Radeon HD 4870: Better Than GTX 260!

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Ok, well I'm very happy I've been waiting to upgrade. I see my nearly $200 8600gtx xxx whatever would have been a supreme error. I keep reading and comparing and reading and comparing, and now I see how I find out when the new cards are hitting the sales channels.
Went from p35, to x38,to x48, now I've got the p45 board I want picked out... just not sure if I can get myself to jump. I read about nehalem, seems it will be pcie 2.0 or the like, and with only 30% increase at = clock, who cares, not me.
So anyway, I'm so pissed and frustrated, they keep BARELY making improvements in these new chipsets... cripes the G80 768 meg is still near topping the chart... the G84, the G92, the whatever... it's been YEARS and that thing still wins a lot of the time...
I just about got the 8800gts, then a week ago the 9800gtx, now there's a plus and this 4850 and 4870... plus i hear the gtx+ in a few weeks and the 4870 /1024 mem.
GRRRRRRR....
I know tell me I can do this till I'm blue and bawling...lol
My complaint is the performance increases are so gradual and pissy, and expensive, and they could just get on with it, make a 512 bit interface and jam ddr5 on it, and really make an upgrade worthwhile.
Instead I'm reading about jumping 10% perf. increases at a couple hundred bucks or more...
COME ON, YOU'RE REALLY SCREWING US ALL ....
Just max the bit width and jam the fast ram on it, for cripes sakes!
Oh I am so sick of this....
( I know most of you think "what a jerk or whatever" and you'rte right... to an extent... I don't trust these piddly lame increases, it's like they're milking the juju... )
Gosh I hope I'm wrong and they just can't handle it.
It's like that 512 bit 512ram hd2900 pro that you could just bios flash to their xtx xxx card, that disappeared like lightning and they cut from the channels.
I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sick of hearing how much it costs them to make the things....
Their costs may be most of it at low end, but they just JUMP the prices SKY HIGH everytime they release their 10% better performer, and a few months later the new 10%'er is 400 or 600 bucks again, and I'm sitting here going "whew" glad it's only $200 bucks because I almost dropped $500 on it...
Oh I am sooooooo sick of it.
Piddle piddle piddle piddle out the minor increases and it's a dang stock market $$$$$$$$$ psychofest on their pricing SCHEMES.
Ok, I'll shut up now. I could have done better complaining, they can just **** *** . < I put in the astericks.
Have a nice day.
Thanks I feel better.
 
[citation][nom]homerdog[/nom]I think there isn't much of a need (at normal resolutions) for anything faster than an 8800GTX at the moment, probably because of the console-first mentality that developers have been subscribing to. So everyone seems to be shooting for G80 performance at <$200, which ain't bad in my opinion.[/citation]
Sure I agree. However I have a 8800GT and I don't see any reason to upgrade yet. It's kind of fustrating never seeing a GTX killer after nearly 2 years. Still waiting to play Crysis @ 1920x1200 @ 40+ fps MAX settings. Just thinking of future games that require faster systems than Crysis - Unless you are right, this will never happen, and Crysis will be the most demanding DX10 game ever. (the console idea). A bit disappointed.
 

Ditto

I wasn't trying to imply that Crysis will be the most demanding DX10 game ever, but it probably will hold the title for a good long while... at least until Warhead 😛 (yea I know they said Warhead won't be as demanding but I'll believe it when I see it).
 
Im glad to see radeon getting back into the game, im even more impressed that they are doing more with less which I believe is the way to go.. nivida is focusing on raw power with little reguard to power requirements but with current trends in society leaning torwards "Green" friendly products its only a matter of time before nivida is going to hunker down and try to do more with less and the fact that you can only fit so many transistors within a givin space (and we are rapidly approaching that limit) means that efficiency is going to be more important than raw power
 
Flight Simulator X was in fact barely playable with the 4870 and the current drivers.

Can anyone explain why??
 

Thanks for the reply. But what does "Ditto" mean?
 
I find it ironic that AMD brags up power consumption when their CPUs aren't competitive in performance, and then dismisses power consumption altogether when their video cards use more than than the competition but are almost as good in performance. Gotta love marketing.

Personally, I'm not impressed with either manufacturer's video cards at the moment. I'll wait until they catch up to CPUs and go to 45nm or better. :)
 

The 4870 takes about 120watts at load(+/- 10watts or so). This is not bad for the performance. The GTX 260 takes nearly 150 watts. It does excel at idle times however, but its not like the 4870 is sucking 400 watts or anything.

I do wish both would cut idle power a bit more like Intel and AMD have with cpu's, but at the same time i did not like idle clocks as they did not increase when playing a windowed game.
 
Hi...i wanted to send u a letter asking this but as i didnt find the place to do that i'll ask u here. I want to buy a pc that has this graphics card but i'm a fan of FSX and Call Of Duty so i have a problem. In your tests the ATI HD 4870 doest look very good handling FSX but looks good with COD4. I wanted to know if it realy is bad with FSX or If it's just not the best, but ok? Hope u answer meon this plz...
thks

ps great review
 
[citation][nom]MoNz[/nom]Hi...i wanted to send u a letter asking this but as i didnt find the place to do that i'll ask u here. I want to buy a pc that has this graphics card but i'm a fan of FSX and Call Of Duty so i have a problem. In your tests the ATI HD 4870 doest look very good handling FSX but looks good with COD4. I wanted to know if it realy is bad with FSX or If it's just not the best, but ok? Hope u answer meon this plz...thksps great review[/citation]
No card is that good with FSX, the game is worse than Crysis. The only good thing is that it is decently multi-threaded, so its god if you have cash to burn on skulltrail.
 
