GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB Review

[hclarkjr]

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB Review

 

[ginfest]

Interesting, the cards are close in performance with the 4870 pulling ahead in situations where I'd expect the larger amount of video memory to matter. I'm surprised that the 260 could actually "beat" the 4870 at times, if you asked me which card would be "faster" w/o any benches, I would have said the 4870
Even so, I found the following to be true when I had mine, and it's what made me sell it:

If there's anything we are disappointed with regarding the Radeon HD 4800 series cards, it's power utilization and cooling/noise. The idle power consumption of the cards could certainly be better (though power under load isn't bad), and the cooling solutions simply aren't as good as they could be?the chips run hot, and while they're still well within their thermal design limits, ATI could do much better.

Anyway, good review, I find that ET usually has the straight story when it comes to computer HW and SW.

 

[apoppin]

i notice they only tested with a 3Ghz CPU .. that is pretty slow to show what each card can really do
- Vista Ultimate 64 or 32-bit?

i am also having a hard time finding their individual settings for each game; the do not mention if Crysis was tested on High or Very High, for example

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i notice they only tested with a 3Ghz CPU .. that is pretty slow to show what each card can really do
- Vista Ultimate 64 or 32-bit?

i am also having a hard time finding their individual settings for each game; the do not mention if Crysis was tested on High or Very High, for example

3ghz is a bottleneck? Damn, these cards are getting out of control.

 

[dguy6789]

Contrary to popular belief, the HD4870 stock cooler is incredibly good. The problem is by default, the fan speed never goes above 23%~. AMD decided to have a high temp low noise configuration rather than vice versa. You can tweak it to find the perfect mix of noise and temperature that you want.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: ginfest
Interesting, the cards are close in performance with the 4870 pulling ahead in situations where I'd expect the larger amount of video memory to matter. I'm surprised that the 260 could actually "beat" the 4870 at times, if you asked me which card would be "faster" w/o any benches, I would have said the 4870

Actually the 4870 1GB IS faster. Take a look at the AT review...in all but 2 games the 4870 is faster. I guess it depends on which site you visit, which is frustrating.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: ginfest
Interesting, the cards are close in performance with the 4870 pulling ahead in situations where I'd expect the larger amount of video memory to matter. I'm surprised that the 260 could actually "beat" the 4870 at times, if you asked me which card would be "faster" w/o any benches, I would have said the 4870

Actually the 4870 1GB IS faster. Take a look at the AT review...in all but 2 games the 4870 is faster. I guess it depends on which site you visit, which is frustrating.

I agree... It is no longer as simple as going to a review site, seeing one card dominate every benchmark and have every benchmark follow the same performance differences within.

Now we have at least two titles where the 4870 can best the GTX 280, which really rarely happened in the past.... It think it really comes down to what games you are playing currently, AND then guessing at what games will do well in the future - but it is just a guess.

GRID is a good example... Man that game dominates on the ATi right now and by a huge margin. You can't really plan for that type of an upset.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

GRID is a good example... Man that game dominates on the ATi right now and by a huge margin. You can't really plan for that type of an upset.

By my benching, the 280GTX still pulls slightly ahead of the 4870/512MB in GRID's bottom FPS, but does not match the average or maximum - after a extraordinarily close race at 19x12 [everything maxed/ultra; 4xAA/16xAF] .. maybe a tie:

4870/512: 62/97/77
GTX280: 68/84/75
4870x2: 70/135/92
CF-X3: 88/127/100

the above is min/max/average and Cat 8.9 improved performance solidly over 8.8, imo. Nvidia did not see as much of a gain with their latest drivers
GRID is quite impressive graphically, also.