Polling and Graphics: Help Us Help You
by Derek Wilson on January 27, 2009 11:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Dell
Hello everyone. We often get asked questions like: what is the most popular x? how common is y? And sometimes we can guess from what we read on the forums or from general market trends. But nothing beats actually knowing what readers are thinking. So it's about time we asked.
We've brought back the ability to do polls. And polls we shall do.
This is more or less a test run to see how polling works out, but I'm hoping we can answer one really key question and also satisfy a curiosity today. The really important question has to do with display information, while the curiosity has to do with current opinions about graphics hardware.
By knowing what resolutions our reader's displays are capable of, we can help target our testing and articles to better accommodate the average reader. We can look more heavily at graphics solutions that satisfy the needs of more of our readers. We've been doing a lot of high end stuff lately (and we've got one more in the pipe), but we are ready to focus on the more mainstream and value segments and we would love to be able to taylor those articles a bit better.
Also, there are a lot of different monitor options with all the many widescreen and laptop panels. Just pick the one that's closest to yours out of this list. If you really want to be as accurate as possible, you could multiply out the resolutions and see which has the closest number of pixels. But just a close guess is fine too.
Well, there's really no sense in beating around the bush. It's a poll, it's not rocket science. Here it is:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
65 Comments
View All Comments
Denithor - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Is that due to the lower memory buffer on the GTX 295 vs 285? Because the scenarios where you would actually use two GTX 295s in QuadSLI versus triSLI GTX 285 could be limited by only having 896MB instead of a full 1GB.DerekWilson - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
It's not just memory size.Memory bus is smaller as well, but more importantly clock speeds are not as high on the 295. The much higher clock speeds on the 285 combined with the fact that more games can take better advantage of 3 cards than 4 (the 4th generally has diminishing returns), means that 3 285s will often out perform 295 quadsli ...
there are exceptions in DX10 where 4 way afr shows very good scaling ... but afr of sfr or sfr of afr or whatever else they do to get 4 cards working together isn't as fast and efficient as 3 frame afr (which works with dx9 and dx10).
beyond that, you've got the split PCIe bandwidth, though I'm not sure how that impacts anything -- it's a very hard aspect of the system to target test with real world scenarios.
VaultDweller - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
That first question was actually really hard... :/I toss out both the 4870x2 and GTX 295 as options, since I don't like dual-GPU solutions. With those out of the way, I really don't know whether I'd buy a 4870 or spend the extra money to get the GTX 280 (which is priced very reasonably now that the GTX 285 has come along).
But on the other hand, I know I'll be buying an AMD card in the near future, since they currently have better options for low-power, low-cost, fanless GPUs - of which I actually need a few.
RagingDragon - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
The graphics card on my primary computer is an AMD/ATI 4850, and I'm not sure a 4870 (or GT260) would be big enough improvement to justify an upgrade - so that leaves GT280/GT285, 4850X2, 4870X2 and GT295, and having "only" a 1920x1200 display I don't think the higher cost and additional driver issues of Crossfire/SLI are justified. So if I were to upgrade my GPU today, I'd probably buy one of the factory overclocked GT285's. So I voted Nvidia.My secondary PC has a Geforce 7600GT, I have no reason to upgrade it (don't play games on that machine), but if it failed I'd probably replace it with an AMD/ATI 4550.
PilgrimShadow - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
or Cowboy Neal.DerekWilson - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
The problem with Valve's data is that it is Valve's data. Not all AnandTech readers play Valve games and not all Valve gamers read AnandTech.Their data is certainly very interesting, but it is most interesting to Valve and not as useful for everyone else.
UNHchabo - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Just so everyone else knows what we're talking about:http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey">http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
What I like about Valve's survey is that it covers a HUGE range of hardware, and a huge range of users. It doesn't just cover people who like to get 60fps on high quality on huge monitors -- it covers anyone who plays games on Steam, whether they play Left 4 Dead and TF2 on their laptops, or whether they only play Peggle on their 30" monitors.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
That's true, and it is very interesting ... It'd be interesting to see the same stats on everyone that uses windows ...but it still isn't universally applicable data. i'm not saying it isn't useful or cool or whatever ... just that to target things better we need to ask the question ourselves ;-)
DLimmer - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
You can find a Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-...This doesn't spell out exactly what a person would need for a particular resolution, nor the price for that exact performance, but it's a very helpful performance chart.
crimson117 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Derek, one of the most useful things I've ever found on anandtech was the "Approximate Performance Ranking" table at http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=288...">http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=288... from way back in December 2006.I'd love to see an updated version of this table! It really helps consolidate a lot of data into a useful single source.