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first 4870 review

My current motherboard is the "Intel® Desktop Board D975XBX2". I have the spec in my sig.

~Can anyone see any problems in chucking 4gb of ram in there (on XP) and also the 4870?

~How much more power would this card need over say the 8800GTS/8800GTX? (my bro has the GTS)

~How much larger is it than the 8800GTS/8800GTX?

~Will I see a noticeable difference in performance? (I play TF2, Spore and want to play WIC and Crysis)

(sorry if these questions have already been asked..)

Really appreciate it guys :)
 
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Will be interesting to see how NVidia reacts with their pricing. It's rumoured that it costs them a fortune to make the the GT200 cores and thus they don't actually have much margin on the wholesale price to the manufacturers.

Now if this is true then they can't reduce the prices much. Of course it may be rubbish and they do have a lot of room for manouvre.

Can't see how NVidia can win this one. Either they can't reduce the prices enough to compete or else they can but will incur the wrath of everyone who's bought a GTX260 or GTX280 so far.
 
but i would only be using 2 lanes with X2s ? will have to wait and see if someone on XS tries it first then.
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Yes, but a gx2 wont use anywhere near the bandwidth of a 4870x2.

And I'd harldy call this half a frame difference:-

flightsimulatorx.png


Admitedly, that's the worst case but more games are heading in that direction in regards the size of textures.
 
30" monitor - check
2: 2 4870X2's - check
3: AMD Quad cpu to drive them (to eliminate any microstutters) - check

4: Lots of Money left, Seeing a nice girlfriend, Push-Bike, Rent, holiday, food...................


  • WIN
 
Jono8 said:
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.
Click to expand...

Err I think you mis read the review. The charts show relative to 16x pci-e 2, not fps.

At high res the GX2 on a 8x pci-e 2 slot was showing 8%+ performance drop.

Working on the theory that a single 4870 comes close to gx2 performance and hence gx2 performance, then with a single 4870 he will lose performance and be noticable.

Throw in the power a 4870x2 has, and that will plummet. Then add a 2nd for crossfire which consumes even more bandwidth and I will be surprised if his system showed a 10% gain over a single 4870x2.

Take a look at the 4850's cards running in crossfire on 8 x pci-e 2 p45 boards and the performance hit they take over 16x slots. At high res and 4xaa/16xaf, these are taking a 40% performance hit with a 8x pci-e 2 slot.

Craig only has 16x pci-e 1.1 slots = 8 x pci-e 2 slots.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Yes, but a gx2 wont use anywhere near the bandwidth of a 4870x2.

And I'd harldy call this half a frame difference:-

flightsimulatorx.png


Admitedly, that's the worst case but more games are heading in that direction in regards the size of textures.
Click to expand...

Ok then on microsoft flight simulator. Most of them looked relatively unnaffected.

Personally i don't think one 4870x2 will be crippled to much. Although two of them probably will.
 
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Greebo said:
Err I think you mis read the review. The charts show relative to 16x pci-e 2, not fps.

At high res the GX2 on a 8x pci-e 2 slot was showing 8%+ performance drop.

Working on the theory that a single 4870 comes close to gx2 performance and hence gx2 performance, then with a single 4870 he will lose performance and be noticable.

Throw in the power a 4870x2 has, and that will plummet. Then add a 2nd for crossfire which consumes even more bandwidth and I will be surprised if his system showed a 10% gain over a single 4870x2.

Take a look at the 4850's cards running in crossfire on 8 x pci-e 2 p45 boards and the performance hit they take over 16x slots. At high res and 4xaa/16xaf, these are taking a 40% performance hit with a 8x pci-e 2 slot.

Craig only has 16x pci-e 1.1 slots = 8 x pci-e 2 slots.
Click to expand...

No in the link only microsoft flight simulator seems affected. But i agree in crossfire i think it will be a problem but i reckon a single 4870x2 will be largely unnaffected.
 
/cry

thanks for all the posts helping me to understand this.
My questions are hardware based no need at all to bring financial situations into this.
 
i reckon a single 4870x2 will be largely unnaffected.
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I agree but we were talking about crossfire (actually quad crossfire if you go back to the original tangent).
 
Jono8 said:
No in the link only microsoft flight simulator seems affected. But i agree in crossfire i think it will be a problem but i reckon a single 4870x2 will be largely unnaffected.
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Don't know. Even with a GX2 I would be upset with a 3.7% drop in Crysis and a 7.2% drop in COD4

If you notice the trend there is little difference at lowish res/no AA but as soon as you go either 1920 x 1200 or add AA, the difference increases.

Would have been interesting to see to very high res/aa results to see if that trend continued.

You might then see 10 - 30% drop across the board which might make you think twice buying a high end card with a pci-e 1.1 16x slot or a pci-e 2 8x slot
 
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