ATI Radeon HD 4850 Preview: AMD Delivers Performance for the Masses
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 19, 2008 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Challenging NVIDIA's Strategy: Are Two RV770s Faster than One GT200?
NVIDIA insists on building these massive GPUs while AMD is heading in the direction of multiple, smaller GPUs in order to keep development time and costs manageable. Does NVIDIA's strategy make sense? In order to find out we paired two Radeon HD 4850s in CrossFireX and ran through our benchmark suite, this time focusing on a comparison to the recently announced GeForce GTX 280 as well as the 9800 GX2. The results were surprising:
| AMD Radeon HD 4850 CF | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 | NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 | 512 256MB|
| Crysis | 36.4 | 34.3 | 39.9 |
| Call of Duty 4 | 88.2 | 67.4 | 73.2 |
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars | 53.7 | 70.2 | 62.2 |
| Assassin's Creed | 51.9 | 45 | 52.6 |
| Oblivion | 39.5 | 36.8 | 35.6 |
| The Witcher | 20.9 | 37.7 | 37.6 |
| Bioshock | 68.6 | 63.9 | 75.4 |
So does AMD's approach invalidate NVIDIA's big-monolithic-GPU strategy? Not exactly. While it is true that two RV770s can outperform a single GT200 in many cases, you could also make the argument that two GT200s could outperform anything that AMD could possibly concoct (3 and 4-way CF scaling isn't nearly as good as 2-way). AMD's strategy makes sense, for AMD, but it's fundamentally no different than what NVIDIA is doing - AMD is simply targeting a different initial market and scaling up/down from there.
The scaling, or lack thereof, in games like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars highlights an important caveat with AMD's strategy: there are still software issues with SLI and CrossFireX. What is necessary is a truly seamless multi-GPU implementation, with shared frame buffer and where both GPUs operate as an extension of each other with direct GPU-to-GPU communication over a high speed (not PCIe) bus, similar to how AMD's Opteron or Intel's Nehalem work in multi-socketed systems.
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Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
Crossfire two of that ;)(starts looking for a humongous PSU...)
rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
lol oohhh yeah.. I'll be looking for Anandtech to be reviewing PCP&Ps newest 2kW Power supply with 200amps on teh 12V rail :)rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
PS. (to PCP&P) Switch to 120mm fans, imagine how loud a 2000watt psu will be with an 80mm fan cooling it :)xsilver - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
the 80mm fan would require its own psu ;)Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
There goes the carrot cutter :))Devo2007 - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
I can walk into a local retailer and pick one up right now (yes, they are actually showing stock on three different cards).Goty - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
Something is VERY wrong if a 1000W rated power supply can't boot a system that draws less than 500W at load. Most sites recommend a 500W-600W power supply to run a 4850 CF system, which should be PLENTY of power.Creig - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
That's exactly what I was thinking when I read that part of the article. A 4850 supposedly only pulls 110w. So if I was conducting the review, I would have immediately suspected a defective power supply, not an inadequate one.bob4432 - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
exactly what i was thinking....ocz quality????JarredWalton - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
I believe the 1000W PSU having problems was specifically in regards to GeForce GTX 280 SLI - though Anand or Derek would have to confirm. The other factor that I don't know is whether the PSU is the problem or perhaps Derek just has really bad electricity in his house. I know I've had no difficulties with even 550W PSUs and 3870 CrossFire (with a Q6600 overclocked to 3.30GHz).