The Radeon HD 4800

[Kougar]

Reviewer: Mr. Björn "SwedBear" Endre

Date Published: June 25, 2008

Excerpt: "AMD is today launching a direct assault at NVIDIA with its newest HD 4800 series of GPU. Offering lots of performance at a low price AMD hopes to hit NVIDIA where it hurts; in the performance segment. But what do you actually get with the HD 4850 and the HD 4870? Read on to learn more about these new GPU's."

http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revimages/video/hd4800/card.jpg

Please feel free to post your comments and questions here!

Link To Review (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1301)

[darkorb]

Very nice review. They still arnt the top dogs, but price/performance is where its at!

[Scott]

NVIDIA has CUDA and PhysX, ATI has well nothing. New games are going to be using those two so the GPU processing power is gong to become very important starting this Christmas.

And do let the Intel AMD HAVOC deal mislead you, they are doing that to fight off NVIDIA but as soon as Intel has their own GPU they will cut off AMD from Havoc.

[Methious]

Price performance wise they seem viable, if the 4870 can compete with the GTX-280 AMD/ATI might make this a very interesting summer.

[Kougar]

NVIDIA can't design a working CUDA driver for Vista yet, switching from 174.55 to 177.35 greatly decreased the occurance of the video drivers crashing, but it hasn't fixed it completely. Nothing gripes me more than someone's drivers making my system crash once a day, it feels like the early days of Vista suffering through NVIDIA's driver woes all over again.

PhysX could be interesting, but I'd have to wait and see before more than just a synthetic benchmark supports it.

It's been to long since my last ATI card, surely their Vista drivers have to be more stable than NVIDIA's. ATI's GPU2 client drivers certainly are!

[AJ.]

Very nice review. This will be a very interesting summer indeed.

[Scott]

You may have a system issue, my CUDA drivers for Vista has not created a single crash.

[slugbug]

It would be interesting to see what folding speed these cards will be capable of once all 800 stream processors are utilized.

[jellyrole]

This is good for AMD, and I can't wait for he 4870x2 to come out and see how it performs against GTX280 and at what price.

[PP Mguire]

*yawn* 4870 = OCed 4850. Not what i was expecting.

[Goliath182]

*yawn* 4870 = OCed 4850. Not what i was expecting.
I agree its the 8800 GTS 512 to 9800 GTX except now ATI has done it.

[Sadasius]

This series is definitely getting under the skin of Nvidia. This is great for the consumer and I am sure this card will perform even better once the drivers are worked out better. I just love the feature richness of ATI cards and not to mention less buggy drivers to crash the system with. The leading cause of windows to crash are Nvidia drivers as per this link;

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/28/nvidia_vista_drivers/

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/03/28/vista_crash_chart.png

I am pretty excited as it seems ATI is getting back on the horse and are hearing what consumers want. Their 38xx series was not bad but definitely not what people were hoping for. This is much better that is for sure and I cannot wait for the review on the 4870X2....1600 shader units bro....Tha's just freakin awesome!

[PP Mguire]

Oh wow a pie chart. rofl. When i had my 9800XT my drivers crashed on me every other day no matter what version i had.

[Sadasius]

I think people with any card has run into a set of bad drivers. That's why there is always new one's coming out. But this 48XX series is really helping get all the prices down on both sides of the fence. I am not a fanboy of either company but I do like what ATI instigated very much. These new cards are instigating price wars on a few levels and that is just plain awesome. Very exciting times! I love it when this happens.

[Frag Maniac]

*yawn* 4870 = OCed 4850. Not what i was expecting.I don't know how you could say that based on this review, as it doesn't even show 4870 benches. However there have already been several early bench tests done on it and I am not as impressed by it as I thought I would be. In other words at $300 it's priced appropriately. Basically you have to CF the 4870 to run Crysis at 1920x1200 on Very High without even being able to reach 30 FPS (28 ), and that's with no AA. The GTX 280 in SLI achieves 34 FPS.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318283 (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318283)

However it does come fairly close to the GTX 280 in a one on one comparison, esp considering the price....I cannot wait for the review on the 4870X2...It should bench pretty close the the 4870s in CF shown in the test I linked to.

