Hardware AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB

[Tim S]

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

The Radeon HD 4800 series has been on a roll ever since its release. It not only won the hearts and minds of enthusiasts, but it also made Nvidia re-think its pricing structure. We take a look at AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB to see if AMD can put even more pressure on Nvidia's product lineup.

[airchie]

Nice review.
If I get around to building my new rig any time soon this will likely be a contender for my cash.

Also, the front-page link to the article starts "The Radeon HD 4800 series has been on a role"
Should it not be "The Radeon HD 4800 series has been on a roll"?

[Engram]

Damn it. I register an account for the sole purpose of correcting that awful spelling mistake - and someone beats me to it!

[Tim S]

sorry, bad mistake - I blame a lack of coffee this morning!

[zr_ox]

Nice review Tim.

I have been waiting for this one with baited breath, some other sites are reporing enourmous performance leaps on the 1GB version. Glad someone managed to put the rumours to rest.

Many thanks

[airchie]

lol, sorry Engram...

[wuyanxu]

wow, that's a really good card for money! £190 compared to gtx280's current (unreasonably high) £300.

but nVidia's card have GPGPU and really fast Folding speeds, it makes me wonder why can't ATI just raise their price a little bit (~220) to offer people the complete solution? graphics cards is not all about graphics nowaways, unless one games 24/7, or it's a waste of energy

[xaser04]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

wow, that's a really good card for money! £190 compared to gtx280's current (unreasonably high) £300.

but nVidia's card have GPGPU and really fast Folding speeds, it makes me wonder why can't ATI just raise their price a little bit (~220) to offer people the complete solution? graphics cards is not all about graphics nowaways, unless one games 24/7, or it's a waste of energy

You could also compare it to the much better 'value' GTX260 Maxcore which judging by the review sits quite nicely up with the GTX280 whilst costing up to £100 less.

[johnnyboy700]

Bah, I was holding out for one of these cards but they took too long to release the damn thing (been waiting for 6 weeks now since ATI Customer Support said they woukd e-mail me back) so I gave up and bought a Powercolor PCS+ instead. Its a nice card and plays all my games very well, might buy Crysis to see how it does but having seen the reviews of Far Cry 2 I reckon I'll get that instead.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by xaser04

You could also compare it to the much better 'value' GTX260 Maxcore which judging by the review sits quite nicely up with the GTX280 whilst costing up to £100 less.

The 260 OCX Maxcore is fairly close to the stock 280, but it's not much cheaper. My last count was about £255 vs £275. I'd probably spend a little bit more and get the 280... or save £50 and get a 4870 1GB.

[Cupboard]

Nice review. I am quite surprised how much less power it uses than the 512MB version, it is quite significant.

What is going on on page 6, the 8800GT is faster than the 9800GTX+ at 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF despite being slower and having less "bits"!

edit:Sorted

How do you do the strikethrough thing?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Cupboard

What is going on on page 6, the 8800GT is faster than the 9800GTX+ at 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF despite being slower and having less "bits"!

There's a typo in the graphs - I recreated them for the HIS review from scratch and didn't pick up on that error. As you can imagine, inputting approximately 800 results (not including minimum frame rates) one after another can lead to the occasional typo - they'd been double and triple checked, but we still managed to miss one error! It should be 27.5 not 37.5 - thanks for picking up on it!

[xaser04]

Originally Posted by Tim S

The 260 OCX Maxcore is fairly close to the stock 280, but it's not much cheaper. My last count was about £255 vs £275. I'd probably spend a little bit more and get the 280... or save £50 and get a 4870 1GB.

Sorry I should have expanded a little bit. You can pick up a BFG GTX 260 Maxcore OC for just over £200 (£204 on novatech), overclock it to the OCX levels (shouldn't be too hard) and presto v.near GTX280 performance for ~£100 less.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by xaser04

Sorry I should have expanded a little bit. You can pick up a BFG GTX 260 Maxcore OC for just over £200 (£204 on novatech), overclock it to the OCX levels (shouldn't be too hard) and presto v.near GTX280 performance for ~£100 less.

Ah right, no problem!

[Primoz]

Of course, there is at least one difference between these cards and that’s the memory used. Interestingly, instead of using 16 of the 64Mb Qimonda GDDR5 DRAMs used on the Radeon HD 4870, AMD has used eight Hynix 128Mb GDDR5 memory chips on the 4870 1GB...

I suspect it should be MB here, not Mb, right? Since there was talk about 512 and 1024 Mb chips before. And MB makes sence (128*8 is 1024 or 1 GB). I know i'm nitpicking here but hey, if i found it there's bound to be someone else. Though it is true that the person who knows the difference will also probably know that there's an error and will know it's bytes instead of bits.

[Ending Credits]

I bought one of these from Ebuyer for £200. Haven't had a chance to really test it.

[Nature]

memory timings are lower if the the amount of memory is lower right? why not make an 4870x2 with 512mb of ram at super low fast and tight speeds?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Primoz

I suspect it should be MB here, not Mb, right? Since there was talk about 512 and 1024 Mb chips before. And MB makes sence (128*8 is 1024 or 1 GB). I know i'm nitpicking here but hey, if i found it there's bound to be someone else. Though it is true that the person who knows the difference will also probably know that there's an error and will know it's bytes instead of bits.

I'm talking about individual DRAM chips.. should be 512Mb/1,024Mb - thanks!

[Sparrowhawk]

Hm. With it being so much less expensive than the competitors, I'd be interested to see how Crossfire performance stacks up.
How does 2x 4870 1GB's compare to 2x 260's and 1x 4870 x2?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Sparrowhawk

Hm. With it being so much less expensive than the competitors, I'd be interested to see how Crossfire performance stacks up.
How does 2x 4870 1GB's compare to 2x 260's and 1x 4870 x2?

That's something we're working on if drivers play nice!