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
NVIDIA Strikes Back: The GTX Gets a Dose of Reality
NVIDIA was still living in the days of G80 when it launched its 1.4 billion transistor GT200 GPU and the GeForce GTX 280/260 that were based on it. Not only did NVIDIA's own GeForce 9800 GX2 outperform the GTX 280 at a lower price, but once AMD launched its Radeon HD 4800 series it became very clear that NVIDIA's pricing was completely out of whack. NVIDIA was pricing its GPUs for a reality that just didn't exist.
The first step to get things back in line was to drop the price of the GeForce 9800 GTX, which NVIDIA did. Next up were the new GTX cards, the GTX 280 now sells for $450 and the GTX 260 is a $299 part. In the conclusion of our Radeon HD 4800 launch article we wrote:
"The fact of the matter is that by NVIDIA's standards, the 4870 should be priced at $400 and the 4850 should be around $250."
It looks like NVIDIA's standards changed, largely thanks to AMD, and now the key players in NVIDIA's lineup are priced more realistically. Today we'll take a look at how the landscape has been reshaped as a result of NVIDIA's pricecuts. At the same time, AMD's literally hot GPUs have seen their prices fall; the Radeon HD 4870 is now a $270 - $280 GPU, slightly down from $299 and the Radeon HD 4850 is a $170 - $180 card. These are very slight changes in price, but at least they are in the right direction.
AMD Prices the Radeon HD 4870 X2
When we previewed the Radeon HD 4870 X2 we weren't given a target pricepoint, we just knew that it'd be more than $500. Today we have a price: $549.
At $549 the X2 isn't exactly a bargain, it's slightly cheaper than two Radeon HD 4870s but you don't need a motherboard with two PCIe x16 slots to use it, which helps lower overall system costs. With NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 price drops, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is now the most expensive current GPU on the market - pretty impressive for a company that swore off building huge GPUs.
The competing product from NVIDIA is, well, there isn't exactly one. NVIDIA doesn't have a single-card multi-GPU GT200 product, so we have to rely on comparing the 4870 X2 to the GeForce GTX 280 (priced at $450) as well as the GeForce GTX 260 in SLI (priced at $300 x 2).
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CyberHawk - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
... but I find a response a bit cold.It's the fastest card for God sake!
Samus - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - link
it was pretty negative. there really isn't anything negative about this card. price and power consumption (the only arguably negative things about this card) are in line with anything nVidia would have had they made a product to compete against this.Finally - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
And what is this?!"When you start pushing up over $450 and into multi-GPU solutions, you do have to be prepared for even more diminished returns on your investment, and the 4870 X2 is no exception."
Man! This is a bullshit card for bullshit buyers, sry I meant: ENTHUSIASTS... What the heck do you expect? Low power consumption and reasonable price-to-power-relations? I totally don't get it...
Isn't this the "We like power supplies only if they can assure us that they will kill the rain forest single-handedly" site?
Where is the bullshit, sry again: enthusiasm?
Finally - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Is it just my eyes or did they actually read the following heading on page2?"NVIDIA Strikes Back"
*sound of a Vegas-style gambling automat turning out big coin*
If there was a prize for a totally out-of-order title... this would take rank 1 to 3...
Finally - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
You are right; got that perception, too...Although I would never buy a dualchip cardmonster like this one (save SLI or CF...) I actually love it how they manage to take an article about an AMD product and turn around till you don't know wheter it was about the new HD4870X2 or the lackluster 280...
drisie - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
In my opinion this review is way too negative. It is solutions like this that have caused Nvidia to drop prices and increase competition between the competitors. Its the best card money can buy for ffs.formulav8 - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Yeps, this is one of the worst reviews Anand himself has ever done. He continues to praise nVideo who just a month or 2 ago was charging $600 for their cards.Give credit where credit is do. He even harps on a sideport feature that doesn't mean much now and AMD says it didn't provide no real benefit even when it was enabled.
I've been a member of this site since 2000 and am dissappointed how bad the reviews here are getting especially when they have a biased tone to them.
Of course, this is only my opinion.
Jason
BikeDude - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - link
I think Anand's initial comments has to be viewed in the light of his conclusion:"I keep getting the impression that multi-GPU is great for marketing but not particularly important when it comes to actually investing R&D dollars into design. With every generation, especially from AMD, I expect to see a much more seamless use of multiple GPUs, but instead we're given the same old solution - we rely on software profiles to ensure that multiple GPUs work well in a system rather than having a hardware solution where two GPUs truly appear, behave and act as one to the software."
I wholeheartedly agree. The software profile solution has baffled me for years. Why are they messing about with this? It was supposed to be a temporary thing. Creating unique profiles for every game title is not feasible. At the very least give the developers an API that will help them do this themselves.
Instead of messing about with the power hungry sideport nonsense, AMD should have invested some R&D time on how to get rid of software profiles.
Locutus465 - Thursday, August 14, 2008 - link
Probably because from a design perspective it works... And based on the benchmark results it works very well indeed. Additionally we know from the early days of SLI that not all games will respond well to all modes, so it seems to be that at a HW level the task of getting the card to automatically perform amazingly with multiple GPU's is going to be difficult to say the least (perhaps feautal?).EglsFly - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
I agree!It is because of ATI/AMD's release of the 4000 series cards that Nvidia had to dramatically drop the price of its GPU's.
AMD brought great performance to the masses at an affordable price point. Here they up the ante with an even higher performing solution and what do we get in return from Anandtech? A biased review full of negativity that it looks like it was written by somebody from Nvidia.