4890 CF or 5870

Hello
I have the choice between a 4890 CF configuration or a single 5870. What would be the most performant with a i7 920, a 850 watt PSU and 4 gigs of 1600 ram?
Thanks

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Personally I would chose the 5870. It's one step closer to DX11 and I've seen DX11 and it is good. If you think what you have now is nice, wait til stuff starts popping out in a more 3d way without having to have the high end monitor and glasses.

Reply to swifty_morgan

ty dude

Reply to dadude941

Two HD 4890s offer probably up to around 25% more performance than a single HD 5870. However, they will use more power, put out more heat, and only support DirectX 10.1 instead of the HD 5870s DirectX 11. Also, it will require a CrossFire compatible motherboard and solid (80 PLUS certified, Active PFC) power supply. A caveat is that they cost the same or less in most cases and there is no problem with availability.

Put simply, the HD 4890s will provide the better performance, but will lack some features and advancements in games we will see with the introduction of DirectX 11. Unfortunately I couldn't find any HD 4890 CrossFire vs. HD 5870 articles, but you can compare these two for performance differences:

techPowerUp :: AMD Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire Review
techPowerUp :: AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5 Review

Some excerpts:

Quote :

Resolution: 1920x1200

Crysis (4xAA)

HD4890CF -- 36.0 FPS
HD5870 -- 31.7 FPS

STALKER: Clear Sky (16xAF)

HD4890CF -- 54.8 FPS
HD5870 -- 44.1 FPS

World in Conflict (4xAA, 16xAF)

HD4890CF -- 83.0 FPS
HD5870 -- 54.0 FPS

Also, please note some disparities in the test setup configurations because of the difference in dates in which the tests were performed. The HD 4890 CF setup is using Windows Vista SP1 while the HD 5870 is using Vista SP2. The HD 4890 CF setup is using 2GB of slower DDR3 RAM; the HD 5870 is using 6GB of faster DDR3 RAM. HD 4890 performance has also increased with newer driver updates.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by brockh on 11-14-2009 at 11:23:39 PM

Reply to brockh

I'd say 4890 CF. Why? Because you can't buy a 5870 today.

Reply to MARSOC_Operator

actually, you can....

Reply to dadude941

look on tigerdirect for yourself

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to dadude941

brockh wrote :

Two HD 4890s offer probably up to around 25% more performance than a single HD 5870. However, they will use more power, put out more heat, and only support DirectX 10.1 instead of the HD 5870s DirectX 11. Also, it will require a CrossFire compatible motherboard and solid (80 PLUS certified, Active PFC) power supply. A caveat is that they cost the same or less in most cases and there is no problem with availability.

Put simply, the HD 4890s will provide the better performance, but will lack some features and advancements in games we will see with the introduction of DirectX 11. Unfortunately I couldn't find any HD 4890 CrossFire vs. HD 5870 articles, but you can compare these two for performance differences:

techPowerUp :: AMD Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire Review
techPowerUp :: AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5 Review

Some excerpts:

Quote :

Resolution: 1920x1200

Crysis (4xAA)

HD4890CF -- 36.0 FPS
HD5870 -- 31.7 FPS

STALKER: Clear Sky (16xAF)

HD4890CF -- 54.8 FPS
HD5870 -- 44.1 FPS

World in Conflict (4xAA, 16xAF)

HD4890CF -- 83.0 FPS
HD 5870 -- 54.0 FPS

Also, please note some disparities in the test setup configurations because of the difference in dates in which the tests were performed. The HD 4890 CF setup is using Windows Vista SP1 while the HD 5870 is using Vista SP2. The HD 4890 CF setup is using 2GB of slower DDR3 RAM; the HD 5870 is using 6GB of faster DDR3 RAM. HD 4890 performance has also increased with newer driver updates.

and is my PSU good enough?

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to dadude941

dadude941 wrote :

and is my PSU good enough?

Yes, your 850W power supply is fine. In the HD 4890 CF article they used an 800W power supply. Make sure you're using Windows Vista or Windows 7 x64. I just realized the reason why they used 2GB of memory in the HD 4890 CF article is because in the x86 version of Vista/7 the 2GB of video memory allocated to the two HD 4890s takes up the 2GB of the 4GB of memory space allocated in 32-bit operating systems meaning the largest amount of memory available to the actual user space is 2GB (if not a little less). User space memory less than 4GB has shown to decrease performance by up to 10% by itself.

Message edited by brockh on 11-14-2009 at 10:43:22 PM

Reply to brockh

dadude941 wrote :

look on tigerdirect for yourself

There is none: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] 8|&Recs=30

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to MARSOC_Operator

MARSOC_Operator wrote :

There is none: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] 8|&Recs=30

Here is one for sale in france...
http://www.materiel.net/ctl/Cartes [...] GD5_A.html

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to dadude941

XFX Radeon HD5870 are out wordwide! Nice marketing plan...kinda of like "Now that we have there attention!!"

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by kenestra1 on 11-15-2009 at 12:49:05 AM

Reply to kenestra1

kenestra1 wrote :

XFX Radeon HD5870 are out wordwide! Nice marketing plan...kinda of like "Now that we have there attention!!"

Sell all you can make at top dollar, sounds like a good plan to me.

Reply to Homeboy2

dadude941 wrote :

Here is one for sale in france...
http://www.materiel.net/ctl/Cartes [...] GD5_A.html

For 400 Euros? No thanks.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to MARSOC_Operator

MARSOC_Operator wrote :

For 400 Euros? No thanks.

Prices are much higher in Europe than in the states

Reply to dadude941

Focus On

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