Hardware Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

To say that crossfire and sli suck is a bit of a sweeping statement. Crossfire does scale well on 2 GPU's in a lot of cases, not all, but the majority of recent releases. COD 4 has always scaled well on muti-gpu setups, it did on my 3870X2/3870 setup and now on my 2 x 4850's. Good scaling does rely a lot on support from software developers though.

Web reviews do vary considerably in their results, however thats why i've always waited for bit-tech's articles, which provide a lot more in-depth analysis of not just the software, but the hardware behind the bennchmarks. I don't think you could accuse them of fabricating results or bias as they have acknowledged the raw power of the GTX280 in the past.

The bottom line is you're never going to get the same performance as someone reviewing a particular piece of hardware as every setup will be different in some subtle way. I'm happy with my purchase choices, if you're happy with yours, that should be all that matters.

 

Does anyone know if the 8.8 Catalyst include the Hotfix driver, does it even need it?

 

I had expected a slightly wider margin of improvement over the 4870 for the money. (4870 is under $270, but 4870 X2 is over $600?) In either case, this card is already fast enough.

You have a formatting error on page three: asscreed1.jpg, inset, is pushing the first chart out of boundaries.

For reference, their system is:

 

D-D-D-DOUBLE POST!

 

Thats my point. Their system is faster than mine but the numbers are quite a bit lower. I have taken worst case scenario in account. Unless, of course all these quads bench big and suck when faced with frequency. Don't know, don't own a quad.

So does TweakTown suck? Reliable? They tell a different story. Crossfire and single slot numbers.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1541/1/sapphire_radeon_hd_4870_x2_in_crossfirex/index.html

 

Or Here:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU0OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Just trying to help people make informed buying decisions. If these are not respected sites for one reason or another let me know. I don't have a deep history of checking bench sites. Bit-Tech is killer by the way. Thanks all.

 

1. Crossfire for the x2's?
2. SLI GTX 280's?

SLI for the GTX 280 at present in the US I can buy 2 of them for $760
Crossfire 4870 X2 would be $1,000

I'm betting you guys have the hardware sitting around ^^

 

getting it next week. But the Powercooler one, its cheaper ^^

 

I'm questioning your results for the 3870 x2. I have a much lower end system than the one tested and I get 70-80% higher frame rate results in CoD4 using a dual core at 3.15Ghz at the same resolutions. I have noticed in other tests that quad core CPU's have negative results in many games as compared to dual core CPU's. Wouldn't it make more sense to do your testing using fast dual core CPU's? I think the results would be more accurate and fairer when doing comparison testing of video cards.

 

The hotfix driver came out in between 8.6 and 8.7, i think, so you shouldn't need it if you have 8.8 installed.

 

If you have the fortune to live in the EU you can try it (or any other product) out for 14 days. If you can bear to rip it out of your system after that time, you can send it back. I doubt any gamer worth his salt would ever remove the best card to arrive on the scene since the 8800gtx (the card i am replacing).
I am playing Crysis on high with no problems, TF2 at max settings and high AA, it is simply a must have!

S*D

 

How come they NEVER mention that this card has Cinema 2.0 Technology??? like get real people who cares if you can over clock this, like it's fine if people want to, but just because you can't over clock it much, don't say "Well let's get the 8800 card cuz it over clocks more" think about the AMAZING feature this card comes with, that people fail to mention, the feature means that you will soon be playing PHOTO REALISTIC games, using this video cards, there is NO other card that can handle that at this time, because they don't come with the onboard Cinema 2.0 chips. So instead of looking at this card and thinking "Well I don't wanna get it cuz it wont let me get an extra 3 fps on Crysis" instead say this to yourself "Well it wont let me get 3 more fps on Crysis, but it comes with revolutionary technology that will allow for PHOTO REALISTIC Games in the near future" that's what the True Gamer should think about, the person who only cares about FPS, is not a gamer, they are simply Power Enthusiasts, in my Opinion.

Power is not everything

 

so tell me, what does Cinema 2.0 actually do? does it enable better physics? what graphics technology is it based on? does it have new shader model?
or is it a marketing phrase?

if power is not everything, then why buy 4870x2? wouldn't a 4650 be enough?

FPS is a measurement of how well one card compare to another in certain games. if there are better way of doing it, Bit-tech will have already done it.
for example, the minimal FPS is what gamers should really care about, Bit-tech puts those on most of the graphs. and guess what, multi-GPU (even with "Cinema 2.0") doesn't perform very well.

 

There's no such thing as a Cinema 2.0 chip... there's definitely no dedicated "Cinema 2.0" hardware in RV770. It's nothing more than a marketing slogan that AMD is throwing around IMO. The Cinema 2.0 demos are incredible, but they're on the rails - they've not shown any moving away from the rails (even looking around), so I'm not convinced. If I'm wrong and in less than 12 months we're playing (truly) "photo realistic games" that are as good looking as the Cinema 2.0 demos, I'll eat my hat.

We've been playing "photo realistic games" for years now - ever since the Emotion Engine in PlayStation 2 (and probably before then too). Nvidia first coined Cinematic Rendering with NV30 as well... and we all know what a load of crock that was (both the card and the associated marketing fluff).