HD 4850 Previews

[Helmore]

That one is awesome iTravis, is the power plant included? Otherwise it's a no go . Ah well, my wallet won't allow me anyway....

[grimREEFER]

two 4850's are faster than a gtx 280 though, so props on that amd.
faster than a 9800gx2? not so sure about that.

[zerazax]

Here you go, just made this:


Looks like the drops are on par with the GTX260 for the most part

[AbelJemka]

Thank you very much, that was so sweet

But I also would like to have nvidia's side, just for a wider comparison.

Nice work

Nice to see @ a general point, HD4850 loses 10% less performance with AA on, than HD3870.

Thx but not my work

[Eastcoasthandle]

Here you go, just made this:

Looks like the drops are on par with the GTX260 for the most part

Awesome, thanks

[hurleybird]

The great thing is that AA penalty will be substantially reduced with any DX10.1 title using deferred shading.

[ghost101]

The great thing is that AA penalty will be substantially reduced with any DX10.1 title using deferred shading.

Not if nvidia has any say on it.

[eleeter]

The great thing is that AA penalty will be substantially reduced with any DX10.1 title using deferred shading.

The bad thing is Nvidia has bags of cash waiting to prevent this.

[hurleybird]

Not if nvidia has any say on it.

NVIDIA can only stall adoption, not prevent it. Look at the hits NVIDIA takes in games with deferred shading... up to 68% in Bioshock on the GTX 260. If Bioshock were DX10.1 you'd see the same 14-24% AA hit on the 4850. Eventually, almost all games are going to use DX10.1 and deferred shading, that's a promise. When that day comes (probably by this time next year), assuming it doesen't run out of video memory, you'll see 4850s beating GTX 280s any time >= 4xAA is used. The only way this projection could be wrong is if NVIDIA has undocumented support for DX10.1 based shader AA.

[eleeter]

Eventually, almost all games are going to use DX10.1 and deferred shading, that's a promise.

That's a bold prediction. Does that mean that we are going to see 2 code paths for some games? Or is it more simple to implement.

[hurleybird]

It's pretty simple logic really. Using deferred shading is less costly than not using it, the only problem is that it messes up AA, and getting AA to work with deferred shading is very costly. Given enough time DX10.1 will become the norm. Even if Nvidia is completely successful in getting us to skip over DX10.1, DX11 will eventually become the norm. Since the deferred shading AA issue is fixed in DX10.1 onwards it's only a matter of time before everyone starts using it since it's by far less costly than the alternative. Therefore, it's only a matter of time before you see 4850s outperforming GTX 280s when AA is enabled since they'll only take a fraction of the performance hit.

[[XC] hipno650]

Well, it's even more remarkable that the 4850 is beating the 8800ultra and the 9800gtx while being cheaper when like you said most of the games are coded for Nvidia cards. Maybe it's you that is not realizing what the card is.

like i said i don't trust that review. i trust what our respected member tells us. and that is the 9800gtx is faster than the 4850 in crysis. yes that is one game and i am sure the HD4850 will beat it in some games (COJ) but overall performance will be the same by the time drivers come out. yes it is impressive that they have done it in one slot and lower power consumption for a lower price. but in Canada it will be the same price as the 8800gts 512mb so they cards will be similar in performance and price (take your pick both are good). and yes most games are coded for Nvidia and that's something AMD has to live with and work around. and i don't take pity on graphics cards so the HD4850 gets no bonus points for doing similar in an nvidia based game. the sad part is that it took AMD how long to reach 8800gtx levels in a single GPU??? TOO LONG.

i just don't understand what all the hype is about. we already have the same type of performance to price ratio from Nvidia (not in 3dmark though) now you just need to choose. bad drivers and lower overclocking returns with single slot and lower power consumption or good drivers and increased ocing with dual slot (can be seen as a good and bad thing) and high power usage. so take your pick for the price both are nice cards.

however please note any assumptions made to performance are based on the review done by mascaras. but i will make my final decision after the hardwarecanucks review is released and hopefully it will be faster than we have seen already (4850 CF hear i come)

[Miwo]

thie 4xAA percentage hit is pretty good considering the 4850 has much less memory bandwidth than the GTX260. Can't wait to see how the DDR5 fares with the AA

[v_rr]

like i said i don't trust that review. i trust what our respected member tells us. and that is the 9800gtx is faster than the 4850 in crysis. yes that is one game and i am sure the HD4850 will beat it in some games (COJ) but overall performance will be the same by the time drivers come out. yes it is impressive that they have done it in one slot and lower power consumption for a lower price. but in Canada it will be the same price as the 8800gts 512mb so they cards will be similar in performance and price (take your pick both are good). and yes most games are coded for Nvidia and that's something AMD has to live with and work around. and i don't take pity on graphics cards so the HD4850 gets no bonus points for doing similar in an nvidia based game. the sad part is that it took AMD how long to reach 8800gtx levels in a single GPU??? TOO LONG.

i just don't understand what all the hype is about. we already have the same type of performance to price ratio from Nvidia (not in 3dmark though) now you just need to choose. bad drivers and lower overclocking returns with single slot and lower power consumption or good drivers and increased ocing with dual slot (can be seen as a good and bad thing) and high power usage. so take your pick for the price both are nice cards.

