4870 review!!! Hope its real

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
I don't think we will see an x2 version of this card for some time seeing as those temps are already high as heck. Nvidia will stay on top for this round probably but they better get in gear or ati will overtake them on the next release. Maybe this will drive down the price of the geforce 260 since I am trading up for one anyway.
 
once you start getting 2 processing cores over the low 3Ghz range, the performance impact in-game becomes exponentially smaller. So I don't really think the 9650 they used had a huge impact, mostly was just used IMO to make absolutely sure there was no CPU-related bottlenecking so all the vid cards could stand on their own.

I'm looking forward to the NDA being lifted and hearing what drivers were used for the en.exp review. Some forumers were saying on another board that these guys had older beta drivers which was causing probs with the fan regulation and core power management or something along those lines. Will be interesting!
 



It just needs a decent cooler and it will be fine. Few heatpipes.
 
Holy smoke!

This cards really can fly! The temps are horrible and power comsumtion allso, but how fast that thing is!!! They say in the article that the heatsink is not great, so we can hope that some retailers make better cooling solutions. This card reserved it.
They most propably have to reduce the clockspeeds for 4870x2 model but let's see how it manages against two of these! In anyway two 4870 in cf is going to be some avesome product. I am just afraid that 1gb versions are not gonna be cheap. For single card solution this 512 Mb version is just great, but these cards has so much horsepower that 1Gb is needed for redigulous high resolutions for gf settings.
The most impostant thing is that this is allso much faster than 4850, so it seems that $100 more prize is not too much... exspecially when the prize of GDDR5 comes down, the prize of these cards can allso reduce. Now the GDDR5 is the biggest single reason for prize difference between these two cards.
I am happily say that I was very wrong when I predicted that 4850 and 4870 will be much closer together in speed. I really hope that this will make AMD some real money, so they can make comeback allso in CPU battle!
 
Main heat problem is fan not operating at high enough speed. A fan control utility or amd gives a update for fan speed and it'll be cooler. People over at xtremesystems have done the fan mod so it's at 100% at all times and reported temps 50-60 on full load.

My card will arrive on thursday so I'll see about putting some artic silver on it and probably do the fan mod until a fan utility or update is out.
 



On a similar note I tried to find the release date for Asus EAH4850/HTDI/1G but couldn't find anything. I wonder what performance in crease that would have, if any, at 19x12.
 
The 4870 looks great so far, seems like ATI really has a hit if all of the figures are accurate.

I hope they get the fan speed under control by release time through software.

The best part about AMD making a competitive comeback on this level is that it will breed much better competition in the longrun which is good for everyone. I would bet the next generation of graphics cards from both companies in 2009 will really raise the performance bar significantly.
 


OCZ freeze or something like that? I saw a post about someone using that but didn't know how it rates compared to artic silver.
 
Someone posted that the 4870 isnt faster than the 3870x2. Whoever that was, they better look again. To me, this is very similar with what happened with the 8xxx series and the 2xxx series. The 2900 could only manage to almost equal the GTS. This time is different for many reasons. One, its beating the 260 already, and solidly. It comes in cheaper, and nVidia will have an extremelt hard time competing at price point. The scaling issues this time favor ATI moreso, as these cards are made for it, or will see better results in a x2 solution over the previous x2. And finally, there really isnt a G200x2 on the horizon as a possibility. Also, the G280 isnt the increase in performance over the 260 is, like the GTX was over the GTS. @boredatcanon, yea thats it. Great stuff
 
OK I will order some of that. What I want to see is when someone releases a tool to OC 4850 past the 700mhz and higher ram speed if it will be a lot closer to the 4870. I know they are releasing OC 4850s with better cooling setup. If they sell for normal 200 price then this is the best bang for the buck.
 



I don't really think Nvidia will have a hard time competing on price point, because they will just drop the price and sell it at a loss if they have to; read: AMD with Phenom processors. If AMD hadn't dropped the price on their Phenoms they would've never recouped the losses from their launch as system OEMs would never have bought into them like they are now.


