HD4870 X2 vs GTX295 with Catalyst 9.1

Catalyst 9.1 comming :)

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Originally Posted by Morais

guess what....9.1 comming....http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

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http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6&postcount=27

Driverheaven Test Setup

BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX
Zotac GeForce GTX 285 AMP! Edition
Zotac GeForce GTX 295
BFG GeForce GTX 295

Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2 GB
ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Intel i7-965EE
3x2GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 8-8-8-24-2T
Foxconn Blood Rage Motherboard
Samsung SyncMaster 305T
Akasa 1000W PSU
Benq 16x DVD Writer
LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray Writer
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive
Belkin Wireless-G PCI card
1x Intel 80GB SSD
2x WD Raptor Hard Drives (OS/Games on RAID 0 Drives)
1x Hitachi Deskstar
Arctic Cooling MX-2 Paste
CoolIT Domino ALC

Windows Vista Ultimate 64Bit + SP1
Forceware Release 181.22
Catalyst 9.1
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews....d=711&pageid=7

im still waiting for 9.1 drivers grr

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Originally Posted by redrumy3

im still waiting for 9.1 drivers grr

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yea they are already overdue. i hope this is because they are packing the drivers instead of just throwing out some crap that barely works.

Interesting that in Crysis high-res 4870 X2 is better than GTX 295 :) But of course CFX is nothing compared to Quad-SLI...
Check the GRID at 2560*1600... Ati is still kicking nvidia's ass ;)

So their 295's topped out @ 71c also, i guess i'm not the only one. Three seperate people have reported 100c+ temps with this card in the past few days, made me scratch my head!

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Originally Posted by LaMpiR

Interesting that in Crysis high-res 4870 X2 is better than GTX 295 :) But of course CFX is nothing compared to Quad-SLI...
Check the GRID at 2560*1600... Ati is still kicking nvidia's ass ;)

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And let's not forget. 3x GTX285 beats both 2x 4870X2 and 2x GTX295.

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Originally Posted by Xello

So their 295's topped out @ 71c also, i guess i'm not the only one. Three seperate people have reported 100c+ temps with this card in the past few days, made me scratch my head!

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Can you say biased review ;)

Anyway, I fear the GTX 295 might face the same disastrous QA failure we had with the 280.. almost 40% of the cards were shipped with craptastic IHS - core contact, thus overheating.. :shakes:

Biassed or what?

I see the Ati 4870X2 slightly edging it in nearly all the tests

Now where's Cat 9.1?

what's this 9.1 you speak of ?

mystical bunny ?

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Originally Posted by 003

And let's not forget. 3x GTX285 beats both 2x 4870X2 and 2x GTX295.

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let us not forget that 3x sli uses 3x alternate frame rendering, if u could use 4x alternate frame rendering u would get much higher scores but more than 2x it gets messed up on ati and NV.

the scores are impressive i wasnt expecting NV to come back but they are trading and in most games are in the margin of error. and it looks like they fixed AF warhead so hopefully its out soon

and i guess ati wins since they win blue ray:yepp:

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Originally Posted by jcool

Can you say biased review ;)

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Yeah i too suspect that they went out and bought 295's until they came across one with lowest temps possible, or maybe kept asking from sponsors :yepp:

the only reason why i don't like the gtx295 is because its a striped down version of the 285 with two cores. the 4870x2 is the same exact thing as two 4870s xfired but the 4870x2 still has that sideport which hasn't been turned on yet. but two gtx285s slied will beat a gtx295. i always thought the point of making a dual gpu card was to save space and the costs of having two of the single gpu card.

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Originally Posted by Loque

what's this 9.1 you speak of ?

mystical bunny ?

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looks like it.

in an ati vs nvidia argument people keep repeating 9.1 n stuff but there is no place u can download this mythical 9.1 even tho the 1st month of this year is almost over.

tbh i wonder y it hasnt been released yet seeing reviewers used it a few weeks ago. One might say that there is a problem with this mythical 9.1 seeing it stil isnt here.

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Originally Posted by Xello

Yeah i too suspect that they went out and bought 295's until they came across one with lowest temps possible, or maybe kept asking from sponsors :yepp:

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or custom fan profile from the sponsor :D , its not like NV always dose that

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Originally Posted by jcool

Can you say biased review ;)

Anyway, I fear the GTX 295 might face the same disastrous QA failure we had with the 280.. almost 40% of the cards were shipped with craptastic IHS - core contact, thus overheating.. :shakes:

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Same here with most nVidia cards, especially OC'd 280s. We do however have contacts at DH...

