HD 4870 vs Crossfire HD 3870's

[bizzyd1441]

I've been eying the HD 3870 for a few months now, and have recently discovered the awesomeness of the 4870. And after looking at prices, it seems like I could get two 3870's in crossfire mode and it would be slightly less expensive than buying one 4870.

Now I'm not sure if there are any big disadvantages to using two cards in crossfire mode compared to using a single better card. But the two 3870's would have a combined ram of 1gb and a memory rate of 512mb.

There's also the fact that the 4870 has 800 stream processors compared to the 3870's 320. I'm not sure if that is more important than having more memory or not.

I'm kinda leaning towards the HD 4870, but I just wanted to be sure. And I suppose the 4850 is always another option, but GDDR3 seems like a big disadvantage.

 

[thilanliyan]

I'd go with the single 4870. It's already very fast and you don't have to deal with any Crossfire scaling issues. Also, you won't actually have 1gb of video ram with the 3870s...you'll only have 512mb and the GPUs can't share the memory.

 

[Atreus21]

I have dual 3870's and I'm pretty sure a single 4870 is better.

I'd go with the 4870. Looking at the benchmarks, the 4870 blows the 3870X2 away, and the X2 was supposed to be better than two 3870s.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

4870

 

[Ike0069]

4870 without question.

 

[JPB]

The 4870 outruns the 3870X2. So yea...I believe the 4870 would outrun Crossfired 3870's as well.

 

[christopherzombie]

I have 3x 3870's and I'd still rather have 1 4870!

BTW

Vantage: P10050
...with system listed below, if you care about benchin'

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: bizzyd1441
I've been eying the HD 3870 for a few months now, and have recently discovered the awesomeness of the 4870. And after looking at prices, it seems like I could get two 3870's in crossfire mode and it would be slightly less expensive than buying one 4870.

Now I'm not sure if there are any big disadvantages to using two cards in crossfire mode compared to using a single better card. But the two 3870's would have a combined ram of 1gb and a memory rate of 512mb.

There's also the fact that the 4870 has 800 stream processors compared to the 3870's 320. I'm not sure if that is more important than having more memory or not.

I'm kinda leaning towards the HD 4870, but I just wanted to be sure. And I suppose the 4850 is always another option, but GDDR3 seems like a big disadvantage.

i can share my experience which is parallel to yours

i have 2900xt crossfire [2900xt/2900pro@xt; close enough] and HD4870. 2900xt crossfire would not be very much slower than 3870x2.

The 4870 is superior ... especially when you crank up the filtering; however my 2900xt crossfire is only about 10-15% slower in raw FPS. To see Crysis without stuttering is worth going for 4870

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: thilan29
I'd go with the single 4870. It's already very fast and you don't have to deal with any Crossfire scaling issues. Also, you won't actually have 1gb of video ram with the 3870s...you'll only have 512mb and the GPUs can't share the memory.

^ What he said.