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| Thread ID: 97734 | 2009-02-25 22:13:00 | 4870 CF slanted by anandtech | SolMiester (139) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 751350 | 2009-02-25 22:13:00 | Ouch....if you were an early adopter of the Radeon 4870 & CF'd, this (anandtech.com) article will interest you.. | SolMiester (139) | ||
| 751351 | 2009-02-25 22:21:00 | In every test but one, GeForce GTX 285 SLI leads the way in performance. Often the GTX 280 SLI pops up next. ...........these two solutions often come in very low in the "value" lineup and not that much higher in performance than something like the Radeon HD 4870 multiGPU options or even the GeForce GTX 295. The cheaper Radeon HD 4870 X2 often does better than the GTX 295, and often multiGPU AMD options have better value than the highest end single GPU options from NVIDIA. But the real stand out has to be the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB. The Sapphire 4850 X2 costs less than a single NVIDIA GTX 280 or 285, and performs better than these as well. While the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is viable as high end single card multiGPU option, it competes at a price point beyond NVIDIA's high end. This is why you need to do your research with cards, and then take the best performance that your budget allows. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 751352 | 2009-02-25 23:20:00 | People on this forum have always warned others off Sapphire, Sparkle etc?? | nofam (9009) | ||
| 751353 | 2009-02-25 23:31:00 | I have the sapphire 4850 with the massive fan. Runs 30 degress idle. No problems whatsoever |
Blam (54) | ||
| 751354 | 2009-02-26 00:23:00 | People on this forum have always warned others off Sapphire, Sparkle etc?? Well, the first Sapphire product I've had is my current 4870 card. It's an early batch I think, which is plentiful enough for many people to complain about its problematic BIOS all over the net. Sapphire has since released a new BIOS that fixed most of the problems. For me anyway. |
qazwsxokmijn (102) | ||
| 751355 | 2009-02-26 00:42:00 | The way i read the article wasnt about top dog as it changed abit . Rather the article was about scaling from 1 to 2 GPU's . The 4870 DOESNT scale as well as the 4850 and the NV cards . . . . To calculate this scaling data, we simply looked at percent performance improvement of two cards over one . With perfect scaling we would see 100%, while no improvement is 0% and a negative performance improvement means that the multiGPU solution actually produced worse numbers than the single card . There's a lot of data here, so we'll break it down a bit before we present it all . It is possible to see more than 100% scaling in some tests for different reasons . Fluctuations in benchmark performance can contribute to just over 100% situations, and some times optimizations to enable better multiGPU performance can cut some work out enabling higher performance than would otherwise have been possible . In one of the cases we test today we have a situation where single GPU performance is limited at some framerate while multiple GPUs aren't hindered by the same limit . This artificially inflates the scaling percent . When looking at games that scale overall, we end up seeing both Radeon HD 4870 configurations (512MB and 1GB) performing worse than we expected . Granted, the 4870 1GB looks better if we only take 2560x1600 into account, but even then the Radeon HD 4850, GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 beat out the 4870 1GB in terms of average performance improvement (when performance improves) . When we add in CPU limited cases, the 4870 cards look even worse . Consistently, most of the ways we attempted to analyze the magnitude of performance improvement (averages, geometric means, per game, across games where call cards scaled, etc . ), the Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTX 260 (and sometimes the GTX 280) did pretty well, while the Radeon HD 4870 cards came in pretty low on the list with the 1GB often looking worse because it hit harder CPU limits at lower resolutions . In other words, while the 4870 is a good card, it isnt well balanced . Great high bandwidth for 30" LCD but no power down low . Abit like a car stuck in high gear . . . . . . |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 751356 | 2009-02-26 00:42:00 | The cheaper Radeon HD 4870 X2 often does better than the GTX 295, and often multiGPU AMD options have better value than the highest end single GPU options from NVIDIA . But the real stand out has to be the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB . . Often? Because I can't see it . Yes OK the 4870X2 is up to $100 cheaper but price/performance is so close to each other its useless stating that the X2 is cheaper when the 295 gets higher rates for a higher cost . The 4850X2 is a killer though, grats AMD :wub Only thing I don't like about the 4850X2 is that its 11 . 2" while the other top dogs are only 10 . 5" . |
trinsic (6945) | ||
| 751357 | 2009-02-26 00:53:00 | The way i read the article wasnt about top dog ...... Like I said............. Thats why you need to research first. |
pctek (84) | ||
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