[News] 4870x2 card benched against GTX280

[Shiggity]

While we are away for Computex, CJ let us know that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 R700 prototype card is out and it beats the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 in 3DMark Vantage. The R700 card is basically made up of two RV770 GPUs with 2x256-bit memory interface to either GDDR3 or GDDR5 memories. We asked our sources about R700 in Computex and apparently AMD is going to let AIB partners to decide the specs themselves. Therefore, the partners will set their own clock speeds, PCB design, memory types, cooler solutions etc. and there will be Radeon HD 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 cards differentiate by the memory type. The R700 card apparently doing pretty well at this stage scoring about X5500 in 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset while the GeForce GTX 280 card is scoring X4800. Both sides are still working hard on optimizing their drivers for the new architecture so probably we will see the performance to improve over time.source - http://vr-zone.com/articles/Radeon_HD_4870_X2_R700_Beats_GeForce_GTX_280/5851.html

The 4870x2 only beats the GTX280 by a small amount. (Is 700extreme vantage points a lot?)

Interestingly ATI will be releasing 2 double cards, both a GDDR3 version via the 4850x2 and a GDDR5 version via the 4870x2.

Ok so price speculation time. We know the GTX280 will be over 600$, most likely 650$ retail. The 4850 will be around ~200$, the 4870 will be around ~300$.

I would guess that the 4850x2 card would be ~450$ and the 4870x2 card will probably be ~550$.

The sick thing is you'll most likely be able to get a quad fire setup with 2 4870x2 cards for less than an SLI setup of 2 GTX280's. Too bad quad-fire scaling pretty much sucks, but the 4870x2 looks like the card to have.

And.....Discuss!

I know this could be totally fake, but still fun to discuss. VR-Zone is usually pretty reliable, but who knows.

[reclaimer122]

Could this mean that the 4870 will be comparable to the GTX 260 for $100-150 less? As long as this is all true, I think ATI may be taking the crown back. :)

[jason4207]

700/4800 = 14.6% improvement...pretty significant considering it's cheaper.

Are the 4870X2's coming in 512x2 or 1024x2? If only 512x2 I wonder if it'll bog down at super-high rez.

[Shiggity]

The article said ATI is giving the card manufacterers a ton of options on the extra specs a card will have. We'll have to see who makes the best GDDR5 memory / cooler / etc.

A 2GB GDDR5 4870x2 would be pretty nasty ;)

Most would be 1GB I assume.

What do you even need 2GB of GDDR5 memory for? 2 50" plasmas with AA on? hohoho

[jason4207]

It'll only really use 1GB if it has 1GB/GPU in a 2x1GB configuration. ;)

[Shiggity]

Hm well how much memory would you need to run 2 HD feeds @ 1920x1200?

Like if you wanted to play a game @ 1920x1200 and watch a 1080p movie at the same time. Would 1GB of GDDR5 overclocked vmem cut it?

[reclaimer122]

Would a movie even need a significant amount of memory? I thought memory was just for storing textures, although it would make sense for the upcoming frames of a movie be stored also.

[White_Pawn]

i read 2 x 256bit bus for the ati, which would most likely cripple 2gig cards.

[Farinorco]

i read 2 x 256bit bus for the ati, which would most likely cripple 2gig cards.

Why? At least in the case of GDDR5 cards, the bandwidth is going to be around the same than the nasty GeForce 512/448 bits GTS 2xx thanks to the twice as fast memory clock, 125-150 GB/s (to each group of 512MB/1GB). Wich is even higher than the HD2900XT's one. I don't think a higher bandwidth could be needed at the present days...

*****

If that's true (and I tend to consider CJ a reliable source...), considering an 80-90% scaling from single HD4870 to HD4870 X2 in Vantage, that should mean that a single HD4870 should be around X3000... if the difference between HD4870 and HD4850 is the 30% claimed by AMD, HD4850 should be around X2400, and AFAIK, 9800GTX is around X2000...

But HD4850 and HD4870 performance could be even better (and the scaling of HD4870 X2 not so good, at least with their current drivers), because I've seen rumours of the HD4850 making X2600 vs 9800GTX X2000 (even when in Performance mode were around the same, maybe ATi has solved their AF issues and are taking advantage of their more efficient AA and shader power in Extreme settings?).

Promising, lets see if all this is hype or a real killer set of cards... I hope it's the latter :beer:

[ghost_recon88]

Also, before anyone says "man, it's gonna take ATI 2 cores to beat a single nVidia core", a user on anandtech said it best.

People need to get rid of this mindset.