9.1 Linux Driver is out though
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6392098
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14458

I "love" the perfomance hit caused by PhysX... yeah really nice addition.

Yes very biased and their test setup was very uneven, they had mis-matched resolutions for many of the games and many of them didn't include 2560x1600 which the 4870X2 excels at.

Also, if their card is running at over 90 degrees, than they didn't change the default fan speed which is too low.

yea, im one of those with a craptastic GTX 295. Its going back to Newegg in the next day or so for a replacement and then its off to the For Sale forum.

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The performance of the GTX 295 was also excellent in many of the games we tested and the card was regularly ahead of the single GPU products from ATI and Nvidia, as well as the 4870 X2.

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YEEAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, a DUAL GPU vs DUAL GPU card bench and of course, nVidia had to win it. :yepp:

Which BTW, there are already some crying about. As usual..........

So these benchmarks were done with Cat 9.1 drivers? I see some interesting Warhead and FC2 results, but nothing to write home about - certainly nothing worth overdue drivers.

I wonder if there is something else to them - would love DH to do a 8.12 <-vs-> 9.1 comparison.

Latest 8.12 hotfix drivers are infact 9.1 beta drivers...and online for weeks already!

Edit: Damn lol, good ol' hd4870x2 still can't be (completely) raped by the gtx295. These drivers are golden.

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Originally Posted by CedricFP

So these benchmarks were done with Cat 9.1 drivers? I see some interesting Warhead and FC2 results, but nothing to write home about - certainly nothing worth overdue drivers.

I wonder if there is something else to them - would love DH to do a 8.12 <-vs-> 9.1 comparison.

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check computerbase.de they have done a comparison between 8.12 and 9.1 beta about 2 weeks ago

Hey, in Crysis it was equal between ATI and NV. I mean, the 4870X2 and the single GTX295. More marketing tricks from the green team, it should be 285X2+.

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Originally Posted by ownage

Latest 8.12 hotfix drivers are infact 9.1 beta drivers...and online for weeks already!

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I had no idea that the 8.12 hotfix drivers were 9.1 betas. But if that is the case, why are they taking so long to release officially supported 9.1's?

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Originally Posted by GeertDB

check computerbase.de they have done a comparison between 8.12 and 9.1 beta about 2 weeks ago

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Thanks friend, that's very helpful :up:

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Originally Posted by Nasgul

YEEAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, a DUAL GPU vs DUAL GPU card bench and of course, nVidia had to win it. :yepp:

Which BTW, there are already some crying about. As usual..........

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I know you've heard...the benches only matter if the fanboi's get the results they were hoping for. If they don't, they don't matter. The common tactic is to attack the reviewer/review site when their favorite card just doesn't measure up anymore. We have a forum full of threads like that.

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Originally Posted by CedricFP

I had no idea that the 8.12 hotfix drivers were 9.1 betas. But if that is the case, why are they taking so long to release officially supported 9.1's?

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There goes a rumour that AMD would have told there partners to keep some room left at Cebit for some new midrange ATI cards to show. AMD seems to be very quit about these new cards. I can understand why AMD wants that not only the newest drivers, but also the drivers from last month support these new cards.
So maybe, just a possibility, AMD waits till 31 January to release cat9.1 with support for these new midrange cards.

Edit: This year Cebit is in March instead of February?

guess what....9.1 comming....http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Lol, you should have post earlier man. There goes my statement. :p:

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Originally Posted by ownage

Lol, you should have post earlier man. There goes my statement. :p:

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I kept refreshing ati website every 10 seconds, so no way to post it earlier :rofl:

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Originally Posted by Morais

I kept refreshing ati website every 10 seconds, so no way to post it earlier :rofl:

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:D .

you would think they would try to get at least some kind of driver out this month. i can't remember the last time they skipped a month. so im hoping it will be out soon especially after we have been seeing it on review sites.

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Originally Posted by T_Flight

I know you've heard...the benches only matter if the fanboi's get the results they were hoping for. If they don't, they don't matter. The common tactic is to attack the reviewer/review site when their favorite card just doesn't measure up anymore. We have a forum full of threads like that.

