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
Crysis
With CrossFire, under Crysis, the 4850 does quite well. There's a bit of an odd scaling anomaly, but no matter how much we retested things it came out the same way. We've had discussions on the fact that the built-in test we used can end up bound by the fact that it moves so fast that it's got to move things on and off the graphics cards way more than normal. This might help explain why the relative performance of the 4850 CrossFire setup goes up at 2560x1600, as it may have plenty of power to process the scene but not the capability to handle the swapping in and out of so many complex objects (which wouldn't happen under nomral conditions in the game).
Call of Duty 4
4850 CrossFire simply ownz Call of Duty 4. Nuff said.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Our Quake Wars benchmark shows a much different CrossFire scaling story, as it really just doesn't do much. The impressive highs we see with CrossFire are underscored by these inconsistencies in support.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
114 Comments
View All Comments
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).