Radeon HD 4870 X2: Four Cards Compared

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The Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire, GeForce GTX 260 in SLI, and GeForce 9800 GX2 are hardly limited by the CPU, and are able to showcase their full 3D power. The performance of the faster cards, such as the Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire and the Radeon HD 4870 X2, are shown nicely with Catalyst 8.10. The frame rates compared to Catalyst 8.9 are up to 70% higher.

The GeForce GTX 280 SLI and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in CrossFire (4CF) are clearly slowed down here. A faster CPU with more overclocking potential could certainly squeeze more 3D power from them. Many of our tested boards benefit from the overclocked quad-core CPU, converting the better baseline performance into more 3D performance. Exceptions to this are the Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870, GeForce GTX 260, and GeForce GTX 280—the single cards show a decrease in performance in all resolutions due to the faster CPU (QX@3.67) and the new drivers.

Driver Comparison: Catalyst 8.9 Versus Catalyst 8.10 w/ Radeon HD 4870 X2

The increase of 70% is easy to see. With such high frame rates you can activate v-sync and thus avoid tearing.

Through the jump in performance between the Catalyst 8.9 and Catalyst 8.10 is actually an unfair comparison, as the extremely high frame rates have too much of an impact on the overall result. Here it makes sense to look at the normalized percentage.