Core i7: 4-Way CrossFire, 3-way SLI, Paradise?

[grieve]

i have always hated the scroll bar! lol

 

[Guest]

I'm a little confused here. The picture on page 1 clearly shows HD4870 X2s, but the text always says that they are using just an HD4870. It would make sense for the low benchmark scores if the cards were in fact HD4870s. Any answers?

 

[Wish I Was Wealthy]

I have a P6T already,but I bought a i7 core 2.93 GHz also at the same time.Now I only have enough spare credit card funds to either buy a core i7 3.2 GHz or 2 x GTX 280 cards.The trouble is in Australia our $1- is only worth 0.63 cents to the U.S. $1-.Core i7 3.2 GHz are going for $2,000.00 cents to $3,000.00 cents approx,while GTX 280 cards are going from $600.00 to $1,000.00 cents approx. depending on brand and if it is over clocked.So 2 over clocked cards equals to 1 i7 core 3.2 GHz at the lower end price in Australia...So think yourselves lucky in the U.S. that your hardware ain't so expensive...Also no EVGA FTW GTX 280 is seen down here,only XFX GTX 280 xXx is seen...Happy Spending in the U.S. of America.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Vulchan[/nom]I'm a little confused here. The picture on page 1 clearly shows HD4870 X2s, but the text always says that they are using just an HD4870. It would make sense for the low benchmark scores if the cards were in fact HD4870s. Any answers?[/citation]

For our single 4870 results, one 4870 was used. For the 2x and 4x CrossFire scores, one or two X2s were used, as referenced on page 4 of the story

 

[ennui]

Thanks for writing this review. Exactly the type of article gamers looking to buy high-end hardware need.



Would be interesting to see systems tuned with higher-end cooling solutions and overclocking in the future. However, at present, it seems that the graphics card manufacturers' work on driver optimization will be needed to bring performance up to a playable level for some of these titles.

 

[Guest]

just wait for the other intel chip coming out near 2011.

sandriver familly i think. 80 cores and 300 megs of l3 cache. the same size of a core i7.

the die for the sandriver as already been done. they just can't get it out yet. damn those menager at intel.

 

[mapesdhs]

can't afford i7,

Where did you get this info?

And how exactly is this magical chip going to communicate with
main RAM? Or anything else for that matter...

Consumers don't need such things. If Intel makes anything like
that as a commercial product, it'll be for HPC markets, like
SGI's Altix ICE.

Ian.

 

[royalcrown]

[citation][nom]antiacid[/nom]so spending 1250$ for 3way SLI 280gtx, 1000$ on a cpu, 400$ on an enthusiast mobo and 500$ on ram (for a total of around 3100$) will yield good results at high resolution. Well, well...well. What a surprise.Can't wait for someone to look at fps/$ comparison to actually discuss what is a good "enthusiast" system. As it stands, this kind of system is for "wealthy enthusiasts" which isn't exactly the core market of Nvidia, intel or tom's[/citation]

..you forgot the 150-300 dollar power supply upgrade..

 

[mapesdhs]

Let's face it, the real gains obtained with systems like this
in terms of frame rates are often irrelevant for many games.
Review sites show numerous games give good update rates with
just a single decent card, never mind a Crossfire/SLI setup.
And with driver issues meaning that some games respond poorly
to either Crossfire or SLI, it can be a bad idea if the game
you want to play is one of those affected.

Meanwhile, toms' own charts show that quite often a much
cheaper dual-card setup such as 4850 CF or 8800GT SLI gives
results that are just as good or better than more expensive
setups using 4870s or GTX280s.

In other words, if a game is already doing 80fps (eg. CoD4),
there's no point bothering with CF/SLI; if it's doing 30, two
cheaper cards will give the desired result; if it's much less
than that (eg. Crysis), better off waiting for new products
than spending a fortune on multiple highend cards that usually
won't deliver the desired result anyway and will be out of
date within 3 months because of new product launches and/or
price changes.

Very expensive setups are more about bragging points than
real gaming performance differences (I proved this to my own
satisfaction by getting superior 3DMark06 results a coupla years
back using an AGP X1950 system with a very cheap mbd, compared
to review sites that used much more expensive mbds with the
PCIe X1950). But hey, if you can genuinely afford it, then who
cares? It's obviously fun. But if one is going to start
talking about price/performance then sure, the argument for
buying this sort of setup breaks down easily. I figure the
market for expensive systems are precisely those people for
whom price/performance isn't much of a concern.

Ian.

 

[Guest]

Sincerely this test isn't fair.

First there's a lot of difference between GTX280 and 4870, comparing the price of the items a more realistic test would be with GTX280 vs 4870X2.

Another thing it's missing is the test of GTX280 on PhenomX4 platform, and again, in this case let's show the price of items since the performance/cost calculation really say something more interesting.

Otherwise it's just a useless bench except the nice data about extreme resolutions, that mainly show how drivers are not ready for that.

 

[cangelini]

Hi McLois,

Not sure if you read the story or not, but this story is all *about* the GTX 280 and 4870 X2.

A price engine like pricegrabber.com might be more of what you're looking for if you just want to put products and price tags side-by-side. The goal here was to evaluate performance, which requires performance benchmarks.

Thanks, and have a good New Year!
Chris

 

[Guest]

Hmm

"With that said, gaming on Core i7 is hardly paradise—though Intel spared no expense importing the palm trees (an ultra-fast CPU), white sand beaches (familiar CrossFireX multi-card rendering support), and fruity umbrella drinks (Nvidia’s SLI technology, enabled on a palatable desktop platform for the first time—we’re not counting Skulltrail here)."

That sentence is unfinished and makes no sense :/

 

[CptTripps]

I find the people stating they don't need a $1000 processor from Intel to be quite annoying. Of course you don't, Tom's is just lucky enough to have one. You buy the i7 920 and overclock to 3.2Ghz (or more) on it's stock cooling.

I spent some extra cash as I do multitrack studio work but my i7 920 with 9GB and 1GB 4850 cost right around $1300. Not cheap, but far from $3100 and it tears through most games at the highest settings. When I start to slow I know I can drop a new GPU in and the i7 will more than keep up.

 

[cangelini]

What's funnier is when we don't use the 3.2 GHz chip and the same people complain that our benchmarks are CPU-constrained because faster CPUs are available

 

[CptTripps]

[citation][nom]antiacid[/nom]so spending 1250$ for 3way SLI 280gtx, 1000$ on a cpu, 400$ on an enthusiast mobo and 500$ on ram (for a total of around 3100$) will yield good results at high resolution. Well, well...well. What a surprise.[/citation]

Darn, I have to respond again. Did you just pull prices from thin air?

6GB DDR3 7-7-7 kits = about $90 on newegg, you can spend more if your ram needs to be cool colors or have led lights but you inflated the RAM cost by about $400.
GTX280 x3 = $840 (You inflated that one by $410.
i7 920 which hits 3.2 easily = $280
Motherboard capable of 3way SLI = ~$250 (Inflated by $150)
For a total of $1460.

So, same level components but with some actual shopping done I just saved $1640 off you imaginary numbers.

AMD fanboy dreaming up numbers to support his claim.... Well, well... well. What a suprise.

 

[sandmanwn]

They guy said nothing about AMD. What is your issue?

And why are you digging up topics no one has posted in for over 4 months? Trolling last years postings is really lame.

 

[malstrom]

This Benchmark is Faulty i'm getting Way better FPS with my 4850 and a E8400 then a I7 and a 4870? whats with that? False Bench Mark Tom you need to Fix that...