The New Champion of 3D Performance – MSI 4870X2 vs. 4850 CF

ATI has considered 2008 a very successful year. In the first half year,
the 4800 series is a middle-level product line which comes with the 55nm process GPU and cost around 220 US dollars.
While, the 4870 series is a high-end product line with a price of 330 US dollars and it’s the first to use GDDR5, giving its competitors a head blow.


The 500 US dollars NVIDIA® GTX260 and the 650 US dollars NVIDIA® GTX280 were originally intended to replace the 8800/9800 GTX market,
but they were defeated by the ATI lower price and higher performance 4870/4850.
It was too late for NVIDIA® to cut the prices of 260GTX and 289GTX last month.


ATI is the first to launch the 4800 Series X2 version of VGA in August and wants to be the only one with 3D performance.
MSI, on the other hand, is the first to launch the 4870X2 2G GDDR5 version.


The packaging in high-end products is often a big volume.
MSI representative pictorial in this series is not good look.
I hope that there will be a more attractive product design in the future.


Bundled Accessories
Accessories are simple and practical.
Aside from bundled games, graphics card has generally no accessories that can be included.
Instead of buying the graphics card for the free game, I hope that lowering the price of the graphics card is more practical.


MSI R4870-T2D2G-OC
The physical appearance of MSI R4870-TD2G-OC is longer than the 4850/480 series graphics card.
It has the same of length as NVIDIA’s 260GTX/280GTX series graphics cards.




4870X2 needs an 8-pin plus a 6-pin power supply.
I suggest that you use a 550~600W or above PSU for safety reason.


The rear side of 4870X2
It has a similar plastic case design of 260GTX/280GTX for protection.
The rear side of 4870X2 casing is made of steel.


IO Ports
The DVI ports are located around the middle for TV/HDTV output port.


ATI special cooling design


In order for 4870X2 to have a full test, we also joined the 4850/4870 comparison test.
The representative of the second group is Gigabyte HD4870 CrossFire.


The representative for the third group is HD4850 + MSI 4850 CrossFire.

For the actual game clock please refer to the following pages.
Settings:
Resolution 1600 X1200
Details of levels: the highest
The others are default.

4850 CrossFire


4870 CrossFire


4870X2


More games are responding to real graphics card performance.
Although the “Need For Speed Carbon” has been launched for a while.
I can still do a comparison based on the previous test article of NVIDIA® 8800 series.
The 4850 CF is the reference point. The 4850 has a lead of 10% and 4870X2 by 30%. The big winner of this test was 4870X2.


Crysis Benchmark
1920X1200

4850 CrossFire


4870 CrossFire


4870X2


In the Crysis performance, the 4870X2 has beaten the 4870CF.
But the two have a better performance compared to 4850CF.
Although the gaming performance of 4850CF is not good than 4870CF, but the C/P value is higher the others.


Temperature
Environment temperature at room is about 29 to 32 degree.

4850 CrossFire


4870 CrossFire


4870X2


The radiator size and the texture of 4800 series are good.
But the performance of the temperature is barely satisfactory.
The temperature is about 78 to 82 degrees which is similar to the previous test of ATI/NVIDIA high-end graphics card.
But most consumers always prefer the lower temperature of the new technology and new 55 nm process GPU.

So it seems that among all cards, Nvidia and ATI, 4850 in crossfire gives the best possible Performance versus power consumption, while also being among the best pricing? And in adition the 4850 doesn't have the concerns with the digital voltage regulators experienced by the 4870's DRMs. I'm happy about all that since my system uses watercooled 4850s in crossfire, a wise choice ...