Monday, July 14th 2008
Radeon HD 4870 X2 Previewed, AA Performance a Trump Card
HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.
The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.
Source:
HardOCP
The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.
95 Comments on Radeon HD 4870 X2 Previewed, AA Performance a Trump Card
When it comes to buying a card, it all depends on what camp you prefer - even if you don't perfer any camp at all. There are 3 types of enhusiast level buyers: those who go green, those who go red, & those who go P/P. That's how it should be, even though those who go P/P seem to be the most logical.
And yours is the logic that is flawed. Benchmarks and architectures don't mean crap if a person can't afford to buy the card (ala GTX280).
And yes, I'm perfectly fine with pitting dual core cpus against single core, especially if the single core was more expensive. That situation is no different. Price point is everything in the computer world, and how fair comparisons are judged, not solely by differences in design. Price is ALWAYS a factor.
If price wasn't a factor, it would be fair to compare my QX9650 against a Phenom 9950 X4. I hardly think pitting a $1000 cpu against a $235 cpu is fair, do you?
Also the price was a guesstimate...
Also the price from retailers depend on the brand,Like Palit selling the 4870 for $319 while the Sapphire goes for $10 more at $329. Same goes on with the 4850`s also.
Also don`t forget that at Driver Heaven they said some companies will have a overclocked versions across the board,Also ATI have said they can up the shader clocks in the second revision`s.If you think what these are doing to Nvidia now what are they going to do in 6 months time when all of this happen`s? I still say ATI is the best at price to performance cost wise.
If you are talking AA you should really specify what kind, 'box' 'tent' or 'edge', since that makes a difference both in looks and in impact on speed due to how they are implemented.
I know it's more convenient to just put AA on sites and in graphs, but you can't anymore I fear.
This is the second time Nvidia did this, Remember the 8800GTX and Ultra, but what made that different was you had 2 bad ass cards with no competitor in sight and now that there is a competitor its not fair.
oh please, :nutkick:
This all comes down to how much performance you can get for your money and ATI beat Nvidia
It also comes down to how much performance you can get period, and ATI still beat Nvidia
for now, at least
There are other concerns aside from performance and price. I have heard enough stories of HD4870's failling on hot areas to even consider this a valid card.
I don't care if Ati uses 2 GPUs to compete with 1 GPU as long as it can perform well on all fronts. This is just not the way IMHO. It is delivering the performance, but the performance of the card doesn't justify that power draw. That's why I strongly believe 2 GPUs will never be able to compete with one faster/bigger GPU. It does now in perf/price, but that's only because Ati is using an smaller fab process and a narrower memory bus. But is underperforming vastly on power consumption and temps. With this card Ati has left me the impression that whenever Nvidia starts using a smaller process and GDDR5, the monolithic design (whichever it is) will destroy any multi-GPU, be it at performance, price, consumption, whatever.
There is also the fact that the GTX280 consumes less power and will never have any issues with some games which dont get on with SLI/crossfire as it is a single GPU card.
But I dont know if future ATi drivers will cause the 4870X2 to pull ahead and make me think, "i wish I had bought..."
Cus it has twice the amount of ram at GDDR5 as opposed to GDDR3
Ah! I'm so confused as to which to get.
What is everyone else thinking?
If they sort out the power issues, and the Cat drivers pull the 4870X2 even further ahead. I will probably get the 4870X2 . 100W of power really isnt worth it IMO when playing at 1680x1050.
Or do you dudes think only nVidia can lower card prices?
Many dudes say "OK: a GTX260 card for $299 is worth it" ... except the 4870 has already fallen to $304 and i wouldn't be surprised if it would fall to something like 249 within a month's time, which is when the R700 is launched ...
Can nVidia match 4870's price, VS GTX260 in a month from now? It might, but only if losing money, badly: it should cost more to build, no?
Wouldn't you agree?
Wouldn't I?!