I know these are reallyyy old cards but they are really cheap at the moment and the pc i should be building soon isn't really gaming focused so they'll still be more than enough! I know 285 is more powerful but by how much? 4890 is £18 cheaper and uses less power but is nosier and slightly weaker, not really sure on what would be best for me. if i do play games then it'll mostly be older games or less demanding ones and if i do play something like battlefield 4 in the future, i really dont mind lowering resolution to 720p, lowering texture quality and turning off AA.

Don't bother recommending newer cards either because for £40 and £58 respectively, there really isnt much better for the price and power (Not that i can see anyway)

Edit: Found an 4870 X2 for £70, would that be the best one?

 

[swaaye]

At this point the answer is- whichever has more RAM.

4870X2 is problematic because of crossfire quirks and the limited availability of new app profiles. Driver support has been semi-stopped.

 

[xfxrising]

At this point the answer is- whichever has more RAM.

4870X2 is problematic because of crossfire quirks and the limited availability of new app profiles. Driver support has been semi-stopped.

Well they're both 1GB GDDR5 so i guess 285 would be the winner here seeing that it has better performance and that's a good point about the x2, didn't really think of that.

Edit: new idea, its around 2-3 weeks till I have the money and by that point the last i7 2700k will probably be sold. Would then have 2 options,get a 2600 (non k) or get a 2500k, if I got the i5 I would save £45 which I could spend on getting a HD 7770 for £80-90 then crossfireing it 9 months later which would give me 7950 level performance with much less power draw! Probably the best way to go but my PC would be mostly after effects video rendering and streaming based which brings up the problem of whether its worth getting a 2600 instead or switching to an am3+ platform for around the same price as an i5.Hmm

 

[ueutyi]

285 obviously

 

[kn00tcn]

did you forget there arent any (real) driver updates for a year on 4 series?

 

[DeadSkull]

Both cards are actually very very close at stock. Unless you can get a pre overclocked FTW version of GTX 285 I'd say go with the cheapest card.

Also look for rev 1.0 HD 4890 pcb cards, which allowed to control core voltage through software.

 

[qu4k3r]

Accordign to this chart ...
4870x2 > gtx285 > 4890
the problem is that CF not always works or scales as it should with all games.-

 

[cdawall]

At this point the answer is- whichever has more RAM.

4870X2 is problematic because of crossfire quirks and the limited availability of new app profiles. Driver support has been semi-stopped.

It's a good card still. There are modded drivers floating around for them allowing the newest profiles for games. I would take the 4870X2 personally in the games it does work it is the fastest by far and the ones it doesn't work in it's not that much slower.

 

[shovenose]

I agree the AMD would be the optimal choice between the two.