4870 in CF vs potential 4870x2

[homerdog]

What about the memory size?

Running at 1920x1200 and looking to use max settings possible, including texture packs for relevant games, would I benefit more from two 4870 1gb editions (providing they appear) over the 1gb shared 4870x2?

If the x2 can share memory and use the 1gb all to itself, unlike previous x2-style cards, let me know. I'm not clear on what 'sharing the memory' on the x2 actually means.

Thanks!

Yep, it can (supposedly) use the entire 1GB unlike previous X2 cards
Of course it's all heresay and speculation at this point, but we can be about 93% sure that this is the case

 

[satanpro]

Thanks again for the help mates. I'll hold off until the x2 comes out to upgrade.

 

[V8VENOM]

Guess I'll have to post some screen shots of Crysis running at close to 60 fps at 1920 x 1080 4X AA (with edge detection on) all settings at HIGH.

Like I said in another post, my two 4870's in CF have made me actually want to play Crysis now. r_displayinfo shows a steady 50-60 fps with a worse case of 38 for a momentary sub second interval. I believe GURU3D tested Crysis using Tri SLI GTX 280 and the results were far from spectacular considering the $1900 invested.

I'll bump the settings to VERH HIGH tonight and see what happens, but 4X AA with edge detection produced some extremely nice results.

Also bare in mind the current drivers for it are Cat 8.7 Beta, not even an "official" 1st gen driver for the 4870 yet. I was testing under Vista x64 with the 64bit Crysis client -- but I only have 4GB RAM (but based on r_displayinfo, there doesn't appear to be any need for more than 4GB.

I'll let you know how the 4870X2's do next month. But I expect their scalability to provide some serious gains in all games, not just DX10 games and/or games designed to work with Crossfire/SLI

I hope nVidia can keep up, cause right now nVidia are holding par in perfromance, and way behind in price/performance, and no DX10.1 support. Best place for consumers to be is with competitors running at close performance levels.

On a side note: watch out for the June 08 Creative Labs drivers for xFi Elite Pro -- I had all kinds of problems with them (sound drop outs, performance hits, etc.) -- I went back to the March 08 drivers.

 

[homerdog]

^Very High or bust

Ah, it also appears that I was wrong about R700 sharing the framebuffer . Good thing it has 1GB per GPU

 

[firc_ops_gordo]

After reading all this , why do I get the sinking feeling I jumped the gun on buying two 4870's and putting them in crossfire

 

[radnor]

After reading all this , why do I get the sinking feeling I jumped the gun on buying two 4870's and putting them in crossfire

Naaa. They perform similar anyway. I will wait for the price to lower a bit as well and then buy 2x4850/4870 as well.
Just nee dto see to price stabilizing and check the bang per buck ratios.

 

[homerdog]

After reading all this , why do I get the sinking feeling I jumped the gun on buying two 4870's and putting them in crossfire

From the looks of things the 4870X2 doesn't scale that much better. However, the 1GB framebuffer should give it a clear advantage at high resolutions with AA and AF.

The jury is still out on microstuttering, but some preliminary tests I've seen indicate that it isn't much of an issue with any of the RV770 cards in Crossfire. This could be due to the fact that RV770 is fast enough to avoid frequent entirely GPU limited scenarios, but I suspect there is something more to it. We'll have to wait for the real reviews to find out for sure, if even then...

 

[firc_ops_gordo]

From the looks of things the 4870X2 doesn't scale that much better. However, the 1GB framebuffer should give it a clear advantage at high resolutions with AA and AF.

The jury is still out on microstuttering, but some preliminary tests I've seen indicate that it isn't much of an issue with any of the RV770 cards in Crossfire. This could be due to the fact that RV770 is fast enough to avoid frequent entirely GPU limited scenarios, but I suspect there is something more to it. We'll have to wait for the real reviews to find out for sure, if even then...

What is considered high resolution for these cards then ? The reason I went for crossfire is because I game at 1920X1200 and don't ever plan to go higher. From what I've read, the extra memory really starts serving well above that. Anyway, I waited as long as I possibly could. Just had to have them !

 

[hannibal]

The high AA will allso need a lot of memory and memory bandwide...

 

[duzcizgi]

The high AA will allso need a lot of memory and memory bandwide...

Depends on the way you're doing AA. If you're doing it old-way-brute-force, then yes. you need lots of memory & bandwidth. If you're doing adaptive AA w/edge detection, no, you don't need that much.

 

[xrodney]

Depends on the way you're doing AA. If you're doing it old-way-brute-force, then yes. you need lots of memory & bandwidth. If you're doing adaptive AA w/edge detection, no, you don't need that much.

Not that much, but close to it. Adaptive AA save more processing power needed than memory ussage.

 

[homerdog]

Not that much, but close to it. Adaptive AA save more processing power needed than memory ussage.

It also tends to not look as good / not always work right.