- Joined
- Jul 3, 2006
- Location
- UK
Hi guys,
Sandy and I took the opportunity to compare the performance of the 4870 X2 and 5870, both using the 9.11 drivers. The results were taken from two systems, not identical in parts but running at the same speeds. Specs are as follows:
Systems:
Sandy's:
I7 920 D0 @ 3.78GHz 1.37v XSPC Delta V3
Gigabyte x58-UD4
6GB Corsair DDR3 @1440MHz C8 timings
HD4870x2 cooled with an Accelero
1KW Enermax Galaxy
500GB Samsung Spinpoint F1
Windows 7 Home Premium
Neural Net's:
I7 920 D0 @ 3.78GHz 1.24v Coolermaster V8
Gigabyte x58-UD3R
6GB Patriot Viper DDR3 @1440MHz C8 timings
5870
750w Antec Truepower
500GB Seagate Barracuda
Windows 7 Home Premium
While the systems are comprised of different parts, the biggest difference (apart from the graphics cards) are the motherboards, which at one step up from the UD3R, the UD4's only real benefit is being able to hold more RAM and the cooling solutions are identical. We ran through a series of benchmarks which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. We focused mainly on more demanding titles to really push both cards to their limits. We haven't had an opportunity to test everything under the sun but there is enough to produce some meaningful results - sorry, no Far Cry 2 results!
Noise & Heat:
There is no doubt that a stock 4870X2 is a loud card, the fan speeds up considerably when running games so it is easily heard over the rest of a typical system. It runs hot in stock form too, with temperatures easily approaching the far side of 90°C under load.
Equipped with the Accelero cooler however, the card is practically silent as its 3 fans spin at a far lower RPM, even under load. The trade off is that the card now becomes a 2.5 slot monster, but in real-world terms that only really matters for the select few that want to run two of these in crossfire. Otherwise the cooler does a great job, much better than stock which struggles in high ambient temps and cases with low airflow.
Somewhat surprisingly, the 5870 is a very quiet card, part helped by the more efficient 40nm process. Although we can't provide any figures for this, the 5870 never becomes intrusive and you will only just hear it over 120mm fans running at 800rpm.
Benchmarks:
Now let's get on with the benchmarks! Unless otherwise stated in the charts, all benchmarks were run at 1920x1200 with either 0 or 8x Anti-Aliasing, the reason being that most gamers out there will buy one of these cards to run at this resolution preferably with all the eye candy turned up to its absolute max.
Crysis 1.21
All benchmarks were run at Very High settings. As we can see here, the 5870 scores a significant victory with average frame rates at playable levels across all benchmarks; the 4870 X2 puts up a good fight but simply can't keep up. Surprisingly, switching on 8x AA resulted a very small performance hit for both cards with the X2 performing particularly well in this regard, albeit at unplayable frame rates.
GTA IV Patch 10.0.0.4
GTA IV is another heavy hitter with some great visuals. Arguably the Core i7 is doing a lot of the work here as despite the 5870 scoring another victory both are easily running it at playable frame rates, but only the 5870 manages to break the 60fps barrier. If we were using a Dual core CPU or even a Core 2 Quad at less than 3Ghz, the game would be unplayable at these settings, which are detailed below for anyone that's interested:
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: Very High
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 100
With everything else on Very High/100 and No AA (as GTA IV doesn't support it).
Street Fighter 4 Benchmark
Results for Street Fighter 4 were close but mixed. As you can see for less demanding games the difference between the two cards is pretty meaningless, you're never going to run into performance issues with either. The X2 manages win one victory here but it is slower overall.
Resident Evil 5 Benchmark
Resident Evil 5 can't be seen as anything but a victory for the X2, winning both tests by a noticeable margin, particularly with no AA enabled. As was said earlier however, being a less demanding game both cards easily run it at playable frame rates, but the X2 is certainly more efficient in this instance.
