End of the 4850 X2?

[scaryjim]

2004? Wow, going back a bit isn't it?
What do you mean by your last argument?

2004 is probably only going back a bit if you're currently aged 21 or less. Some of us think 2004 was only yesterday!

[sammorris]

True, but the rate at which the industry moves make comparisons to such times a little less relevant. Ftr, I'm not 21 until next week but can still remember what hardware was like in 2004

[scaryjim]

The rate at which the industry moves make comparisons to such times a little less relevant.

True wrt technology, but not wrt market forces / market share. They need to be viewed over the course of several years to really determine trends vs spikes. For instance, NVidia may have 66% market share now, but how does that compare to their quarter-by quarter share over the last 2 years? Is it a slow rise, is it a slow fall, is it a spike or sudden upturn in an otherwise flat market? 5 years really isn't a long period when analysing market trends (and having run my own business I know a bit about this ).

[sammorris]

I would estimate that it's been a slow increase for nVidia, and I would expect it to have plateaued since Q3-Q4 2008 with the advent of the HD4000 series. nVidia were definitely up between Q1 2007 and Q3 2008 though, with cards like the 8800GTX vs HD2900XT (LOL) and 8800GT vs HD3870.

[scaryjim]

I would estimate that it's been a slow increase for nVidia

Why estimate? The market share figures will be out there and if you really care you can look them up. I was posing a rhetorical question to highlight the point that market share is different to technological advantage.

You've clearly missed the point if you're basing your estimate of market share on the relative merits of the technology: that often has very little to do with it. The first article TooNice links to states that it took a year of having a better product for ATI to win back market share from NVidia with the 9700 / 9500 vs the FX series. I'm not sure AMD has ever had a larger overall x86 market share than Intel, despite haing a massively superior processor range throughout the first half of this decade. Sometimes technology does drive the market, but just as often it's done by better marketing, developer relations, pure hype, or customer inertia.

Now, how exactly did we get here from is the 4850 X2 finished?
I'd say not until the HD5800s come out... or Sapphire cook up a 4770 X2

[sammorris]

That's not what I meant, new amazing product doesn't instantly mean higher sales, or vice versa. Simply put, however, I know of nobody that bought anything but an 8800 or 8600 in that period, which places the odds pretty good in nvidia's favour. By contrast, it's now almost entirely the other way round.

An HD4770X2 would be very nice. Eagerly awaiting this summer's generation!

[jim]

Now, how exactly did we get here from is the 4850 X2 finished?
I'd say not until the HD5800s come out... or Sapphire cook up a 4770 X2

I have to admit, I'm very impressed at how well this thread took off after a slow start, but I'm still none the wiser about the 4850 X2

[sammorris]

Lol. I think the consensus is buy two HD4770s instead, or if you've only one PCIe slot, buy a 4890 or 4870X2, budget depending. Alternatively, wait until July-ish.

[Rollo]

So, your totally and utterly impartial then?

Never said I was. What I will say is that I take very much care not to post anything I believe can be shown to be inaccurate, because my posts are scrutinized more than most. (not to mention I'm an honest person- I once told a cashier they were undercharging me $400, could have just kept the money!)

I run everything (with the exception of Crysis) at 2560x1600 and find the AMD card to be awesome for that task, perhaps the GTX295 is as well but seeing at it took months for them to release a card that could compete with the 4870x2, I am not likely to find out first hand as even if it is quicker then what I have, there is no way I am going to upgrade for marginal gains.

It took 4 months, not exactly an eternity.

BTW, I have yet to see a single issue with Crossfire in any games that I play, something I dearly wish I could have said about SLI during the times I had an SLI system. Appalling screen tearing, lower framerates then a single card and artifacting where all issues that happened in far too many games. I am sure SLI has gotten better since the GeForce 7 days but I was a lot more willing to give AMD the benefit of the doubt first with a dual-GPU solution after such a bad past experience with nVidia.

What does tearing have to do with SLI or CF? What games artifact? It's pretty common knowledge CF drivers are worse than SLI drivers, I can link to many reviews that say so, here's a couple:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3463&p=6

Though we tend to see problems a lot more frequently than end users, we do see a lot more issues with AMD drivers than NVIDIA.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi..._vs_sli/25.htm

ATI cards are decent in certain games, no doubt about that, they are just not consistent across the board like I said earlier.

I must ask....How is the nVidia PR machine handling the news of the 5870 and 5870x2? Will we be seeing new nVidia parts to go head-to-head with them? or will we have to wait 6 months again?

My guess is they're probably laughing about it.

If the rumored specs of the GT300 are true, it will be an evolutionary leap ahead of ATi with it's MIMD shaders. ATi sticking with their VLIW arch and adding more clusters and ROPs won't help them.

[sammorris]

4 months is in the graphics world a long time. However, since a successor to the 4870X2 has not yet arrived, a lot of people have had the choice at the time they came to buy a card. I did not, but would have chosen the X2 anyway. Those who were that fussed could have sold the 4870X2 and got a 295 (Though most people that did that were the people that had driver issues they were too thick to sort out, I'm continuously amazed how much the graphics forums from either manufacturer get plagued by bozos like that)
With regard to your comments about SLI having superior drivers, it really doesn't. Overall, SLi is a more consistent platform for performance. Ironically, the 4870X2 is better than usual Crossfire. The GTX295 is worse than usual SLi, so these particular examples balance out well. As mentioned earlier, the benefits of SLi being stabled are balanced out by having to have either a very expensive system (i7) to run them, or having to run the stability gauntlet that is the nforce chipset.
As for GT300 vs HD5000 series, that's pure speculation at this point. Discussion over what could, will and won't be is meaningless until closer to the time. Nobody thought Intel's core 2s would slam AMDs so hard. Few thought the Phenom II would be as much better than its predecessor as it is. Few thought the HD4000 series would be such a turnaround for ATI. There are lots of surprises in the PC industry, that's what makes it so exciting...

[maxwilson]

http://en.expreview.com/2009/04/28/f...benchmark.html

This is to be taken with a pinch of salt of course, but these two teamed up do look very promising at the £150 price point.

Looking forward to the Hexus review.