[Goliath182]

I don't know how you could say that based on this review, as it doesn't even show 4870 benches. However there have already been several early bench tests done on it and I am not as impressed by it as I thought I would be. In other words at $300 it's priced appropriately. Basically you have to CF the 4870 to run Crysis at 1920x1200 on Very High without even being able to reach 30 FPS (28 ), and that's with no AA. The GTX 280 in SLI achieves 34 FPS.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318283 (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318283)
You have to look at the stats. Who cares about benchmarks that doesnt tell you anything inside the card. Both the 4850 and 4870 have 800 stream processors. The only real difference is the 4870 has GDDR5.

[PP Mguire]

You have to look at the stats. Who cares about benchmarks that doesnt tell you anything inside the card. Both the 4850 and 4870 have 800 stream processors. The only real difference is the 4870 has GDDR5.ding ding

I think people with any card has run into a set of bad drivers.No, every single set of ATI drivers ive used for that card, and any other ATI card ive used has been horrible.

[Sadasius]

Well if you look at the power regulation on the card you will see that there is a very clear difference between the 4850 and 4870 card. The dies may be the same but the configurations are not. Power and memory usage are different on both cards. Notice no caps on the 4870?

[Kougar]

You may have a system issue, my CUDA drivers for Vista has not created a single crash.

I wish it was the case, because then I could fix it. The crashes always occur in sync with the NVIDIA display drivers crashing, GPU is at stock and tested stable. I am also not the only one getting them according to my thread over on their forums, and they agree it's a display driver issue.

*yawn* 4870 = OCed 4850. Not what i was expecting.

For an "OC'd" 4850, it certainly has no trouble putting the $100 more expensive GTX 260 "down". :ahhhhh:

Basically you have to CF the 4870 to run Crysis at 1920x1200 on Very High without even being able to reach 30 FPS (28 ), and that's with no AA. The GTX 280 in SLI achieves 34 FPS.

However it does come fairly close to the GTX 280 in a one on one comparison, esp considering the price.It should bench pretty close the the 4870s in CF shown in the test I linked to.

You just compared a $600 Crossfire set up to a $1300 SLI setup. I would rather save the $700 and lose 6 FPS. :)

There is no question, NVIDA's GTX is more powerful than the 4870. But it also costs more than 2x as much, for only slighty better performance. Two 4870's can be had for $50 less than the GTX 280, and will easily outperform any GPU set up that costs below $800.

I'm astonished AMD/ATI pulled this off, considering the 4850/4870 have only 68% of the transistors of GT200.

[PP Mguire]

Wrong.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261010

Will outdo 2 4870s in Crossfire. For only $119 more and still a nice single card solution.
Oh and i mean $119 more than 1 4870.

[Kougar]

Wrong.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261010

Will outdo 2 4870s in Crossfire. For only $119 more and still a nice single card solution.
Oh and i mean $119 more than 1 4870.

According to Anandtech's tests, 4850's in Xfire beat the GX2 4-2. And those cost the same. ;)

According to The Tech Report, 4850's in Xfire beat the GX2 5-1, the only loss was Crysis.

Care to prove me wrong? ;)

[Goliath182]

We are talking about the 4870 and GTX 280 here. The 4850 has nothing to do with either. Have we forgotten about the 9800 GX2? It has more performance than a GTX 260 and looks like the GTX 260 is supposed to be 350-400$, so the GX2 isnt much more than that. From what ive seen the 9800 GX2 is by far the card to have. Easily keeping pace with a GTX 280, even surpassing it in tests, for $200 cheaper. That certainly makes it a much better deal than 2 4870s in Crossfire. Once again Nvidia wins the bang for the buck award.

[Frag Maniac]

Wrong.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261010

Will outdo 2 4870s in Crossfire. For only $119 more and still a nice single card solution.
Oh and i mean $119 more than 1 4870.Not according to this, esp if you go Very High Crysis at 1920x1200, which isn't an unrealistic way to test high end cards. Incidentally it beats it at High too.
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/8558/112232498us4gp0ay0.jpg

Yeah Kougar, I know I'm comparing a $600 CF setup to a $1300 SLI setup but I was caught up in wishful thinking hoping I woulndn't have to go SLI to run any game at 1920x1200 at max settings without going under 30 FPS. Then again if CryTek pull off what they claim they can with Warhead as far as optimizing the CryENGINE2, GPU killing benches of Crysis will be a thing of the past.