X3: Terran Conflict Benchmark
While it may seem easy to run in places, X3 can be very demanding as shown by the minimum fps both these cards achieve. As this is a sandbox game, player actions can have a significant impact on performance, meaning that while it is able to run quite happily a lot of the time, it will begin to stutter when a lot is going on. Both cards are pretty much even here, on average the X2 wins but this seems irrelevant when this victory doesn't come with a higher minimum frame rate. Neither card can keep it above 30 fps to have it somewhat enjoyable when the action gets hectic.
3DMark06
Now we move onto benchmark applications, which while they have arguably become less relevant over the years can still shed light on a card's strengths and weaknesses. Here we can see that both cards are CPU bottlenecked at the default resolution, which is no surprise as neither of them were built with 1280x1024 in mind. Pushing up the res and AA however and we see that the 5870 isn't as optimised as the X2 for DX9, let's see how it fares in Vantage.
3DMark Vantage
Here the 5870 is indeed faster that the X2, even at what should be the CPU limited resolution for the Performance benchmark. What we see is nothing we haven't seen already - the 5870 is undoubtedly the faster card, but it is not miles ahead.
Unigine Heaven Benchmark (DX10)
Finally we have the Heaven Benchmark, which next to Crysis is perhaps the most demanding test we've put these cards through. With 8x AA the 5870 manages to pull ahead, but not so much that you would notice watching it.
Conclusion:
It's safe to say that the 5870 is definitely the faster card out of the two but it only really comes into its own with the more demanding titles, which bodes well for it being a decent DX11 card when more DX11 games come out over the next 12 months.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the 5870 is the lack of overclocking headroom provided through CCC. You can flash the BIOS and use MSI Afterburner, but the highest CCC can push is 900Mhz, a paltry increase over the stock speed of 850Mhz and not everyone will be comfortable with flashing their new bit of kit.
Before the X2 was discontinued it was reaching prices as low as £240. If both were out today the 5870 would demand a £60-80 premium, but there are additional benefits to owning this card. Obviously it supports DX11, it also runs cooler and draws far less power, the fact that on early drivers it manages to beat an X2 is also impressive: Harking back to the first month of the X2's release, its initial drivers were buggy, inconsistent and clearly lacking in performance. The 5870 has been a much smoother ride.
Sandy and I took the opportunity to compare the performance of the 4870 X2 and 5870, both using the 9.11 drivers. The results were taken from two systems, not identical in parts but running at the same speeds. Specs are as follows:
Systems:
Sandy's:
I7 920 D0 @ 3.78GHz 1.37v XSPC Delta V3
Gigabyte x58-UD4
6GB Corsair DDR3 @1440MHz C8 timings
HD4870x2 cooled with an Accelero
1KW Enermax Galaxy
500GB Samsung Spinpoint F1
Windows 7 Home Premium
Neural Net's:
I7 920 D0 @ 3.78GHz 1.24v Coolermaster V8
Gigabyte x58-UD3R
6GB Patriot Viper DDR3 @1440MHz C8 timings
5870
750w Antec Truepower
500GB Seagate Barracuda
Windows 7 Home Premium
While the systems are comprised of different parts, the biggest difference (apart from the graphics cards) are the motherboards, which at one step up from the UD3R, the UD4's only real benefit is being able to hold more RAM and the cooling solutions are identical. We ran through a series of benchmarks which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. We focused mainly on more demanding titles to really push both cards to their limits. We haven't had an opportunity to test everything under the sun but there is enough to produce some meaningful results - sorry, no Far Cry 2 results!
Noise & Heat:
There is no doubt that a stock 4870X2 is a loud card, the fan speeds up considerably when running games so it is easily heard over the rest of a typical system. It runs hot in stock form too, with temperatures easily approaching the far side of 90°C under load.
Equipped with the Accelero cooler however, the card is practically silent as its 3 fans spin at a far lower RPM, even under load. The trade off is that the card now becomes a 2.5 slot monster, but in real-world terms that only really matters for the select few that want to run two of these in crossfire. Otherwise the cooler does a great job, much better than stock which struggles in high ambient temps and cases with low airflow.
Somewhat surprisingly, the 5870 is a very quiet card, part helped by the more efficient 40nm process. Although we can't provide any figures for this, the 5870 never becomes intrusive and you will only just hear it over 120mm fans running at 800rpm.
