Looks like I’m moving from one GPU to another faster than I change my underwear Well let’s put the joke on the side, and let’s start talking! Talking about what? About the new HD4870 of course!

OK, a few days ago, I ordered this brand new HD4870 from Sapphire, which eats the 9800GTX for breakfast! That’s right people - It’s cheaper, and most important - waaay better. The current competitor to 9800GTX is HD4850 which, costs only 150€ in Europe, which blasts the 9800GTX away with it’s enormous price - above 200€.

So, what’s making the HD4xxx series so extremely fast? It’s definately the GDDR5 (you heard right) RAM, then a smaller chip size, which gives some insane speeds even trough 256bit interface. The Pixel fillrate is as high as  12.0Gpixel/s. The texture fillrate is 30Gtexel/s. It supports PCI-E 2.0 and the DX10.1 and SM4.1 (which is ATI unique - Nvidias don’t support it). The result is a better, fotorealistic gaming. It also has a large bandwidth. Up to 115GB/s on stock frequencies (9800GTX only has 70GB/s, 8800GTX 86GB/s, 8800Ultra 105GB/s).The HD4870 even beat’s the new GTX260 and get’s dangerously close to the GTX280. HD4870 in crossfire is even better than GTX280 SLI in some games. A funny thing is, that a single card HD4870 costs half price of GTX280, crossfire with HD4870 costs as much as GTX280, but as you can see, is absolutely better/faster. So, the HD4850/70 is the biggest bang for a buck on the market today.

OK,  let’s take a look at some pictures of mine.

This is the box, which covered my new GPU. It’s small, compact and practical. All in one. This is a lite retail version of course. I don’t need those extra games and few programs which I’ll never use I guess…

Even though it’s a retail version, the bundle is very rich. I got some additional Molex->6pinPCI-E converters (well the Arkangel 850W had everything included, so I don’t even need it). Then, of course some drivers which I didn’t even install - At that time, there was a new hotfix on web. Then the standard, Crossfire bridge, and some DVI->VGA converters. Followed by a DVI->HDMI converter. Nice

The graphic design on the graphics gard itself reminds me of a material, named carbon fiber Very nice though. To deliver all the power supply needed, you will require two 6pinPCI-E connectors.

So, the HD4870 has two DVI monitor outputs, so you’ll be able to connect up to two LCD’s or CRT’s or whatever. Cross this GPU with another HD4870 and you almost double your GPU power, and you’ll be able to plug up to four (yep, four) LCD’s. And of course on the middle, the HD plug.

The following pictures are showing the HD4870 in my computer.

Now, were up to some benchmarks. It’s obvious, that 3DMark does not like 3DMark at all. The HD4870 scores are even lower than the 9800GTX scores. But then again, 3DMark is just a benchmark tool. All the games are running faster on a HD4870. So why bother at all? Well, here’s a photo of mine, which shows the 3DMark06 benchmark results.

The test machine was/is still:

C2D E6550 @3.2Ghz H20 cooled

2×1GB Corsair DDR2 800Mhz

ASUS P5KC CF Edition

Sapphire HD4870 512mb GDDR5

LC Power Arkangel 8850 850W

Thermaltake H20 cooling system

Chieftec’s case

P.S.: If I OC my card to 790/1100Mhz, the scores get higher for about 1000 marks.

HD4870 in GAMES!

As already told, the HD4870 does a great jobs in games. Even with the 9800GTX I was pleased enough, with HD4870 I’m absolutely flying

Let’s compare the HD470 with the GTX260, which should be it’s competitor. But it doesn’t seems like that… The GTX260 is for about 70€ more expensive than the HD4870 but slower. So it’s your choice, what you’ll buy Picture and the text under the picture is from here - http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870-and-hd-4850/19/ - Here you can find out even more about the HD4870 and other cards.

Amount all test items, GTX 260 and HD 4870 is draw in 4 of them.GTX 260 leads only 11 items, and other 21 items are HD 4870 in the lead. In no AA/AF condition, HD 4870 leads 1.56% averangly. If we enable AA/AF in game, the lead can be raise to 2.28%. If you think Lost Planet is a N biased game, then after we take is number off, the HD 4870 lead will become 5.5%(NoAA/AF) and 5.8%(With AA/AF). So, with only 75% of GTX 260’s price, HD 4870 can do slightly better.

For the end, I’ve prepared another Crysis video, showing a Jungle fightwith amazing FPS’s.

Well, the ingame settings are:
1280×1024
AA 4x
All on high with DX10 tweak and Natural mod included - Actually prettier than pure DX10 quality in Crysis

But it can also run beautifuly on a native resolution of a 22” with average of 35FPS. Without AA of course. After all, there really isn’t no noticable differences between the AA stages. In a short period of time, I’ll post another video of Crysis, running on a 22” LG LCD, with my HD4870.