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how can you agree with the biggest Intel/Nvidia fanboy ever created.....
do some research about him, i cannot believe he is not banned already, the rest of your statement is completely true, but please, dont quote him (my ignore list will not work) and definetly don't agree with him

I couldn't read that review!...
I'm an Nvidia fan, and I would have liked to see a good comparison... not that!:down:

Looks like HD4870X2 is still the better choice overall. R700 gets consistently higher minimum FPS (and that's what counts), except for some titles where CF is broken or GTX295 is marginally faster.

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Too bad selling a GTX295 is a very bad deal for nV, let alone the AIBs.
AMD and AIBs actually make profit by peddling R700s. But it's been like that since spring '08 so nothing has really changed. Except nV can now offer similar performance at 25% higher price.

The 9.1 WHQL drivers were not released to reviewers until last night. Before that we were fed countless beta versions of the drivers with very different performance from one to another. If I had to make a guess, I would say that they didn't use actual 9.1 drivers but the latest beta build sent before the official WHQL driver release. I guess calling them 9.1 has a certain ring to it though...

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Originally Posted by largon

Looks like HD4870X2 is still the better choice overall. R700 gets consistently higher minimum FPS (and that's what counts), except for some titles where CF is broken or GTX295 is marginally faster.

Too bad selling a GTX295 is a very bad deal for nV, let alone the AIBs.
AMD and AIBs actually make profit by peddling R700s. But it's been like that since spring '08 so nothing has really changed. Except nV can now offer similar performance at 25% higher price.

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Agreed, also it's amazing to see how well a $325 card performs against a 700$ GTX285 SLI setup at High resolutions.

Rating - 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF

ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 248,0
ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 8.11 236,1
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 SLI 186,7
Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 141,3
ATi Radeon HD 4870 1GB 130,5
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 100,0
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 92,7
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260² 75,4
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 73,5
ATi Radeon HD 4870 50,4
ATi Radeon HD 4850 46,7
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 2,9


Link

One word of comment. Sort your graphs from highest to lowest please. It makes it THAT much easier to read. *puts on his old man glasses*

^Highest what - min, average or max FPS?

To tell you the truth I have never like that website.

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Originally Posted by 003

And let's not forget. 3x GTX285 beats both 2x 4870X2 and 2x GTX295.

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$800 ATI vs. 1500 Nvidia. Hrmmmm Anyone dishing out this much with DX11 coming is insane.

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Originally Posted by largon

^Highest what - min, average or max FPS?

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all of them :rofl:


One can wish for interactive graphs one day that let us sort the data set ourselves =)

If these are the same as the 8.12 hotfixes, then I am not impressed.

The 8.12 hotfixes still give the same black screen problem with Armed Assault on more than 3GB of RAM. No such problem on nV.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a download link?

Vista64
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206..._enu_74234.exe

Where's snipedogg?? It looks like that :COMPUTERBASE: thread on here was pure bs. the only nocible gains i have seen is in farcry 2. not even crysis warhead saw any improvements

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/17...sta/index.html

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Originally Posted by Glow9

$800 ATI vs. 1500 Nvidia. Hrmmmm Anyone dishing out this much with DX11 coming is insane.

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By the time that DX11 will be used in any significant way, we will be on the refresh of the first DX11 cards or even a completely new gen.

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Originally Posted by Glow9

$800 ATI vs. 1500 Nvidia. Hrmmmm Anyone dishing out this much with DX11 coming is insane.

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I am already using dx11, where is my cards and games to play with?
:ROTF:

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Originally Posted by jasonelmore

Where's snipedogg?? It looks like that :COMPUTERBASE: thread on here was pure bs. the only nocible gains i have seen is in farcry 2. not even crysis warhead saw any improvements

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/17...sta/index.html

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According to Tweaktown...

Performance of 9.1 = 8.12 = 8.11 = 8.10 = 8.9 = 8.8 = 8.7 = 8.6 = 8.5 = 8.4 = 8.3 = you know the deal = BS

But anyway if it makes your fangirl roots happy... :rofl:

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Originally Posted by Macadamia

According to Tweaktown...

