Do ATI's new graphics cards deliver 75% of a GeForce GTX 280’s power for a fraction of the price? We went into the lab to find out.
The short answer is "yes". The Radeon 4870 runs nearly as fast as a GTX 280 in most benchmarks for about 60% of the cost. Running two 4870 boards together in Crossfire delivers performance that beats a single GTX 280 board for the same cash outlay. The performance you get from a single 4870 card is quite impressive, especially when you consider that it's half the price. When you look at the scores the Radeon 4870s chalked up in Crossfire mode, you may even be tempted to pony up for a pair of 4870s, but think before you leap.
Dual-card solutions are well and good in practice, but before you make the jump to a dual-GPU, you need to be aware of the pitfalls. First, adding a second card to your rig completely obviates the power and noise benefits the 4870 has over the GTX 200. Second, functionality that you may take for granted, like multiple monitor support, doesn't work with dual-card solutions from either ATI or Nvidia. Third, new games frequently require a driver update or even a patch before they'll properly take advantage of your second card. Multiple-cards are great for power users, but you need to be aware of the sacrifices entailed with these rigs, preferably before you whip out your credit card. We can't wholeheartedly recommend SLI and Crossfire as more than niche products until these problems are solved.
During the course of our testing, we also discovered that many of these new cards were CPU-bound on our testbeds in all but the most demanding games. That means that even adding a second (or a faster) videocard to your system shows very little performance improvement because the CPU can't handle its tasks fast enough to keep multiple GPUs occupied. We'll be updating our testbed before the next round of GPU reviews, however, if your current CPU is slower than an Intel Core2 Duo X6800--a 2.93GHz dual-core Conroe--then you probably won't see much benefit in games outside of Crysis if you upgrade to more than one graphics card, whether it's a GTX 280, a Radeon 4870, or even a Radeon 4850.
But, we digress. The short, short verdict is that ATI's new Radeon 4850 and Radeon 4870 deliver stunning performance at an extremely compelling price point. If you've been waiting to upgrade to a DirectX 10-compatible graphics card, now is the time. For less than the price of an Xbox 360, you can upgrade your GPU and get kick ass gaming performance on most modern PCs.
| GeForce GTX 280 | Radeon 4870 | Radeon 4870 Crossfire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crysis (fps) | 15.9 | 9.3 | 19.9 |
| World in Conflict (fps) | 32.0 | 28.0 | 34.0 |
| Company of Heroes (fps) | 32.0 | 39.6 | 44.6 |
| 3DMark'06 Game 1 (fps) | 46.0 | 34.0 | 47.1 |
| 3DMark'06 Game 2 (fps) | 45.5 | 36.7 | 49.5 |
| 3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps) | 15.5 | 10.7 |
19.9 |
| 3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps) | 11.9 | 9.0 | 17.4 |
| GeForce GTX 280 | Radeon 4850 | Radeon 4850 Crossfire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crysis (fps) | 15.9 | 8.1 | 19.2 |
| World in Conflict (fps) | 32.0 | 31.0 | 34.0 |
| Company of Heroes (fps) | 32.0 | 32.7 | 45.1 |
| 3DMark'06 Game 1 (fps) | 46.0 | 24.4 | 45.5 |
| 3DMark'06 Game 2 (fps) | 45.5 | 29.7 | 48.1 |
| 3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps) | 15.5 | 8.1 |
13.1 |
| 3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps) | 11.9 | 7.0 | 10.0 |
Comments are closed on this article
robbyyung
April 19, 2010 at 3:02pm
Someone please help me and tell me what the HD 5970 is and why it is so special in this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dWziA_u5OU
pcfxer
June 28, 2008 at 5:31pm
For those that don't know, OpenCL is C-code compiled into OpenGL code to make graphics processing/debugging quicker and easier. The C-code is first written, debugged, compiled with llvm, debugged some more (or sent back to C for more debugging), etc., etc.
If you hack compilers, you'll love llvm.
dc10ten
June 27, 2008 at 1:55pm
could ATI/AMD be finally coming out of the disaster that was this past year?
the_river
June 25, 2008 at 12:00pm
I paid like $240.00 for my HD3870, which I hooked up to a 47" LG 1080p HDTV. Sweet through HDMI. Quality is amazing! I'm thinking of reselling my 3870 for like $150.00 on eBay or something and paying the extra $50 for a jump Of course, my clock is about 775MHz+ with an OC tool, so that is a trade off for the cheaper card. The way I see it, pros are as follows:
- 2.5x the procs (800 vs. 320)
- Single slot card over my mammoth of a 3870 Asus cooler
- Less power hungry
- Dirt cheap for the performance increase.
- Crysis at higher resolutions? (only played the demo, but DX10 is so sweet looking). I'd by it then for sure.
DRAGONWEEZEL
June 25, 2008 at 11:20am
I am glad that they will be able to compete again. I hope that they are secretly building a megafast top end card, just waiting for Nvidia to roll out one more geforce XXX so they can drop the bomb.
Price /performance is what matters to all but the affluent. Why sport extra heat in your case when most of the time good enough will do? I personally don't want to apply Degree to my case to keep it from perspiring, especially with warmer weather coming up (here in some parts, but not where I am at).
For those of us who do the best we can with what we got, this sounds like the perfect upgrade and right price to anyone who has a 1 1/2 year old & older videocard, yet wants to play modern games.
THERE ARE ONLY 11 TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD. Those that think binary jokes are funny, those that don't, and those that don't know binary
n0t_a_n000b
August 21, 2008 at 11:59am
Well, I guess you could consider the 4870 X2 the bombshell, but I agree something even better will come out soon.
I found the bombshell! Visiontek has a new watercooled beyond superclocked 4870 Black Edition. Sounds sick, eh!
N0t a n00b
mikeart03a
June 25, 2008 at 1:46pm
I'm inclined to agree with you there. I've been a bit of an ATI fan over the years as their cards performed pretty well at a decent price and they were Canadian owned prior to the AMD buyout. I'd recommend nVidia more for the performance freaks. However, I find that ATI boards generally performed well for most people as well as budget shoppers, including myself.
- mike_art03a
IT Technician Gov't of Canada
da_samman
July 28, 2008 at 10:31am
Ditto here. In my next rig I plan to build, I'm putting in an 8800GTS 512 MB by EVGA, with an EVGA mobo that supports SLI. However, if you feel that the 4870's are better for a budget box, please let me know.
Sincerely yours, from FOB Striker, Iraq,
SGT Samuel E. McClard II
Life's a journey, enjoy the ride!!
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