R700 is dual-GPU because it was designed to be, not because AMD can't compete with a single-GPU card. If years ago when AMD was designing R700 they thought a huge, rediculously expensive single-GPU solution was best, they would have designed a single GPU with 960SP/64 TMU/32 ROP. But they decided that was not the way to go, and we will see soon whether that gamble pays off.

If R700 > GT200, then R700 > GT200. There is no "well, it's a dual GPU so it doesn't count." That's just BS.

[jason4207]

Hm well how much memory would you need to run 2 HD feeds @ 1920x1200?

Like if you wanted to play a game @ 1920x1200 and watch a 1080p movie at the same time. Would 1GB of GDDR5 overclocked vmem cut it?

I have routinely seen video memory usage go above 512MB when playing COD4 and Crysis at 1680x1050. I'm not sure if this is right, but I think the card has to store anything above what it can store locally in system memory, and this can cause dips in framerates as the card has to go fetch data from the slower system RAM. That's why the 8800GTX/Ultra's do so well at higher rez. They don't put up as high of FPS, but they don't dip as low either...they're more consistent. And when you put 8800GTX/Ultra's in SLI you gain crunching power, but don't gain any memory bandwidth. That's OK b/c these cards have an abundance of bandwidth. Each card has to store all of the same textures in it's memory banks, so even though you have 2 cards w/ 768MB of RAM each you really only have 768MB total memory. The same holds true w/ X2 cards. Each GPU has it's own banks of RAM, and both banks of RAM hold near identical data since both GPU's are working to render the same scene.

If the X2 has 2x512MB then it really only has 512MB of effective RAM. If the game is using more than 512MB then you might see some low FPS dips. If it has 2x1024MB then that should be plenty for all the modern games at common rez.

I think a better example than the game and movie scenario would be to run a dual-monitor set-up while gaming. (2) 1920x1200 screens just for the game. It would depend a lot on the particular game, but COD4, or Crysis would probably consume more than 1GB at that high of a rez (3840x1200) w/ high/max settings.

[vixro]

700 points on the extreme preset is a pretty big advantage, not a small advantage at this stage... like somebody said before that's almost a 15% increase.

[netmask]

:drool::drool: I WANT ONE 4870 :drool:

[Hardin]

Also, before anyone says "man, it's gonna take ATI 2 cores to beat a single nVidia core", a user on anandtech said it best.

Well 3DFX had the same philosophy and if you look at the Voodoo 5 6000 you can see that they took that idea a little too far.

[ratbuddy]

Hmm. I think it's an ATI leak to take a little buzz away from the GTX 280. Isn't it suspicious how a card that's being released way after the 4870 is being compared to the 280 before the 4870 itself? I don't doubt the 4870X2 will be faster than the GTX. It'll also be a 300+ watt card. According to GPUReview, 3870 takes 105 watts max, 3870X2 takes 225 watts max. The 4870 is listed at 150 watts right now, so we're talking over 300 watts for the X2 version, probably around 325 or so. Can an air cooler even handle that much in a normal double slot design?

[netmask]

Hmm. I think it's an ATI leak to take a little buzz away from the GTX 280. Isn't it suspicious how a card that's being released way after the 4870 is being compared to the 280 before the 4870 itself? I don't doubt the 4870X2 will be faster than the GTX. It'll also be a 300+ watt card. According to GPUReview, 3870 takes 105 watts max, 3870X2 takes 225 watts max. The 4870 is listed at 150 watts right now, so we're talking over 300 watts for the X2 version, probably around 325 or so. Can an air cooler even handle that much in a normal double slot design?

I think an air cooler can do.

[chrome-187]

well how much wattage does the 9800x2 take? im sure if the 9800x2 can be aircooled, that a 4870x2 can be..

[Shiggity]

Hmm. I think it's an ATI leak to take a little buzz away from the GTX 280. Isn't it suspicious how a card that's being released way after the 4870 is being compared to the 280 before the 4870 itself? I don't doubt the 4870X2 will be faster than the GTX. It'll also be a 300+ watt card. According to GPUReview, 3870 takes 105 watts max, 3870X2 takes 225 watts max. The 4870 is listed at 150 watts right now, so we're talking over 300 watts for the X2 version, probably around 325 or so. Can an air cooler even handle that much in a normal double slot design?

It'll be fine in one of our well ventilated cases with top notch air cooling / aftermarket coolers. Can't say the same for Joe Shmoe who buys this and crams it in his tiny case with 1 exaust fan that's covered in dust hehe. Would probably melt in there ;)

[ratbuddy]

well how much wattage does the 9800x2 take? im sure if the 9800x2 can be aircooled, that a 4870x2 can be..

9800GX2 uses less than a 2900XT :)