The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 25, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Assassin's Creed
Even at 2560 x 1600 the high end configurations are bumping into a frame rate limiter, any of the very high end setups are capable of running Assassin's Creed very well.
Oblivion
The GeForce 9800 GTX+ does very well in Oblivion and a pair of them actually give the 4870 CF a run for its money, especially given that the GTX+ is a bit cheaper. While it's not the trend, it does illustrate that GPU performance can really vary from one application to the next. The Radeon HD 4870 is still faster, overall, just not in this case where it performs equally to a GTX+.
The Witcher
We've said it over and over again: while CrossFire doesn't scale as consistently as SLI, when it does, it has the potential to outscale SLI, and The Witcher is the perfect example of that. While the GeForce GTX 280 sees performance go up 55% from one to two cards, the Radeon HD 4870 sees a full 100% increase in performance.
It is worth noting that we are able to see these performance gains due to a late driver drop by AMD that enables CrossFire support in The Witcher. We do hope that AMD looks at enabling CrossFire in games other than those we test, but we do appreciate the quick turnaround in enabling support - at least once it was brought to their attention.
Bioshock
The Radeon HD 4000 series did very well in Bioshock in our single-GPU tests, but pair two of these things up and we're now setting performance records.
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NullSubroutine - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
It scaled more than 100% in a few games?DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
greater than 100% scaling is due to margin of error combination for both single card and dual card tests in the vast majority of cases.we also tested single card performance on an nvidia system and crossfire performance on an intel system, so the different computers will also add margin of error.
two card solutions generally don't scale at greater than 100% except in extraordinarily odd situations (where rebalancing loads might help with scaling on both individual cards -- but that's odd and rare).
Sind - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Why no 260 and 280 SLI?ImmortalZ - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Because, with that kind of money, one can an entire system with one 48xx :PAlso, page 10 appears to be broken.
Lifted - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
No 260 or 280 SLI in the benchmarks, but they included them in the power charts. Odd.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
The power data was simply taken from the GTX 280 review, we just added to the list.As for the GTX 280 SLI numbers, we didn't include them as it it's mostly out of the price range of the Radeon HD 4870 ($1300 vs. $600 for two 4870s). We can always go back and redo the graphs to include them if you guys would like, but in the interim I would suggest looking at the GTX review to get comparison numbers.
Take care,
Anand
DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
we actually only have one GTX 260, so we can't test thatClauzii - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Yes, and the click to enlarge doesn't work.And believe it or not, posting right now from a AT page that looks like 1994...!
ImmortalZ - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Insert a buy in there. Need edit!TonyB - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
but can it play crysis?