True Goliath that stats other than game benches matter but then again game benches don't lie. You know right away when you look at them what the limitations of the cards are.

[Nocutius]

Finally!
Ati has been pushed around for too long. Great comeback, and just around the time when i'm absolutely ready to upgrade :), nice.

[PP Mguire]

Frag where did you get that biased chart? AMD.com?

Seems the 4870 has an advantage with high res and AA/AF cause of the GDDR5.
But, the 9800GX2 is still cheaper than 2 of those. We also have to take into account which reviews have the best and highest clocked processor. Because some bottleneck the crap outa the 280 and 9800GX2.

[Frag Maniac]

Frag where did you get that biased chart? AMD.com?Nope, HardForum.com...http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318283

...and here's another from LegitReviews.com. They both show a single 4870 beating a 9800GX2 btw. http://forums.legitreviews.com/about15370.html (http://forums.legitreviews.com/about15370.html)

[Goliath182]

I am wondering why there is a AMD logo in that pic. That automaticaly disguarded the results for me. Those number look like :flag_bs: to me. 20 frames in 1650 x 1050 for the 9800 GX2? I dont think so.

[AJ.]

Why so much controversy over new cards? You guys just can't accept the fact ATI basically b!tch slapped Nvidia with this series. It was like, BOOOOOOOOM! lol, such n00bs. :rolleyes:

Jk. :lol:

[PP Mguire]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v701/pp_mguire/Smileys/pokemon.gifhttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v701/pp_mguire/Smileys/ar.gif

[AJ.]

Rofl. I just got a flashback of the 3rd grade. :lol:

[Sadasius]

Well something to think about as well with this series is the 10.1 support of DirectX. If you don't think it is important then you better think again. Here is a quote taken from Dave Baumann;

Something that hasn't been noted yet is that EA and SEGA are signed on with us for DX10.1 titles, we've also signed a fairly major deal with Blizzard.

This is also a good read....
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=7

It's about time the architecture is going to be put to use.

[PP Mguire]

I still say if it was that important the big green would be using it already. So until then, its rubbish. They will probably just overfly 10.1 and go 11.

[Goliath182]

Ha who cares about DX 10.1 when Nvidia has PhysX?

[Sadasius]

Got to learn to read PP. 10.1 game support makes the ATI cards go faster and perform better. It's like having a beefed up Trans AM but only throwing in 80 octane fuel....Look at Assassin's Creed. It was 10.1 supported until they came out with a patch that disabled it making the ATI cards do worse.

[PP Mguire]

I can read, and apparently like i had said Nvidia isnt to worried about it. Nvidias PhysX performance will deff outdo 10.1 thats giving ATI the edge in........1 game.

[Goliath182]

At least Nvidia doesnt need DX 10.1 to get good frames cant say that much for ATI lol.:lol:

[Sadasius]

I don't think you guys are getting it......I am not an ATI fanboy here speaking. Just a consumer wanting the best my money can give me with architecture that will blow me away in games. I owned more Nvidia cards then ATI that is for sure to testify to this. ATI has been supporting architecture that really is pretty damn good for awhile now. Nvidia used this to their advantage by not going to 10.1 and keeping developers from making better games because it will be too much work to code for both. So basically as a 'consumer' Nvidia is shafting us from better architecture support by not going to 10.1. I don't know if I made my point or not or if it went on deaf ears but at least I tried...:icon_tiphat:

[PP Mguire]

Nvidia has PhysX support though. And right now there are currently.....0 games supporting 10.1 if you patch Assassins Creed.

And this ATI vs Nvidia war could go on all night. 4870 beats 9800GTX. Well get a 9800GX2. Well 4870 Xfire can beat both the 9800GX2 and 280. So get quad SLI yada yada. Im done this is stupid. Who cares who beats who unless were gonna buy.

[Goliath182]

Umm since when did ATI have a good architecture? Do you see how many streams are in a 4870 compared to a GTX 280? Funny that a GTX 280 can beat it.

