AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Testing the Multi-GPU Waters
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on August 12, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power Consumption
The 4870 X2 is an incredible power hog. Yes, it does perform well. Yes it costs a bit less than two 4870 cards. But will we be able to afford the energy bill?
In both idle and load power the 4870 X2 is near the bottom of our chart. The only thing more inane than the 4870 X2 is plugging two of them into one system. Keep in mind that this power measurement is taken running a 3dmark pixel shader test using almost no other resources. In actual game play power draw is much higher as the CPU, memory, and hard drive can come under load at the same time.
Welcome to the kilowatt era. We've been telling you these huge power supplies weren't that necessary until this generation, and we absolutely mean it. If you are thinking about a multi GPU solution involving the latest hardware you are going to want something upwards of 1KW. If you want GTX 280 SLI or 4870 X2 CrossFire you'll want to head on up to the 1200W deparment.
Oh, and, don't forget to turn it off when you aren't gaming.
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CyberHawk - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
That kind of message was I hoping for to get from review... a kind of didn't happen.BRDiger - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
I just wondered if you useed the 8.8 Catalysts... The testing rigs specs would be nice for comparison of the benchies...nubie - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - link
This is interesting, and thanks for the hints about a 1GB model, but guru3d ran an article two weeks ago on a 2GB 4850, so I believe that is trumped.I too was hoping for more enthusiasm, the 9800GTX is $200 and the just released GTX 260 is under $300?? Stop the presses nVidia is no longer on top!!
AMD has wrested back the performance crown with a vengeance, and their mainstream products are totally playable in recent games.
Meanwhile nVidia is trying to plug every price point with the 8800GS and 9600GSO and the 9600GT, not to mention the 9800GTX+, this is freaking ridiculous.
You need to paint a more realistic picture, this is one of the rare times that mainstream games can be played for $170 while decimating the competition's products that cost $250, and the high end is owned by the same company with a working Dual chip card with the performance crown, and being a more efficient electricity user than the competition.
If nVidia comes out with a GTX 260 x2 or a GTX 280 x2 I am going to look very carefully to see how glowing THAT review is.
I want SLi and Crossfire to die. There is no reason to only allow 2 displays (or worse just one) on a multi-output machine. Worse still a machine with 2x PCI-E 16x slots (even in dual 8x mode) should be allowed to run any hardware that fits in them.
This software hampering of a completely standard PCI-E interface is stupid and childish, they should just drop it.