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4890 XFire vs GTX285 SLI
- Thread starter thilanliyan
- Start date
alcoholbob
Diamond Member
Crysis performance is still sadness.
SlowSpyder
Lifer
Nice overclocks and power numbers for the 4890. I like how the GTX285's will overclock to about 720-730MHz on average from what I see, and some people will claim how wonderful Nvidia's top cards overclock, yet 10% on a 4870 is bad compared to ~11% for the GTX285 being good. Anyway, nice to see the 4890 has lots of headroom and AMD improved power usage with the 4890 vs. the 4870. Looks like 2 4890's are an excellent buy right now... less power then the competition, great performance, and lower cost. Not that the GTX285 is a bad card, but I'm suprised it's price hasn't dropped a bit with the GTX275 and 4890 on the market.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...-hd4890cf_7.html#sect0
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...-hd4890cf_7.html#sect0
thilanliyan
Lifer
For sure. Here in Canada, the cheapest I've seen the 285 is $400 and $260 for the 4890 so $800 vs $520...I don't think the 285s are worth that much more.
thilanliyan
Lifer
It's not only the 4890s...I can get 11% more at stock volts and about 18% more with a voltage boost on my 4870. nV cards do overclock well though...I had my 8800GT up almost 20% and my 8800GTS 640 up 13%.
I dont see anything negative towards nV here according to the benchmarks?
Maybe that isnt what you are trying to say. I think you are bringing up a pricing issue, which is valid. Long day here, sorry.
nV takes some of the highest resoltion wins, which I though ATi was better at high resolution, high AA recently?
It also shows just how poor an X3 solution is sometimes even compared to a single-PCB X2.
Maybe that isnt what you are trying to say. I think you are bringing up a pricing issue, which is valid. Long day here, sorry.
nV takes some of the highest resoltion wins, which I though ATi was better at high resolution, high AA recently?
It also shows just how poor an X3 solution is sometimes even compared to a single-PCB X2.
BenSkywalker
Diamond Member
There are some..... oddities with the numbers in this review. Outside the margin of error better then 100% scaling in several benches(some CoD4, PoP, 16x10 ME, and most HAWX benches). Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see them talk about this and point out that they red made sure to double check results that don't quite add up.
Other then that, 4870x3 numbers looked very nice on a couple of games where all the other solutions rolled over and died. That could be interesting with some of the deals we have been seeing on those.
Other then that, 4870x3 numbers looked very nice on a couple of games where all the other solutions rolled over and died. That could be interesting with some of the deals we have been seeing on those.
ATI seems to gain ground at higher resolutions, but quite often it also has lower minimum frame rates.
Certainly if it's mostly cheaper than the NV options it's a much much better buy.
Also interesting to laugh at how much the HD4870 X3 struggles to do anything worthwhile in almost every game.
Certainly if it's mostly cheaper than the NV options it's a much much better buy.
Also interesting to laugh at how much the HD4870 X3 struggles to do anything worthwhile in almost every game.
BenSkywalker
Diamond Member
So people are knocking the 4870x3 solution....
They tested 15 games, in 10 of them the x3 was the fastest board at the highest settings. So for $510 you can a x3 setup versus $459 for the board that wins 3 out of 15, and the x3 is the bad offering?
Maybe it's just me, but in this segment I'm a lot less worried about getting 5% more performance when I'm already over 150FPS then I am about moving from 32 to 52FPS in a game like HAWX with everything cranked. The x3 may lose on a marginal basis often at the lower settings, but when you push these parts it seemed to rather dominate.
They tested 15 games, in 10 of them the x3 was the fastest board at the highest settings. So for $510 you can a x3 setup versus $459 for the board that wins 3 out of 15, and the x3 is the bad offering?
Maybe it's just me, but in this segment I'm a lot less worried about getting 5% more performance when I'm already over 150FPS then I am about moving from 32 to 52FPS in a game like HAWX with everything cranked. The x3 may lose on a marginal basis often at the lower settings, but when you push these parts it seemed to rather dominate.
cbn
Lifer
I wonder why this happened?
I tried looking for something comparable in the recent Anandtech archives the closest I could find was 4870 512MB X-fire vs 260 GTX SLI. Even with lower memory on the 4870 it seems to do as well as the 260GTX with the larger memory. So maybe there is something about the ATI cards that is effectively reducing a memory bottleneck effect?
Or maybe there is something about the latest Catalyst drivers?
cbn
Lifer
Plus consider the price of the other parts....
Lately I have been looking at AMD motherboards (although I will probably not upgrade in that are for another two years) and from a value standpoint it seems hard to beat something with two full X16 lanes (in X-fire) for $120.
P45 is cheap also but can only run x8,x8 on Multi-GPU.
x8,x8 might become an issue for people that like to hold onto their mobos (and just upgrade video cards). In fact, I think we are already at the point where the top single cards in the next generation (GT300, HD58xx) will exceed the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0 x8. (HD4850x2 already exceeds the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.0 x16)
nitromullet
Diamond Member
Nice numbers for 4890 CF, and honestly pretty surprising to me. Although, I've been hanging out in the console forum more these days so I'm not as up-to-date with video as I have been in the past.
soccerballtux
Lifer
Really? Linkage? Did not know this.
cbn
Lifer
It looks like the 4890s CF is better than 285 GTX SLI when 2560x1600 resolution is used.
But when the resolution is lower the 285 GTXs in SLI come out ahead.
The fact the cheap ATI cards are winning at high resolution is impressive to me. I wonder what is going on?
Maybe there is something about Crossfire that lends itself to scaling well at high resolution?
Personally I think this is a big selling point for ATI because I would think a lot of Mega systems would be paired with a large LCD.
I received my HD4890 (MSI OC Edition) on Friday and it is very fast, and overclocks quite well. Mine does 980/1100 quite easily, without doing anything special. However, the card is very noisy! My old HD4830 was virtually silent compared to this card. Even at idle, the card is too noisy, unless you do something special to quiet it down. My compter is very quiet - I undervolts my fan, and have very quiet silent cpu cooler and PSU, and have a quiet case. I don't mind some noise while gaming (although this is really too loud, IMO), but cards should really be silent in 2D.
The first problem is that the GDDR5 memory doesn't underclock in 2D, so the card idles around 60C. The only way I found to get around this is to use ATI Tray tools to underlock the RAM in 2D. I can get the temperature down to 52C with the RAM downclocked. I'm sure the temrpature would go down further if I could lower the voltage in 2D, but I've not been able to tweak the voltages (the Rivatuner plug-in didn't work for me).
My solution for now is to underclock the memory (down to 400) in 2D - and remember to set it back high again if I play a game. I've also edited the fan profiles with ATI tray tools, to keep the fan speed low. The lower memory speeds would keep the card at 52C while idle - however I also lower the fan to near-silent levels, so the card is back up to idling at 60C, but is much quieter. It's now "usable" in 2D, although not as good as my old HD4830.
I'm dying for a BIOS editor for this card! I'm sure a slight undervolt along with the lower 2D speeds will keep the card cool and quiet in 2D. However, in 3D the card is pretty noisy - I'm thinking if letting the card run a bit hotter, just to keep the noise down a bit (or game with headphones). With some effort, noise levels can be tolerable at stock speeds. However, at full overclock the card is noisy - no way around it. I've never tried 3rd party cooling on a video card, but I might do it for this one.
The first problem is that the GDDR5 memory doesn't underclock in 2D, so the card idles around 60C. The only way I found to get around this is to use ATI Tray tools to underlock the RAM in 2D. I can get the temperature down to 52C with the RAM downclocked. I'm sure the temrpature would go down further if I could lower the voltage in 2D, but I've not been able to tweak the voltages (the Rivatuner plug-in didn't work for me).
My solution for now is to underclock the memory (down to 400) in 2D - and remember to set it back high again if I play a game. I've also edited the fan profiles with ATI tray tools, to keep the fan speed low. The lower memory speeds would keep the card at 52C while idle - however I also lower the fan to near-silent levels, so the card is back up to idling at 60C, but is much quieter. It's now "usable" in 2D, although not as good as my old HD4830.
I'm dying for a BIOS editor for this card! I'm sure a slight undervolt along with the lower 2D speeds will keep the card cool and quiet in 2D. However, in 3D the card is pretty noisy - I'm thinking if letting the card run a bit hotter, just to keep the noise down a bit (or game with headphones). With some effort, noise levels can be tolerable at stock speeds. However, at full overclock the card is noisy - no way around it. I've never tried 3rd party cooling on a video card, but I might do it for this one.
thilanliyan
Lifer
You can have Tray Tools auto overclock when you start a game so you don't have to manually change it back to a 3D profile when gaming and a 2D profile when it exits the game. Make a 2D and 3D profile and the "auto overclocking" menu is just under the "overclocking" menu.
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