[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]No card is that good with FSX, the game is worse than Crysis. The only good thing is that it is decently multi-threaded, so its god if you have cash to burn on skulltrail.[/citation]


well thks.. =)
 
FSX is almost completely reliant on CPU core speed. Did the tester make sure that the affinity was set to all cores for FSX? Any rig that has a core speed of 2.8g or below will ultimately suck because of the way the game is structured. Doesn't matter if it's dual core, tri core or quad core. FSX is a great game, and doesn't rely too much on what gfx card you have. It's all clock speed with it. Look it up if you are skeptical. The programmers have made note of it in their forums.
 
Is this an ATI fansite? This review was the most biased i've ever seen. I love the fact that drivers issues where never even mentioned. Catalyst drivers are some of the buggiest pieces of crap out there. I also love the fact that from all the nagative points ATI scored, the reviewer only took power consumption and haha NOISE! OH MY GOD the GeForce's are noisy! grow a set would ya.

It's over for AMD/ATI. sooner or later NVidia will release a new chipset and a new board. With all the developers that are working there, it aint that hard. I still have the GeForce 8800 Ultra and I borrowed my friend's GeForce GTX 260 and the difference is barely noticeable. The GeForce 8800 was Nvidia's big dog and still is. Sandwitching two GPU's together isn't innovative, but having one GPU that can do similar performance is indeed impressive.

Unless AMD steps it up and start fixing their issues, they'll dwindle and die soon.

My 2 cents.
 
When was the last time you used an ATI card?

I love the fact that drivers issues where never even mentioned
Click to expand...

This is not the days of the 9800Pro where sometimes the drivers sucked.

the reviewer only took power consumption and haha NOISE! OH MY GOD the GeForce's are noisy! grow a set would ya.
Click to expand...
They did performance tests too, it beat the GTX260 in many on them, thus the title.

If ATI has such a bad lineup, then why did Nvidia feel compelled to drop the prices across the board? Maybe because at under 300 dollars they had NOTHING to compete.

Unless AMD steps it up and start fixing their issues, they'll dwindle and die soon.
Click to expand...
Unless you are running an ATI card now you have no clue how the drivers are. ATI in fact has far superior driver for Vista 64 to Nvidia. A simple fact I have tested with the 8800GTX, X1900XT and HD4870. Both ATI cards have far more stability under Vista 64(too many game performance and graphics issues, they work on new games and forget older or less known games) then the 8800 does.

Whats next? blame Vista? I would have(and I was, but figured I better try my old X1900XT to be sure) but if one card works properly then the only company to blame for me is Nvidia.

Looks like you are the fanboy shazam, No one ever said that Nvidia was bad. They said that in the $300 price range the 4870 is hard to beat(and it beats the GTX 260 in enough tests to give the title of the article). Nvidia's price drops will close the gap, but I was sick of waiting on drivers(the one thing you complain about). There are inf modded GTX 200 drivers that fix many issues(not all), too bad Nvidia did not make then available to the users of other cards.

My 10 cents.
 
[citation][nom]nukemaster[/nom]The 4870 takes about 120watts at load(+/- 10watts or so). This is not bad for the performance. The GTX 260 takes nearly 150 watts. It does excel at idle times however, but its not like the 4870 is sucking 400 watts or anything.I do wish both would cut idle power a bit more like Intel and AMD have with cpu's, but at the same time i did not like idle clocks as they did not increase when playing a windowed game.[/citation]

Those appear to be idle (not loaded) power consumption numbers
 
[citation][nom]dark41[/nom]I find it ironic that AMD brags up power consumption when their CPUs aren't competitive in performance, and then dismisses power consumption altogether when their video cards use more than than the competition but are almost as good in performance. Gotta love marketing.Personally, I'm not impressed with either manufacturer's video cards at the moment. I'll wait until they catch up to CPUs and go to 45nm or better. [/citation]

Looks like the Nvidia's use more, when you are actually doing something...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-15.html
 

120 according to here

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354

144-160 according to here(they tend to over estimate)

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

It is important to note that when you game not only the video card loads up but the cpu as well. Both together start to take more power. Toms also test full system consumption not just the card. There is also an amount of loss in the psu it self.

In a test. i load the cpu to the max(Prime95) and then open ATItools scan for artifacts. This gives me about a 65 watt increase in power use at the wall(before the psu losses are taken into consideration). This almost lines up with atomicmpc.com.au's idle-load delta. That said those are loaded numbers.

Systems in most cases are not nearly as power hungry as one would think.
 
Did you see when this article was posted? before any such turnings. Nvidia only dropped the prices because of ATI's new cards. There was another post with the fact that prices are dropping.

This is not abnormal in the computer industry. those prices help us all.
 
ATI Radeons high-end lineup

4850 = Pro
4870 = XT
4870 X2 = X2
4890 = XTX
4890 X2 = XTX X2

3 cards are out, 2 more to go. if AMD/ATI is really serious in dethroning nVidia in high-ends/ultra high-ends, they should or they MUST release the remaining 3.

and AMD/ATI, don't leave massive gap between the high-end and the midrange.
 
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