Performance of 9.1 = 8.12 = 8.11 = 8.10 = 8.9 = 8.8 = 8.7 = 8.6 = 8.5 = 8.4 = 8.3 = you know the deal = BS

But anyway if it makes your fangirl roots happy... :rofl:

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Is that why you admited that this is a bug fix driver only? Several people are showing no performance increases.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=216176

hmmm i have until the 8th to return my 295

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Originally Posted by GeertDB

how can you agree with the biggest Intel/Nvidia fanboy ever created.....
do some research about him, i cannot believe he is not banned already, the rest of your statement is completely true, but please, dont quote him (my ignore list will not work) and definetly don't agree with him

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T_Flight is buddy-buddy with him, has the exact same misconstrued POV. Heck you should see when T_Flight posts in the same thread as Shintai. They have to post in every single AMD/ATi thread and crap on it and then they also post in every Intel/Nvidia thread and glorify them.
It is getting old...

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Originally Posted by jasonelmore

Is that why you admited that this is a bug fix driver only? Several people are showing no performance increases.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=216176

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That review enabled Adaptive AA setting it to Quality. That will reduce performance and, how it functions from game to game can vary. Besides, the multi-core performance additions will be in Cat 9-2. :up:

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Originally Posted by LordEC911

T_Flight is buddy-buddy with him, has the exact same misconstrued POV. Heck you should see when T_Flight posts in the same thread as Shintai. They have to post in every single AMD/ATi thread and crap on it and then they also post in every Intel/Nvidia thread and glorify them.
It is getting old...

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I think he was talking about Nasgul, but they're the same. Worse actually.

my response to all this. remeber that the 4870x2 came out in august 08

My comments: test more games where the x2 wins and you will get a better qualitative comparison.... It's really hard to read these reivews but at the least they are a very biased site: in the mirrors edge chart they switched the 1920x1200 295 results with the 2560x1600 this made it look like the 295 won by hundreds of FPS in the second test when it really did not.

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4870x2 v2 295:
WAW:
1) 59-87-168 vs 69-102-151  verdict: 295  (14.5+14.7-10.1)/3 = 6.3 pts
2) 43-68-111 vs 49-88-131  verdict: 295  (12.2+22.7+15.2)/3 = 17 pts

CrysisWarhead:
1) 26-45-61 vs 21-44-58 verdict: 4870x2  (19.2+2.2+4.9)/3 = 8.8
2) 18-30-39 vs 13-29-36 verdict: 4870x2  (27.7+3.3+7.6)/3 = 12.9

FC2:
1) 53-71-95 vs 41-63-83 verdict: 4870x2 (22.6+11.2+12.6)/3 = 15.5
2) 3-9-49  vs 6-16-37  verdict: niether card has playable frames

GRID:
1) 114-145-168 vs 81-110-140 verdict: 4870x2 (28.9+24.1+16.6)/3 = 23.2 pts
2) 84-107-139 vs 63-85-107  verdict: 4870x2 (25+20.5+23)/3 = 22.8

GTAIV
1) 18-36-70 vs 34-43-70 verdict: 295 (47+16.2+0)/3 = 21
2) 15-37-62 vs 27-39-58 verdict: 295 (44+5.1-6.4) = 14.2

L4D
1) 90-135-211 vs 85-138-203 verdict: 4870x2 (5.5-2.1+3.8)/3 = 2.4
2) 60-87-133  vs 39-98-176 verdict: (35-11.2-24)/3 = 0 pts for either TIE

LPC:
1) 32-52-76 vs 34-68-103 verdict: 295 (5.8+23.5+26.2)/3 = 18.5
2) 18-31-46 vs 13-41-62  verdict: 295 (-27+24+25.8)/3 = 7.6 pts

Tombraider (CF not working)
295 wins

WIC:
1) 78-93-119 vs 84-104-123 verdict: 295 (7%+10.5%+3.2%)/3= 6.9pts
2) 55-64-83 vs 56-70 84    verdict: 295 (1.7%+8%+1.1%)/3= 3.6pts
ME:
1) 86-129-189 vs 103-141-192  verdict: 295 (16.5+8.5+1.5)/3 = 8.8
2) 58-85-117  vs 83-108-140 verdict: 295 (30.1+21.2+16.4)/3 = 22.6



SCORE:
Qualitative-
4870x2: 85.4/6 = 14.23 %
295:    126.5/10 = 12.65 % 

this tells us that the 295 wins in more games than the 4870x2,
but the 295 wins by less when it wins

I didnt bother with tombraider.... I don't really want to get into this.
when Its fixed by drivers the 4870x2 will do fine, if you wanna argue with me about it go ahead
I dont care and who plays tombraider anyway.

