The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head

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CrossFire With Radeon HD 4850

On our test system, the Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire mode only gains a bit of performance on average compared to the HD 4870 at 1680x1050 pixels with anti-aliasing turned on. This benefit of up to 5% in performance isn’t actually worthwhile at current prices and taking energy consumption into consideration. A pair of Radeon HD 4850s would cost $360, while the single HD 4870 can be purchased for $270.

You should also take a good look at the results for the individual games, though. With anti-aliasing, the HD 4850 in CrossFire is faster at many resolutions. For example, Mass Effect running at 1920x1200 with 4xAA achieves 38.6 fps with the HD 4870, but hits 50.2 fps with the HD 4850 CrossFire. World in Conflict at 1920x1200 with 4xAA runs at 34.8 fps on the HD 4870, but 44.5 fps with the HD 4850 in CrossFire.

In 2D mode, the power consumption of the entire system increases to 177 watts. Under full 3D load, it is 367 watts, which is 79 watts more than an individual HD 4870 requires. Anyone who wishes to operate AMD’s Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire mode will need a solid power supply with between 300 and 340 watts and 25 to 28 A on the 12 volt rail for a standard system.

In 2D mode, the paired cards are nice and quiet at just 36.3 dB(A). Only when under full load does the noise increase to a significantly louder 46 dB(A), which is also achieved by a single HD 4870. The temperatures are two degrees higher in 2D mode (for CrossFire) versus a single card. You need to remember though, that from now on you have two substantial heat sources tucked away in your PC case. Even with very good ventilation, the temperature of the remaining components should be checked frequently.

TOPICS
Tino Kreiss
146 Comments Comment from the forums
  • San Pedro
    Looks like the results for SLI and Crossfire were switched with the single card results. . .
    Reply
  • Duncan NZ
    Not a bad article, really comprehensive.
    My one complaint? Why use that CPU when you know that the test cards are going to max it out? Why not a quad core OC'ed to 4GHz? It'd give far more meaning to the SLI results. We don't want results that we can duplicate at home, we want results that show what these cards can do. Its a GPU card comparason, not a complain about not having a powerful enough CPU story.

    Oh? And please get a native english speaker to give it the once over for spelling and grammar errors, although this one had far less then many articles posted lately.
    Reply
  • elbert
    No 4870x2 in CF so its the worlds top end Nvidia vs ATI mid to low end.
    Reply
  • Lightnix
    It'd be a good article if you'd used a powerful enough CPU and up to date Radeon drivers (considering we're now up to 8.8 now), I mean are those even the 'hotfix' 8.6's or just the vanilla drivers?
    Reply
  • elbert
    Version AMD Catalyst 8.6? Why not just say i'm using ATI drivers with little to no optimizations for the 4800's. This is why the CF benchmarks tanked.
    Reply
  • at 1280, all of the highend cards were CPU limited. at that resolution, you need a 3.2-3.4 c2d to feed a 3870... this article had so much potential, and yet... so much work, so much testing, fast for nothing, because most of the results are very cpu limited (except 1920@AA).
    Reply
  • wahdangun
    WTF, hd4850 SHOULD be a lot faster than 9600 GT and 8800 GT even tough they have 1Gig of ram
    Reply
  • mjam
    No 4870X2 and 1920 X 1200 max resolution tested. How about finishing the good start of an article with the rest of it...
    Reply
  • I agree, the 4870 X2 should have been in there and should have used the updated drivers. Good article but I think you fell short on finishing it.
    Reply
  • @pulasky - Rage much? It's called driver issues you dumbass. Some games are more optimised for multicard setups than others, and even then some favour SLi to Crossfire. And if you actually READ the article rather than let your shrinken libido get the better of you, you'll find that Crossfire does indeed work in CoD4.

    Remember, the more you know.
    Reply