- 8800GTS is a EOL product. Is a matter of time to they disapear from the market. They don´t event count to this fyght.
- HD 4850 with beta drivers is competitive with 9800GT/8800 ultra. And competite = equal or better in overall performance.
- Crysis is 1 game. We need to see the overall numbers or the cards are just made to bench and not to play?
- The Nvidia= God drivers and ATI=Bad drivers is just hilariours. If is that your argument it´s false. ATI don´t use costumers to bombard them with beta + beta drivers like Nvidia and the oficial ones have 3 months or so. So if anyone has to learn is Nvidia from ATI with their 1 month driver WHQL launch.

[Luka_Aveiro]

- 8800GTS is a EOL product. Is a matter of time to they disapear from the market. They don´t event count to this fyght.
- HD 4850 with beta drivers is competitive with 9800GT/8800 ultra. And competite = equal or better in overall performance.
- Crysis is 1 game. We need to see the overall numbers or the cards are just made to bench and not to play?
- The Nvidia= God drivers and ATI=Bad drivers is just hilariours. If is that your argument it´s false. ATI don´t use costumers to bombard them with beta + beta drivers like Nvidia and the oficial ones have 3 months or so. So if anyone has to learn is Nvidia from ATI with their 1 month driver WHQL launch.

Yesterday a WHQL driver went out, aka 177.35.

From my personal experience, I liked nVidias drivers better than ATIs, and it's preferable to have a beta driver that fixes a certain issue, than having to wait a month or for a driver...

Can't see why having much driver choice is a bad thing, but you sure can...

BTW, does ATI have already a game profile page like nVidia has? I'm thinking about getting an HD4870, they pretty seem to be fair performers, and I'd like to know if recent catalyst have the possibility to set different AA, AF, texture and vsync settings for each game, I just love that

BTW2: zerazax, great working on the graph, much appreciated, you can clearly notice very nice AA performance from HD4850, losing about 15/20% performance MAX (except Crysis 24% & R6V 45%) is very good, and newer drivers can only make this better

[zerazax]

Thanks

It looks like the 3870 was losing 30-40% w/ 4xAA in games where the 4850 is losing ~20%

Amazing to see the 4850 lose the same % as the higher bandwidth more ROP'd GTX260... I wonder how the 4870 will do

[[XC] hipno650]

- 8800GTS is a EOL product. Is a matter of time to they disapear from the market. They don´t event count to this fyght.
- HD 4850 with beta drivers is competitive with 9800GT/8800 ultra. And competite = equal or better in overall performance.
- Crysis is 1 game. We need to see the overall numbers or the cards are just made to bench and not to play?
- The Nvidia= God drivers and ATI=Bad drivers is just hilariours. If is that your argument it´s false. ATI don´t use costumers to bombard them with beta + beta drivers like Nvidia and the oficial ones have 3 months or so. So if anyone has to learn is Nvidia from ATI with their 1 month driver WHQL launch.

drivers for me. nvidia has ATI beat hands down in my opinion. the interface is so much smoother and nicer and you can actually use the ocing features in it. unlike CCC which is a joke. not to mention the problems i have had with ATI drivers. and AMD's XP support is becoming lower and lower. i have the whole camp here. 8800gtx, 8800gt, 2900pro, 1950xtx, 7900gt, 1800xt and 8600gt to name a few. notice i said HAVE not had and i have personally liked Nvidia's drivers much more than ATI's and i have found ocing an Nvidia card much easier than the ATI counterparts.

what do you mean they don't count to this fight?? i can still buy one for around the same price as the HD4850 is supposed to be. wasn't the 8800gtx and ultra EOL as well a while ago??? but i can still buy them. and by the time the 8800gts 512 will be EOL the 9800gtx will have it's price.

i agree that Crysis is only one game but the fact is that i can run everything else just fine on my 8800gt. so crysis is the game that i would see the most improvement on if i were to buy a new card. new games will tax the 8800gt more and then a new card will be needed but we have no way to tell what card will do better in games that have not been released.

yes the drivers on the HD4850 are still green but the performance now is below the 9800gtx and so with new drivers they the HD4850 should end up about 5-10% faster. and that's something i expected from a 480SP card not an 800SP card.

[zerazax]

800SP's might be screaming for bandwidth anyways, though the card certainly performs well at 1920 x 1200 resolution from the reviews and CF seems to really kick the card alive

Anyways, I want to see what the 4870 results are so I can get a good idea at the 4870X2. I had been hoping to get a GTX280 with my step up, but I forgot tax sucks and the card step up from a 9800GTX is going to set me back $421 which can net me a brand new GTX260 anyways. Not to mention the water cooling loop and PC overhaul im doing, itll hurt my wallet so I'll wait.

