ATI R700 Preview

[tiro_uspsss]

Some frightening AA scaling in AoC @ [H]ard:

lol!



OfT: does anyone else find the [H] articles difficult to read/look @/'decipher'? ... their pages always have this 'hurt my eyes' affect on me

[Hornet331]

I'm not that impressed to be honest, IMHO minimum FPS and Average FPS is really where the money is at, check out the poor minimum FPS in Crysis!
Sadly I was expecting this sideport thing to boost the minimum FPS as it would take the load off the CPU syncing the cards or something...
John

i kinda agree, after all this hypeing the X2 turned out to be nothing more then a regualr CF on one board card (as expected). It sure sometimes sacales better then to single boards but it still suffer from the same limitations as normal cf -> no profile and your screwed.

Im still torn between a 4870 vs a 280gtx, cause the 280gtx has come down to 355€ (incl vat) vs the 4870@ 210€.

Since CF/SLI is a nogo, its a hard decicion what to choose. 280gtx is ~20% faster then a 4870 but paying 60% more for a 280gtx is not aiding.

[Bo_Fox]

lol!



OfT: does anyone else find the [H] articles difficult to read/look @/'decipher'? ... their pages always have this 'hurt my eyes' affect on me

LOL, hell yeah!

My signature over at [H] is:

Wow, you must have good eyes if you could read this!
FORUM IMPROVEMENTS REQUESTED:
1) More smiley face icons
2) Option to display more threads (not posts) per page
3) Option of having your own avatar (default option for viewing: OFF)
4) Slightly larger font for signatures
5) Upload hosting of small files, up to 10MB total per user
6) More respect for members (PM warning before banning, etc..)
And HardOCP forums will still have its unique integrity.

[tiro_uspsss]

LOL, hell yeah!

My signature over at [H] is:

I was actually referring to their review articles

their fourms? dont even get me started! I have registered with them TWICE & NEVER recieved the confirmation email - my first attempt got no where because of this, & thus I couldnt post (duh).. I went back a few months later, tried to login & I get a Forum msg saying I've been perma-banned - & yet I had never posted!!!
I gave up..

[Chickenfeed]

Personally I'd wait until more is known on the GT200 refresh if you are gravitating towards a single gpu solution. In fairness though, given the speed difference between the 4870 and 280, in the games that do scale you'll be ahead of the 280 with a X2 and in those that don't you won't be far behind and given it will only cost slightly more( I'm guessing the rumored $499 price is for the 1GB version of the X2 and that the 2GB model will be $50-60 more), thats not a bad deal. My guess is we'll see the 55nm within $50 of current GT200 prices so they *may* be worth waiting for.

Still if Nvidia can get within 10-15% (on average) of the 4870 X2 with their 55nm part, I'd sooner go for it as you get both lower power usage ( thus thermals and fan noise ) plus theres no annoying driver issues / inconsistencies like with SLI/CF. I've heard CF drivers / profiles are rather slow in coming ( many games in the past haven't had profiles with new title releases which totally sucks ; who wants to wait for days/weeks for the new game they bought to perform ) The lack of custom profiles with the Catalysts also doesn't sit well with me personally.

But who knows perhaps Ati will go crazy driver side ( back in the good 9000 / x800 days their drivers were great in my eyes )with these cards but that remains to be seen. I've had more confidence in Nvidia as far as drivers go over the past 2 years ( and their strong developer relations and TWIMTBP program do help usually ) For now I'm going to pick up a single 4870 and roll with that until the dust settles regarding the X2 and Nvidia's counter offer.

[superkinshin]

wonderful AMD R700!

[annihilat0r]

Personally I'd wait until more is known on the GT200 refresh if you are gravitating towards a single gpu solution. In fairness though, given the speed difference between the 4870 and 280, in the games that do scale you'll be ahead of the 280 with a X2 and in those that don't you won't be far behind and given it will only cost slightly more( I'm guessing the rumored $499 price is for the 1GB version of the X2 and that the 2GB model will be $50-60 more), thats not a bad deal. My guess is we'll see the 55nm within $50 of current GT200 prices so they *may* be worth waiting for.

Still if Nvidia can get within 10-15% (on average) of the 4870 X2 with their 55nm part, I'd sooner go for it as you get both lower power usage ( thus thermals and fan noise ) plus theres no annoying driver issues / inconsistencies like with SLI/CF. I've heard CF drivers / profiles are rather slow in coming ( many games in the past haven't had profiles with new title releases which totally sucks ; who wants to wait for days/weeks for the new game they bought to perform ) The lack of custom profiles with the Catalysts also doesn't sit well with me personally.

