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Dual 4870s vs. 5870

Raswan

Raswan

Senior member
Just picked up an HD 5870, and I'm wondering if anyone can point me to a performance comparison to a friend's two 4870s. While I'm positive I got the better deal in terms of cost vs. performance (215 after instant and MIR), and I'm pretty sure running two 4870s is going to beat a 5870, I'm wondering by how much.

No other reason than curiosity. Ok, and a little bit of competitiveness and maybe even envy 🙂
 
The problem with the benchmarks is they are rather old vs the 4870x2, so they might not give you a fair comparison. The 4870x2 was a little faster in some games. I would think with the 5000 series driver improvements the 5870 is about equal.
If I were you I would overclock the 5870 and beat the pants off your buddys system. 🙂
 
I figured that's why I couldn't find any benchmarks. And you bet your ass I'm going to do just that, whenever ups gets their head out of their collective ass and quit using turkey day as an excuse to say it's still "in transit". I don't believe you ups. Now just get it here.
 
Found a benchmark comparison after all--though I don't know how accurate it remains with driver updates, etc. Shows dual 4870s win 12 of 18 benchmark comparisons in Mass Effect 2, Wolfenstein, Left 4 Dead, Battleforge, and HAWX at different resolutions, shader, and AA settings, with the 5870 taking the other 6 wins. In two-thirds of cases, however, the cards are within 6 fps of each other, and even when the difference is bigger it's a matter of 90 fps vs 72 fps, ultimately making the difference in my eyes negligible:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/174?vs=162

So even while I'll concede the slight advantage to the 4870s, I can rest easy knowing I'm gaming at 67% of the power draw under load and idle and with significantly (25-30%) less heat produced. Oh yeah, and my card cost me $215 instead of the average ~330 price tag, so I have a continuous deal-boner, while his probably cost him twice that.
 
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The tables actually turn when you start overclocking. 4870's were never great overlcockers; 5870's on the other hand, are 🙂.
 
He's got an i7 860 @ stock and I will be buying the i5 760 (and overclocking) as soon as it drops back below $200, since I know I'm going to be watching it plummet even more when Sandy Bridge releases.

We both also have 8 gigs of DDR3, though his is 1600 and mine is the 1333 @ 10666 (I say he was sucked in by the propaganda of intel, since everything I've seen/read says the i5 does just as good as the i7 and 1600 RAM doesn't make an appreciable difference in current games. Of course, I could be wrong.)
 
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