The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 25, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Assassin's Creed
Even at 2560 x 1600 the high end configurations are bumping into a frame rate limiter, any of the very high end setups are capable of running Assassin's Creed very well.
Oblivion
The GeForce 9800 GTX+ does very well in Oblivion and a pair of them actually give the 4870 CF a run for its money, especially given that the GTX+ is a bit cheaper. While it's not the trend, it does illustrate that GPU performance can really vary from one application to the next. The Radeon HD 4870 is still faster, overall, just not in this case where it performs equally to a GTX+.
The Witcher
We've said it over and over again: while CrossFire doesn't scale as consistently as SLI, when it does, it has the potential to outscale SLI, and The Witcher is the perfect example of that. While the GeForce GTX 280 sees performance go up 55% from one to two cards, the Radeon HD 4870 sees a full 100% increase in performance.
It is worth noting that we are able to see these performance gains due to a late driver drop by AMD that enables CrossFire support in The Witcher. We do hope that AMD looks at enabling CrossFire in games other than those we test, but we do appreciate the quick turnaround in enabling support - at least once it was brought to their attention.
Bioshock
The Radeon HD 4000 series did very well in Bioshock in our single-GPU tests, but pair two of these things up and we're now setting performance records.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
215 Comments
View All Comments
Amiga500 - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Apple has passed over control of Open CL to the Khronos group, which manage open sourced coding.To all intentions and purposes, it is open source. :-)
emergancyexit - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
i hope you do 3x crossfire can do. maybe a 4x 4850 vs 3x GTX 260 just to satisfy us readers for the moment would be lovely!DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
i'm not sure if this is supported out of the box ... ill have to check it out ...emergancyexit - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
i would really like to know what type of performance theese cards could get in an MMO. (and hopefully compare them to some cheaper cards) Games im interested in are some of the newer titles like Age of conan ( i hear it's graphics are great and is a workout for even a 8800 ultra) And Eve-online (thier new graphics engine works cards pretty hard too)MMO's Graphics usually get pretty intesive with some odd 200+ characters flying around shooting fireballs evrywhere with missles sailing through the air in a land of hundreds of monsters as far as the eye can see. it can get pretty demanding on a gameing computer, just as much (if not more) as a hit new title.
for example, on my current Rig i can get around 50FPS steady at 1440x900 but on Eve-Online i get 35 at the most at peacefull times and 20 or even 15 in a large fight with FEW graphics options selected.
MIP - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Great review, the 4870 looks to be fantastic value. However, we're missing the 'heat and noise' part.skiboysteve - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Not only do these cards rock, but I wouldn't be surprised if AMD has an ace up its sleeve with the 4870x2... with that crossfire interconnect directly connected to the data hub that you showed on the chart. That and the fact that they have been looking forward to this crossfire strategy of attacking the high end for quite some time so they might have some tricky driver stuff coming with it.I have been disappointed with the heat and power consumption of these cards. But:
1) Someone said powerplay is getting a driver tweak and, I can always clock them lower in 2D than 500/1000 (which is insane for 2d)
2) That hardware site someone linked earlier showed a more than 50% reduction in temperatures with an aftermarket cooler! Thats insane!!
And finally, if I can get the 1 & 2 fixed... I want to know how well these babys overclock. If I can get a 4850 running like a 4870 or better... yum. And in that case, how high will a 4870 OC? And I want to know this with a non stock cooler, because apparently the stock ones suck. With a non stock cooler if the 4850 clocks up to 4870 level, but the 4870 clocks way up too... i'm gonna have to grab a 4870.
So yeah, fix #1 and #2 and find me non-stock cooler OC #s and I'll go buy one (maybe two?) when nehalem comes out
Powered by AMD - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Impressive review, Thanks :)A few glitches:
It says "Power Consumption, Heat and Noise", but the graphs only shows Power Consuption.
In Page 17 (The Witcher), in second paragraph, it says 390X2 instead of 3870.
Thanks again.
Cheers from Argentina.
Conscript - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
atleast that was the tile of the second to last page...but only see two power consumption graphs?Proteusza - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
I quote one Kristopher Kubricki regarding whether the RV770 is inferior to the GT200:"It is. Even AMD isn't going to tell you otherwise. You can debate this all you want, but it's still a $200 video card."
So, please tell me now why I should pay $650 for a GTX280. I'm struggling to see the logic here.
Source: http://www.dailytech.com/Update+AMD+Preps+Radeon+4...">http://www.dailytech.com/Update+AMD+Pre...50+Launc...
(near the bottom)
AbRASiON - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
I can live with a greedier card than my 8800GT but I refuse to put up with a noisy machine.Any comments on the heat and noise please? would be nice!