Aloha Reading the latest reviews and checking prices, i think ATI offer me the best solution atm. how would a pair of 4850's fare against a single 4870? will be faster? by alot? cost effective? The chipset i plan to use would be a X38 or X48 or X58 depending on the new Nehelam CPU being launched. Whats your oppinion on using crossfire over a single better card? will a new graphics card become availible that would beat the current selection for a roughly same price mark by september - december? Thanks,
Dual HD4850s perform better than a single HD4870: Legit reviews Regarding new graphics cars in Q4, you'll see the HD4870X2, we won't be told about anything else yet seeming as both nVidia and ATi have just released their new architecture, and why would you make everyone wait for something, when you can leave to buy your products already out. The HD4870X2 will be more expensive, but I expect there will be a small drop in the prices of the HD4870 and HD4850. Buy one HD4850/70 now, one later...
Check the crysis benchmark, the 4850 in crossfire beat the 4870 in crossifre. Not what you would expect to see. I would say that the drivers still have a way to go to bring out the full potential.
As a general rule crossfire will beat a single processor but it is driver dependant. Occassionally you will see benchmarks where crossfire does vitually nothing over a single card. Having said that AMD(ATI) are good at getting driver updates out.
Depending on the rest of the system you're running I'd say go for a single 4870 (and a board allowing crossfire) and then step up to dual 4870's when you need some extra performance. You've not mentioned what system you're going to be pairing with the cards, nor what monitor you're going to be running.
