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
Assassin's Creed
Two GeForce 8800 GTs in SLI outperform a single GeForce GTX 280, and two Radeon HD 4850s in CrossFire outperform the 8800 GT SLI, so AMD manages to outperform NVIDIA's brand new GT200 with a pair of cheaper, slower cards. The two actually end up performing like a GeForce 9800 GX2 here as well.
It's not so much that the Radeon HD 4850 is ultra competitive, but rather that the GTX 280 isn't terribly competitive with NVIDIA's own $400-$500 multi-GPU solutions.
Assassin's Creed has a ~60 fps frame rate cap, so the flat performance of the 4850 in CrossFire simply indicates that it kept bumping off of the frame rate limiter resulting in static performance throughout all three resolutions.
Oblivion
While CrossFire tends to not scale as consistently as SLI, when it does, it scales very well. The performance of two 4850s is nearly double that of a single card and it puts AMD at the absolute top of the performance charts here.
The Witcher
The Witcher is a good example of an area where CrossFire fails to scale - despite the Radeon HD 3870 X2 scaling, we could not get the 4850 to show any performance benefit with two GPUs. It could be an issue with the 4850 drivers or a special trait of the 3870's driver, at this point it's tough to tell.
Bioshock
While we see scaling at 1920 x 1200, at 2560 x 1600 there's no benefit to two 4850s over one. We could be bumping into a memory bandwidth limitation or some continued strangeness in AMD's CrossFire drivers.
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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).