AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Testing the Multi-GPU Waters
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on August 12, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Crysis Performance Scaling
Ahh Crysis. Our familiar friend. Not the greatest game in the world, but it looks really good and still absolutely kills graphics hardware.
In this case things are a little strange. We see the 4870 X2 and 2x 4870 X2 CrossFire solutions very system limited at below 2560x1600. The NVIDIA SLI options provide a marked performance advantage at 1920x1200 and lower, but drop off very steeply at 2560.
The major factor in a purchasing decision here should be monitor size. If you have a 30" monitor, you might want to consider the 4870 X2 soluiton, but other wise it is a much better bet to stay with a single card (and lower settings) or to go with an NVIDIA SLI system.
Not that anyone would want to build a system just to play Crysis. Right?
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pattycake0147 - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
I've noticed the same bias recently. I've only been a member for a little over a year now and even in the short time the site has gone downhill.sweetsauce - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Translation: I like ATI and you don't so im going to bitch. Even though my name is tech guy, i obviously have ovaries. I'm going to go cry now on ATI's behalf.jnmfox - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Get over yourself. Pointing out facts isn't taking pot-shots.This is just what I was looking for in a review of the X2. The numbers tell the story. In the majority of cases the X2 isn't worth it, and until AMD & NVIDIA get proper hardware implementation of multi-GPU solutions it will most continue to be the case.
To little performance increase for the large increase is cost.
skiboysteve - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
i completely agree with anand on this article. the lack of innovation from a company supposedly focusing on multi chip solutions is stupidalthough yes, it is really fast.
and why cant they clock it lower at idle?
astrodemoniac - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
... reviews I have ever seen here @ Anands. I am extremely disappointed with this so called "Review" ... hell, I have seen PREVIEWS that would put it to shame.Oh, and what in the hell did AMD do to you that you're so obviously pissed off at them?... are you annoyed they didn't give you preferential treatment to release the review earlier? man just go back to the unbiased reviews, we're buying graphic cards, not brands.
It's like the guys writing the reviews are not gamers any more o_0
/rant
Halley - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - link
It's no secret that AnandTech is "managed by Intel" as a user put it. Of course every one must have some source of income to support their families and themselves but it's pathetic to show such blatant biasedness.TheDoc9 - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Anandtech isn't about gaming anymore, it's about photography and home theater. And the occasional newest intel extreem cpu.I think Dailytech and the forums carry Anandtech these days...
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
"AMD decided that since there's relatively no performance increase yet there's an increase in power consumption and board costs that it would make more sense to leave the feature disabled. "In other words, it's broken in hardware and we couldn't get it working, so we "disabled" it.
NullSubroutine - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
You didn't even include test system specs or driver versions.CreasianDevaili - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
I wanted to know why you didnt retest the 4870CF setup when you obviously had some issues with it before in GRID. I noticed the 280gtx setup was retested which resulted in higher FPS. I feel that after running the game at 2560x1600 on my FW900 and also from other reviews that you had a issue with crossfire not working at that resolution. The single 4870 shouldnt be getting better FPS by that degree at 2560x1600 because it also has 512mb of vram.So I just wanted to know why the 280gtx was special enough to retest when this review was about the 4870X2. If it is to show a good comparison then why wasnt the 4870CF, which many have and want to see, not retested as well.