4850 or 4870?

Both the cards are VERY worth their price... although the 4850 gives better bang for buck, if you can spend $300 then 4870 is definitely a sexilicious buy.... in the below benchmark 4870 is behind the GTX280 by only one and a half FPS for Crysis Very High 1920 res.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/12

Also check the benchmarks of other games in that review...depending on which games you play you should get whichever card seems worth.

If you have a CF mobo 4850 is a better deal since there isn't that much difference between 4850 CF and 4870 CF.

Make sure you have a good PSU.

Thxs, I'll get 4850 Thinking near future to upgrade again like in 6 mounths save 30-40$ a mounth and bang

The dual slot , the higher fps which in total is over the 20% core difference Its by far the better card. Worth an extra 100? Im getting one. Mainly its because I want that heat out the back of my case, not in it. Plus, I wont have to upgrade for awhile again

I may get a 4850, but I'll wait for a better cooler.

What program are you using to set the fan speeds?...also what are you ramping them up to?

Once again this was shamelessly stolen for another forum and edited as needed.

Make a new profile in catalyst after turning on Overdrive (make sure your clock and memory settings are at their default settings), make note of the profile name. You can then go to the file "C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\. You will have to go into folder options and turn on hidden folders if you can not find the AppData folder. Once there look for a xml file that will have the same name as the catalyst profile you saved. right click and hit edit.

<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Automatic" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="16" />

Change the value from "Automatic" to "Manual" in the first line in bold above

and Change the second bold lines Want value to "60" (or what ever setting you would like to try... don't go below the setting thats already there)

Save the file then reload and activate your profile in catalyst.

Setting the fan at 40% worked perfect for me, that said at 70% it was pretty loud but you may need to set it that high if your case has poor air flow.

You may have to select the profile every time you start the computer, but it will work until there is a fix or they release the 8.7 drivers.

They are already out they are called HD4870 (you just have to get lucky), the super R770 are just a unlocked bin and have a bit better cooling, ATI had a lot of higher grade parts, so they just made a different SKU.

I have a already set my card (Basic HD4870) up to a 970 core with a utility that allows the card to go around the CCC lock. The only issue is the utility only sets one clock setting, so sitting at you desktop in 2D it still runs at whatever you set. Most I have gotten out of the memory so far is 1285 but I think its a cooling and voltage issue from there, I am pretty sure you can and will see higher.

That said until you can set the card with both 2d and 3d settings I will stick to a CCC overclock, there is no need to running the card full blast at 100% of the time.

Well said.

If you can afford the 4870 get it. The DDR5 ups the memory bandwidth quite considerably which helps when playing certain games or using anti-aliasing.

^
||

LoL
But very true.

The 4850 gives you a great bang for the buck. For the price of one 4870 you could, very nearly, have 2 4850's. That would be my recomendation. Cf 4850's will PWN anything currently out except Cf 4870's.

That being said, you will want to upgrade the cooling as they run VERY hot. Turning the fan past 45% is unbearably loud. Even at 45%, they still work in the upper 90's. Upgraded cooling is not overly expensive but it will raise the cost of your setup. The Artic Cooling AccelS1 Rev 2 runs about $30 and is said to work wonders on the 48xx's temps.

I think one question that needs to be asked here is:

Do you have a CF mobo ?

if not, you might want to wait for the 4870x2

Lets throw that into the mix