GT280 or two 4850s in CF

[shamus8888]

I am having a very hard choice deciding between these two options. I have a CF mobo so SLi is not an option. I am thinking if I should squeeze around £150 more to get GT280 or should I hold on and get two 4850s for around £300.

I game on a 24" monitor in its native 19x16 resolution. Hopefully I won't have any problems in games such as CoD4, AoC etc with the new GFX that will choose to buy.

 

[kotrtim]

Wait wait, it won't be long until there are reviews that compare both in terms of performance and power consumption. CF 4850 power consumption compared to GTX 280 is not reviewed by reviewers... After all those reviews, take a calculator and start calculating which is the best purchase for you.

 

[shamus8888]

Ah thanks for the advice i am just wondering why the price of a single GT280 is miles ahead of even two of 4850s...

With so many different models coming out, I am just confused of which to get. So many numbers :S

I missed the days when all you have to choose is which edition of the Voodoo card you want
Due to certain financial contraints, I would have to make my decision of a GFX card to purchase by mid July the latest

 

[Sylvanas]

The CF 4850's are going to be better performing in the majority of cases. You could perhaps hold on for an X2 which will be more expensive but the 4850's are a good choice nonetheless.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Why not wait and see what the 4870s are like? I hear they are supposed to be released in July.

 

[Lonyo]

You can get 2xHD4850's for £260 (Scan.co.uk) vs £400 for the 280GTX (Ebuyer and others).
But as others have said, waiting for the HD4870 would be a better idea, or at least reviews of it.

Since you're on 1920x1200 the extra bandwidth offered by the HD4870 might make it a more attractive option than HD4850's (it has ~double the memory speed, so ~double the memory bandwidth).
Hopefully we will see numbers sometime next week for the HD4870, and it will likely/hopefully come in at ~£400 for a Crossfire setup, the same price as the GTX280, and probably outperform it by a reasonable margin (since the 4850 is competitive with the GTX280).

 

[Denithor]

The anand review of the 4850/4850CF/260/280 is out, read for more details.

At high resolutions the 4850 looks to run into memory bandwidth limits that hold it back.

BurnItDown and Lonyo are right on the money here, wait until the 4870 is launched, the GDDR5 should alleviate the bandwidth issues and the core clockspeed bump won't hurt anything, either. And priced around US$300 it should be a fantastic deal. If nothing else, the GTX280 should drop to US$500 or less as a result of competition.

 

[BadRobot]

4870 looks like it might be pure win.

And the 4850 is not so bad itself according to anand's results

Anandtech
There's an unexpected amount of concluding we can do already based on these early results.

For starters, the Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the best buy at $199, even better than NVIDIA's price-dropped GeForce 9800 GTX. What's also unbelievable is that compared to the 4850, our beloved GeForce 8800 GT seems downright slow in a number of benchmarks - and the 8800 GT is only 8 months old. It's also very refreshing to see this sort of competitive pressure at such a reasonable price point, while it's fun to write about 1.4 billion transistor GPUs it's a dream come true to be able to write about this type of performance at under $200.

Take two 4850s, put them together and now you've got something even faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 in most cases. It shouldn't be too surprising since 8800 GT SLI and 9800 GX2 both outperform the GTX 280 as well.

 

[shamus8888]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You can get 2xHD4850's for £260 (Scan.co.uk) vs £400 for the 280GTX (Ebuyer and others).
But as others have said, waiting for the HD4870 would be a better idea, or at least reviews of it.

Since you're on 1920x1200 the extra bandwidth offered by the HD4870 might make it a more attractive option than HD4850's (it has ~double the memory speed, so ~double the memory bandwidth).
Hopefully we will see numbers sometime next week for the HD4870, and it will likely/hopefully come in at ~£400 for a Crossfire setup, the same price as the GTX280, and probably outperform it by a reasonable margin (since the 4850 is competitive with the GTX280).

Hmm, I can't find the HD4850s at scan. Maybe I will look again later.

And yes, looks like the general concensus says I should wait for 4870 for the bandwidth. I will definitely be playing games at 19x16 as thats why I bought this 24" for

Will 4850 in CF struggle at that resolution with all the eye candy on?

@ Lonyo : Do you know when will the 4870s be out in UK? Will it be August? :S

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You can get 2xHD4850's for £260 (Scan.co.uk) vs £400 for the 280GTX (Ebuyer and others).
But as others have said, waiting for the HD4870 would be a better idea, or at least reviews of it.

Since you're on 1920x1200 the extra bandwidth offered by the HD4870 might make it a more attractive option than HD4850's (it has ~double the memory speed, so ~double the memory bandwidth).
Hopefully we will see numbers sometime next week for the HD4870, and it will likely/hopefully come in at ~£400 for a Crossfire setup, the same price as the GTX280, and probably outperform it by a reasonable margin (since the 4850 is competitive with the GTX280).

I have seen 4850 for under 120 quid at Dabs,so that puts two for under £240.

 

[shamus8888]

ok another question, does the 4850s for sale comes with two(?) Crossfire bridges or do I have to buy it separately?

and is this real?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk...t.php?prodid=GX-170-AS

4850 with 1Gb memory?

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Denithor
The anand review of the 4850/4850CF/260/280 is out, read for more details.

At high resolutions the 4850 looks to run into memory bandwidth limits that hold it back.

Plus the GT280 is not limited by game profiles like a Crossfire setup would be.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: shamus8888
ok another question, does the 4850s for sale comes with two(?) Crossfire bridges or do I have to buy it separately?

and is this real?

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-170-AS">https://www.overclockers.co......p?prodid=GX-170-AS</a>

4850 with 1Gb memory?

Yes its real...I believe they do come supplied with crossfire bridge(one per card) but best to check beforehand on brand in question.