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
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  • 0g1 - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    In the article it says the GT200 doesn't need to do ILP. It only has 10 threads. Each of those threads needs ILP for each of the SP's. The problem with AMD's approach is each SP has 5 units and is aimed directly at processing x,y,z,w matrix style operations. Doing purely scalar operations on AMD's SP's would be only using 1 out of the 5 units. So, if you want to get the most out of AMD's shaders, you should be doing vector calculations.
  • DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    The GT200 doesn't worry with ILP at all.

    a single thread doesn't run width wise across all execution units. instead different threads execute the exact same single scalar op on their own unique bit of data (there is only one program counter per SM for a context). this is all TLP (thread level parallelism) and not ILP.

    AMD's compiler can pack multiple scalar ops into a 5-wide VLIW operation.

    on purely scalar code with many independent ops in a long program, AMD can fill all their units and get close to peak performance. explicit vector instructions are not necessary.
  • gigahertz20 - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canu...">http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha...870-512m...



    The site above mounted an after market cooler on it and got awesome results. Either the Thermalright HR-03 GT is just that great of a GPU cooler, or the standard heatsink/fan on the 4870 is just that horrible. Going from 82C to 43C at load and 55C to 33C at idle, just from an after market cooler is crazy! I was hoping to see some overclocking scores after they mounted the Thermalright on it, but nope :(
  • Matt Campbell - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    The HR-03GT really is that great. Check it out: http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...">http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...

    Our 8800GT went from 81 deg. C to 38 deg. C at load, 52 to 32 at idle. That's also with the quietest fan on the market at low speed. And FWIW, I played through all of The Witcher (about 60 hours) with the 8800GT passively cooled in a case with only 1 120mm fan.

    -Matt
  • Clauzii - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    I see no fan on that thing??! PASSIVE?? :O ??
  • jeffreybt2 - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    "Please note that this is with a single Zalman 92MM fan operating at 1600RPM along with Arctic Cooling MX-2 applied to the base."
  • magnusr - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    Does the audio part of the card support PAP? If not all blu-ray audio will be downsampled to 16/48...
  • NullSubroutine - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    I would just like to point out that the 4870 falls behind the 3870 X2 in Oblivion while in every other game it runs circles around it. To me it appears to be a driver problem with Oblivion rather than an indication of the hardware not doing well there. Unless of course the answer lies in the ring bus of the R680?
  • orionmgomg - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    I would love to see more benchmarks with the CPU OCed to at least 4.0

    All the CPUs you use can hit it NP.

    Also, what about at least 2 GTX 280 Cards and their numbers. Noticed that you did have them in SLI cause the power comsumption comparisons had them, but you held back the performance numbers...

    Lets see the top 4 cards from ATI and Nvidia compete in dule GPU (no punt intended)on an X48 with DDR3 1600 and a FSB of 400x10!

    That would be really nice for the people hoe have performance systems, but may still be rocking out a pair of EVGA 8800Ultras, cause their waiting for real numbers and performance to come out - and their still paying off theye systems lol... :]
  • Ilmarin - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link

    You're probably aware of these already, but I'll mention them just in case:

    * Page 10 (AA comparison) is malformed with no images
    * Page 21 (Power, Heat and Noise) is missing the Heat and Noise stuff.

    Heat is a big issue with these 4800 cards and their reference coolers, so it would be good to see it covered in detail. My 7800 GTX used to artifact and cause crashes when it hit 79 degrees, before I replaced it with an aftermarket cooler. Apparently the 4870 hits well over 90 degrees at load, and the 4850 isn't much better. Decent aftermarket coolers (HR-03 GT, DuOrb) aren't cheap... and if that's what it takes to prevent heat problems on these cards, some people might consider buying a slower card (like a 9800 GTX+) just because it has better cooling.

    Anand, you guys should do a meltdown test... pit the 9800 GTX+ against the 4850, and the 4870 against the GTX 260, all with reference coolers, in a standard air-cooled system at a typical ambient temp. Forget timedemos/benchmarks... play an intensive game like Crysis for an hour or two, and see if you encounter glitches and crashes. If the 4800 cards can somehow remain artifact/crash free at those high temps, then I'd more seriously consider buying one. Heat damage over time may also be a concern, but is hard to test for.

    Sure, DAAMIT's partners will eventually put non-reference coolers on some cards, but history tells us that the majority of the market in the first few months will be stock-cooled cards, so this has got be of concern to consumers... especially early adopters.

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