Reviews - Sapphire AMD (ATI) Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB: opening up a can of whoop-ass

[kalniel]

Driver incompatibilities, sure, but with Vista it's a free upgrade to 64-bit if you own the 32-bit edition

How much does the free upgrade actually cost you?

[4zg4rt]

To HEXUS - You guys know that in the console or .cfg for cod 4 you need to take off the FPS limit to get over 85. I dont know why it says 85 when the limit according to the cfg is 91 but hey...

Most of the FPS games got that (HL1-2, CS, CSS, AAO, Q1-4, W:ET, W:QW, COD1-4, U1-3, UT...).
It's used to stabilize fps rate in game. In order to offset the spikes and successions of fps rate depending on the action in game.

The command is 'com_maxfps 250' which would set the max to 250

In most games it's: 'fps_max X', '**_maxfps X', '**_fpsmax X' (X = fps limit).
It’s always limits fps up to given value.

HEXUS Team - Check all FPS games used in tests for fps limits.

[Zak33]

I'd like to point out the critical nature of the bar charts in this excellent review.

They start at 0, at the base of the Y axis.

Why do I bring this "obvious" thing to your attention? Because many reviews, on many items, have results SO close, that to make the graphs easy to read, only the "peaks" of them show in the results chart.

Not on this card. That chart shows MAMMOTH power nailing nVidia. Mammoth.

[Tarinder]

To HEXUS - You guys know that in the console or .cfg for cod 4 you need to take off the FPS limit to get over 85. I dont know why it says 85 when the limit according to the cfg is 91 but hey...

The command is 'com_maxfps 250' which would set the max to 250

If it didnt require a power station to run i would definitely consider this card.

Thanks. The graphs have been updated to reflect the 'new' results.

[SiM]

The real question is how does it compare to GTX280/260 SLi and 4870 CF?

[CrazyMonkey]

I feel raped since im sat with my normal 4870

Damn fast/nice card!

[TooNice]

Very good performance, though it looks like the 48xx series is stuck with high power consumption.

[4zg4rt]

The real question is how does it compare to GTX280/260 SLi and 4870 CF?

Read:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=14957

And then go to Alienware site.
http://www.alienware.com/microsite/a...00-series.aspx

And then you find there that:

Age of Conan - 2560x1600 Highest Settings/ Max AA

Crysis -1920x1200 High Settings, 4xAA

Oblivion - 2560x1600 Highest Settings/ Max AA



Age of Conan, Call of Duty 4, Race Driver: GRID, are the first games with the engine made and optimized for unified shader units. And AMD/ATI power is nailing nVidia there.

All performance tests run on an Alienware ALX: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 4.0GHz, 4GB DDR3 Memory @ 1600MHz, Dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2.

[dangel]

Crikey that's impressive..

Must. Resist.

[greenalien]

2 issues concern me - 1 ) Which power supplies work with this card; and 2 ) It runs pretty hot, which must have an impact on long-term reliability - how long before versions with the Asustec cooler will be available?
It would also be interesting to have some test results that involve manipulation (flip, zoom etc) of large, complex 3D models in real time as this card could be useful for 3D-CAD applications.

[dangel]

Issue 3) doesn't always scale (if the drivers don't target the specific game).

[kalniel]

The real question is how does it compare to GTX280/260 SLi and 4870 CF?

The anandtech review covered this very well. Eg:



Which interestingly shows the x2 working much better than 4870 CF, so probably a driver thing.

[dangel]

The anandtech review covered this very well. Eg:



Which interestingly shows the x2 working much better than 4870 CF, so probably a driver thing.

Might be do do with the on-card bridge - isn't the bandwidth better?

[4zg4rt]

Might be do do with the on-card bridge - isn't the bandwidth better?

AMD refers to the inter-GPU communication ability as CrossFireX SidePort, and it's a feature that, as the name suggests, offer high-bandwidth - bi-directional 5GB/s - transfers from GPU to GPU, should they be required. We were informed that the feature will not be enabled until a later date, though.

On-card bridge is turned OFF, for now. So, when bridge well be turned ON - probably we well see an increase in power.
It's probably turned OFF to reduce power consumption.

[dangel]

Interesting - so what makes it quicker?

[4zg4rt]

Interesting - so what makes it quicker?

HD4870x2 2GB = 2GB of GRAM to use = 1GB for GPU
2x HD4870 512MB in CF (all use 512MB cards in tests) = 1GB of GRAM to use = 512MB for GPU

So you got half of GRAM, and in high quality it's not enough.

Higher quality = more/larger textures = higher GRAM use/requirements

Take:
HD4870x2 2GB = 2GB of GRAM to use = 1GB for GPU
2x HD4870 1GB in CF = 2GB of GRAM to use = 1GB for GPU - the score well be probably equal or similar.