Official ATI 4870 X2 reviews thread.

[n7]

Microstutter still exists.
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/tra..._en&btnTrUrl=Translate

If i understand the translation correctly though, it's not too noticeable till you get to the 30 fps area...

 

[OCGuy]

Why arent the guys for sale yet?? Or is google my friend?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
Why arent the guys for sale yet?? Or is google my friend?

Newegg has one but they don't have a category for the GPU yet, nor is searching turning them up.

 

[hclarkjr]

newegg has 3 brands in stock right now for sale

 

[sourthings]

Review conclusions:

tomshardware : "Our first conclusion is that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 manages to achieve its objective?namely to be the best performing card you can buy."

hardware canucks : "Before I go on with this conclusion, let?s put one thing straight: the HD4870 X2 2GB is the absolute undisputed king of the single-card hill and probably will be for some time. It steamrolled over every single one of Nvidia?s offerings like a runaway freight train and made the GTX 280 look like nothing more than an also-ran in the grand scheme of things."

firing squad: "This is most definitely the fastest single graphics card on the planet."

guru3d: "I have to admit here that the X2 just is a surprisingly fine product. NVIDIA on their side can not compete one-on-one with performance, not even with the GeForce GTX 280, which quite honestly is such a fine piece of gear."

extremetech : "So ATI's new high end card based on the RV770 GPU?indeed, two of them?is finally here. True to the company's promise, it is clearly the performance leader of this generation. If you want the fastest graphics card money can buy, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is it."

hexus.net : " AMD's aim in designing the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - aka R700 - was to architect the world's fastest single-board graphics card - a title that's been in NVIDIA hands for a while now. Leveraging the strengths of the RV770 architecture, AMD fits two Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards on to a single PCB, CrossFires them internally, and sticks a heavyweight cooler on top. Naysayers may argue that the means by which AMD has managed to gain performance leadership is by somewhat inelegant CrossFireX, but who cares when it's invisible to the system, spitting out ridiculous framerates along the way?

What can NVIDIA do to topple Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB? It'll focus on its Cuda environment and PhysX support, but those are almost incidental features - limited to a few games - to the gamer who craves lustrous framerate above all else."




Nice to see AMD king again. Off to my local shop to pick one up. :beer:

 

[MichaelD]

I just read AT's review and am kind of surprised. The impression I came away with was that the reviewers were pretty much underwhelmed and well, bored, for lack of a better word.

IMO, here's a summary of the review:

Yes, it's the fastest single card solution out, but the performance scaling above the $300 mark doesn't justify it's price. We're really upset about the sideport thing. Same old software solution instead of hardware. Card's really fast but if the game has no XFire profile, it's a waste. Great card but not worth the money to us.

I'm being totally serious about my summary. The AT PREVIEW of the card completely smothered the card in praise and superlatives but the REVIEW of the shipping card showed the reviewers pretty much telling people that the card is not worth the money. "Until we have x-feature and y-feature, we'll just have to suffer, etc" type comments. Every time they would state a "plus" for the card, a "negative" would follow it.

What's going on here? I've been around long enough to know a "negative slanted review" when I see one.

 

[Nurn]

Originally posted by: nRollo

However, here's why I think NVIDIA doesn't need "help":...........


............

............

So I don't think NVIDIA really has to do anything at all, and doesn't really need "help".


lol... reading nRollos's posts these days reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the knight who has had all of his limbs hacked off during a fight, yells to his opponent "come back and fight like a man".

 

[OCGuy]

After looking at all of the benchs, Toms, etc.....I am getting less and less impressed. I know this is AT and everyone has 42inch LCD's, but to the mere mortals in the rest of the world, im not sure it justifies $560.

Hell, my card on my monitor/rez is massive overkill as well, so I guess I cant blame people.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: ajaidevsingh
Anyone want to buy my 4850's CF!!
No this is epic i guess 4870 x2 = 5870 OCed "Just a taught"

So i am getting a 4850 x2 for sure.. 4870x2 is kk but a bit too expensive in front of the 4850x2 "$150"!!

Besides 4850x2 ~ GTX280 and on top will equal the next gen cards in performance and i can CF them later...!!!

When is 4850X2 gonna release anyhow????

You realize that the 4850X2 would be the same as you already have? Except you would have the option of adding a third...or another X2

 

[chizow]

It performs pretty much as expected, 4870CF on a single card. What was interesting was how the X2 still seemed to trade wins with the 4870CF. I suppose it could be the shared x16 slot vs. 1GB buffer balancing each other out, but it seemed the differences were in favor of the X2 in situations where frame buffer caused performance to tank on the 512MB parts. It certainly would be the card to own at 2560, but for anything else it looks like we'll probably need more intensive games or faster CPUs before it justifies its price over slower solutions. In the meantime, you'll get a lot of "free AA", whether or not that's worth the premium is up to you.

