ATI HD4800 Review Thread

[Philip_J_Fry]

hmm i am waiting for R700 .. maybe it wont just be 4870 CF ... maybe theres more (better way of making the 2 chips working together perhaps?) ... then ill make my decision

[Bo_Fox]

My gosh, Techreport is my favorite one so far. Everything about their review is so awesome, and makes all others almost "redundant"!

[zerazax]

Yeah I noticed TechReport has really stepped it up recently. Their review had architecture coverage as well as real in-game tests along with synthetic benchmarks and image quality along with AA and AF tests. Very impressed

[Kingcarcas]

To actually focus on dodging bullets first you have to see who is shooting them. If he's too far, you won't see a $hit without AA. Anyway jaggies destroy my eyes. 2xAA absolute minimum at all resolutions, but I can't live without 4xAA at 1280x1024.

QFT, i find it quite funny that people don't care about them or vsync. Why spend all that money on hardware? Why bash consoles all the time if you have a tearing and/or jaggies on your PC? I just discovered that if a game doesn't have the option to enable Vsync the CCC won't let you do it in Vista That and the issues with the X-Fi, i think i'm going back to XP.

[Motiv]

i focus on dodging bullets more than counting jaggies. come on, a real gaming enthusiast doesn't nit-pick about eye candy.

QFT

If I'm playing single player, then eye candy is lovely. You can push all the settings as high as you want and enjoy the look of the game. In multiplayer, most competitive players, will have configs to reduce everything as much as possible. Not just for the FPS but also to see clearer.

AA is certainly off.

[onethreehill]

Guru3D: AMD Radeon HD 4870
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...-review--asus/

Overclockersclub: PowerColor HD 4870 Review
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...rcolor_hd4870/

[Unbornchild]

Overclockersclub: PowerColor HD 4870 Review
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...rcolor_hd4870/

Wow!, their HD4780 and GX280 use more or less the same blue color, very handy...

[SKYMTL]

Guru3D: AMD Radeon HD 4870
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...-review--asus/[/url]

I can't seem to find Guru3D's methodology. I see Mass Effect and GRID tested but I don't see HOW they were tested (runthrough? Timedemo? Which level? Etc.). Can someone provide me with a link?

[kuden]

SKYMTL did you try overclocking the hd4870? you're the only reviewer so far i think, to have proper cooling on this card (btw when checked which coolers fit, did u happen to check the temp difference compared to the arctic cooling?)/

[onethreehill]

SKYMTL did you try overclocking the hd4870? you're the only reviewer so far i think, to have proper cooling on this card (btw when checked which coolers fit, did u happen to check the temp difference compared to the arctic cooling?)/

Did I hear overclocking
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=192411

[SKYMTL]

SKYMTL did you try overclocking the hd4870? you're the only reviewer so far i think, to have proper cooling on this card (btw when checked which coolers fit, did u happen to check the temp difference compared to the arctic cooling?)/

The issue is not the core nor the memory. It is Catalyst.

I got to the max Catalyst allows RIGHT HERE

790 / 4400

I am waiting to hear back from ATI right now since they are supposed to send me an updated Catalyst driver to unlock speeds to 1000Mhz / 5400Mhz.

As for temp difference between the Thermalright and the AC...I have no idea.

[865pe]

Guru3D: AMD Radeon HD 4870
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...-review--asus/

Overclockersclub: PowerColor HD 4870 Review
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...rcolor_hd4870/

Nice review..

HD4870 = GTX280..

Nvidia muss more price cut..

[AliG]

well; according to my reading of all you prognosticators 2x 4870 1gig cf will win
in 3d mark benches anyway,
but i think 4870X2 will be the most cost effective multigpu option, particularly for those without a proper crossfire mobo

and 2x 4850 1gig cards in cf could be good too.

i seem to run out of vram in M2TW, with sporadic subsequent fps drops, and cpu is not maxed out at any point
although 4870x2 may prompt me to upgrade my cpu, as ive noticed cpu use can go as high as 90%(rarely however), on one of the 2 cores anyway.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvi...-ati,5764.html
also, physx seems to be in ati's hand (as per another thread)

Nah I'd say the 4870x2 will win, if it indeed is designed to act as an mcm, then it won't need xfire support in games and thus the x2 will win over all, not to mention there shouldn't be any micro-stuttering, so even if the x2 gets less fps it still would hold more value

[Rock&Roll]

My god. If 4870 X2 hits the market, I just might be on board. AMD did pretty good this round.

[AliG]

Pretty good? The 4870 nearly matches the gtx 280, I'd say they did short of amazing, not to mention their yields are better and the r7xx can do ray tracing, so pretty good would actually be a major understatement, especially considering they were behind in the race by a considerable margin (especially with aa enabled)

[annihilat0r]

GTX 280 can do ray tracing also.

[Rock&Roll]

Pretty good?

Haha. Yeah, I guess I'm the king of understatement.

To possibly speculate though, are the rumors still going around about the 4870X2 using shared memory, instead of using two separate frame buffers?

If that is true, could we not possibly be looking at the end of some of the software/driver/micro-stuttering issues brought on in dual card setups?

[AliG]

Due to the 4870x2 having a bridge chip that provies 160 GB/s of bandwidth, it is entirely possible, which likely means r700 will act as an mcm if that is the case (now I did not say will be an mcm, act as an mcm, probably too much concentrated heat if it was an mcm). But there's no guarantees yet, but due to the huge delay between the 4870 and 4870x2, likely something big is changed in the r700 from the r680

[AliG]

GTX 280 can do ray tracing also.

Link? I've heard nothing about that, and as you can tell I spend A LOT of time in the news forum

[v_rr]

ATI 9700 with 5 years can do ray-tracing....

[Kai Robinson]

AliG - 160GB/sec? Sorry but you've been on the funny sauce again. It's a 48 lane PCIe 2.0 Bridge chip from either PLX or IDT (more than likely PLX). Thats 16 lanes for each GPU, and 16 lanes for the bus connection, which means at most, 32GB/sec bandwidth between GPU's.

[Hornet331]

AliG - 160GB/sec? Sorry but you've been on the funny sauce again. It's a 48 lane PCIe 2.0 Bridge chip from either PLX or IDT (more than likely PLX). Thats 16 lanes for each GPU, and 16 lanes for the bus connection, which means at most, 32GB/sec bandwidth between GPU's.

dont forget "magic" crossfire x sideport.

[halo112358]

Anyone hear about 4870's refusing to post? My new card bit the dust this morning during a reboot after working fine for the last 24 hours. There's another guy over in the general hardware forum who has the same problem on 2 different 4870's.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

hey guys, UPS says my 4870's are out for delivery so i will be doing my own mini review of crossfire scaling and such and ill post it up sometime tommorrow night testbed will be the system in my sig

[Hornet331]

Anyone hear about 4870's refusing to post? My new card bit the dust this morning during a reboot after working fine for the last 24 hours. There's another guy over in the general hardware forum who has the same problem on 2 different 4870's.

hmm maybe needs further investigation.

Did you oc your card already?

Also can you see any physical damage?