The Test

Test Setup
CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 3.20GHz
Motherboard EVGA nForce 790i SLI
Intel DX48BT2
Video Cards ATI Radeon HD 4870
ATI Radeon HD 4850
ATI Radeon HD 3870X2
ATI Radeon HD 3870
EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX KO
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Video Drivers Catalyst Press Driver (8.7 beta)
Catalyst 8.5
ForceWare 177.34 (for GT200)
ForceWare 177.39 (for 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+)
ForceWare 175.16 (everything else)
Hard Drive Seagate 7200.9 120GB 8MB 7200RPM
RAM 4 x 1GB Corsair DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1
PSU PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W
AA Image Quality Comparison Crysis
Comments Locked

215 Comments

View All Comments

  • Final Destination II - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Dear girls and guys,

    does anyone know of a manufacturer, who offers a HD4850 with a better cooler? I'm desperately searching for one...


    Please reply!
  • Graven Image - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Asus recently announced a 4850 with a non-stock cooler, though their version still doesn't expel the air out the back like a dual slot design. (http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11871)">http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11871). Its not available yet thought. My guess is mid-July we'll probably start seeing a couple different fan and heatsink designs.
  • strikeback03 - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link

    Only dual-slot card I've ever used was an EVGA 8800GTS 640, it sucked air in the back and blew it into the case.
  • Final Destination II - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Nice! 7°C cooler, that's a start! I guess I'll wait a bit more, then.
  • Spacecomber - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Although I'm somewhat dubious about dual card solutions, I keep looking at the benchmarks and then at the prices for a couple of 8800 GTs.

    Perhaps, if the 4870 forces Nvidia to reduce their prices for the GTX 260 and the GTX 280, they will likewise bring down the price for the 9800 GX2. This is already the fastest single card solution, and it sells for less than the GTX 280. If this card starts selling for under $400 (maybe around $350), will this become Nvidia's best answer to the 4870?

    Given the performance and the prices for the 4870 and the 9800 GX2 will Nvidia be able to price the GTX 280 competitively, or will it simply be vanity product - ridiculously priced and produced only in very small numbers?

    It should be interesting to see where the prices for video cards end up over the course of the next few weeks.
  • kelmerp - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Better HD knickknacks? Better offloading/upscaling?
  • chizow - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    The HD4000 series have better HDMI sound support with 8ch LPCM over HDMI, but still can't pass uncompressed bistreams. Image quality hasn't changed as there isn't really any room to improve.
  • kelmerp - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    It would be nice to have a video card, where it doesn't matter how weak the current-gen processor is (say the lowliest celeron available), the card can still output 1080p HDTV without dropping any frames.
  • Chaser - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Good to have back at the FRONT of the finish line.
  • JPForums - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Ragarding the SLI scaling in Witcher:
    The GTX 280 SLI setup may be running into a bottleneck or driver issues, rather than seeing inherent scaling issues. Consider, the 9800 GTX+ SLI setup scales from 22.9 to 44.5. So the scaling isn't an inherent SLI scaling problem. Though it may point to scaling issues specific to the GTX 280, it is more likely that the problem lies elsewhere. I do, however, agree with your general statement that when CF is working properly, it tends to scale better. In my systems, it seems to require less CPU overhead.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now