The principle focus of this piece is a four-way comparison between four of AMD’s fastest graphics cards— its Radeon HD 4870 X2. Asus, HIS, MSI, and Sapphire all sent us their own versions of the board, with cooling solutions similar to the reference design, little to no differences in the cooling solution, and minimal clock speed variation, which as we all know, can have a tremendous impact on 3D performance. Asus, with the TOP model, and MSI with its OC edition, are overclocked by the manufacturer. In order for HIS and Sapphire to compete, they were manually overclocked and tested at their highest stable speeds.
To make sure the Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards aren’t lonely, we’ve added numbers for the fastest and most current cards from AMD and Nvidia, along with an overclocked quad-core CPU. Among the additional configurations are the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 as single board and in CrossFire arrangements, Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GTX+, the double-chip 9800 GX2, as well as the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280, both as a single card and as a combined unit using SLI. For comparison purposes, we provide results with different CPUs and older driver versions. And in addition, we provide the results from the newcomer, the Radeon HD 4670. In total we have 31 combinations, which should give you a very complete overview of the current chip classes and the 3D performance they are able to provide.
The article is organized into several parts. The first part talks about the product tests done on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards from Asus, HIS, MSI and Sapphire. We follow this with charts for the benchmarks, and the driver comparison between Catalyst versions 8.9 and 8.10. Although 8.11 is indeed now available, you shouldn’t see significant performance variation in anything other than Stalker: Clear Sky and Far Cry 2—neither of which are included in this piece.
In the third part, we give a detailed analysis of single-card HD 4870 versus Radeon HD 4870 X2, X2 versus two cards in CrossFire, X2 versus X2 CrossFire (4CF), and the double-chip Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards versus the GeForce 9800 GX2 from Nvidia. In the last part, you’ll find the overall performance results and information on price/performance ratios, noise levels, power consumption, temperatures, and frame rates sorted by resolution.
- 31 Different Combinations Tested
- Comparison Of Graphic Chips And Test Configurations
- Problems with Catalyst 8.10: Part 1
- Problems with Catalyst 8.10: Part 2
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 Specifications and Ports
- Asus Radeon HD 4870 X2 Top (EAH4870X2 TOP/HTDI/2G/A)
- Software Asus Radeon HD 4870 X2 Top
- HIS Radeon HD 4870 X2 (H487X2F2GP)
- Software HIS Radeon HD 4870 X2
- MSI Radeon HD 4870 X2 OC Edition (R4870X2-T2D2G-OC)
- Software MSI Radeon HD 4870 X2 OC Edition
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 (HD4870 X2 G2 GDDR5)
- Software Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 Crossfire (4CF)
- Assassin’s Creed v1.02
- Call of Duty 4 v1.6
- Crysis v1.21 High Quality
- Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
- Half Life 2 Episode 2
- Mass Effect
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
- World in Conflict v1.05
- 3DMark06 1280x1024p v1.1.0
- Radeon HD 4870 And HD 4870 X2 Compared
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 And HD 4870 CrossFire (CF) Compared
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 And HD 4870 X2 CrossFire (4CF) Compared
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 And GeForce 9800 GX2 Compared
- Image Quality of ATI and Nvidia
- Overall Performance
- Performance Gain From CPU And Graphics Driver
- Power Consumption, Noise Level, And Temperature
- Ratio of Overall Performance And Power Consumption
- 3D Performance At 1280x1024
- 3D Performance At 1680x1050
- 3D Performance At 1920x1200
- Conclusion

Radeon HD 4870 X2: Four Cards Compared : Read more
One slight warning about sapphire though. If you have problems, don't expect their support team to help you before you've solved the problem yourself!
I made a ticket regarding some issues with my 4870 on august 7th, and received a reply on the 26th of september! That's 46 days to address an error they simply stated would go away with a bios upgrade from their homepage!
As for the article, I actually liked the detailed driver errors they encountered. Not that I liked the errors themselves, but I liked them being explained. Usually you just read 'after spending some hours resolving driver errors ....' without getting any wiser.
Hmm your right. Power house vs crippled mouse.. yeah your analagy sucked im sure mine did to but all i saw from what you typed was i like weak stuff dont give me more power.
don't get me wrong, i liked the article but would have liked to have seen the resolution spectrum hit the top.
I bought a 2900 xt more than a year ago , on the box in huge letters the pomise for the blax box ( games from steam ) , well where are they ?
I am still waiting , i sent them an email but after a month no reply .
Good way to show how u care about your customers Shapphire and even better way to lose them.
now for 8 bucks difference i bought a Asus 4870 , i had a nice bag for cd software and games and i had them soon .
Bye Bye Shappire
So no more shappire , asus all the way
Eh? These charts do not make sense either, we're getting a 9800 GX2 seemingly more powerful than a GTX 280 in here.
Was is das? Ich bin TERRIBLY CONFUSED.
If it's CPU's that are the problem, then damnit, game developers seriously need to find some better multithreading optimizations.
My thoughts too, their Best Video Card list from November had:
1) 4870 X2
2) GTX 280
3) 9800 GX2, GTX 260, 4870
But now the 9800 GX2 is superior/equal to a 4870 X2?
Seems the bottom line still is that everything past the 9800 GTX+ or 4850 is basically overkill for most 1680x1050 game play with the obvious exception being Crysis(this game is just coded poorly). Anything over 30 fps will hardly be noticable to the human eye so there really is no sense in buying a card that consumes 150 extra watts of power and costs $300 more so you can have 100+ fps.
That's only true in some games. Different engines handle different cards differently. Remember, 9800gx2's g92 is identical to that of a 9800gtx, single 4870 outperform 9800gtx by 20-30%, cf/sli/x2 depends highly on driver optimizations, 9800gx2 already has mature drivers, which means more efficient operations, smaller gap against 4870x2 overall, and outperforming it in a few games. 4870x2 will improve over time.
As for 9800gx2 outperforming gtx280, that has always been true. It's just few people realize it. Gtx280 cost $420, 9800gx2 $275. Nvidia's hype machine focus on current cash cow.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=14
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=15
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=16
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=18
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=19