[Sadasius]

I am not talking about beating the other cards.....I am talking features.....You know the stuff that comes extra with good products...lol. I don't care if it takes 4000 4870's to beat a GTX280 as long as I am not buying them...:lol:. Just saying that it would be nice to finally be able to use the features on the ATI cards in games that will come out and finally support 10.1 Who knows it may be nothing special but as a consumer I would like to decide that instead of the choice being made for me.

[Frag Maniac]

The main difference in DX10.1 is you get higher frame rates when AA is used. Thus the best comparison tests between the latest Nvidia and ATI cards should be done with and without AA on to show the differences. It doesn't necessarily mean a given ATI card will outperform a given Nvidia card once AA is enabled though because Nvidia's AA performance has imporoved quite a bit. It does however mean that ATI is juicing better bang for the buck in employing such technology at reasonable prices. The features Nvidia is employing like onboard PhysX have yet to be proven useful let alone practical considering few games have offered support for it.

[Goliath182]

Thats because BFG was the only backer of the PhysX card. Nvidia is huge company that has most every game optimized for its cards. Lets take in mind that Unreal Engine 3 uses PhysX, and that engine is used in a whole lot of games. The number of PhysX compatible games will only grow, and lead to way better physics than we have prevously seen.

[Sadasius]

Physics acceleration has shown some good eye candy though. I seen a demonstration with Unreal Tournament III with enabled physics acceleration and I was pretty impressed. I don't know about ATI's Havock support though and have not read up on that too much yet. But I think Nvidia definitely has the ball in their court for this segment.

[Methious]

Dang all the back and forth on the nVidia/ATI issue is enough to give a guy a crick in the neck.

I'm grateful for my XFX 8800 gt, I'll be grateful when the GTX-260 gets here. As long as it makes me smile when it goes into the machine, gives me some good graphics, and takes my mind off the next review for an hour or two I'm a happy camper.

The GPUs we have today are such a far cry from what I started with it's not even funny. (Monochrome/trindent card, followed by CGA 3 color)

Maybe I just have a small e-appendage but to me these things aren't a $1000 dollar bottle of wine or a fine woman.

I enjoy each for what it is, appreciate what each will do, accept the short comings of what I've got, and pray for better next generation. Beyond that I don't expect much.

Maybe that's the key, keeping your expectations neutral.

BTW nVidia still rocks but it rocks better the XFX way!

[Sadasius]

Yup right now they both rock. I thought for sure ATI was just boing belly up at one point and heck I was even routing for Nvidia to just make the business decision to kill them off outright. Then that's when the members here taught me the wonders of competition, progress and better prices for the consumer. So now that's what I instigate...competition. As we all know you can get some pretty heart felt conversations going when it comes to computer parts especially with enthusiasts. For some people talking bad about one part or company is like saying their woman should be living in the sewer...:lol: We have nice mix of fans of all brands here and that's cool. I hate once sided conversations. That's what makes Bjorn3d rock so much!!! Now let's bring out the big guns with the new R800...:jawdrop:

[Frag Maniac]

Yes I know PhysX support will continue but at this stage of the game it's too soon to tell how well the onboard support will go with the GT200 series and how well ATI will compete in that arena. What we DO know for now though is that feature set wise ATI's efficient use of DX10.1 using AA IS a reality whereas with Nvidia it's not.

I'm not playing ATI fanboy here, as I said earlier I'm a bit disappointed in the 4870 results despite it's price. I'm just saying ATI is currently offering usable features whereas Nvidia is shortcutting the currently usable ones and opting to instead include tech that is not yet usable, and that makes the high price of the 280 all the more questionable.

ATI's bang for the buck strategy will indeed pay off because what was just a goal of competing in the midrange with one card and high range with CF has become a situation where you can by a very well priced card from them that is priced in the high mid range and still come very close to Nvidia's high range cards. THAT is what will afford them more R&D on including features and implement them when they are usable.

So bottom line, what I'm saying is even though Nvidia holds the top dog position on most powerful GPU, I lean toward ATI in support of their intelligentlly offering up some needed competion. This will only help the consumer, with Nvidia leading the way indefinitely it would have definitely hurt the consumers. Most don't think of leaders in this industry in terms of sales, they think in terms of most powerful GPU, and that doesn't tell the whole story.