which card performs better in xfire? 4850 or 3870

the 3870 has faster core and mem speeds but is 4850 a better card? why? Is it because of the processing units?

4850 without question.

Different cores, my friend. R600 vs. R700. You can't compare speeds from different cores and come to any reasonable conclusion.

Just like with cpu's... you can't say a 3ghz P4 is faster than a 2.66ghz E6700. The speed is only one factor.


Here's a nice chart that shows a number of factors comparing ATI cards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_graphics_processing_units

In this case, the core didn't have much revision

It was a simple brute force attempt for performance in essence.

They more than doubled? was it 320 to 800 stream processors?

There wasn't much of a revision when you compare to pentium 4 and core.

azu said:

In this case, the core didn't have much revision

It was a simple brute force attempt for performance in essence.

They more than doubled? was it 320 to 800 stream processors?

There wasn't much of a revision when you compare to pentium 4 and core.

Click to expand...

All that article shows you is the bandwidth, the number of shaders, etc.

The architecture is actually very different. The memory controller, the way the shaders communicate with the main core. The way information is transferred. It's all very different. Think of it as, they took what worked from R600 and made it better and then they added the things that were missing.

What worked: The process, unified shaders, the die size, the rendering power without AA/AF.

What was missing: AA/AF power, strong memory controller, communication between the shaders and the core.

4850 is like a 3870X2, around there, especially with AA/AF