The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 25, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Crysis
Crysis is a game that can beat down all cards. We're once again using the high settings with the shaders at very high, and even at a fairly tame resolution of 1680x1050 only 8 cards manage to get past the magical 30fps rate, with nearly half of those are just squeaking by. Crysis is particularly punishing on the HD3000 series cards at these kinds of settings, where only the HD3870 X2 was competitive without resorting toCrossfire. This makes the placement of the HD4000 series all the more important.
What we see with the 4870 is very promising. Here it leapfrogs the $100 more expensive GTX 260 and delivers 7% more performance at the same time, delivering manageable framerates. It does struggle a bit to separate itself from its cheaper brother the 4850 however, with only a 20% boost in performance for a 50% boost in price. This isn't unexpected of course, it's almost exactly in line with the shader power difference between the two and we've known that this test is shader-bound for some time, but we're not seeing the memory bandwidth make even a slight difference here even at the more unplayable 1900x1200 resolution.
Neither HD4000 card can crack 30fps at higher resolutions however, after 1680x1050 you either need to turn the settings down or start throwing down additional cash for one of NVIDIA's more expensive cards or a Crossfire/SLI solution. In either case, this situation highlights the fact that on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the HD4000 series has negated NVIDIA's commanding lead with Crysis merely two weeks ago.
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iamap - Friday, June 27, 2008 - link
I'm looking to buy the 4870 from newegg when they get back in stock next week but I'm not familiar with any of the manufactures, except for Diamond, and I had problems with Diamond years ago.Diamond
HIS
Powercolor
Sapphire Technology Limited
VisionTek
Any advice, especially ones to avoid?
feelingshorter - Friday, June 27, 2008 - link
Go with the one with the warranty. Which would be visiontech life time warranty. Asus does offer a 3 year warranty also.Nehemoth - Friday, June 27, 2008 - link
Check this onehttp://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/">http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/
Gannon - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
No supreme commander? :-Odesignerfx - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
http://bensbargains.net/deal/69638/">http://bensbargains.net/deal/69638/195 -> 20$ rebate newegg -> 20$ rebate bensbargains = $155!
To think this card will get cheaper yet!
I'm buying one asap. This is a freakin steal at 150 bucks.
QEFX - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
Heck, pick up 2. $310 for CF 4850s! Now there's "bang for the buck" on games that actually work properly with crossfire.Jjunior130 - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
can i haz quantum physix? lolMustanggt - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
I was watching the 8800GT SLI and it was in the top 2 most of the test, for less than the price of 2 4870s i could pick up a SLI board and another 8800 GT. perhaps also a E8400 to equal the $600 on 2 of these 4870s in CF. I am talking about the resolution i use that the 8800GT was looking very good in SLI 1680x1050BusterGoode - Thursday, June 26, 2008 - link
I'd like to see the differnce the GDDR5 made and since clocking the 4850 up may not be possible right now it would be nice to see the 4870 slowed down. If this has been asked or done sorry so much info pouring out now it is hard to keep up, thanks!DerekWilson - Sunday, June 29, 2008 - link
this is an interesting request ... we'll look at the possibility ...