I think ATI have made a smart move here, the current economic climate means that the enthusiast market is shrinking so hitting the mainstream with a product that can play a game with all the eye candy on a 19 or 22" screen will certainly get OEM's like dell signed up. I'm afraid to say its all about volume in 2009 and not about who has the fastest GPU, these companies need to make money to survive not live on bragging rights for our small enthusiast market. The interesting thing I've noticed is that for once hardware appears to be coping easily with new games (apart from Crysis but we all know about this piss take), I wonder if software dev's are getting lazy and not interested in pushing the technology boundary forward....hmmm a debate could be made of this ;-)
Apparently no games will, since this card beats the 4830 in every game in the review posted here. Even at resolutions no one games at yet.
Every single test, bar one, was run at a max resolution of 1920x1200 , with this card scoring, on average, in the mid 20's, and at all resolutions within a frame or two of the 4830 even though it has a 20% higher Math processing rate. Seeing as the card can't manage more than an average fps in 20's at 1920x1200, the memory bandwidth won't be that significant, not until you try to crossfire two (3?) of these; which, incidently, is what is being discussed here. And if you think people don't game at 1920x1200, you have lost touch with the current enthusiast market; who are the people that would even consider running cf/sli, in fact a recent poll in the gaming section showed that the overwhelming majority of Guru3d members are running a resolution of 1680x1050 or above. I take it you are still running 1280x1024, in which case even two of these cards would be a waste let alone 3. edit: ok most games were run at 2560x1600, still doesn't make a big difference to the average fps at high resolutions.
I'm planning on playing on a 21.5 inch 1080p monitor. Single card frames should a little better than 24 inch 1200 res. But I want some decent frames and eye candy so I'm seriously considering crossfire for optimum cost to performance. Less than 200 bucks for high settings on 1080 res is a good deal if you ask me.
Had a doubt here. Each memory channel is 32bit wide which means that a 256 bit card like the Radeon HD 4850 has 8 memory chips. This is supposed to be a 128 bit card which means it should have half that number. BUT i see 8 memory chips on the "4750" too. Care to clarify please? :S Also you could post pics of the Memory IC's and take off the cooler and post Die shots as well
The 4870 would struggle at these resolutions also. The limiting factor here is not memory bandwidth, if it were, you would see the current 4830 overtake this "4750" at the high resolutions. This doesn't happen. The limiting factor is pretty clearly the GPU itself and the amount of processing it can do, not the memory bus.
In the article, the SKU comparison chart says 16 ROPs for RV740, but the following comment refers to eight (8) -- which one is the correct?
no wonder nv is just rebranding they have the 88+98gt with custom coolers for 100$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...048 106792522 1067942536&name=GeForce 9800 GT so its not compeating with the 96gt its the 88gt or what ever they call it.
No it wont. The 128-bit bus will give as much bandwidth using GDDR5 as a GDDR3 card will using a 256-bit bus due to the higher data rates generation 5 can throughput. They aren't limited to adressing amounts of RAM 2x the bus width as GDDR3 is. Thus, a GDDR3 card with a 128-but bus will only be able to efficiently address 256MB. With GDDR5, a 128-bit bus on GDDR5 memory has enough bandwidth to service 512MB.
According to that thinking 3 way crossfire of these cards would rival a HD 4870x2 even at 2560x1600 as the HD 4870x2 has the same memory bandwidth as a single HD 4870. I assure you that would not be the case. Anyway, it's a great card, but I don't believe two of these cards in crossfire would be the ideal solution at higher resolutions when compared to other single cards.
These would be useless at 2600x1500 or similar resolutions. But they would be competitive at 1900x1200 or less if the 4830 crossfire is any indication. I remain optimistic. :3
I say that two of them outperforms a single 4870...you say that according to that thinking three of them should outperform a 4870x2? How did you come to that conclusion? You're getting too focused on this memory bandwidth thing which is clearly not an issue even at extreme resolutions. As I said. If this were true, the old 4830 would push ahead of this one at those resolutions, it doesn't. Hell, by your line of thinking my 3870 would outperform it at high resolutions. It has a 256 bit bus with GDDR4 memory...so...
I was not refering to the general implications of Gddr5 when comparing memory bandwidth to Gddr3 and how this effects memory size, I am well aware of this. In the post you quoted, I was comparing the card to the 4870 which uses a 256 bit bus.
In terms of raw GPU processing power, three of these cards would be "similar" to a 4870x2 (as two are supposedly faster than a single hd4870) and the hd 4870x2 has the same memory bandwidth as a single HD 4870. So your statement that memory bandwidth is not an issue for this card "even at extreme resolutions" is obviously flawed, because if you were right, three of these should have the same performance as a hd4870x2 at high resolutions. So clearly memory bandwidth is as important as gpu processing, the difference being that not all games will need that much bandwidth but in circumstances where they do even a single hd4870 will ahve an advantage. So at very high resolutions this will obviosly be a concern when considering a crossfire based system. I can't make it any simpler than that... I don't see how Gddr4 is of any interest seeing that it 'does not' double the effective data rate when compared to Gddr3, I think you seem to be confused.. Anyway, this article is not a crossfire review..
Whaat? No Overclock-testing? Pfft. That just sucks. Would've been nice to see how much hurt this card could've delivered..
if these are really $100 with low power consumption, i might pick up two down the road to replace my 4850.