Benchmarks:
Now let's get on with the benchmarks! Unless otherwise stated in the charts, all benchmarks were run at 1920x1200 with either 0 or 8x Anti-Aliasing, the reason being that most gamers out there will buy one of these cards to run at this resolution preferably with all the eye candy turned up to its absolute max.
Crysis 1.21
All benchmarks were run at Very High settings. As we can see here, the 5870 scores a significant victory with average frame rates at playable levels across all benchmarks; the 4870 X2 puts up a good fight but simply can't keep up. Surprisingly, switching on 8x AA resulted a very small performance hit for both cards with the X2 performing particularly well in this regard, albeit at unplayable frame rates.
GTA IV Patch 10.0.0.4
GTA IV is another heavy hitter with some great visuals. Arguably the Core i7 is doing a lot of the work here as despite the 5870 scoring another victory both are easily running it at playable frame rates, but only the 5870 manages to break the 60fps barrier. If we were using a Dual core CPU or even a Core 2 Quad at less than 3Ghz, the game would be unplayable at these settings, which are detailed below for anyone that's interested:
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: Very High
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 100
With everything else on Very High/100 and No AA (as GTA IV doesn't support it).
Street Fighter 4 Benchmark
Results for Street Fighter 4 were close but mixed. As you can see for less demanding games the difference between the two cards is pretty meaningless, you're never going to run into performance issues with either. The X2 manages win one victory here but it is slower overall.
Resident Evil 5 Benchmark
Resident Evil 5 can't be seen as anything but a victory for the X2, winning both tests by a noticeable margin, particularly with no AA enabled. As was said earlier however, being a less demanding game both cards easily run it at playable frame rates, but the X2 is certainly more efficient in this instance.
X3: Terran Conflict Benchmark
While it may seem easy to run in places, X3 can be very demanding as shown by the minimum fps both these cards achieve. As this is a sandbox game, player actions can have a significant impact on performance, meaning that while it is able to run quite happily a lot of the time, it will begin to stutter when a lot is going on. Both cards are pretty much even here, on average the X2 wins but this seems irrelevant when this victory doesn't come with a higher minimum frame rate. Neither card can keep it above 30 fps to have it somewhat enjoyable when the action gets hectic.
3DMark06
Now we move onto benchmark applications, which while they have arguably become less relevant over the years can still shed light on a card's strengths and weaknesses. Here we can see that both cards are CPU bottlenecked at the default resolution, which is no surprise as neither of them were built with 1280x1024 in mind. Pushing up the res and AA however and we see that the 5870 isn't as optimised as the X2 for DX9, let's see how it fares in Vantage.
3DMark Vantage
Here the 5870 is indeed faster that the X2, even at what should be the CPU limited resolution for the Performance benchmark. What we see is nothing we haven't seen already - the 5870 is undoubtedly the faster card, but it is not miles ahead.
Unigine Heaven Benchmark (DX10)
Finally we have the Heaven Benchmark, which next to Crysis is perhaps the most demanding test we've put these cards through. With 8x AA the 5870 manages to pull ahead, but not so much that you would notice watching it.
Conclusion:
It's safe to say that the 5870 is definitely the faster card out of the two but it only really comes into its own with the more demanding titles, which bodes well for it being a decent DX11 card when more DX11 games come out over the next 12 months.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the 5870 is the lack of overclocking headroom provided through CCC. You can flash the BIOS and use MSI Afterburner, but the highest CCC can push is 900Mhz, a paltry increase over the stock speed of 850Mhz and not everyone will be comfortable with flashing their new bit of kit.
Before the X2 was discontinued it was reaching prices as low as £240. If both were out today the 5870 would demand a £60-80 premium, but there are additional benefits to owning this card. Obviously it supports DX11, it also runs cooler and draws far less power, the fact that on early drivers it manages to beat an X2 is also impressive: Harking back to the first month of the X2's release, its initial drivers were buggy, inconsistent and clearly lacking in performance. The 5870 has been a much smoother ride.