 

[sourthings]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
After looking at all of the benchs, Toms, etc.....I am getting less and less impressed. I know this is AT and everyone has 42inch LCD's, but to the mere mortals in the rest of the world, im not sure it justifies $560.

Hell, my card on my monitor/rez is massive overkill as well, so I guess I cant blame people.

It's the best card in the world. It comes at a premium, the 8800gtx held that title for over a year and stayed at the $500-$600 price point the entire time. What's not to get ?

For people who want the very best, this is the card to buy.

Just installed mine and it's chewing up crysis at 1920x1200 very high with 4xaa. Granted the framerate I'm getting in CoD4 with it is making me wish I had a 30" monitor to really use it. Because at 1920x1200, I'm hard pressed to find any settings that are making the game unplayable. :beer:

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: sourthings
Because at 1920x1200, I'm hard pressed to find any settings that are making the game unplayable. :beer:

That's a very enviable position to be in. Enjoy it!

 

[woolfe9999]

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
After looking at all of the benchs, Toms, etc.....I am getting less and less impressed. I know this is AT and everyone has 42inch LCD's, but to the mere mortals in the rest of the world, im not sure it justifies $560.

Hell, my card on my monitor/rez is massive overkill as well, so I guess I cant blame people.

It's the best card in the world. It comes at a premium, the 8800gtx held that title for over a year and stayed at the $500-$600 price point the entire time. What's not to get ?

For people who want the very best, this is the card to buy.

Just installed mine and it's chewing up crysis at 1920x1200 very high with 4xaa. Granted the framerate I'm getting in CoD4 with it is making me wish I had a 30" monitor to really use it. Because at 1920x1200, I'm hard pressed to find any settings that are making the game unplayable. :beer:

It's worth mentioning that while you always pay a premium for the fastest performing card out there, this one is a bargain in price/performance compared to previous generation equivalents. For example, the 8800gts ultra cost $650 and was nowhere near the improvement over an 8800 gts 320 as the 4870x2 is over the 4870.

- woolfe

 

[hclarkjr]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
I just read AT's review and am kind of surprised. The impression I came away with was that the reviewers were pretty much underwhelmed and well, bored, for lack of a better word.

IMO, here's a summary of the review:

Yes, it's the fastest single card solution out, but the performance scaling above the $300 mark doesn't justify it's price. We're really upset about the sideport thing. Same old software solution instead of hardware. Card's really fast but if the game has no XFire profile, it's a waste. Great card but not worth the money to us.

I'm being totally serious about my summary. The AT PREVIEW of the card completely smothered the card in praise and superlatives but the REVIEW of the shipping card showed the reviewers pretty much telling people that the card is not worth the money. "Until we have x-feature and y-feature, we'll just have to suffer, etc" type comments. Every time they would state a "plus" for the card, a "negative" would follow it.

What's going on here? I've been around long enough to know a "negative slanted review" when I see one.

i agree, i read the review and come away with the feeling that anand and derek were somehow hedging their judgment on it. like you said for every positive point they make they then bash it in the next breath. i was kind of shocked at their review, i was expecting a well rounded review like is the norm for anandtech. maybe they both were having a bad day

 

[Hunt3rj2]

I don't know anyone who wouldn't like to use AA on their games, especially at lower resolutions where aliasing is more likely to happen, so ATI wins there, Chizow. I don't know what you think, but 4870 CF on a single PCB works for people who have nvidia motherboards. I personally think the real problem with any CF/SLI/X2 setup is that the performance gains need drivers with game profiles to achieve that. It should appear as 1 card/GPU to the drivers, so ideally there needs to be a scheduling device to direct which frames each GPU should render, and the RAM needs to also be shared so that both GPUs can access it without needing to have 2 copies and the GPUs working on their own.

 

[extra]

Arrgh, the anandtech review is pretty awful. Just run some benchmarks and report what they show. It was like they divided their review up so that after every good thing they could say something bad about the card. Like they are trying not to piss nvidia off too badly or something lol. And no temperature? Noise? Trying to trick non-scaling games with exe renaming to see what kind of games AMD is playing with framerates? Min framerates? Actual playability? The guru3d one was pretty decent tho imho. I wanna see all kinds of various numbers with various kinds of aa, etc.

 

[OCGuy]

So any review that doesnt sound like Hardwarecanucks gleefully proclaiming that ATi can walk on water is somehow biased? Alot of the reviews show some interesting results that arent exactly earth-shattering for the X2 at "normal" resolutions. Why go after AT?

 

[Compddd]

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
After looking at all of the benchs, Toms, etc.....I am getting less and less impressed. I know this is AT and everyone has 42inch LCD's, but to the mere mortals in the rest of the world, im not sure it justifies $560.

