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.
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Final Destination II - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Dear girls and guys,does anyone know of a manufacturer, who offers a HD4850 with a better cooler? I'm desperately searching for one...
Please reply!
Graven Image - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Asus recently announced a 4850 with a non-stock cooler, though their version still doesn't expel the air out the back like a dual slot design. (http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11871)">http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11871). Its not available yet thought. My guess is mid-July we'll probably start seeing a couple different fan and heatsink designs.strikeback03 - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
Only dual-slot card I've ever used was an EVGA 8800GTS 640, it sucked air in the back and blew it into the case.Final Destination II - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Nice! 7°C cooler, that's a start! I guess I'll wait a bit more, then.Spacecomber - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Although I'm somewhat dubious about dual card solutions, I keep looking at the benchmarks and then at the prices for a couple of 8800 GTs.Perhaps, if the 4870 forces Nvidia to reduce their prices for the GTX 260 and the GTX 280, they will likewise bring down the price for the 9800 GX2. This is already the fastest single card solution, and it sells for less than the GTX 280. If this card starts selling for under $400 (maybe around $350), will this become Nvidia's best answer to the 4870?
Given the performance and the prices for the 4870 and the 9800 GX2 will Nvidia be able to price the GTX 280 competitively, or will it simply be vanity product - ridiculously priced and produced only in very small numbers?
It should be interesting to see where the prices for video cards end up over the course of the next few weeks.
kelmerp - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Better HD knickknacks? Better offloading/upscaling?chizow - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
The HD4000 series have better HDMI sound support with 8ch LPCM over HDMI, but still can't pass uncompressed bistreams. Image quality hasn't changed as there isn't really any room to improve.kelmerp - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
It would be nice to have a video card, where it doesn't matter how weak the current-gen processor is (say the lowliest celeron available), the card can still output 1080p HDTV without dropping any frames.Chaser - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Good to have back at the FRONT of the finish line.JPForums - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Ragarding the SLI scaling in Witcher:The GTX 280 SLI setup may be running into a bottleneck or driver issues, rather than seeing inherent scaling issues. Consider, the 9800 GTX+ SLI setup scales from 22.9 to 44.5. So the scaling isn't an inherent SLI scaling problem. Though it may point to scaling issues specific to the GTX 280, it is more likely that the problem lies elsewhere. I do, however, agree with your general statement that when CF is working properly, it tends to scale better. In my systems, it seems to require less CPU overhead.