First, I have to apologize for being apsent for half a year. The reason is very stupid - I started a new website project, which took me lot’s of free time, so there really was’t enough time to write on this blog. We’ll now I’m back, and we can once again start filling this blog up with the posts

We’ll the last post was very poor. Running Crysis on Medium settings is a complete waste of time, so I decided to upgrade my whole computer. I replaced the old one eith those two computers:

#1: The C2D machine:

C2D E6550@3.0Ghz
Corsair 2×1GB DDR2 800Mhz CAS 4-4-4-12
Gainward 9800GTX 512mb GDDR3
ASUS P5KC CF
WD Caviar 320GB
Arkangel 850W
Chieftec’s case

#2: The AMD X2 machine:

AMD X2 6400@3.2Ghz
Corsair 2×1GB DDR2 800Mhz CAS 4-4-4-12
Gigabyte 9600GT 512mb GDDR3
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
WD Caviar 160GB
Trust 570W
Chieftec’s case

Today, I’ll be writing about the #1 machine. We’ll, the C2D E6550 does it great. I overclocked it from 2.3Ghz to 3.0Ghz, so it has the capabilities of a E6850 or a X6800 Extreme. RAM itself is great. A DDR2 combination of Corsair 2×1GB modules, gives yoou some good benchmarking results all over the place. Motherboard is also great. It supports Crossfire. We’ll unfortenately, I have a Nvidia GPU inside, so I can’t test Crossfire in this moment. We’ll my favourite part of my computer is my graphic card - GeForce 9800GTX.

My last graphic card was a Gigabyte 8600GT, so this definately is a good performance jump. It outperforms most of the graphic cards on the market, so there is no game that could be pushing the card to it’s limits - not even Crysis. We’ll get to that, you’ll be able to see a gameplay video, recorded from my computer.

So, this is the identical card, that “sits” in my computer now She has a nice design, and some very cool paintings are hanging on her And she isn’t small either - this big joe requires 2 PCI-E connectors, so it drains a lot of power from my Akrangel 850W…

WHAT ABOUT OVERCLOCKING?

There actually is no need to OC this card yet However, becaouse of the new G92 GPU, the 9800GTX should have lot’s of OC potential. So I found a test, which shows the overclocking of this awesome card (quoting from: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1587020):

Looks like Geforce 9800GTX going to be an amazing card with fantastic overclocking potential. Uni tested a single card overclocked to 850MHz on stock cooling running 100% fan speed scored 16,444 3DMark 06.

SO NOW WE HAVE THE OC REPORT, WHAT ABOUT GAMING PERFORMANCE?

We’ll I must tell you, that this GPU impressed me a lot. This card really brings you a reall “bang for the buck”. I took my tests in Crysis, which is currently the heaviest cargo for GPU’s.

I used VERY HIGH settings on resolution 1024×768 with no AA. What framerate do I get? On average about 45, on this map a little lower becaouse of the big landscape. We’ll check it out by yourselves

Click on this image to direct yourself to the gameplay video!

WELL IS THIS GPU WORTH BUYING!?

Absolutely yes. We’ll it’s not much faster than the 8800GTS 512mb, but if you look at the OC potencial, it’s definately worth buying. Still, if you see a cheap 8800GTS 512mb, go for it. They can be OC-ed to the 9800GTX specs so you can’t loose much by buying it. The 9800GTX could have 1GB of VRAM but even 512mb is enough to shoot pixels on monitor at high resolutions…

OVERALL MARK:

9/10

Advantages:

- Very light

- Awesome speed for low prices

- Very nice looking GPU

- Very silent

- Good OC potencial

Disadvantages:

- Requires a power supply unit that is rated to at least 500W and two 6-pin power connector available

- Not much faster than the 8800GTS 512mb, but more expensive (we’ll for those 50€ more, you get much more OC potencial, than the old 8800GTS 512mb)

Well, since the Crysis demo is out, I borrowed a brand new X1950XT for this short test. I was testing medium/high settings in Crysis demo.

This test was made on this computer:

- AMD64 3000+ S939

- 1.5GB DDR400

- Sapphire X1950XT

- Gigabyte motherboard GA-K8N51

It runs smooth, well, the GameCam recording programm has a few FPS drops, so this game runs a little smoother in reality. It is obviously, that my processor is bottlenecking this graphic card, so I ordered a special processor, called AMD X2 4200+ S939 2×512kb L2 cache, which will come in handy in some games, especially Crysis and the new NFS Pro Street. When I’ll install that processor in my computer, I’ll make another video with it and we’ll see the difference

OK, let’s see the video:

In the next post, I’ll write about the new NFS Pro Street demo, of course, there will be a video, showing gameplay, graphics etc. I just have to wait for new processor

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF AIRSOFT

Kristjan already wrote about it - and I just couldn’t resist to write about it to. Actually I became addicted on it right on his blog Well, it isn’t just about the quality, it’s beautiful too!

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