Hardware AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...n-hd-4870-x2/1

AMD has launched its latest high-end graphics card with a clear goal: to take the performance crown back from Nvidia. Does the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 succeed and achieve great things, or is there still a long road ahead for AMD? Read on to find out...

[badders]

upon looking through the chip's datasheet

This is why I love Bit's hardware reviews. So thorough.

Well done chaps, another great article.

[johnnyboy700]

Yep, great review folks, well done.

Welcome back ATI, I've missed you! As soon as the Gen2 4870's hit the e-tailers you can have my hard earned cash.

[sotu1]

yep, tis a good read. would like a bit more info on the 4850x2, just a conclusory paragraph or two, that would be nice

[Nuffenburger]

Originally Posted by johnnyboy700

Yep, great review folks, well done.

Welcome back ATI, I've missed you! As soon as the Gen2 4870's hit the e-tailers you can have my hard earned cash.

Gen2?=O since when lol

[RotoSequence]

Sounds like happy-go-fun times, though the lack of 2560x1600 testing in Far Cry seems rather detrimental for this particular card. Whats the story behind 2560x1600's conspicuous absence?

[johnnyboy700]

The Gen2 4870's are supposed to be out this month, there's one out already from Power Colour (I think) and the only difference is that it has double the memory. The others are alledgedly going to have alternative coolers, higher clock speeds and other tweaks.

It happens all the time, when a new batch of cards first come out they are held pretty tightly to the reference specs then the card builders get the gloves off and get to indulge themselves, thats what I'm waiting to see. If there'e no real improvement then I'll buy a bog standard one, I've waited this long so another couple of weeks won't matter.

[Jack_Pepsi]

I don't understand why you're not using the 8.7 driver set.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Price?

*EDIT*
About $680.00AUD

[liratheal]

Nab another one and do an X2 crossfire power consumption test please!

Also, any chance testing of this and a single 4870 in 3-way Crossfire?

Thanks for the review Tim

[atanum141]

i'd love too see numbers with more mature drivers, perhaps a modded version of this card by a manu? as all the cards are just stickered versions of the ref card.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Jack_Pepsi

I don't understand why you're not using the 8.7 driver set.

1) The amount of time it'd take to get everything done with a new driver that, from looking at the release notes has no tangible performance gains in the games we're testing, would mean you might get to see it by September (I'm off to IDF and Nvision, so out of the office for a couple of weeks from Saturday).

2) I only got back to work this Saturday after almost 6 weeks off with a family emergency - I arrived back from Taiwan on Friday evening having been out there to shuffle some paperwork and basically haven't stopped working since. Because of the situation, I've re-used all of the tests that Harry has completed for the other GPU reviews he's done recently and added the 4870 X2 into the mix... it's also why there hasn't been a 4870/4850/RV770 architecture piece on bit yet either. That's also well on the way to being finished now too.

The drivers used for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 are a branch off from 8.7 and are probably somewhere in between 8.7 and 8.8 from what I understand.

[wuyanxu]

with gtx280 at £260 on OCuk, i think the single GPU is a better option in comparison to 4870x2.

especially considering Folding@home performance (plus ease of use for folding on single GPU), PhysX and GPGPU on nVidia cards.

if GT200b comes out at same price point of 4870x2, yet it's slow. i would still get the single GPU solution. totally agree with this article, multi-GPU isn't there yet. wait until it's not crossfire-on-a-stick, waiting ultil it's 2GPU-1Hub-shared-memory

[naokaji]

uk pricing is simply insane.
there are still massive perfomance drops in certain games at certain settings (read: driver issues).
the card wont fit in 75% of all non full tower cases.

but, it is the fastest card, nice kick in the nu*s of nvidia, I hope they will have something nice to counter.

[Hg]

naokaji your right it does kick the nuts of nvidia's GPUS, but this is two cores.
Compared on price this is a winner, but if you wanted to compare flagship with flagship, you would need to compare this with an GTX280SLI setup, this would be intreasting too see or even this and a GTX260 SLI setup as thats around £30-40 more then a 4870x2.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Originally Posted by naokaji

uk pricing is simply insane.

Considering how much of a price-gouge the high-end nVidia cards were (over several generations' early release) I don't think this is too badly priced. It's sub-£400 for a start. Sure, in the UK it works out more expensive than equivalent in the States, but that's always been the way of things and always will be the way of things if 99% of companies have their way.

...

On the topic of the review, though... I would really like to see some figures for this card when run with a heavily overclocked quad (4GHz+) I think the X2 is CPU limited at all but the most extreme graphical settings. But it's good to see it run with the chip it is, as 3GHz is a more realistic figure for most users.

Would anyone happen to know whether the 4870X2 has the same issues with the DFI X38/X48 boards that the 3870X2 had? (ie: not working?)

[Xir]

...price-performance wise, the 4870 (single) is still the most attractive..

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by Xir

...price-performance wise, the 4870 (single) is still the most attractive..

Maybe for you subjectively, but objectively, the bang for buck from the 4850 is indisputably better.

However, what's a concern for me is the high idle power draw of both this and the Radeon HD 4870.

I guess this may be related to the power draw of GDDR5 RAM, as the 4850 (which uses the same chip at slightly reduced speeds) is one of the most power efficient at idle and load? Or is it because the chip needs more voltage to achieve the 4870 speeds? I'd be interested to see the power draw of a 4850 overclocked to 4870 speeds.

[wuyanxu]

any experience with microshutter? or bad minimal FPS in games? (lower than single 4870? )

[WhiskeyAlpha]

Originally Posted by Hg80

naokaji your right it does kick the nuts of nvidia's GPUS, but this is two cores.
Compared on price this is a winner, but if you wanted to compare flagship with flagship, you would need to compare this with an GTX280SLI setup, this would be intreasting too see or even this and a GTX260 SLI setup as thats around £30-40 more then a 4870x2.

Flagship to flagship would surely be "2 x 4870x2 in Crossfire X" vs "3 x GTX 280 in SLi".

I think I saw some figures recently (which may have been from ATi so taken with a pinch of salt) that showed some phenomenal Crossfire X scaling. Tri-SLi can rarely claim such feats. I honestly think the dual 4870x2 setup would punish the GTX 280 threesome in almost all titles.

I've always owned Nvidia cards and I like the company and their support. I would shift to ATi now however if I were building a new machine as their 4850 is a fantastic card at the right price point.

Some people however, have a hard time admitting that the green team just got caught with their trousers down. They never expected the 48xx series to hit them hard in every price range and be so damn fast to boot. I'm sure they just expected their midrange to suffer a little and rushed out the 9800GTX+ in response. What a joke that turned out to be.

Now with their "top-end toppled" I await their reply with baited breath.

People also seem to miss the point: ATi are competitive again, which even if you're the most ardent Nvidia fanboy means great things. When two big players are trying their hardest to keep your attention (and your $'s) that means one thing - price/performance war!

Bring it on!