4850/4870 CrossfireX review

[J.D]

Drop every detail setting in the menu then add 2xMSAA max & see if it helps & he can work his way up the detail setting until it breaks again.

Must not use any Adaptive AA or force ASF in CCC.

This is not going to be fun I tell you. He will send the cards back due to this I'm sure. It's pretty pathetic that a single card flies in this game (from what I've seen in review benches) but 2 cards are useless. I just don't get why I'm seeing numbers so great with 4xAA and highest game settings as in all the reviews that I've read.

I'll give your suggestion a try, thank you. I just hope my m8 will have the patience to not send them back and get the GTX 280.

 

[Final8y]

That's my point.

You pay 100% more so its not unreasonable to expect a 100% performance increase.

It's delivering on (my) expectation's so I dont find that wonderful.

150% to 200% would be wonderful.

Yes it is unreasonable to expect 100% performance increase when you dont understand the technical & sometimes physics involved
& understand that this is the best that we offer but if you need more this is what we have & you make a compromise .

2 engines on a car will not give you double the speed.

I can have a new book making machine at work that cost x2 as much as the one before & it will not make x2 the amount of books than the one before.

plugging in a the second speaker on a HIFI does not give you double the perceived loudness.

 

[ten80p]

It is wonderful that you can seemingly use almost any different cards in CF and theres little to no compatibility issues, and also that 2 x 4850's at £235 opens a can of whoopass on Nvidias flagship that despite a lowering of £150 in 2 wks is still £70 more, if you compare the £235 against the price of the GTX280 at many other retailers its almost half the price of the GTX280 assuming you've got the right MB and a good PSU to start with

 

[HarryPainful]

Yes it is unreasonable to expect 100% performance increase when you dont understand the technical & sometimes physics involved
& understand that this is the best that we offer but if you need more this is what we have & you make a compromise .

2 engines on a car will not give you double the speed.

I can have a new book making machine at work that cost x2 as much as the one before & it will not make x2 the amount of books than the one before.

plugging in a the second speaker on a HIFI does not give you double the perceived loudness.

English. please.

 

[Final8y]

English. please.

If that's the best you can do then don't bother replying.
Clearly you have lost your argument when you focus on my typing errors.

 

[titaniumx3]

Paying twice as much for a card has rarely if ever yielded twice as much performance in the entire history of 3D accelerators. In fact, it's a pretty rare phenomenon in many other things too.

 

[shaffaaf27]

English. please.

Good argument

I never pick on someone's English as mine is lazy, but shouldn't you technically have a capital "P" on "please"? If your going to criticise someone else's English, tidy yours up.

 

[chaosophy]

Shame they didn't do some 4870 + 4850 tests. I'd still be interested to see how that fits in with the other results.

 

[C64]

The 4850 is "the card" to get just think will you be maxing out farcry 2 battlefield 3 etc on a 4870 in 6 months time ? all that matters in this pc world we live in is 6 months to a year I wouldn't want to spend £190 on a card I need to sell for £100 in 6 months to get the next best thing so I can run the latest games maxed out when I could have ran all my games maxed out on a £120 card just fine for that 6 month period.
I made that mistake with the 8800gt and will never make that mistake again touch wood.

 

[HarryPainful]

If that's the best you can do then don't bother replying.
Clearly you have lost your argument when you focus on my typing errors.

And what argument is that then?

You got yourself bent out of shape, I was arguing with no-one.

Calm yourself.

 

[HarryPainful]

Good argument

I never pick on someone's English as mine is lazy, but shouldn't you technically have a capital "P" on "please"? If your going to criticise someone else's English, tidy yours up.

I couldn't care less what you say, think or do.. have your back.

 

[PhoenixUK]

The 4850 is "the card" to get just think will you be maxing out farcry 2 battlefield 3 etc on a 4870 in 6 months time ? all that matters in this pc world we live in is 6 months to a year I wouldn't want to spend £190 on a card I need to sell for £100 in 6 months to get the next best thing so I can run the latest games maxed out when I could have ran all my games maxed out on a £120 card just fine for that 6 month period.
I made that mistake with the 8800gt and will never make that mistake again touch wood.

I think the same way, the 'future-proofing' of hardware has gone away at least a year ago. I still can't understand people buying a quad core CPU just because 'maybe in a year and half games will support it and I want it to be as future proof as possible' - rubbish talk IMO; and by the time they start to support it, the new technology comes out and the 'future-proofing' you just got is already too old and not up to task.

I couldn't care less what you say, think or do.. have your back.

You my dear Sir, clearly FAIL.
And he had a good point about the performance, you can not expect it to be double just because you have two GPUs just as you would not get double the speed from dual core over single core CPU in example.

 

[Final8y]

And what argument is that then?

You got yourself bent out of shape, I was arguing with no-one.

Calm yourself.

LOL!

You clearly don't understand the term when its use in such context.

 

[Locky]

They really should have used a better cpu or overclocked it, holding it back i reckon.

 

[oweneades]

I couldn't care less what you say, think or do.. have your back.

Well you clearly do care otherwise you wouldn't have replied to the post.

Anyway assuming that adding a second card would automatically give you a 100% performance boost is daft. There are far too many variables involved to simply increase the performance in a perfectly linear line.

One of the largest hurdles to overcome is the cpu limitation. By adding in a second card you are now asking your cpu to feed data to both gpus at the same time.

A good example of this limitation is the following.

In crysis benchmark @ 1680x1050 DX9 No AA all High I get the folliwing:

@ 3ghz

Single card - 35.15
Crossfire - 46.8

This is scaling of 133% (two cards offer 133% of a single card)

@ 3.6ghz

Single card - 35.65 (shows I am not cpu limited with a single card)
Crossfire - 50.84 (quite a large improvement given this is crysis)

This is CF scaling of 143%.

What this simple test shows is that I am heavily cpu limited with using two HD4850's in crysis. 4ghz on my cpu should give me CF scaling of 150%.

Obviously there is a point at which you no longer become cpu limited however there is also the matter of drivers and whether the game actually supports CF (or SLI). Some games simply don't.

 

[stewart.r@ntlwo]

When you’re saying CPU is that single CPU or Duel or Quad? Surly you can’t max out these Quad Core CPU’s?

Must emit not got the foggiest how Quad and Duel GFx cards work together not to mention if the games can handle multithread CPU’s.