[DilTech]

NVIDIA can only stall adoption, not prevent it. Look at the hits NVIDIA takes in games with deferred shading... up to 68% in Bioshock on the GTX 260. If Bioshock were DX10.1 you'd see the same 14-24% AA hit on the 4850. Eventually, almost all games are going to use DX10.1 and deferred shading, that's a promise. When that day comes (probably by this time next year), assuming it doesen't run out of video memory, you'll see 4850s beating GTX 280s any time >= 4xAA is used. The only way this projection could be wrong is if NVIDIA has undocumented support for DX10.1 based shader AA.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=7

They do, NVidia support some DX10.1 features, but they won't state which ones they do. There's a support query feature in their driver developers can use to check what features NVidia support, aka, they found out how to get around DX10.1's all or nothing support.

It's useful to point out that, in spite of the fact that NVIDIA doesn't support DX10.1 and DX10 offers no caps bits, NVIDIA does enable developers to query their driver on support for a feature. This is how they can support multisample readback and any other DX10.1 feature that they chose to expose in this manner. Sure, part of the point of DX10 was to eliminate the need for developers to worry about varying capabilities, but that doesn't mean hardware vendors can't expose those features in other ways. Supporting DX10.1 is all or nothing, but enabling features beyond DX10 that happen to be part of DX10.1 is possible, and NVIDIA has done this for multisample readback and can do it for other things.

NVidia supports it.

- 8800GTS is a EOL product. Is a matter of time to they disapear from the market. They don´t event count to this fyght.
- HD 4850 with beta drivers is competitive with 9800GT/8800 ultra. And competite = equal or better in overall performance.
- Crysis is 1 game. We need to see the overall numbers or the cards are just made to bench and not to play?
- The Nvidia= God drivers and ATI=Bad drivers is just hilariours. If is that your argument it´s false. ATI don´t use costumers to bombard them with beta + beta drivers like Nvidia and the oficial ones have 3 months or so. So if anyone has to learn is Nvidia from ATI with their 1 month driver WHQL launch.

NVidia's every few week betas I actually would rather have than once per month. Why? Every issue in a game for the most part recently has had a beta driver to fix it very shortly afterwards... Meanwhile, how long did it take for ATi to get AA working in UE3 titles with it's "better whql drivers", or the length of time it took for a fix to lost planet with it's "better whql drivers"? That's where the argument comes from, and it's very valid.

[eleeter]

They do, NVidia support some DX10.1 features...

In hardware?

[AbelJemka]

yes the drivers on the HD4850 are still green but the performance now is below the 9800gtx and so with new drivers they the HD4850 should end up about 5-10% faster. and that's something i expected from a 480SP card not an 800SP card.

What a bold statement based only on Crysis and only on Mascaras's preview altough there is a review made a the most appreciated site in France showing that 4850 is ahead of 9800GTX even ahead of 8800 Ultra

[DilTech]

In hardware?

Yes, in hardware, it just doesn't have total dx10.1 support. It supports some features in hardware. Read the link.

[Clairvoyant129]

Awesome card for an awesome price. Depending on how the HD4870X2s does, I may go back to the green team this year.

[v_rr]

NVidia's every few week betas I actually would rather have than once per month. Why? Every issue in a game for the most part recently has had a beta driver to fix it very shortly afterwards... Meanwhile, how long did it take for ATi to get AA working in UE3 titles with it's "better whql drivers", or the length of time it took for a fix to lost planet with it's "better whql drivers"? That's where the argument comes from, and it's very valid.

Yeah and you forgot the other 10 bugs that it creat with the new beta.
ATI also have some hot-fix through the year but that´s only it.

Problems with drivers are everywhere with everyone, and ATI and Nvidia drivers are both good. The Nvidia = Best and ATI = Bad drivers is ridiculous and everyone knows that.

I´am one advanced user and I never in my life installed drivers weekly. That´s insane. I remember Nvidia launched 2 drivers in one day to fix the other beta.
99% of users stick with monthly WHQL upgrade driver.
Drivers is a no go excuse to stay away from one HD 4850. It could be if we where talking about crossfire, but those problems are equal in SLI/Crossfire.

[gojirasan]

I love all this hype. I am still in line for a GTX280 step-up, but I am already drooling about my R700 4870x2. Me want! It will be my first AMD card. I will buy it on the day of release and PRICE BE DAMNED! I want that card! It is kind of pathetic that it has taken ATI this long to reach (and now surpass) the top end G92s, but it is SO nice to finally have some real competition. If it weren't for the 48xx series I am starting to wonder if Nvidia would ever have released the GTX200 series. All they would have to do is re-release a G92 every 6 months with higher model numbers and a die shrink when available.