AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Previews Posted

[malware]

With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.

Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.

[PVTCaboose1337]

What I think? It has to pwn all (and the black cooler does not look bad)

[Megasty]

Pwn - yes, looks - yes, SPARTAA - YES! Need I say more

[KainXS]

welcome to spartaa everyone

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all hail the spartaaaannnn!!!!!

[philbrown23]

I think there may be some issues with it like the 4870's

[KainXS]

yea, I'd have to agree to taht also

[mlupple]

Originally Posted by philbrown23

I think there may be some issues with it like the 4870's

Why, because you buy two of ATI's filler cards (3000 series)?

[KainXS]

Originally Posted by mlupple

Why, because you buy two of ATI's filler cards (3000 series)?

there are alot of 4870's dying for some reason, I'm seeing it on every forum now

[freaksavior]

well dual 4870 x2's looks like power draw is almost 700w. so my psu would be fine for it

[chron]

am I alone when I say I'm completely unimpressed? Not only is the performance in crysis lacking (for such a robust card) but the reviews all have different numbers so it's hard to determine which would give a realistic view of the performance.

Also, what in the HELL makes age of conan such a hog? It doesn't even look that cool.

Maybe next year :/

[freaksavior]

Originally Posted by chron

am I alone when I say I'm completely unimpressed? Not only is the performance in crysis lacking (for such a robust card) but the reviews all have different numbers so it's hard to determine which would give a realistic view of the performance.

Also, what in the HELL makes age of conan such a hog? It doesn't even look that cool.

Maybe next year :/

beta drives and engineering cards my friend. wait till the "official" reviews are out

[mdm-adph]

Hooray for Free AA!

[PVTCaboose1337]

Originally Posted by chron

Also, what in the HELL makes age of conan such a hog? It doesn't even look that cool.

Maybe next year :/

I have two words.

Bad coding.

That is probably why. No optimization, no good performance.

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by freaksavior

well dual 4870 x2's looks like power draw is almost 700w. so my psu would be fine for it

As an ATI fan (inspite of myself), this is good shit.

The results from the 4 reviews have the wattage varying all over the charts. The HARD OCP seemed to be the highest @~700w. Yikes!

[cool_recep]

I am waiting for the W1z to review the card including a nice 3DMark Vantage!

[InfDamarvel]

They are saying eventually you can use 4 of these in CrossfireX...now what the hell is going to power that? (Even though I know its possible)

[PVTCaboose1337]

Originally Posted by InfDamarvel

They are saying eventually you can use 4 of these in CrossfireX...now what the hell is going to power that? (Even though I know its possible)

I've been ranting about this for ages... how can you actually have 4 in a PC (besides server)? Think about it. If one card takes up 2 PCI slots, then:

2 slots x 4 cards = 8 PCI slots. Most PC cases only have 7 PCI slots. How is that going to work?

[chron]

Originally Posted by PVTCaboose1337

I've been ranting about this for ages... how can you actually have 4 in a PC (besides server)? Think about it. If one card takes up 2 PCI slots, then:

2 slots x 4 cards = 8 PCI slots. Most PC cases only have 7 PCI slots. How is that going to work?

special case :P

[lemonadesoda]

Wow. I thought the 4870x2 would blow the 280. Not true. Pretty much equal performance, but with 280 winning in SLI vs. crossfire by quite a fat margin.

For similar money, for similar performance, but much lower power consumption, the 280 wins IMO. Or at least, with the 280b refresh it does.

[InfDamarvel]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

Wow. I thought the 4870x2 would blow the 280. Not true. Pretty much equal performance, but with 280 winning in SLI vs. crossfire by quite a fat margin.

For similar money, for similar performance, but much lower power consumption, the 280 wins IMO. Or at least, with the 280b refresh it does.

But it doesnt.

[Urbklr]

Originally Posted by PVTCaboose1337

I've been ranting about this for ages... how can you actually have 4 in a PC (besides server)? Think about it. If one card takes up 2 PCI slots, then:

2 slots x 4 cards = 8 PCI slots. Most PC cases only have 7 PCI slots. How is that going to work?

