Widescreen Gaming Forum

Been browsing "pro" reviews and benchmark results, still no clear idea of how a single 4870 X2 performs compared to two GTX 280s in SLI... (It's amazing how quite a lot of these folks can test high-end GPUs over dozens of games and/or resolutions while using E8200s or Q6600s CPUs, then draw their conclusions and give advice to serious gamers. :evil: Ever heard of CPU bottleneck, or the weight of multi-GPU solutions over the system's resources, you morons ??)

LOL! :D

Here's a review that shows several configurations up against each other with a Core2Extreme QX9650:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15293/11

Better to test it yourself though. :)

Card ordered anyway :P

Thanks for the link Tamlin, great find ! :) At least a review of the 4870 X2 featuring lots of multi-GPU solutions including GTX 280 SLI, with min FPS and even Assassin's Creed ! :D

As I suspected, on Xbox360 ports a single 4870 X2 clearly outperforms a GTX 280 SLI setup. As I'm currently playing a lot of Overlord (Raising Hell expansion), will probably replay DiRT and Assassin's Creed very shortly, and will even receive Grid with the card - I will most certainly become an Ati guy for some time...

I will most certainly become an Ati guy for some time...

Glad to hear, You were striking me as a fanboy with the whole "SLI lover" and "PhysX worshipper" thing. Glad to see you can put your differences aside and just buy what ever performs the best for the price.

Amazes me how picking the latest top-notch graphics cards is considered being open-minded these days :lol:
j/k, you're right - that sig can be easily misinterpreted. No fanboy here though, just a long-time nvidia customer who's pretty excited to finally have a good reason to try something new. 8)

[OT]
As for my sig ranting :

'SLI lover' : I love parallel architecture i.e SLI/Crossfire - just never tried the latter so far. It's the possibilities I like (since the old SLI of Voodoo cards...), not the brand. People saying SLI or Crossfire "is half-cooked technology, it doesn't work, it has loads of problems, everybody knows that" just depress me :)

'PhysX worshipper' : same here, gotta love the potential. And I began worshipping PhysX when it was still Ageia stuff, with the expensive card needed to showcase their features in even less games than today :lol:
[/OT]

Received my 4870 X2, struggled a bit to install everything properly, but after a while it seemed ok (3DM2006 default : 19000). So I was ready for some surround gaming tests...

...and I'm pretty disappointed right now. I wonder if my XP SP2 w/ 2 GBs of RAM can really handle a 2-GB video card - those RAM issues confuse me to say the least. I suspect memory leaks and/or swapping issues anyway, as in-game performance is far from stellar (maybe my expectations were a bit too high ?), and more importantly gets worse in time. :(

All tests at 3840x1024 using Fraps on E8400@4.05 GHz, 2 GB DDR2-800, XP SP2.

Overlord :
For a console port, supposedly favored by Ati cards, performance just sucks. Nothing comparable to my GTX280 SLI. Actually I think even my 8800GTX SLI was doing better ! Main menu, tower exterior : ~75 fps (was 120 on the GTX280s). Game start, throne room : 25-55 fps (was ~70 at the lowest). Both GPUs of the X2 work as they should though. One point to consider : I already noticed Overlord tends to raise Page File usage to 1.2+ GB in no time, which to my knowledge is not typical even of more recent games.

DiRT :
First I was glad to see a nice framerate boost compared to my GTX280 SLI (60+ vs. 40-45 fps), but performance drops to the 40s after a while. Restarting the same race won't give the same good framerate as before too : still stuck at ~45. :? Quitting and restarting the game will restore the nice 60+ fps, again only in the beginning of the race. Menus on the other hand always reach the 160, so the card works and delivers.

Assassin's Creed : (DX9)
No noticeable framerate improvement, multisampling still has a price, and sadly I can't test the infamous DX10.1 version. Performance seems noticeably better than on the GTX280s during the loading scenes (lone Altayr in the "techno fog"), a tad lower during dialogues, but pretty much the same in town.

So I went to Jerusalem, jumped from roof to roof, stealth-killed lone guards, climbed and dived, ran around the crowded streets, attacked guards in packs and so on for a while, with no problem. Then all of sudden, while I was alone on the rooftops, the framerate became more and more choppy, then unplayable, then on the way to freezing completely, so I eventually Alt-Tabbed out of it. :shock:

The card itself seems to work alright (I monitored both GPUs using 2x GPU-Z and loads, temperatures, fan speed all seem normal), it's even not as hot and noisy as I feared. There are clearly performance issues though, and I don't know what to think.

from the sounds of it, your not on a very powerful system. I've heard running the latest graphic cards WITHOUT at least 4GB's of ram is not very good.

That and I beat DX10.1 is where the cards shine.

Hmm, the rigs the card was reviewed on were not all running 4 Gigs of RAM or x64 OSs, you know... And I never read a warning to users with "only" 2 GBs of RAM - which is more than enough for gaming today, I assure you. Maybe it's just the drivers, Ati issues only one driver release per month and the first one is never the greatest for newer cards it seems.

Must test more games to get a better idea...

Most of the good results were of Vista 64 systems.

Perhaps these drivers might work for you? I don't know if they support XP, but they are newer:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1339658

..and I'm pretty disappointed right now. I wonder if my XP SP2 w/ 2 GBs of RAM can really handle a 2-GB video card - those RAM issues confuse me to say the least. I suspect memory leaks and/or swapping issues anyway, as in-game performance is far from stellar (maybe my expectations were a bit too high ?), and more importantly gets worse in time.

Any hardware memory needs to be mapped into system ram (mainly graphic card), so a 2GB graphic card would need a minimum of 4GB system ram, so swapping issues will be the norm with only 2GB

Your case is pretty normal, even not bad at all, considering you installed windows succesfully and managed to play something

A quad-CF of 2x 4870x2 would need AT LEAST 6GB of system ram, and 8GB 8 recomended

This is the point where a 64bit system begins to be an useful option

Thanks. Guess my mind was still stuck at the point where XP was still the gamer's OS of choice... Maybe I missed it but I don't remember reading anything about the necessary amount of RAM in any 4870 X2 review though - but if the current high-end GPU war between Ati and Nvidia tought me something, it's that "pro" reviews don't provide much reliable information to the end-user these days. :evil: The minimum/recommended requirements on the card's box itself don't mention any specific amount of RAM either, you're supposed to be fine with 1 GB :?

Continuing my tests only seems to confirm the card can't express its potential on my rig anyway : performance in Grid is terrible, each race start or car crash is a slideshow even at 1280x1024 with medium advanced settings. I also had weird sync issues at 3840x1024 (horizontal black bars all across the display), seems to be gone now but framerate sucks. And this is supposed to be THE title where the X2 truly shines...

Too bad there's no trial version of Vista x64, but it seems obvious I need to try with 4 GBs of RAM somehow :/ And just to be sure, I'll try using the 200 additional Watts of my Booster X3 to second my 750W PSU, like I was doing with the GTX 280 SLI...

Thanks for the beta drivers, that's another interesting trail, but the issues I'm experiencing seem more hardware-related to me. Drivers can't be that crappy, right ?? :lol:

And most of all, thanks for bearing with poor little me and my stupid problems ! All inputs are greatly appreciated :)