ATI HD4800 Review Thread

[Tonucci]

Agree with everyone else, great review @ HardwareCanucks. Min FPS and AVG FPS, Several resolutions, AA and quality settings, OC'ed CPU, 4Gb ram, dx9 vs dx10 etc... Everything needed to understand how the cards perform in various situations

[Papu]

Thanks for the compliments guys. Believe it or not, I appreciate the feedback from the community much more than anything a manufacturer can say. Glad to know the review is going to good use.



This depends on quite a few factors such as:

- space between PCI-E slots
- Height of fan
- Orientation of HR-03

You can mount the HR-03 in two ways; one wrapped around the card with the heatpipes "straddling" the card and one like the way I installed it.

It takes up a total of 4 slots.

yes awesome review , the graph that shows heat before and after the cooler is replace is amazing

[Aberration]

That hardware canucks review is good. Looking at COD4 at the higher res, makes you wonder what the 4870 performance would be with 1GB.

[safan80]

I'm hoping this will force nvidia to allow SLI on intel boards.

[Darkatom]

So what is the best ddr3 intel board to run crossfire with ?

[ceevee]

LOL @ the Nvidia fanboys... Ceevee etc.

2x HD4870 is a perfect and fair comparison to a single GTX 280. First of all 2x HD4870s are cheaper than a single GTX 280 and not to mention, in half of the cases, 2x HD4870s destroys 2x GTX 280s.

HD4870 is definitely the best card for the price.

Read'em and weep Nvidia fanboys!



http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=23

Time to ditch the ****ty nvidia chipsets for Intel chipsets and pick up 2 HD4870s!

WTF is this idiot talking about???

This is why I responded to this thread to begin with, and yeah if you are going to say 4870 has taken the ultimate performance crown then you are wrong.

All the fanboys (like this one) saying that "in half of the cases, 2x HD4870s destroys 2x GTX 280s."

What complete and utter bull. What part of middle school math was too hard for you?

[ceevee]

I'm only going to say this once.

Ceevee, the 4870 is $299, the GTX 280 is $649.

The impracticality of your comparison would already be apparent had you gone on a tirade with GTX 260 numbers because even that is a $100 more and not in the same segment. Respect the card for what you get for $299. Had it been $599 your views would have been valid, but it isn't.

The 4870X2 will be the competitor to the SINGLE GTX 280. Prices are what set segments in the GPU market, not your definition of segment equality.

Someone who is considering the 4870 on the ~$300 segment but wishes to see the Nvidia equivalent ISN'T going to check out the GTX 280 just because you want him to. He/She will check out the GX2 (which is $430+) and the GTX 260 at best.

A proper comparison would be 4870CF ($599) vs GTX 280 ($649). You don't compare a Mercedes with a Ferrari, you don't compare a single 4870 with a GTX 280, even if the former's performance comes very close to the latters.

Perkam

Perkam,

My issue is with the posters who are claiming that ATI has won the ultimate performance crown over and over in this thread and hurling personal insults at anyone who doesn't agree with them.

ATI has not won the ultimate performance crown. I am not talking about price, or die size or anything other than the fact that Nvidia is still number 1 for the highest maximum performance.

[Shadowmage]

WTF is this idiot talking about???

This is why I responded to this thread to begin with, and yeah if you are going to say 4870 has taken the ultimate performance crown then you are wrong.

All the fanboys (like this one) saying that "in half of the cases, 2x HD4870s destroys 2x GTX 280s."

What complete and utter bull. What part of middle school math was too hard for you?

I'm not saying that he's right, but you're not right either: you just linked 1x4870 vs. 1xGTX 280

[Papu]

Perkam,

My issue is with the posters who are claiming that ATI has won the ultimate performance crown over and over in this thread and hurling personal insults at anyone who doesn't agree with them.

ATI has not won the ultimate performance crown. I am not talking about price, or die size or anything other than the fact that Nvidia is still number 1 for the highest maximum performance.

congratulations are in order then for winning that <5&#37; of the market , people who pay 600+ euros on a Gfx are silly..

[ceevee]

congratulations are in order then for winning that <5% of the market , people who pay 600+ euros on a Gfx are silly..

Maybe someone with your personal financial constraints would be silly, please do not judge others that may not have them.

Anyway I'm done with this thread.

cya.

[Papu]

Maybe someone with your personal financial constraints would be silly, please do not judge others that may not have them.

Anyway I'm done with this thread.

cya.

[natty]

the way some people talk it makes you think that they own vast amounts of stock in ATI or Nvidia

[Manicdan]

look at who posts scores on ORB, its was nothing but 8800gts for quite some time.

the question of whos the performance king per price range is different than whos got a card with more stuff packed into it. when the 4870x2 comes out we will see what ati has for enthusiasts, until then its midstream only

[Manicdan]

the way some people talk it makes you think that they own vast amounts of stock in ATI or Nvidia

i bought 2000$ worth of ati stock at $6.50 a share, im hoping after they finally make a worthy card it might go back up to the pre-merger prices

[v_rr]

Maybe someone with your personal financial constraints would be silly, please do not judge others that may not have them.