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huh well I guess I might as well have not done all that work....

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Originally Posted by SNiiPE_DoGG

huh well I guess I might as well have not done all that work....

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I read it. :p:

The 295 is a pretty big let down IMO. It would be a really solid contender. If it came out forever and a half ago...

It's a little bit hard to tout minor wins in some games when you've made your loyal fanbase wait that long... I suspect most people feel they should have just gotten an X2 by now. I know I would personally.

Only thing I can really say about the 295, is that maybe the drivers are better. People with certain configs still seem to have an awful lot of problems with ATI. And I can certainly say my 3870X2 did not work well one bit.

But that's getting into sheer guesswork as I have not personally used either card.

man id return my 295 and just swap out and get a 4870x2 but i dont know if its worth it, i mean i did get my 295 for 400 bucks ;)

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

I read it. :p:

The 295 is a pretty big let down IMO. It would be a really solid contender. If it came out forever and a half ago...

It's a little bit hard to tout minor wins in some games when you've made your loyal fanbase wait that long... I suspect most people feel they should have just gotten an X2 by now. I know I would personally.

Only thing I can really say about the 295, is that maybe the drivers are better. People with certain configs still seem to have an awful lot of problems with ATI. And I can certainly say my 3870X2 did not work well one bit.

But that's getting into sheer guesswork as I have not personally used either card.

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Even if it were exactly the same performance (i.e. no gains) it's "more valuable"... PhysX, Folding, option for Stereo3d, some would argue better drivers/cp, and it's not much later behind the 4870x2 than the 9800GX2 was behind the 3870x2... not sure what the problem is.

You're paying for an experience, not just 1 fps anymore.

Thanks for taking the time Snipe.
Reasons like that are why I bought a 4870x2 about a week ago.
And IMO it won't be long until decent driver support for the GTX295 is dropped, or was it just my imagination that as soon as the GTX280 was released nVidia seemed to stop caring about the 9800GX2?

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Originally Posted by Sr7

Even if it were exactly the same performance (i.e. no gains) it's "more valuable"... PhysX, Folding, option for Stereo3d, some would argue better drivers/cp, and it's not much later behind the 4870x2 than the 9800GX2 was behind the 3870x2... not sure what the problem is.

You're paying for an experience, not just 1 fps anymore.

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Fair enough. Those features don't matter much to me, but I can certainly undertstand. Folding especially, if that's your forte.

I suppose I had just hoped the 295 would be more ground breaking FPS wise.

Catalyst 9.1 WHQL Benchmark Review @PCGH

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Catalyst 9.1 WHQL benchmark review: Introduction

With a noticeable delay AMD released the Catalyst 9.1 WHQL on January 29. As usually the package of CCC (Catalyst control Center) and drivers is available for download in versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Although the 9.1 is a WHQL certified driver, which had to pass Microsoft's quality tests, it still contains the AF Bug known from the 8.12 Hotfix - the problem is also mentioned in the Release Notes. But they don't list the D3D10 workload optimizations for multi-core processors which have also been introduced with the 8.12 Hotfix. Our benchmark results on the next page reveal how fast the Catalyst 9.1 WHQL is compared to the 8.12 Hotfix and the 8.12 WHQL.

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http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...chmark_review/

GTX295 vs HD4870 X2
Source: Hardware-infos

The 295 is a winner! :)

ASUS Extreme AH4870X2 TOP vs GTX295 with Catalyst 9.1

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Today we are checking out the overclocked ASUS Extreme AH4870X2 TOP graphics card, designed to squeeze even more performance out of the Radeon HD 4870 X2. In doing so we find that ASUS has made a hot operating product even hotter, pushing temperatures through the roof! Meanwhile, their non-overclocked base model Radeon HD 4870 X2 receives a much improved cooler, which does not make a whole lot of sense...................

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http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=809

my test: http://pctuning.tyden.cz/index.php?o...2576&Itemid=44

no major improvements from 8.12 ...