But who knows perhaps Ati will go crazy driver side ( back in the good 9000 / x800 days their drivers were great in my eyes )with these cards but that remains to be seen. I've had more confidence in Nvidia as far as drivers go over the past 2 years ( and their strong developer relations and TWIMTBP program do help usually ) For now I'm going to pick up a single 4870 and roll with that until the dust settles regarding the X2 and Nvidia's counter offer.

EXACTLY my thoughts on all levels.

ATI needs to deliver good CF profiles to every game if they are serious with this "no more big GPUs, we'll just throw in a second GPU if you want FPS" strategy. And I do think they'll do that, as even with the magnificent price/performance ratio you would never expect from a high end product 4870x2 still isn't directly recommendable to everyone because of CF issues.

[Bo_Fox]

I was actually referring to their review articles

their fourms? dont even get me started! I have registered with them TWICE & NEVER recieved the confirmation email - my first attempt got no where because of this, & thus I couldnt post (duh).. I went back a few months later, tried to login & I get a Forum msg saying I've been perma-banned - & yet I had never posted!!!
I gave up..

ROFL!!! Yeah been banned twice without warning myself for some rules that were not even in the guidelines. Now I realize that I like XS much better for all of those reasons in my sig, and more (it's true that there are far more *cough* noobs *cough* on [H] asking all those questions over there to no end, and to no end I mean it). Oh yeah, I'm not getting you started, and dont get me started either! LOL..

No way in hell. CSAA sucks serious ass.

Really? In screenshots, 8x CSAA is roughly equal to 6x MSAA that was offered on ATI cards for a few years. And 16x CSAA appears to be like 10-12x MSAA in screenshots.

Do you have a reference? A review site saying that CSAA sucks serious ass? I notice that when playing the game in MOTION, it still looks like no better than 4x AA but the screenshots really do show a difference except when there is not very much contrast among the edges.

[L7R]

Personally I'd wait until more is known on the GT200 refresh if you are gravitating towards a single gpu solution. In fairness though, given the speed difference between the 4870 and 280, in the games that do scale you'll be ahead of the 280 and in those that don't you won't be far behind and given this is for only slightly more money ( I'm guessing the rumored $499 price is for the 1GB version of the X2 and that the 2GB model will be $50-60 more), thats not a bad deal.

I found this quite opposite (I think I'm optimist in general). 4870x2 will be faster than GTX280 in NEW games as those will get CF profiles pretty fast (GRID, AoC, Crysis, CoD4, Bioshock etc.). For old games though which won't never see CF profile, it doesn't really matter because those doesn't need so much grunt for hardware than newer games. And even then it'll be only a little slower than GTX280.

So it's most likely win/win situation ...if the price is "right". For me, of course.

[gosh]

Is there any test out there that has used AMD Phenom to review these cards? I think that these superfast cards are bottlenecked but the FSB and they should get better scores using Phenom

[Motiv]

I found this quite opposite (I think I'm optimist in general). 4870x2 will be faster than GTX280 in NEW games as those will get CF profiles pretty fast (GRID, AoC, Crysis, CoD4, Bioshock etc.). For old games though which won't never see CF profile, it doesn't really matter because those doesn't need so much grunt for hardware than newer games. And even then it'll be only a little slower than GTX280.

So it's most likely win/win situation ...if the price is "right". For me, of course.

Couldn't agree more. With the exception of Crysis, any game out at the moment will run perfectly fine on the 4870x2, regardless of it using SLI or not.

whether or not it "wins" over the 280gt in the older games doesn't matter as it will be playing them to such a high framerate, it would be pointless to argue about.

It's new games that matter and if AMD keep the CF profiles coming out with them, then buying the 48070x2 will basically mean it gives a higher FPS in all new games over a single 280GT.

[tiro_uspsss]

Is there any test out there that has used AMD Phenom to review these cards? I think that these superfast cards are bottlenecked but the FSB and they should get better scores using Phenom

lol - Intel makes a better CPU at the moment, that is fact, so no, a phenom would not get higher/better results with these cards!

[gosh]

lol - Intel makes a better CPU at the moment, that is fact, so no, a phenom would not get higher/better results with these cards!