I think the most notable point for AMD's new graphics cards is that they /outperform/ Nvidia's models at the same price points which is something they have not been able to do for quite some time.

4870 outperforms gtx260 (gtx260 is launching at 399$, but dollars to donuts say they will drop it to match AMD's price)

4850 outperforms 9800GTX (again, same price point but slightly more performance from the AMD solution)

4870 crossfire i'm pretty sure will outperform the gtx280 for the same cost or it'll be bloody close

and the 4870x2 should really be a big hit by all rights

Well as I have said before - i'll reserve my final judgment for Anand/hardocp reviews of this new card - but so far this looks like a big improvement for AMD and its a lot more impressive than the 4850 even with the 4850's cheap price tag
 


Sell at a loss? Look what happend to ATI when they sold 2900xt at a loss. They stopped making high end cards after that. Although Nvidia have more funds it's going to hurt them.

For all you guys with Nvidia stocks you should sell them soon and rebuy later when Nvidia bounces back.
 
Yes, but look at where "not selling high end cards" got AMD's graphics department - they seem to be using a much better approach. Scalability.. well time will tell with live launch reviews on that, but if the scalability they claim is there is indeed there, it'll be "high end" enough in XF, eh?
 
So far, nVidias response has been slow, and somewhat lame with the + solution, tho its their only alternative. If you look at the 2900, ATI kept their prices high, just as I suspect nVidia will, say a $50 dollar cushion, over price performance. Thats only on the G200s. The thing thats really going to hurt nVidia is their low end, or G92s. ATI has them covered here. The lower 4xxx series cards will wipe out the 9600s et al. At this point, nVidia is being squeezed from top to bottom, unless they have a rabbit somewheres
 
Nope, m\ they arent. But if you remember, it held that 400 price, even tho the GTS was cheaper. I think nVidia is going to do the same. Another difference is die size and yields, and thats even worse. The yields on the 2900 wasnt that bad, just the power inefficiencies
 



I don't really know enough about what goes on in Nvidia's scheme of things at the factory level - but maybe they are planning on bringing all of the old g92s to end of line?

Then just proceed on with 9800GTX/9800GTX+ as the mainstream low end (9600 GT/8800 GT), gtx260 as the mainstream high end (9800GTX), and then gtx280 as the very high end (9800GX2)

I think you're right that fighting AMD on price is going to hurt them quite a bit, but its more that they have just switched positions I guess you could say. Its not like Nvidia's cards are inherently bad video cards, its simply that the HD4800s are outperforming them. I mean one company has to be better at points right? And its not like AMD rolled over and died just because the 8800/9800 cards were better than their HD3800s.

I don't think comparing any of Nvidia's new cards to something like a 2900XT is sensible, because that sort of thing is a phenomenon to itself. Is AMD taking the performance crown this time? Seems so. Is there anything horribly wrong with the Nvidia cards? So far, no. Even on things like "heat" and "power consumption" both companies seem to be on the same level this time around, its really just a performance war.

Assuming all things accurate, AMD won this time - but I don't think that will stop people from buying Nvidia cards anymore than it stopped people from buying ATI HD3870s
 
hd4870sdh5.png


Our AMD rep gave us the green light to post some preliminary benchmarks of the HD4870s in single and CrossFire setups.
Results are on our forums:

http://www.ibuypower.com/dri/ThreadDisplay.aspx?FID=2&QID=161

It certainly looks promising for the Reds considering the pricepoint they are offering their HD4800 series cards. 😀

Let me know if you have questions or don't like how we test.
 
Looks like 45-50% scaling with your system on Crossfire, pretty acceptable stats for a launch product.

That seems like an odd phenomenon with the 4870 CF at 16*12*4 performing lower in WIC bench than the single 4870

I'm sure some people will appreciate the mod tip on the blue control pin - I read about people having good success with this on the 4850

Well, I eagerly await your post on the hybrid crossfire Quad, i'll bookmark it.

I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate an overclocking post on your forum too if you happen to have time.

Thanks again for the link
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom