Crossfire 4850's vs GTX280

[NoStateofMind]

THESE NUMBERS ARE TAKEN FROM ANANDTECH 4850 REVIEW THAT IS LINKED IN THIS OP. I DID NOT MAKE THESE BENCHMARKS, I ONLY BROKE THEM DOWN INTO PERFORMANCE PER DOLLAR AND RESOLUTION.

After reading the benchmarks on Anandtechs front page about the 4850's performance in crossfire against the GTX280, I thought it was time to lay it on the line so to speak. Currently you can have 2x4850's for around $400 before rebate and a GTX280 for around $600. IMO according to the benchmarks nvidia is going to have to drop their prices significantly to stay competitive. Here are the average numbers for each game and resolution. The bold will be the FPS over the other card(s). In the end I will show the overall performance in FPS from one to the other. You will have to agree there is no reason for a GTX280 then.

Crysis

1280x1024
GTX280 50.1 +6.6
4850CF 43.5

1600x1200
GTX280 40.7 +2.5
4850CF 38.2

1900x1200
GTX280 34.3
4850CF 36.4 +2.1

Nvidia wins by 7 FPS overall with an average of 2.3 FPS lead for each resolution.

Call of Duty 4

1600x1200
GTX280 94.0
4850CF 147.0 +53.0

1920x1200
GTX280 90.9
4850CF 130.6 +39.7

2560x1600
GTX280 67.4
4850CF 88.2 +20.8

ATi wins by 113.5 FPS overall with an average of 37.8 FPS lead for each resolution

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

1600x1200
GTX280 109.1 +13.6
4850CF 95.5

1900x1200
GTX280 99.0 +7.3
4850CF 82.7

2560x1600
GTX280 70.2 +15.5
4850CF 53.7

Nvidia wins by 36.4 FPS overall with an average of 12.1 FPS lead for each resolution.

Assassins Creed

1600x1200
GTX280 56.5 +3.5
4850CF 53.0

1900x1200
GTX280 55.5 +2.9
4850CF 52.6

2560x1600
GTX280 45.0
4850CF 51.9 +6.9

Dead even overall (ATi by .4 FPS equals nil)

Oblivion - 4x AA & 16x AF

1600x1200
GTX280 57.1
4850CF 67.9 +10.8

1900x1200
GTX280 51.1
4850CF 60.0 +8.9

2560x1600
GTX280 36.8
4850CF 39.5 +2.7

ATi wins by 22.4 overall with an average of 7.4 FPS lead for each resolution.

The Witcher

1600x1200
GTX280 60.6 +17.0
4850CF 43.6

1900x1200
GTX280 55.1 +20.5
4850CF 34.6

2560x1600
GTX280 37.7 +6.8
4850CF 20.9

Nvidia wins by 44.3 overall with an average of 14.8 FPS lead for each resolution.

Bioshock

1600x1200
GTX280 109.2 +5.9
4850CF 103.3

1900x1200
GTX280 96.7
4850CF 100.3 +3.6

2560x1600
GTX280 93.9 +38.4
4850CF 55.5

Nvidia wins by 40.7 overall with an average of 13 FPS lead for each resolution

GTX280 @ $600
Total FPS for all games/resolutions: 1411
FPS Average per game (7): 202

Total FPS for all games @ 1600x1200: 527.2
FPS Average @ 1600x1200: 75.3 ($7.97 a FPS)

Total FPS for all games @ 1900x1200: 482.6
FPS Average @ 1920x1200: 68.9 ($8.71 a FPS)

Total FPS for all games (6) @ 2560x1600: 351
FPS Average @ 2560x1600: 58.5 ($10.26 a FPS)

HD4850CF @ $400
Total FPS for all games/resolutions: 1399
FPS Average per game (7): 199.8

Total FPS for all games @ 1600x1200: 549
FPS Average @ 1600x1200: 78.4 ($5.10 a FPS)

Total FPS for all games @ 1900x1200: 497
FPS Average @ 1920x1200: 71.0 ($5.63 a FPS)

Total FPS for all games (6) @ 2560x1600: 310
FPS Average @ 2560x1600: 44.2 ($9.04 a FPS)

ATi wins at the 1600x1200 & 1900x1200 resolutions along with the price and performance. Nvidia wins the highest resolution 2560x1600 but loses the dollar per frame war.

There is no doubt in my mind that if you are concidering buying a GTX280, your money would be better spent on Crossfire 4850's. I hope I have helped someone see things differently or at least wasted 10 minutes of your time reading this

I was bored

 

[Termie]

Great job PC Surgeon - this is definitely something I and a lot of others are thinking about. Nvidia is hurting itself by not allowing its cards to be run in SLI on the intel chipsets that most of us have (I would already have another 8800gt if they did). The only thing that scares me about the 4850 is Anandtech's power supply problems with the crossfired 4850s. 1200w required? What was up with that? I'll need to see a few more reviews before I take the plunge - I'm not about to step up to that kind of power supply.

 

[shabby]

Impressive considering you can get those 4850's for $150 each and majority of mobo's alreayd support crossfire, well done ati.

 

[chizow]

Nice compilation, I put a similar one together myself in a different thread along with some bullet points about some of the downsides of SLI/CF.

1920x1200 Review Compilation

• Profiles/Scaling- SLI/CF rely on driver profiles for their performance and in the case of ATI, you can't change these yourself. So if your particular game doesn't have a pre-defined profile you may see no benefit or even *worst* performance than with a single card. In the case of relying on two individually slower cards than your single card, you can see that you may actually be paying more for *worst* performance which is unacceptable to me. Scaling is typically erratic as well even when CF/SLI is working, so seeing 2x the performance is rare (although 4850 does show improvements here).
  
• Micro-stuttering- Pretty heated debate about the significance of this problem on this board and others although it pops up infrequently. Basically the timing of each frame from the different GPU in AFR can be erratic, leading to this effect. Apparently some people are very sensitive to it and some aren't. I don't know as I have never used SLI, but I certainly wouldn't be happy if I spent $400-600 for SLI/CF only to find I couldn't stand micro-stutter.
  
• Heat/Power/Space - Typically not an issue for most enthusiasts, but it can become a problem when you have 2 or even 3x the power draw and heat from high-end cards. The PSU issue can be a total W issue, but also a power connector issue with so many high-end parts needing 6 or even 8-pin PCI-E connections. Many cases can also have problems accomodating 1x9"+ card, much less 2+.
  
• Multi-Monitor (NV only) - NV multi-GPU solutions do not support multi-monitors. I don't know if this is a superficial driver limitation to prevent desktop cards being used in professional workstations or a truly technical issue, but I'm leaning towards driver limitation as I'm assuming the Quadro GX2 would support more than 1 monitor..... Multi-Monitor support is important to me as I play full screen on my 1920 and use my 2nd monitor for various monitoring tools, surfing the web, etc.
  
• Bandwidth/Frame Buffer - Not as big a deal at 1920, but one of the major reasons to upgrade to the fastes GPU is for ultra high resolutions with AA. With a GX2 or SLI/CF solution, you're still limited to the same bus width and frame buffer as the individual cards even if you have more rendering horse power. This limitation is apparent in the higher resolutions with AA when comparing a GTX 280 with a true 512-bit bus and 1GB frame buffer to the X2/SLI solutions with a 256-bit bus and 512MB buffer.
  
• Chipset specific limitations - ATI CF requires an Intel/AMD chipset and NV SLI requires an NV chipset. This unnecessarily ties your platform to your GPU between generations and in the case of SLI, to NV's flaky chipsets.
  
• Overclocking ability? - NV used to have problems overclocking in SLI in Vista but I think its been fixed. Not sure if ATI has similar problems although I know many of their parts are clock-locked via BIOS.
  
• Low Minimum Framerates (CP5670 mentioned) - SLI/CF for whateve reasons tend to have much lower minimum framerates than single-GPU solutions.
  
• Vsync and Triple Buffering consistency problems (CP5670) - seems this can be hit or miss with SLI (not sure about CF) and is certainly an important feature at both high and low FPS. At low FPS Triple Buffering, helps mitigate the incremental FPS denominations of Vsync and at high FPS they can prevent screen tearing on LCDs.

Certainly trying out CF/SLI on low-cost solutions like 4850 CF or 8800GT/GTS or 9800GTX/GX2 make it a more bearable experiment to see if its worth it for you, but I don't really think you can compare a single-GPU solution without any of the above problems to a CF/SLI solution based on FPS alone.

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon

There is no doubt in my mind that if you are concidering buying a GTX280, your money would be better spent on Crossfire 4850's. I hope I have helped someone see things differently or at least wasted 10 minutes of your time reading this

I was bored

DO 8xAA benchmarking please ... crossfire with 4xAA not fun.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Nice job on the review. One thing I think is important to remember with the 4850's, is even in games that don't support CF well, you still get at least the performance of a single 4850... this is a lot different then the experience with a 3870x2 I'm sure, where worst case you'd get the performance of a single 3870. Single 4850 performance is still very, very good. I would think this makes the 4850 CF a safter bet.

OP, any comments on microstutter? How about overall game play experience on the GTX280 vs. the 2 x4850? Did anything over all seem better/worse on one rig to the next? I imagine at this stage image quaility is quite similar 99.9% the same, any comments on that? Thanks again for making this review, it really shows where your money is better spent. I don't see the GTX280 doing all that well in the market place, not until a price reduction anyway.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Oh no You guys have mistaken the numbers for my own review. I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer. This is not my review. I only took the numbers from the Anandtech review and broke them down into FPS performance per dollar and resolution. Sorry if I gave you guys the wrong impression. I'll update the OP so its more clear.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

dang, this ati card is making me want a Xfire board

 

[ginfest]

Good synopsis of the review
After reading this and other sites since the 4850/GT280 launch it seems best to me to wait for the GT260/4870 release/reviews. The GT280 is way overpriced and I don't want to deal with any multi-card solution, whether CF or SLI
Hopefully the 260/4870 will be avail soon.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
dang, this ati card is making me want a Xfire board

You have two in your sig?

 

[waxking1]

Here's a link to a Crossfire review of the 4850's. While impressive, they aren't exactly world beaters, but I agree they are great for the price. Since I couldn't get the Bestbuy deal, I'm going to wait a bit longer. I want to see what the 4870's can do and also see some more comparisons with the new Nvidia cards.

Crossfire

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
dang, this ati card is making me want a Xfire board

You have two in your sig?

those are both 1x16pci-e with the other slot electrically at 4pci-e

 

[Sind]

As an owner a former owner of 6800GT SLI, 7800GTX512 SLI, 7950GX2, 3870X2 I would encourage anyone who is thinking of checking out multi-gpu to really do there research and beware the caveats, some of which are listed in this thread. I've stepped up to a 280 and the 3870X2 will be the last multi gpu solution I will be using until some of the issues I have with it are addressed. I hear rumours that a 4870X2 will negate micro stutter and some of the other issues, if that is the case where is the fix for non-single card multi-gpu solutions? Uh huh. Multi-gpu can be an amazing thing, but it is not without it's problems, do your research unless you want to check it out and have a some cash to blow. I really hope something revolutionary comes along or one of the two camps corrects it's problems, for example there is no excuse in my mind from either company to have 1 title that is unable to work with multi-gpu, support should be out of the box, not through beta drivers or months down the road. Good luck future multi-gpu users!

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: chizow


Certainly trying out CF/SLI on low-cost solutions like 4850 CF or 8800GT/GTS or 9800GTX/GX2 make it a more bearable experiment to see if its worth it for you, but I don't really think you can compare a single-GPU solution without any of the above problems to a CF/SLI solution based on FPS alone.

Why because it's $200 cheaper than your GTX 280? So your logic is to spend an extra $200 Because it's a single GPU card? No thanks! I'll save my money and get HD4850 CF.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks

Originally posted by: chizow


Certainly trying out CF/SLI on low-cost solutions like 4850 CF or 8800GT/GTS or 9800GTX/GX2 make it a more bearable experiment to see if its worth it for you, but I don't really think you can compare a single-GPU solution without any of the above problems to a CF/SLI solution based on FPS alone.

Why because it's $200 cheaper than your GTX 280? So your logic is to spend an extra $200 Because it's a single GPU card? No thanks! I'll save my money and get HD4850 CF.

No, the point was its illogical to compare to a GTX 280 because it doesn't have all the problems inherent with a multi-GPU solution. But that's certainly a lesson best learned from first-hand experience. I don't have any experience with modern SLI (since the 3dfx days) but I know the problems I've read about would bother me to no end. Like the poster above you stated, if you're thinking about CF/SLI you definitely should research it first. Starting with the SLI/CF forums would be a good start. If your head isn't spinning after the first page I'd be surprised.

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: MegaWorks

Originally posted by: chizow


Certainly trying out CF/SLI on low-cost solutions like 4850 CF or 8800GT/GTS or 9800GTX/GX2 make it a more bearable experiment to see if its worth it for you, but I don't really think you can compare a single-GPU solution without any of the above problems to a CF/SLI solution based on FPS alone.

Why because it's $200 cheaper than your GTX 280? So your logic is to spend an extra $200 Because it's a single GPU card? No thanks! I'll save my money and get HD4850 CF.

No, the point was its illogical to compare to a GTX 280 because it doesn't have all the problems inherent with a multi-GPU solution. But that's certainly a lesson best learned from first-hand experience. I don't have any experience with modern SLI (since the 3dfx days) but I know the problems I've read about would bother me to no end. Like the poster above you stated, if you're thinking about CF/SLI you definitely should research it first. Starting with the SLI/CF forums would be a good start. If your head isn't spinning after the first page I'd be surprised.

Research what? I've been using CrossFire since January look at my sig I can tell you "from experience" that it did give me a better gaming at higher resolution. My next setup would probably be CF again.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: MegaWorks

Originally posted by: chizow


Certainly trying out CF/SLI on low-cost solutions like 4850 CF or 8800GT/GTS or 9800GTX/GX2 make it a more bearable experiment to see if its worth it for you, but I don't really think you can compare a single-GPU solution without any of the above problems to a CF/SLI solution based on FPS alone.

Why because it's $200 cheaper than your GTX 280? So your logic is to spend an extra $200 Because it's a single GPU card? No thanks! I'll save my money and get HD4850 CF.

No, the point was its illogical to compare to a GTX 280 because it doesn't have all the problems inherent with a multi-GPU solution. But that's certainly a lesson best learned from first-hand experience. I don't have any experience with modern SLI (since the 3dfx days) but I know the problems I've read about would bother me to no end. Like the poster above you stated, if you're thinking about CF/SLI you definitely should research it first. Starting with the SLI/CF forums would be a good start. If your head isn't spinning after the first page I'd be surprised.

Research what? I've been using CrossFire since January look at my sig I can tell you "from experience" that it did give me a better gaming at higher resolution. My next setup would probably be CF again.

And like I said, I'm sure its fine when it works and you don't run into the problems I've listed, but that's clearly not the case all of the time. I can say for certainty that my GTX 280 is always an improvement over my 8800GTX in every aspect.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Termie
Great job PC Surgeon - this is definitely something I and a lot of others are thinking about. Nvidia is hurting itself by not allowing its cards to be run in SLI on the intel chipsets that most of us have (I would already have another 8800gt if they did). The only thing that scares me about the 4850 is Anandtech's power supply problems with the crossfired 4850s. 1200w required? What was up with that? I'll need to see a few more reviews before I take the plunge - I'm not about to step up to that kind of power supply.

that was a defective psu. it didn't work with the single gtx 280, either.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
dang, this ati card is making me want a Xfire board

You have two in your sig?

those are both 1x16pci-e with the other slot electrically at 4pci-e

I'm thinking about getting a 4850 to go with my 3870. I have an ip35 pro, which is also 16x/4x in crossfire mode. I read a review from AT about 6 mos ago that only showed about a 10% drop between 8x/8x and 16x/4x. with mismatched cards like 4850 and 3870 it would probably be even less than that, maybe 5% or so.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Sind
As an owner a former owner of 6800GT SLI, 7800GTX512 SLI, 7950GX2, 3870X2 I would encourage anyone who is thinking of checking out multi-gpu to really do there research and beware the caveats, some of which are listed in this thread. I've stepped up to a 280 and the 3870X2 will be the last multi gpu solution I will be using until some of the issues I have with it are addressed. I hear rumours that a 4870X2 will negate micro stutter and some of the other issues, if that is the case where is the fix for non-single card multi-gpu solutions? Uh huh. Multi-gpu can be an amazing thing, but it is not without it's problems, do your research unless you want to check it out and have a some cash to blow. I really hope something revolutionary comes along or one of the two camps corrects it's problems, for example there is no excuse in my mind from either company to have 1 title that is unable to work with multi-gpu, support should be out of the box, not through beta drivers or months down the road. Good luck future multi-gpu users!

if you dislike multi gpu so much then why did you opt for 3870x2 instead of 8800gtx, 8800 ultra, or 9800gtx?

 

[Sind]

I had a 9800gtx, which I used to steup to the 280. The 8800 series corresponded to a time where I was very busy and barely had time for gaming and when I did have the time the 7 series got me through it for the short periods. Honestly after comparing the 3870X2 and the 9800GTX side by side and weighing the pros and cons I kept the 9800GTX in the system I game on and slapped the x2 in wifes, it was a smoother experience for me over all. Despite the pundits, ATI Crossfire game support is severly lacking imo compared to nvidias. But as I said above they both have issues and for me, I am finding a single card is quite more acceptable and less irritating.

 

[Isaac MM]

Avoid CF and SLI, that's what i think.

 

[Acanthus]

the 4850s look good, but im still avoiding multiple display adapters.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Isaac MM
Avoid CF and SLI, that's what i think.

you beat me to it.

 

[NoStateofMind]

There is no way IN HELL I would ever spend $200 more for the same performance just because I wanted it to be one card. That IMO is just stupid. But, maybe you guys have money to blow. <shrug>