Why we don't use the ATI HD 4870...

ATI is definitely back in the game, and we're very pleased with the results we've gotten from offering the HD 4850 in the Ion. A few of you have asked us why we don't then offer the 4870? It's true that ATI's new high-end card offers decent bang-to-buckness, but the price point and capability clearly make it more appropriate for our Reactor (the Ion, being designed for 22-inch monitors and below just doesn't need that much power.)

As a possible Reactor card, it compares closely to the nVidia GTX 260, each outperforming the other under certain circumstances. That said, we only had to follow a few lines of logic to arrive at the conclusion that the HD 4870 just doesn't fit our needs:

1. We want to use a single motherboard for the Reactor to keep costs down and ensure superior support and quality assurance.
2. We want to offer multi-GPU options (nVidia's SLI or ATI's Crossfire) to our customers, even if they don't buy their PC with two video cards installed.
3. No motherboards can support both Crossfire and SLI (except Skulltrail, but don't even get me started about THAT.)
4. In order to span the Reactor's entire range of supported monitors, we pretty much have to include the GTX 280 as an option (nothing can touch it for 30-inch gaming.)

So we just can't turn to the HD 4870 for the Reactor, until something unseats or pulls even with the GTX 280. The good news is, we use the overclocked versions of the GTX 260, which does consistantly beat the 4870.

Reactor now features GTX 260 & GTX 280

After quite a bit of benchmarking, the dust has settled, leaving five distinct video card options for the Reactor:

1. A single GTX 260
2. Two GTX 260's in SLI
3. A single GTX 280
4. Two GTX 280's in SLI
5. Three GTX 280's in SLI

The 9800 GX2 just doesn't make sense any more: you get more performance for about the same money from either a single GTX 280 (compared to one 9800 GX2) or a pair of GTX 260's (compared to a pair of 9800 GX2's). This holds true across multiple resolutions, especially 1920x1200 and above, and especially with antialiasing turned on.

This is interesting news, since we can now say that the 8800 GTX was the longest-reigning performance champion in memory, while the 9800 series was the shortest lived.

It's also a little sad to say that Quad-SLI was somewhat stillborn. We're not too big on TRI-SLI either, unless you're after bragging rights. We have yet to find a situation where Three-way SLI makes much of a difference in gameplay feel

It will be interesting to see what happens with the GTX-200 series. I suspect they'll last through Q1 2009 as the top dog...

Changes to the Ion and the Reactor!

Those new video cards we talked about here previously turned out to be quite the interesting development. Without getting bogged down in details, the net effect is that ATI is indeed finally offering competitive products again, and the HD 4850 has single-handedly rendered obsolete the 8800 GT, 8800 GTS, and 9800 GTX. At a $200 price point, we're thrilled to offer it as the new standard Ion video card, with two HD 4850's in Crossfire mode (which is ATI's version of SLI) as the upgrade option. This means the Ion now offers significantly more power now than it did last week, at roughly the same price! In order to support Crossfire mode, we've chosen Intel P35/P45-based motherboards for the Ion, which are just as good, if not better, at overclocking than the 650i/680i boards they are replacing.

As for the Reactor, nVidia's new GTX-200 series cards are only offering a modest improvement in performance, but an improvement it is. We're currently still comparing the following combinations in gaming benchmarks:

1 x GTX 260
2 x GTX 260
3 x GTX 260
1 x 9800 GX2
2 x 9800 GX2
1 x GTX 280
2 x GTX 280
3 x GTX 280

Until we have more concrete data about how these combinations stack up against each other, we're offering all eight of them, plus an "entry level" single GTX 260 option which features a non-overclocked card with a non-SLI ready power supply. That latter option gives those with a moderate budget a respectable Reactor configuration which sacrifices upgradability for affordability.

Within the next few days, we'll identify what monitor sizes make sense for the various combinations, and drop out any redundant ones (for example, the first to go will probably be the triple-GTX 260 option. It costs the same as a pair of GTX 280's with no performance gain, but it uses much more power and two more expansion slots.) More to come...