4870 on way back...

Final8y · 16 Jul 2008 at 16:46

Rroff said:
Only... if you read most forums or reviews they hype the 4850/4870 up like the second coming... only in reality its slightly to moderatly faster than whats already out there and if you already have a high end 8800 its just not worth the outlay imo for the slight boost in performance.

Not at low res anyway & seeing as you mentioned high performance those standard ati 4800,s can be overclocked as well.

And yes all the review sites are running a bench fixing racket between them & the OcUK forum members have been paid off as well :rolleyes:

SS-89 · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:00

With vsync on, playing at 1680, no overclock and your quad at only 3.0 it's no surprise you didn't see much of a gain. Plus the 8800gtx copes well at that res anyway. Not really sure why you posted this as I'm sure most people are aware that at 1680 the gtx is more than capable with good IQ.

Diggsy · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:05

SS-89 said:
With vsync on, playing at 1680, no overclock and your quad at only 3.0 it's no surprise you didn't see much of a gain. Plus the 8800gtx copes well at that res anyway. Not really sure why you posted this as I'm sure most people are aware that at 1680 the gtx is more than capable with good IQ.

To be honest I posted as it seems in most reviews that the 4870 is quite a good step up from the GTX, when in my experience, it wasn't really.

But like I said, YMMV. It's just the way it worked out for me. Sometimes you need to see something for yourself to believe it.

wuyanxu · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:12

nice review. ignore all those 48x0 lovers.

we enjoyed 8800GTX for 2 years, and we shall keep enjoy it.

i didn't upgrade to 4870 is also because of the minor gain for the money i had to put in on top of selling 8800GTX. the only time i will upgrade myself is when Dx10.1 games or games are unplayable at 1680x1050 resolution.

-GRID: max out 16xQCSAA
-CoD4: max out 4xAA (highest CoD4 allows)
-STALKER: max out (max AA setting, but doubt it's implemented)
-Crysis: self tweaked very high 1680x1050 no AA.
so, apart from the last one, upgrading from 8800GTX at 1680x1050 is not a very wise move, as you will see ZERO difference.
Crysis is already playabe, and 4870 doesn't make Crysis playable either, with similar minimal FPS.

*still waits for a better graphics card* (or die shrink of gtx280)

SS-89 · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:12

9+fps average in crysis with no aa? seems pretty damn good and with 4xaa fair enough 2fps isn't great but aa has always been a killer in crysis. You do realise that 3d mark 06 is something ATi really didn't bother with for this gen, check out the difference in Vantage. Tbh I wouldn't use either as a measure of real performance and I see you negated to post any comparisons of the other games you apparently tested?...Grid is one game that the 4870 stomps all over.

Bare in mind that you are using in essence beta drivers and comparing it to a card that is nearly 2 years old with mature drivers too.

Diggsy · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:32

SS-89 said:
9+fps average in crysis with no aa? seems pretty damn good and with 4xaa fair enough 2fps isn't great but aa has always been a killer in crysis. You do realise that 3d mark 06 is something ATi really didn't bother with for this gen, check out the difference in Vantage. Tbh I wouldn't use either as a measure of real performance and I see you negated to post any comparisons of the other games you apparently tested?...Grid is one game that the 4870 stomps all over.

Bare in mind that you are using in essence beta drivers and comparing it to a card that is nearly 2 years old with mature drivers too.

To be fair I didn't quote the others as both cards cruised by synced at 60FPS

J.D · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:49

This story is a immensely different to my friend who is a right picky git when it comes to new hardware. Even more than you.

He plays at 1920x1200 and tested a lot of games with one card to see the benefits of Crossfire and loved it over his 8800GTX. Though he did try a good few games to really see what the card could do. He noticed a big difference in CoD4, Grid, Assassins Creed, World in Conflict and a good few others and was really happy with just the one card and that's a rarity. So, you've either not set up things right, your CPU speed has been holding you back or something as if one card can make my friend happy and two cards leaves him overjoyed then I don't understand why you've not been impressed in any way and that's why I believe you've not really tested the card right or something has been wrong with your set up. The reason I'm saying this is that all the review sites can't be lying

.

AWPC · 16 Jul 2008 at 17:51

Diggsy said:
To be honest I posted as it seems in most reviews that the 4870 is quite a good step up from the GTX, when in my experience, it wasn't really.

But like I said, YMMV. It's just the way it worked out for me. Sometimes you need to see something for yourself to believe it.

It is a good step up. Reason people like me think it is the 2nd coming is because until this afternoon when Nvidia went for realistic prices the 4870 was a lot cheaper than the GTX260/280 and offered close performance losing no more than 10-15% for a fraction of the cost.

In my experience the 4850 is up to 30% quicker than my 8800GTX yet cost a fraction of it and does this with less Vram & a slower memory interface.

