2x 4870's & 2x 4850's in Crossfire!

[iBPJohn]

iBuyPower Testing and Overclock Team Presents:
ATI Hybrid CrossFireX 2x HD4870s and 2x HD4850s

Picture

With the 4870s in the wild, we at iBuyPower decided to try running the Phenom 9950s our AMD reps gave us to test on a Quad CrossFireX configuration with 2 HD4870s and 2 HD4850s in tandem.

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System Specifications:
CPU - AMD Phenom 9950 @ 3.0 GHz
RAM - 2 x 1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-1066 PC2-8500 @ 5-5-5-15
Graphics - 2x ATI HD4870 and 2x ATI HD4850
Motherboard - Asus M3A32 MVP 790FX
HDD - 250GB WD2500JS
PSU - 1250W Cooler Master Real Power Pro
OS - Windows Vista 32bit
Stock ATI HD4870 Clocks: 750 core/900 memory (GDDR5)
Stock ATI HD4850 Clocks: 625 core/993 memory (GDDR3)

HD4870 Crossfire System Specifications:
CPU - Intel Yorkfield QX9770 @ 4.0 GHz
RAM - 2 x 1GB Mushkin DDR3-1800 PC3-12800 @ 7-7-6-18
Graphics - ATI HD4870 (Crossfire when specified)
Motherboard - Asus P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n Edition
HDD - 160GB Hitachi Deskstar
PSU - 1250W Cooler Master Real Power Pro
OS - Windows Vista 32bit

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Benchmarks:
Temperatures:
Idle: 60C-65C
Load: 73C-78C

3DMark Vantage:
P13371
GPU: 14941
CPU: 10168

3DMark '06:
16987
GPU SM2.0: 6145
GPU SM3.0: 9144
CPU: 4168

Compare to HD4870s in Crossfire:
3DMark Vantage:
P12261
GPU: 11390
CPU: 15913

3DMark '06:
21684
GPU SM2.0: 8070
GPU SM3.0: 10846
CPU: 5900

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Crysis Benchmark:
1280 x 1024 (No AA) @ High: 34.465
1600 x 1200 (No AA) @ High: 32.555
1600 x 1200 (2x AA) @ High: 28.27
1600 x 1200 (4x AA) @ High: 27.705
1280 x 1024 (No AA) @ Very High: 24.28
1600 x 1200 (No AA) @ Very High: 20.765
1600 x 1200 (2x AA) @ Very High: 18.38
1600 x 1200 (4x AA) @ Very High: Failed (Benchmark wouldn't complete)

Compare to HD4870s in Crossfire:
1280 x 1024 (No AA) @ High: 53.205
1600 x 1200 (No AA) @ High: 48.35
1600 x 1200 (2x AA) @ High: 41.385
1600 x 1200 (4x AA) @ High: 34.01
1280 x 1024 (No AA) @ Very High: 38.63
1600 x 1200 (No AA) @ Very High: 32.085
1600 x 1200 (2x AA) @ Very High: 27.35
1600 x 1200 (4x AA) @ Very High: 24.16

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Conclusions
Right now it seems that 4 cards isn't the best route. It is most likely caused by the 4850's bringing the 4870's down to the same speed. Also it could have been the limiting by the bus speed being reduced to x8 speeds. Hopefully though with newer drivers we might see a performance boost.





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Additional Photos:
Picture 2
Picture 3

 

[Hauk]

I like the "additional photos."

Who freakin needs a case anyway!!

 

[AmberClad]

Well that was disappointing, but I guess not really unexpected based on what I already saw from the previous quad 4850 benchmarks . Thanks for the numbers.

 

[Hauk]

Both camps still in 2+ infancy...

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: SteelSix
I like the "additional photos."

Who freakin needs a case anyway!!

I'm trying to figure out what all that gear he's got is . I think I see:

- Scythe Ultra Kaze fans
- some sort of Zalman cooler...the box looks too small to be a 9 series
- some kind of mystery water-cooling gear...not something I've ever seen before...looks like an integrated pump and waterblock

EDIT: Heh, mystery solved. I think it's one of their own in-house products. I wonder how it'd do compared to the H20-120 Compact.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, how many 6-pin PCI-E power connectors does that PSU have? Doesn't the 4870 take two, and the 4850 take one, so that means that it needs six total!

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Wow, how many 6-pin PCI-E power connectors does that PSU have? Doesn't the 4870 take two, and the 4850 take one, so that means that it needs six total!

well just about all the cards come with molex adapters anyways...

 

[Sylvanas]

Crysis has had problems with Multi-GPU from the beginning, it would have been good to see games like Fear, UT3 and ETQW which generally scale well with more GPU's, did you use the 4800 Hotfix drivers?

 

[lopri]

That pre-built water cooling kit looks interesting. Wonder how it performs?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
Crysis has had problems with Multi-GPU from the beginning, it would have been good to see games like Fear, UT3 and ETQW which generally scale well with more GPU's, did you use the 4800 Hotfix drivers?

Those hotfix are mearly for boosting 3Dmark scores. Tweaktown did use the new hotfixes, and reviewed CF X with 4xHD4850s, and they concluded

It seems that the Hot Fix driver should simply be called the ?Increase your 3DMark score? driver. Apart from the two synthetic benchmarks, the only game to really see an increase in performance was Unreal Tournament 3. Outside of that, most games had a negative affect when adding more cards.

Link

 

[iBPJohn]

We used the 1250W Cooler Master Real Power Pro, it has 6x 6pin and 3x 8pin for Tri SLI.

The water cooler is our own, it's the IBP-Z001, and it should be available on Newegg fairly soon. (Hopefully under the correct name).
From our tests it seems to perform better than any air cooler, we tested it against the TT MaxOrb and a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 and it kept a qx9770 a little cooler.
We have sent it to a few sites for reviews if you don't believe our results .

We are working on getting more games in our benchmarks to provide better results.

We weren't using the hotfix drivers.

 

[iBPJohn]

oops didn't realize that the bottom to pictures were the same, I fixed it now.

 

[sxr7171]

I could really use a one unit watercooler for the chipset since I have a custom watercooler for my CPU and I don't want to put the chipset in the same loop. Modern chipsets heat up like crazy when boosting FSB. If you guys come out with one for the x58, I will buy it. If you guys made a GPU watercooler I'd get it also. As long as the loop is long enough to put the radiator outside the case it will be a great solution.