first 4870 review

[Tom|Nbk]

Groovy Baby.

 

[Lightnix]

I thought the 4800 series would only work on pci express 1.1 and above?

PCI-E is fully backwards and forwards compatible bar some anomalies (VIA chipset, although I believe a fix was found).

 

[Things change I've changed]

Asus Rampage Formula and 2 4870's

yeah that boards more than fine, full 2x16 PCI-E so no worrys on the CF front.

 

[Tom|Nbk]

Let's hope the retailers don't all go for a spot of price gouging.

 

[CraigN]

my skulltrail board has

"Four primary PCI Express* 1.1 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector"

im planning to go 4870X2 in crossfire - as i understand it i should have all 4 lanes with X16 not cut down as 8800 Sli and above requires you to have at least 2 x16 lanes does it not ?

Im going to cry if this motherboard doesnt support these after the ammount of money and time i spent on it.

 

[melbourne720]

Yes, I did. But benchmarks aren't enough. I need somebody to tell me whether this is a potential next card or not. It shows that Crysis would run at about 35 average.

I am thinking that this isn't enough? I am way outta touch with components these days.

I agree. We don't need another card that can't do minimum 25 fps at 16x10 all on high.

Its the minimum that counts imho, we can all point the viewpoint at the sky to get the average up, but if it slows to a crawl in a firefight then you kind of feel you wasted your time/money..

Let's hope the retailers don't all go for a spot of price gouging.

Surely not....?

 

[Greebo]

my skulltrail board has

"Four primary PCI Express* 1.1 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector"

im planning to go 4870X2 in crossfire - as i understand it i should have all 4 lanes with X16 not cut down as 8800 Sli and above requires you to have at least 2 x16 lanes does it not ?

Im going to cry if this motherboard doesnt support these after the ammount of money and time i spent on it.

Passes Craig a tissue..........

If they are only 1.1 on yoru skulltrail then you will get one hell of a perfromance hit with two 4870x2 in crossfire.

Each 4870x2 is going to need more than 16x pci-e 1.1 or 8x pci-e 2 slot bandwidth.

I reckon you will need full pci-e 2 bandwidth to get full potential as I presume we are talking about very high res here, otherwise you wouldn't be looking at two 4870x2?

 

[psychas]

they said that 4870 is 24 cm 8800gts g92 is 23 cm so its only that much bigger

such a disadvantage rofl

 

[Things change I've changed]

my skulltrail board has

"Four primary PCI Express* 1.1 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector"
.

No offence mate but why in earth did you buy a skulltrail (£350), the maximum you'll be able to get out of that board is 2x16 @ PCI-E 1.1 which is half the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

skulltrail

Also linked to the 5400 MCH is a pair of NVIDIA nForce-100 PCI Express 1.1 switches. These switches take 32 PCI Express lanes from the MCH and fan them out to four PEG slots.

So, if you use all four slots, you'll get x8 per lane or the equivalent to x4 PCIE v2.0 speed.

In other worlds, crippled as far as HD4xxxx series crossfire goes, even in just a two card config

 

[Greebo]

So, if you use all four slots, you'll get x8 per lane or the equivalent to x4 PCIE v2.0 speed.

In other worlds, crippled as far as HD4xxxx series crossfire goes, even in just a two card config

Hands Craig a box of tissues...............

 

[CraigN]

i fancied building something different at the time.

The mobo may have been £350 but it was cheaper than a quad core extreme CPU new DDR3 and a top of the line mobo.

Ive just read that the GTX 280 driver has Skulltrail SLi disabled aswell.

 

[Final8y]

I think running 2 4870x2's might just be rather pointless, unless you have really decent overclock. money down the drain - having said that, we all do silly things with our money, enjoy the bragging rights, but thats all you will really have to show for your empty pockets

30" 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF will take care of 2 4870x2

 

[Greebo]

30" 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF will take care of 2 4870x2

Or could you use each 4870x2 to run a seperate 30" screen?

 

[Jono8]

Unlikely.

In another thread it shows frame rate comparisons on a single 9800GX2 on 8x 2.0 slot (16x 1.1 slot) and 16x 2.0 slot.

The difference was negligible. Most of the time it made about half a frames difference.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Why not buy a cheap 8800Ultra (if you can find one) and ejoy GTX 280 speeds for half the price (seeing as you already have one 8800GTX Ultra)? Surely that's the beauty of SLI/xfire being to add a card at a later date?

I don't think the x16/x16 PCIE v1.1 config would harm that combination?

 

[CraigN]

So, if you use all four slots, you'll get x8 per lane or the equivalent to x4 PCIE v2.0 speed.

In other worlds, crippled as far as HD4xxxx series crossfire goes, even in just a two card config

but i would only be using 2 lanes with X2s ? will have to wait and see if someone on XS tries it first then.

 

[LanceCrossfire]

Unlikely.

In another thread it shows frame rate comparisons on a single 9800GX2 on 8x 2.0 slot (16x 1.1 slot) and 16x 2.0 slot.

The difference was negligible. Most of the time it made about half a frames difference.

HALF A GODDAMN FRAME?! FAIL!!!

^^