This isn't about the processor speed, it's about I/O performance

[Cooper]

Is there any test out there that has used AMD Phenom to review these cards? I think that these superfast cards are bottlenecked but the FSB and they should get better scores using Phenom

there will be soon

[tiro_uspsss]

This isn't about the processor speed, it's about I/O performance

didnt say anything about speed
I/O performance or not:

bottom line is this, any system with an intel cpu behind the video card is gonna get better results than an amd cpu behind the same video

or do u have a phenom & just wanna figure out approx. how many fps u'll get? I know what thats like - I'm still on s939 - I have to 'factor in' less fps with every review result i look @ due to less cpu power

[EagleRock]

Every review have different result but clearly 4870 x2 is at the top, I was hoping for more strong card but as i can see all these cards are only 1gb?
But beta drivers and old bios it will get much better later and hopfully we will clearly see the 80% increase over the Gtx 280.

[gosh]

didnt say anything about speed bottom line is this, any system with an intel cpu behind the video card is gonna get better results than an amd cpu behind the same video

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...l_q9450/14.htm
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...el_q9450/8.htm
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...l_q9450/13.htm

There you can se that a much slower phenom wins over Intel. On low res intel wins easy, going higher and if the video card is fast using advanced graphics then AMD is winning. One computer isn't just the speed of the processor, all fast parts on the computer needs fast comunication

[gosh]

there will be soon

Great!!!

[865pe]

Nvidia GTX280_GTX260 more Price Cut

[jVIDIA]

Every review have different result but clearly 4870 x2 is at the top...

Lets wait for the new GTX280 Extreme

[Dragy2k]

Lets wait for the new GTX280 Extreme

i thought it was out and taking a beating !
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...)%20-%20Retail

happy with my single 4870 atm ....just need ati/amd to fire out some drivers now !

[Nedjo]

When AMD launched 9850 Black, our own Tony did comparison of K10@ 3.4 GHz vs. Yorkfield @ 3.4 GHz /w GF 8800Ultra, and K10 pulled out better 3DM2006 score!

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=282

And this is in 12x10 rez! In 26x19, with all the FSAA and Aniso turned on, speed of the CPU is even less factor for GPU score!

So yeah, I think it would be great if the final testing is done on Phenom 9950 Black Edition on 790GX mobo the new OC'ing capabilities ON

[Chickenfeed]

I found this quite opposite (I think I'm optimist in general). 4870x2 will be faster than GTX280 in NEW games as those will get CF profiles pretty fast (GRID, AoC, Crysis, CoD4, Bioshock etc.). For old games though which won't never see CF profile, it doesn't really matter because those doesn't need so much grunt for hardware than newer games. And even then it'll be only a little slower than GTX280.

So it's most likely win/win situation ...if the price is "right". For me, of course.

Well thats good to hear then. Hopefully ATI continues that trend. I'm not concerned with older titles as like you say they already run fast enough. As long as there is consistent driver / profile updates this card will do quite well. Although these cards are definitely a niche, the whole scalable idea of AMDs will need alot of effort put towards it for it to come together without any major flaws.

Until a foolproof way of scaling cores is available (eg with guaranteed results ), I'm more prone to recommend a single card myself. I've came to this conclusion after using SLI with both 7900GTs and more recently 8800GTS 512s. To be fair though when it worked it was a nice improvement ( sometimes with 70-90% gains at high resolution over single card ) but I always hated in games when the performance just wasn't there over a single card. I couldn't' help feeling ripped off given I spent 2x more for 0-25% improvement. I won't deny that multigpu solutions are fastest but the cost per performance gain just isn't linear but I guess people know that when they buy into it. You simply do pay alot more for the latest and greatest I suppose

Again its all in ATIs hands are far as drivers go so hopefully their team are doing everything possible to make the 4870x2s launch ( and life ) as smooth as possible.

[Bellisimo]

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...l_q9450/14.htm
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...el_q9450/8.htm
http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...l_q9450/13.htm

There you can se that a much slower phenom wins over Intel. On low res intel wins easy, going higher and if the video card is fast using advanced graphics then AMD is winning. One computer isn\'t just the speed of the processor, all fast parts on the computer needs fast comunication

That is really strange, if true i would like to know what happens when you have some CF/SLI

[m0da]

That is really strange, if true i would like to know what happens when you have some CF/SLI

It's related to Intel's FSB vs AMD's HT.
Don't worry, future Intel chipsets will take care of the problem