Radeon HD4870 User Thread

just got my new stuff running ( <------- ) and starting to do some benchmarks unfortuantely my current monitor displays up to 1600x1200 but that will change soon too So far i played Grid, Serious Sam and GC2 and it all runes AWESOME. I've stepped up from celeron d and 6800GS so its like a whole new level of quality ... anyways ill post some benchmarks soon, aswell when i do some OC.

 

hi mate can u also run CF at same settings as above post in crysis with ur max res 1600x1200

 

Its not about memmory size its about memmory bandwitch.
With 512 GDDR5 you wont run in frame buffer limitation.
It happend in few games and on very very high resolution, which 99.9% of gamers doesnt use. And with 100% i can say he wont be running in frame buffer limitation with 19x16 res.

 

Sounds great.. I just had a big upgrade like yours a week ago. I was stepping
up from a X850 XTPE and a AthlonXP. Looking forward for some OCed CF scores.

 

OMG...I laughed so hard my chest hurt after I read this. ROFL. Yeah, I hope he means F and not C...hehe.

 

Dear Lord, that must be one heck of an upgrade for you! Congrats! That would be like going from a horse-and-carriage to a Ferrari. Enjoy.

 

I definitely like the IQ on the 4870 better than the 8800GTX.

 

cant wait to get mine, any new info on release date for the 4870X2, i want it now lol


my upgrade path has been

nvidia 256 6200TC
nvidia 512 6800GS
nvidia 512 7900gtx
nvidia 512 7900gtx sli (two week then sold to meny problems sli)
nvidia 768 8800gtx
nvidia 512 8600gt (current - sold 8800 + setup to buy 9800gt2 then decided to wait for 4870 and now waiting for the 4870X2 lol)

 

Don't wait too long

You may not get what you want :3eyes:

 

Yeah. Cant even compare both new and old system. If i do, my old one would be off the scale.

This summer is a awesome time to upgrade.

 

Sorry dude, the card is being RMA'd, it fried itself. All I can tell you is that it was jumpy compared to a 1024mb 2900Pro. But this was only in parts where there was a LARGE open view looking down on a village or something. Where ever there was too much stuff on screen I'd run out of VRAM. Lowering the res to something like 1440x900 gave me silky smooth gameplay at very high settings. 1680x1050 was pretty good too, but it still suffered in parts. I guarantee it'll be fixed when they release a 1gb card.

Incorrect. You see, on my 1024mb 2900Pro I was able to run GRID at 1920 x 1200 with 8x AA flawlessly. However, on my 4870 I needed to back down the AA to 4x so that it would slow to a crawl. Not to mention running oblivion + qarls texture pack III with 4x AA and 16x AF, on the Pro, smooth, on the HD4870, jumpy till I downed the AA and AF, and even then it was still jumpy. I don't know where you got the idea that you can compensate space for speed, but it's completely wrong.

If you run out of space in the VRAM then the extra bandwidth isn't going to help you much ( extra bandwidth is the only thing that GDDR5 introduces, do not get confused ) because it's going to be bottlenecked by the PCI-E bandwidth and the system RAM bandwidth, because that's where you'll be fetching / storing your new / unused texture information to render the next frame, which holds up the entire card while it waits for the operation to complete. This effect is caused by the screen colour information reserving large portions of your cards VRAM (what you call the framebuffer), things like anti-aliasing can increase the size of the colour information alot depending on the level of anti-aliasing. This makes texture information a second priority, and gets pushed off the end of the VRAMs address space into system ram (technically, although a memory manager actually transfers information to system ram).

With more VRAM you need to talk to the system ram less, meaning alot less lag and jumpiness.

This is my personal experience with insights with personal knowledge based on real world personal experiences.

Do I even need 1920x1200. While I'm at it, do I even need to play at max texture settings or max effects. When you spend your hard earned cash, you're spending that extra premium to have you cake and eat it too with all the icing on top.

Also 512mb GDDR5 = faster 512mb GDDR3, you can never magically make up for lost space.

 

is this guy talking s@?t or what?? 4870 inferior to 2900pro 1gb???

 

In terms of the amount of memory, yes, it would make sense that a 2900 pro 1GB gives smoother performance with high resolution gaming than a HD 4870 512mb

 

somehow I just find it very difficult to buy that

and it also makes it difficult to buy the card

r u saying I should get gtx260 instead for hi-res gaming cos it's got 900meg of ram? or stick with my gtx cos it has 768?

 

Well, the higher the resolution and the more AA/AF you apply (also count texture mods in there as well) increases the framebuffer, so the more memory you have on your graphics card the smoother the performance will be once you ramp up the image quality.

 

every single 4870 comparison test I've seen @ 1920x1200 16af 4aa (and I could not look at one more!) makes a mockery of your argument

I'm not sure you have a full grasp of how this card works..

 

Don't I?

Okay then, so just because you saw a review means what I said wasn't true?

Believe that if you want, but don't cry to me if what I typed up here turns out to be true

 

fella, I've forensically scrutinized and amalgamated about 25 reviews! - in an attempt to make the correct purchasing choice...

 

I personally play GRID at 1680X1050 all max with 4XAA. I tried to run 8XAA but it wasnt smooth with some jerking.