Hell, my card on my monitor/rez is massive overkill as well, so I guess I cant blame people.

It's the best card in the world. It comes at a premium, the 8800gtx held that title for over a year and stayed at the $500-$600 price point the entire time. What's not to get ?

For people who want the very best, this is the card to buy.

Just installed mine and it's chewing up crysis at 1920x1200 very high with 4xaa. Granted the framerate I'm getting in CoD4 with it is making me wish I had a 30" monitor to really use it. Because at 1920x1200, I'm hard pressed to find any settings that are making the game unplayable. :beer:

What kind of FPS are you getting in Crysis at those settings southings?

 

[dadach]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
So any review that doesnt sound like Hardwarecanucks gleefully proclaiming that ATi can walk on water is somehow biased? Alot of the reviews show some interesting results that arent exactly earth-shattering for the X2 at "normal" resolutions. Why go after AT?

cmon now...why are you clinging on to obvious and trying to put it against amd/ati somehow...just accept the fact that this card is THE FASTEST single card in the world right now...end of story

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: dadach

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
So any review that doesnt sound like Hardwarecanucks gleefully proclaiming that ATi can walk on water is somehow biased? Alot of the reviews show some interesting results that arent exactly earth-shattering for the X2 at "normal" resolutions. Why go after AT?

cmon now...why are you clinging on to obvious and trying to put it against amd/ati somehow...just accept the fact that this card is THE FASTEST single card in the world right now...end of story

Whos arguing that Overall, it is. But not always.....

At my resolution (1680X1050), a bunch of those benchmarks show otherwise.

 

[dadach]

yes but who cares about those...there will be games out that will make this card the king in that 16x10...the true strength is always shown at the most demanding benchmarks/resolutions, not some weak ass ones...your point is that not everyone needs this card? well duh

 

[Hauk]

Ah screw it, I'm gonna pick one up. Wouldn't be the first time I've paid >$500 for a graphics card.

So what's up with the Egg being the only one with them and only three models at that? I hate to slam them, but I'd bet they have other models ready to go and just posted the three so they can play the sold out/back in stock/sold out game.

Is an HIS worth $20 bucks more than a Sapphire? Not to me. I'm waiting till the Egg's not the only game in town with them. I'm kinda liking the Asus white on black look, but that touch of pink may be a deal breaker. I do like the babe though..

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
I just read AT's review and am kind of surprised. The impression I came away with was that the reviewers were pretty much underwhelmed and well, bored, for lack of a better word.

IMO, here's a summary of the review:

Yes, it's the fastest single card solution out, but the performance scaling above the $300 mark doesn't justify it's price. We're really upset about the sideport thing. Same old software solution instead of hardware. Card's really fast but if the game has no XFire profile, it's a waste. Great card but not worth the money to us.

I'm being totally serious about my summary. The AT PREVIEW of the card completely smothered the card in praise and superlatives but the REVIEW of the shipping card showed the reviewers pretty much telling people that the card is not worth the money. "Until we have x-feature and y-feature, we'll just have to suffer, etc" type comments. Every time they would state a "plus" for the card, a "negative" would follow it.

What's going on here? I've been around long enough to know a "negative slanted review" when I see one.

I got this vibe too. Colour me confused.

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: woolfe9999

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
After looking at all of the benchs, Toms, etc.....I am getting less and less impressed. I know this is AT and everyone has 42inch LCD's, but to the mere mortals in the rest of the world, im not sure it justifies $560.

Hell, my card on my monitor/rez is massive overkill as well, so I guess I cant blame people.

It's the best card in the world. It comes at a premium, the 8800gtx held that title for over a year and stayed at the $500-$600 price point the entire time. What's not to get ?

For people who want the very best, this is the card to buy.

Just installed mine and it's chewing up crysis at 1920x1200 very high with 4xaa. Granted the framerate I'm getting in CoD4 with it is making me wish I had a 30" monitor to really use it. Because at 1920x1200, I'm hard pressed to find any settings that are making the game unplayable. :beer:

It's worth mentioning that while you always pay a premium for the fastest performing card out there, this one is a bargain in price/performance compared to previous generation equivalents. For example, the 8800gts ultra cost $650 and was nowhere near the improvement over an 8800 gts 320 as the 4870x2 is over the 4870.

- woolfe

Yup. I paid $673 for my 1900XTX when it came out just two years ago.

 

[Hauk]

At the end of their preview, AT did have a strong tone of caution though, saying that ATI needs to get it right (speaking mainly in terms of CF & drivers). I think if anything, there's a general dissapointment in CF sideport being disabled. The reason sounds like a lazy/lack of time or knowhow driver issue, and if so, AT cautioned. There's been enough time to get this thing 100% right IMO..