You have to play a few games not just benchmark as the answers lie in how the 4800 series run games smoothly with little to no microstutter which the NV cards seem to have with a lot of games now. Personally I think this stuttering is caused by Nvidia and their TWIMTBP program meaning they would release special drivers for most big games but obviously newer drivers would still have to include this code which could mean that they handicap newer cards as the drivers also support older cards as well so there is a lot of legacy support in them.

I can get 45-50FPS on Assassins Creed @ 1920x1200 + 4xAA with a 4850 the 8800GTX cannot even do a smooth 30FPS without AA. A lot of this increase is due to DX10.1 which even Nvidia are now rushing to support with their next cards making all their current cards obsolete as you can almost performance free AA as 10.1 saves a rendering pass.

Bioshock runs around 88-90FPS @ 1920x1200 under DX10 with full gfx details on the 4850 the 8800GTX only manages around 55-60FPS.

formby · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:00

Thats it i will stick with my voodoo 5500 seeing as the 4870 is rubbish thanks for the heads up.....!

J.D · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:03

formby said:
Thats it i will stick with my voodoo 5500 seeing as the 4870 is rubbish thanks for the heads up.....!

Enjoy Solitaire running smooth as butter then

.

Rroff · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:05

AWPC said:
Bioshock runs around 88-90FPS @ 1920x1200 under DX10 with full gfx details on the 4850 the 8800GTX only manages around 55-60FPS.

Might wanna test again with the 177.39 or newer drivers... compared to 169 or even 175 with the 8800GT my framerate in BioShock went up by 60% and I'm guessing thats atleast on all G92 cards and probably older G80 ones too. My 8800GT SLI setup at 1920x1200 with everything maxed (4x FSAA - I don't bother with higher personally) never drops below 109fps.

LoadsaMoney · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:06

AWPC said:
I can get 45-50FPS on Assassins Creed @ 1920x1200 + 4xAA with a 4850 the 8800GTX cannot even do a smooth 30FPS without AA. A lot of this increase is due to DX10.1 which even Nvidia are now rushing to support with their next cards making all their current cards obsolete as you can almost performance free AA as 10.1 saves a rendering pass.

Nvidia are not rushing to support Dx10.1, they are going straight to Dx11.

wellibob · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:06

The new radeons are good, but not the "love children" people make them out so. I game @ 1680x1050 , and a radeon makes games no more playable than they were on my 8800 cards imho.

thegoonden · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:16

Odd, I found a 4850 traded blows with my GTX quite nicely, on a slower system too, so I'd have expected better of the 4870.

Don't suppose you did any sillyxAA tests on anything?

My life seems doomed to owning a gtx280, and I really don't fancy a 15MegaWatt fusion reactor sitting in my nice cool (even with the 8800) case

J.D · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:18

wellibob said:
The new radeons are good, but not the "love children" people make them out so. I game @ 1680x1050 , and a radeon makes games no more playable than they were on my 8800 cards imho.

The same could be said about the GTX 260 and 280 in your scenario though :confused:

. So, you should have said that ANY of the new gen would be a waste and not highlight the ATI cards to be the only culprit here

.

I really don't understand how review sites (and many of them) can see a big difference yet one or two people on here can't?. I've seen the numbers from the 8800GTX vs the 4850 and know that if I was buying a card today, it would be the 4850. I wouldn't upgrade my 8800GTX to one though. That would only be the 4870.

Rroff · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:23

thegoonden said:
Odd, I found a 4850 traded blows with my GTX quite nicely, on a slower system too, so I'd have expected better of the 4870.

Hence my earlier comments - they do well against the cards - but they aren't stunningly faster - not worth spending the money upgrading to imo if you have a decent 8800.

thegoonden · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:31

Rroff said:
Hence my earlier comments - they do well against the cards - but they aren't stunningly faster - not worth spending the money upgrading to imo if you have a decent 8800.

So it would seem.

Sod it, nothing to buy that'll speed this thing up any more

Tooks · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:47

I can see why you might not be blown away by the performance if v-sync is enabled as a lot of cards will manage 60fps pretty consistently, as others have said.

I know it's subjective for some people, but I've found since I changed my 8800GT for a 4850 that the image quality is definately improved. It might just be different, but I prefer it anyway.

Did you not notice a difference?

RizlaKing · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:59

One person comes on saying that the 4870 is nothing to write home about while a lot more people and just about every review site says it is a worthwhile upgrade. Sorry m8 you had another problem that wasn't the card and as someone else said i would have done a full reinstall of the os before writing the card off.

marscay · 16 Jul 2008 at 19:21

Diggsy said:
To be honest I posted as it seems in most reviews that the 4870 is quite a good step up from the GTX, when in my experience, it wasn't really.

But like I said, YMMV. It's just the way it worked out for me. Sometimes you need to see something for yourself to believe it.

it is a step up under the right conditions, your lack of cpu and 1680 resolution don't help in realising the 4870's strengths.

also, you've tested 1 game and 1 benchmark .......the game in which nvidia have in their back pocket and the benchmark that doesn't reveal the cards strengths until you hit it with high levels of filtering.

run COD4 again with 8xAA and see how the GTX compares to that