ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - R700 Preview: AMD's Fastest Single Card
by Derek Wilson on July 14, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power Heat and Noise
This is prerelease hardware and software, so we can't really go in depth on these issues until we have something more final. We were told that idle power is not what it will be and so not to test it at all. We did, however look at load power.
As for heat, this card doesn't get any hotter to the touch than a single 4870. The HSF is much heavier than either 4870 or 3870 X2, and is very likely the reason the heat doesn't stay in the system.
Hot surface
On the noise front, when gaming it does spin up, but it isn't any louder than the GTX 280 at max fan speed. Again, we'll want to wait until we have final hardware to do quantitative tests on this, but it is nice to see that even the prerelease hardware doesn't go crazy in terms of heat and noise.
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David Brown - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Well if you say so, but I am not sure most people would agree...I mean if you really think about it.----------------------------------------
David Brown
http://mymmoshop.com/buy/age-of-conan-us/gold/inde...">http://mymmoshop.com/buy/age-of-conan-us/gold/inde...
granulated - Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - link
If the charts are all correct then I'm quite astonished that the bizarre results haveb't been highlighted.4870 @19x12=73.7fps
4870CF@19x12=99.8fps
4870 @25x16=43.9fps
4870CF@25x16=30.4fps
plus loads of other bizarre results
paradoxnighthawk - Friday, July 18, 2008 - link
I've been an ATi fan since I built my first PC with a 9600 256MB card. I have to say AMD has now proven it can handle the legacy of ATi. I haven't bought a new graphics card for myself since the X1900XT (been waiting for something like this to happen), and in just a short time I will be getting the 4870X2.A $500 to be card seems to dominate and combination of alternatives (even more expensive ones) in most applications. If nothing else, this will drive down the price-gauging of nVidia's new GTXs, and make the life of enthusiasts and gamers alike, much more interesting. Regardless, go AMD, bring the competition.
Afterthought: If only AMD put this much brilliance into their Phenom X3 processors. I think the X3 idea has a lot of potential, just needs some more TLC.
ilkhan - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
You know what Id really like to see in these reviews?Instead of nVidia GeForce / AMD Radeon being repeated in each chart, use the street MSRP for that GPU.
Then I could get everything I need on one graphic, crysis performance vs the price.
We KNOW they are going to destroy everything else, so please stop bothering.
jameswalker - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 - link
I have 3 ati 4870x2 on an asus workstation motherboard with 4 intel qx9850, i'm going for the 3d mark world record, using linux. Because it is the only operating system that well utilize all 4 cpu's and my 3 video cards. It is water cooled by liquid nitrogen.vailr - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 - link
Will this 4870 x2 card be commercially available in time for Leo Laporte's "Ultimate Game Machine"?Anand had phoned in, to talk on the UGM show:
http://twitlive.tv/">http://twitlive.tv/
on July 4 and had offered design tips for the UGM that's being assembled for a late August giveaway. The motherboard/video card selected (then: July 4) was an nVidia 780 motherboard coupled with SLI'ed: two water cooled 9800 GX2 cards:
http://www.bfgtech.com/bfge98512gtxh2ocwe.aspx">http://www.bfgtech.com/bfge98512gtxh2ocwe.aspx
Will a water cooled 4870 x2 card be available by mid-August?
pattycake0147 - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
Excellent preview you guys always do a great job on your articles. Is there any news as to when the 790GX chipset is going to be released?dragonbif - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
I found a posting of the 1GB version of 4870http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features...">http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features...
Also I do beleve that the card AnandTech tested is a 2GB 4870x2.
thewanderer666 - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
Anand, I really enjoy your site, but please, get rid of Derek Wilson, not only does he fail miserably at showing that he really knows how to bench video cards (like when he tried to prove how his methodology is better than HardOCP) but he makes huge mistakes in judgement.First off, how come he doesn't answer the simple question of how is it possible that you guys, the most respected HW site got an X2 with only 1GB in RAM...many posts talk about this yet he has not even tried to reply. Second, his take on the performance results is simply flawed. If he had read the specs of the X2 as the rest of the sites and noted that the card had 2GB of RAM, the GRID results could have been easily explained by the additional frame buffer memory (1gb vs. 512mb) instead of coming with outlandish remarks about how there are internal aspects of the card that push the performance considerably above a regular crossfire setup.
As I tell you I really like your site and I respect all of those who write here, but seriously for such a professional site such as yours it's really sad that you have a person like Mr. Wilson in your staff. I hope this is taken as constructive critisism and not as bashing...I'm a long time reader of your site and I have no intention of having anythg different in my mind than helping this site become even better.
thewanderer666 - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
I did see the corrections were made regarding the huge mistakes in the original preview, so kudos for fixing them. Still I stand by my statements about the person in question...this kind of annoying mistakes are becoming more and more common on this site (on the graphics department). Knowing the Anand's professionalism these kind of noob mistakes (how about contacting AMD/ATI and asking them why the results might be so different) should not be allowed.