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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calumhm - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
i mean, ATI invented the unified pixel/shader architechture, or so i believe, and this generation they've got dx10.1 level hardware something like 7 months and counting before Nvidia have any.Also i once read an article about SLI and Crossfire, about how SLI has only one rendering type, scissors. (meaning the screen is divided in two) Whereas ATI have scissors, tiled, (so that the more demanding areas of the screen are better divided amongst the cards) and others.
Also, you can combine any HD series ATI card with any HD series card! thats way better than having to say, buy another 7800 for SLI because just one isn't doing it anymore, even though the 9800 series are out. With CFire you could add a 4870 to your old 3870!
Im currently with Nvidia (a 9600gt (found one for £60!)) but am frequently impressed by ATI.
-IS- ATI the smart customer's choice?
heaneyforestrntpe68 - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
well I am looking forward to a single card setup. SLI or CF is beyond the reach of my pockets. :P https://bit.ly/2Z7E1jrbillywigga - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
im pretty shore the 4870 is low profile ive been looking everywhere for a low profile graphics card and i think i foung a high ends one unlike the geforce 8400 and the 8600 those arenot very good and they dont look good either but where do i buy the 4870Hrel - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
Why has there been no article comparing the 8800GT to the 9800GT? Is it just a rebrand, are there noticeable performance differences. It's 9 series, I assume it has hybrid power, but I don't know. Anandtech, PLEASE! Do an article on this.billywigga - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
bang for the buck id get the 9800 because its newer also all the diffrence is it has more intagrated ram your saving a lot if you just get more ram to your computer.firewolfsm - Friday, August 1, 2008 - link
I'm trying to do the same benchmark for Crysis for my 4850 as I have a similar system and a fresh vista install. Just wondering what kind of driver settings you used.spikeysting - Saturday, July 19, 2008 - link
I just got it for $179 at Frys. Such a good deal.Yangorang - Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - link
Anyone tried this mod?http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319658">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319658
jALLAD - Friday, July 4, 2008 - link
I would for sure go for the 4870. (I am a Quake Wars fan boy u see :P)But I was unsure how these would perform on Linux. Is the driver support reliable? Right now I use a 7950 NVIDIA and their support on Linux is almost shite. I was wondering whether its better or worse...
Anyone ?
KriegenSchlagen - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
If you are a Quake Wars fan, aren't the scores higher in 3-4 GeForce SLI configs vs. Crossfire mode 4870?