1. Take ones I/O bracket off, and watercool it.
2. Mod your case

It's possible for anyone who wants 8 GPU's badly enough. I don't see the point, with the previews claiming 8xAA at 2560x1600 is playable in most games with 2 4870X2's, who needs more than 2?...Other than people looking to break records

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

Wow. I thought the 4870x2 would blow the 280. Not true. Pretty much equal performance, but with 280 winning in SLI vs. crossfire by quite a fat margin.

Read AMD's comment to that, they said they are not near done the driver's CrossfireX support. Considering how bad the 48xx's drivers are right now, I can only imagine how bad the R700's are. Wait till semi-finished drivers come out, then we can get a real comparison.

[Megasty]

Originally Posted by PVTCaboose1337

I've been ranting about this for ages... how can you actually have 4 in a PC (besides server)? Think about it. If one card takes up 2 PCI slots, then:

2 slots x 4 cards = 8 PCI slots. Most PC cases only have 7 PCI slots. How is that going to work?

My xaser has 10. 4 of these is totally unrealistic. A supercomputer maybe, but not 8 graphical processing agents in CFx. The scaling with 4 GPUs is awful, the 4th GPU doesn't exist & yet it still sucks juice. Imagine having 2 whole cards doing nothing They literally would do nothing but suck juice if you try it now but even if drivers ever did support such a thing, the cards would still be decoration. I just want them to properly fix 3 & 4 GPU scaling & leave that as a pipe dream, like it should be.

It doesn't get any better than to watch these engineering samples in action. The monsterous power that this thing is putting out right now is just going to be all that much better when it hits our hands. GJ AMD & keep it up

[Nkd]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

Wow. I thought the 4870x2 would blow the 280. Not true. Pretty much equal performance, but with 280 winning in SLI vs. crossfire by quite a fat margin.

For similar money, for similar performance, but much lower power consumption, the 280 wins IMO. Or at least, with the 280b refresh it does.

yea in your dreams seriously, have you seen the driverheaven preview, did you see the x2 kicked the crap out of gtx 280 and even two of those in sli in some games, I am not a fanboy but when you come in here and try to tell lies is just not right, it is so ignorant of you to not even realize the numbers.

crysis is the only game where crossfire does not scale well, well that has always been the case, sli scales better because the game is TWMTBP game, and ati probably never gotten a helping had from crytek, there has to be a reason why this game scales so bad in crossfire than it does in sli.

I am not defending Ati I am just telling the truth, it is just and honest opinion.

[imperialreign]

read from TechReport's review:

In the center of the board sits a PLX PCIe switch chip, flanked by a pair of RV770 GPUs. We couldn't find this particular model of PCIe switch listed on PLX's website, but when installed, the card shows up as a PCI Express 2.0 x16 device. Each GPU shows up as being PCIe 2.0 x16 capable in AMD's driver control panel, as well. So our best guess is that we're looking at a PCI Express Gen2 switch that has 48 total lanes—16 routed to each GPU and 16 connected to the PCIe slot.

effin sweet!

[lemonadesoda]

Originally Posted by Nkd

yea in your dreams seriously, have you seen the driverheaven preview, did you see the x2 kicked the crap out of gtx 280 and even two of those in sli in some games, I am not a fanboy but when you come in here and try to tell lies is just not right, it is so ignorant of you to not even realize the numbers.

crysis is the only game where crossfire does not scale well, well that has always been the case, sli scales better because the game is TWMTBP game, and ati probably never gotten a helping had from crytek, there has to be a reason why this game scales so bad in crossfire than it does in sli.

I am not defending Ati I am just telling the truth, it is just and honest opinion.

Wow. What a performance! All I did was show my surprise at the results I saw at linked previews I read. First link to anand was down, so read HardOCP. If there are other reviews where 280 gets whalloped by the 4870x2, then fine. That's what I was expecting too. But no need to act like a slow boy and get all rude about it.