Anyway I'm done with this thread.

cya.

About time

GTX280 will be the top performance till R700 comes into life.
So in 1 month ATI dominate all market segments in price/performance if Nvidia don´t chage drasticaly their prices, but guess what, GT200 is very ineficient and very big to drop so much in price.

So the next 2 Quarters will be so hard for Nvidias has those that ATI had with R600.

[Hornet331]

About time

GTX280 will be the top performance till R700 comes into life.
So in 1 month ATI dominate all market segments in price/performance if Nvidia don´t chage drasticaly their prices, but guess what, GT200 is very ineficient and very big to drop so much in price.

So the next 2 Quarters will be so hard for Nvidias has those that ATI had with R600.

well see about that in 2 quaters, who benefits and who fails.

[Philip_J_Fry]

About time

.

hehh

he bought a GTX 280 as shown in his sig, therefore its understandable that he is defending it

i waited out (and wheww... thank god i did that) to see what RV770/R700 brings then i will make my decision, but judging from these results im leaning toward AMD this time, coming from a long time NV owner ... getting a bit tired of having to buy nv's board for SLI

GTX 260 and 4850/70 will be very popular i would imagine

[v_rr]

well see about that in 2 quaters, who benefits and who fails.

It&#180;s prety obvious, but I won&#180;t go in those predictions

For this quarter nothing will change. Only for the next 2 quarters.
AMD is targeting 50&#37; in discrete desktop until the end of the year, that&#180;s the only thing that I know they want.
I think that they will do that with HD 4800. Strong performance/low prices is the key and they have conditions to done well that.

[villa1n]

I think the 4870 is an amzing card and AMD deserves .

However I do not understand people saying it has the performance crown when it clearly does not, not to mention you are saying this about a card that may not even be released for 2 MONTHS.

Anyway here is GTX280 in tri-SLI so you can see that it handily beats your x12000 score from 2xHD4870x2:

not sure if you ve seen these results... 12k vantage score with just 2 4870's... not X2's ....

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/148...age/index.html

[Philip_J_Fry]

crossfire doesnt scale well ...

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...nce/page11.asp

hopefully future driver fix that ... or that could have been a bottleneck of some sort .. res. , aa , cpu


also in nv sponsor games like COH, Lost planet the 4000 series dont perform well
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ance/page8.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ance/page9.asp

although many 360 port games perform better on AMD

seems like 280 perform well in DX10, but doesnt perform much faster in DX9

[Philip_J_Fry]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...nce/page16.asp

wow the overclocking result looks awesome. 4870 @ 790/1100 is almost an GTX 280! almost that is

[Peakr]

Looks like nVidia shot themselves in the foot on this one. And thank god too. $650 for a video card...Please. No wonder they rushed em out b4 the 4000's. See how many suckers they could reel in for an extra 3fps. Great job AMD. I'll take one and later on when I need more horsepower I'll buy another and stick them in my INTEL mobo.

[Philip_J_Fry]

lol some what true i suppose, but the 280 does have good DX10 performance, it just that for $650 and about 1.6 years after G80 i am expecting a lot more though ....

and again thank god i didnt rush out and buy one ... especially now that ebay has a 10&#37; off on 1 purchase deal ends b4 june 30th ... i almost bought one lol

and stick them in my INTEL mobo.

yeah i cant wait to get my intel board and am read to ditch sli

[waver_01]

Perkam,

My issue is with the posters who are claiming that ATI has won the ultimate performance crown over and over in this thread and hurling personal insults at anyone who doesn't agree with them.

ATI has not won the ultimate performance crown. I am not talking about price, or die size or anything other than the fact that Nvidia is still number 1 for the highest maximum performance.

ATi has the single card performance crown with the 4870X2, which is all that
matters

[villa1n]

Thanks for the compliments guys. Believe it or not, I appreciate the feedback from the community much more than anything a manufacturer can say. Glad to know the review is going to good use.



This depends on quite a few factors such as:

- space between PCI-E slots
- Height of fan
- Orientation of HR-03

You can mount the HR-03 in two ways; one wrapped around the card with the heatpipes "straddling" the card and one like the way I installed it.

It takes up a total of 4 slots.

Kudos to the review, well laid out and nice format, and test rig I m really glad you showed what can be accomplished with an aftermarket cooling solution... Its too bad no one could get a 260gtx to you guys hehe.

I m pretty impressed with these results as a whole, especially in cod4 which is where i spend my time I ll wait it out though until the 4870x2 comes out, as my gx2 is still holding on ok for now