Radeon HD 4870: Better Than GTX 260!

[homerdog]

^Got any links on the 4890 or 4890X2? Those are news to me...

 

[sentenced83]

am playing at a res. of 1280X1024 , which card is better if i play at that res. with AA ? because i heard that ATi has some problems with AA ? 4870 or gtx 260 ?

 

[urahozer]

Current Gen ATI PWNS AA, A 4870 almost consistently catches up or passes a GTX 280 when all is turned on

 

[Guest]

so can the 4850 512 gddr5 run crysis in high with my system

3.16 core2duo

2 gb drr2 ram

?

 

[homerdog]

^Yes, although I must point out that there is no such thing as a 4850 512 gddr5.

 

[winderic]

thanks for the review.
Anyone know if there any difference with Asus and Sapphire?
Planning to get one 4870, but dont know which brand to choose, but i'll be using M3A79-T Deluxe. Thanks

 

[enewmen]

[citation][nom]winderic[/nom]thanks for the review.Anyone know if there any difference with Asus and Sapphire?Planning to get one 4870, but dont know which brand to choose, but i'll be using M3A79-T Deluxe. Thanks[/citation]
Personally I'll look for a 4780 with 1024 megs of RAM. This will help in 1920x1200 or higher res. It will also help in games with many large textures (Crysis, Warhead, FarCry2, etc).
For the brand, any popular brand is good. It's more about features ->Game bundle, aftermarket cooler, remote-control, cables & CDs included, nice box, etc.

 

[winderic]

Just wandering, is there any difference with 2x4870(512MB) and 4870 (1G)? i know that you will need higher PSU to run cross fire.Will the performance have great different? Or it just smth like CPU, with another one,it just run faster and better...

 

[enewmen]

[citation][nom]winderic[/nom]Just wandering, is there any difference with 2x4870(512MB) and 4870 (1G)? i know that you will need higher PSU to run cross fire.Will the performance have great different? Or it just smth like CPU, with another one,it just run faster and better...[/citation]
There is a big difference between 2x512meg and 1x1024meg. 2x512 = 512.
So you don't get extra texure/res memory with crossfire. CF can add a lot of performance for only a little money, but that is tricky. Some benchmarks show big gains and other benchmarks show no gains. It's best to match 2x 4870s or 2x4850s in CF. A good place to start looking is the Tomshardware.com Charts->Graphics Cards->3rd quarter cards. Then you can see what games do better in CF and which do better with extra memory. You many need to look for other benchmarks if you can't find a 4850 1024meg card, for example. One killer card is the 4870-X2 which has 2 GPUs built in (1 card) for CF and 1024megs for EACH GPU.
For CPUs, ANY C2D can play ANY current game well. Even the older Althon X2 5000+ can still do well with enough RAM and a good video card. In 1-2 years, you will start seeing faster framrates with quad-core, 64bit, etc. But for now, 2 core and XP is good enough.
my $0.02....

 

[boise49ers]

I have the 4870 1 gig by Powercolor. It is a great card, my processor holds it back. Athlon 64x2 2.8 at 5600. I actually had to tone some settings down because the lighting is over the top. World at War(cod) is way sweet. Far Cry 2 is nice too.

 

[spearhead]

if you like you could tweak the idle and fan settings for lower power consumption and a more silent workspace without loozing to much preformance at all. just decrease the idle clock to something very low like 125-150MHZ and put the memory at 200MHZ. this should save about 40 Watt on a radeon 4870 in idle modus. then you might be able to lower the voltage a bit, But if you do this you must know what your doing and do it by small margins at a time testing stabiity at every step for a good amount of time since this could damage your hardware if its done wrong. the perfect optimization could take days to achieve. i wonder how low you can make the power usage on the new amd dragon platform. it already has been proven the standard voltage of deneb is higher then is needed even in idle. and that is something i like, low power usage in idle and preformance in load. the powerusage in load isn't that importment at all for me since my system will run idle most of the time

 

[radiowars]

This review seems a little odd. The GTX 260 beat the 4870 (1gb) in all benchmarks at this site- http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd4870-1024.html
Idk whats going on...

 

[nukemaster]

Well, first Toms review is older(about 4 months older) and second you are comparing the plain old Geforce GTX 260 that has 192 sp's to a new one with 216.

Nvidia did the same thing when they redesigned the 8800GTS

If they would just use a different name then the end user would be able to tell more easily. lets say GTS 260 with 192 and GTS 265 with 216. Most cards are labeled as gts 260 216, but a number makes more sense.