The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 25, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
AA Comparison
And now the fun part: playing around with images. Certainly everyone has their own taste when it comes to AA, but we've cropped and blown up this 800x600 screenshot from Oblivion in order to better show what's really going on. As resolution increases and pixel size decreases, the impact of higher AA modes also decreases. This is useful to keep in mind here.
A few key points to check out: compare the interior of textures between either no AA image and any of AMD's tent filters. Notice how the detail on interior textures is significantly decreased. It can be quite frustrating to enable a high anisotropic filtering level to increase the detail of textures only to find them blurred by your AA mode. Also, note how NVIDIA's 8x CSAA and 16x CSAA modes only subtly change some of the pixels. This is because CSAA actually attempts to better understand the actual geometry that a pixel covers rather than going around looking for data outside the pixel to bring in.
These screenshots are with gamma correction enabled on NVIDIA hardware in order to give the best comparison with RV770 which does not allow us to disable gamma correction. We do prefer disabling gamma correction for the average case and especially for anti-aliasing thin lines.
Click the links in the table below to change the AA images displayed
AMD RV770 |
NVIDIA GT200 |
Click here to download all the full resolution, uncompressed images used in this comparison
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jALLAD - Wednesday, July 9, 2008 - link
well I am looking forward to a single card setup. SLI or CF is beyond the reach of my pockets. :PGrantman - Friday, July 4, 2008 - link
Thank you very much for including the 8800gt sli figures in your benchmarks. I created an account especially so I could thank Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson as I have found no other review site including 8800gt sli info. It is very interesting to see the much cheaper 8800gt sli solution beating the gtx 280 on several occasions.Grantman - Friday, July 4, 2008 - link
When I mentioned "no other review site including 8800gt sli info" I naturally meant in comparison with the gtx280, gx2 4850 crossfire etc etc.Thanks again.
ohodownload - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - link
computer-hardware-zone.blogspot.com/2008/07/ati-radeon-hd4870-x2-specification.tml
DucBertus - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - link
Hi,Nice article. Could you please add the amount of graphics memory on the cards to the "The Test" page of the article. The amount of memory matters for the performance and (not unimportant) the price of the cards...
Cheers, DucBertus.
hybrid2d4x4 - Sunday, June 29, 2008 - link
Hello!Long-time reader here that finally decided to make an account. First off, thanks for the great review Anand and Derek, and hats off to you guys for following up to the comments on here.
One thing that I was hoping to see mentioned in the power consumption section is if AMD has by any chance implemented their PowerXpress feature into this generation (where the discrete card can be turned off when not needed in favor of the more efficient on-board video- ie: HD3200)? I recall reading that the 780G was supposed to support this kind of functionality, but I guess it got overlooked. Have you guys heard if AMD intends to bring it back (maybe in their 780GX or other upcoming chipsets)? It'd be a shame if they didn't, seeing as how they were probably the first to bring it up and integrate it into their mobile solutions, and now even nVidia has their own version of it (Hybrid Power, as part of HybridSLI) on the desktop...
AcornArmy - Sunday, June 29, 2008 - link
I honestly don't understand what Nvidia was thinking with the GTX 200 series, at least at their current prices. Several of Nvidia's own cards are better buys. Right now, you can find a 9800 GX2 at Pricewatch for almost $180 less than a GTX 280, and it'll perform as well as the 280 in almost all cases and occasionally beat the hell out of it. You can SLI two 8800 GTs for less than half the price and come close in performance.There really doesn't seem to be any point in even shipping the 280 or 260 at their current prices. The only people who'll buy them are those who don't do any research before they buy a video card, and if someone's that foolish they deserve to get screwed.
CJBTech - Sunday, June 29, 2008 - link
Hey iamap, with the current release of HD 4870 cards, all of the manufacturers are using the reference ATI design, so they should all be pretty much identical. It boils down to individual manufacturer's warranty and support. Sapphire, VisionTek, and Powercolor have all been great for me over the years, VisionTek is offering a lifetime warranty on these cards. I've had poor experiences with HIS and Diamond, but probably wouldn't hesitate to get one of these from either of those manufactures on this particular card (or the HD 4850) because they are the same card, ATI reference.Paladin1211 - Saturday, June 28, 2008 - link
Now that the large monolithic, underperforming chip is out, leaving AMD free to grab market share, I'm so excited at what to happen. As nVidia's strategy goes, they're now scaling down the chip. But pardon me, cut the GTX 280 in half and then prices it at $324.99? That sounds so crazy!Anyone remembers the shock treatment of AMD with codename "Thunder"? DAAMIT has just opened "a can of whoop ass" on nVidia!
helldrell666 - Friday, June 27, 2008 - link
Anand tech why didnt you use and amd 790FX board to bench the radeon cards instead of using an nvidia board for both nvidia and ATI cards.It would be more accurate to bench those cards on compatible boards .I think those cards would have worked better on an amd board based on the radeon express 790fx chipset.