8800GT--->HD4870 First Impressions

[Magusigne]

Finally got my Sapphire HD4870.

Price Purchased at 309$ - 25% from Live cashback - 10% paypal coupon=~200$

Came in a very nice compact box. Very pleased when I opened the package. This card is VERY large compared to my MSI 8800GT, not so much long as it is wide and heavy, the card itself weighs 3lbs.


Edit 1:Age on Conan performance increase DRAMATICALLY! I initially thought this game was supposed to be NV biased I was wrong.

At 4xMSAA 1920x1200 my perfomance has jumped from 20-35fps to 60-90fps no joke. This is with increased graphics settings too, draw distance maxed, 3.0 shaders instead of 2.0 HUGE improvement. Makes this game actually look very very nice.

Edit 2: 8800GT OC yielded 10.9k 3dmark06, 4970 OC'd to 790/1100 yielded 15.2k marks! if I had a Q9450 I'd bet I could hit 18k.

Also Idle 78 Load 90+ easily fixed by pushing fan up to 60%. Now it barely breaks 55 under load and sits at 42ish idle.

I am running Vista 64 by the way. I have no crysis to benchmark

I have run into a small issue. 3dmark06 and 3dmark vantage have caused a few hard crashes when I ran them. Black screen high fan speed crashes. Still looking into that, but all games run fine...just a few issues with 3dmark, probably drivers.

 

[zod96]

Cool I'm curious about the results. I have a GT now and was really really thinking about getting the 4870

 

[lopri]

You can't be serious about that packaging. It's the worst video card packacing I've seen since PNY 6200 PCI.

 

[Magusigne]

Lopri, I can't say i've opened more than 3 video cards Its a very small box, and the contents are indeed just strewn about under the card, but i feel that it was packaged pretty well. And the card itself impressed me.
'
My wife is on my rig right now so I can't begin fully testing yet, but after seeing the AoC performance increase I'm pretty happy. Now I need an x48

 

[nib95]

Originally posted by: lopri
You can't be serious about that packaging. It's the worst video card packacing I've seen since PNY 6200 PCI.

It wasn't the prettiest box in the world. But I for one was pleasantly surprised at the box. Beside the box for my Gainward 8800 GTS 512MB, it's less than half as big! And for an actual card that's near enough the exactly the same size!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albu...ioneer/09072008243.jpg

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: nib95

Originally posted by: lopri
You can't be serious about that packaging. It's the worst video card packacing I've seen since PNY 6200 PCI.

It wasn't the prettiest box in the world. But I for one was pleasantly surprised at the box. Beside the box for my Gainward 8800 GTS 512MB, it's less than half as big! And for an actual card that's near enough the exactly the same size!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albu...ioneer/09072008243.jpg

my eyes!

 

[zod96]

I'm probably going to wait until the end of this month to see what nvidia has to offer and to see what kind of tricked out ati 4870 cards come out. I'd love to see some zalman or artic cooling heatsinks on the 4870 come retail.

 

[User5]

^you can always "wait".. but then guess whats going to happen in a month? Speculation for the month after that, and the month after that, and from there its just a never ending cycle.

Blizzard's games aren't exactly demanding, and the next Crysis has even said to be optimized to perform within reach of actual computers out there. I'd say get a 4800 series card, these things are just monsters. I don't think benchmarks truly depict how great this thing is. It not only seems to "deal" with framedips better and make them less drastic than my old card, but it also seems to just LOVE aa. I was amazed to find that when increasing AA from 0x to 2x to 4x to 8x, there were maybe 2-3 fps differences each step.. I'd say its a great time to get one of these cards.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Finally got my Sapphire HD4870.

Price Purchased at 309$ - 25% from Live cashback - 10% paypal coupon=~200$

Came in a very nice compact box. Very pleased when I opened the package. This card is VERY large compared to my MSI 8800GT, not so much long as it is wide and heavy, the card itself weighs 3lbs.

8800GT yielded 11.5k in 3DMark06 with rig in the sig. HD4870 Testing begins!

Edit 1:Age on Conan performance increase DRAMATICALLY! I initially thought this game was supposed to be NV biased I was wrong.

At 4xMSAA 1920x1200 my perfomance has jumped from 20-35fps to 60-90fps no joke. This is with increased graphics settings too, draw distance maxed, 3.0 shaders instead of 2.0 HUGE improvement. Makes this game actually look very very nice.

Can I bet that you are running Vista 64?

Please reply. This could be critical information to me

EDIT: DOH!! Just read your sig. It seems like Vista 64 is the solution to my HD4870's quite simply woeful performance in AoC. 25-30 FPS at 1280x720 and thats onlt if I force AA/AF through CCC, its worse without.... 1920x1080 running at 30-50 FPS on exactly the same settings on Windows XP SP3.

The tenuous link Ive found is that GPU usage on AoC on XP seems to be mainly around 30-40% whereas under Vista 64, performance is much greater.

 

[Obsoleet]

I'm also getting a 4870. I have a CrossfireX motherboard and the card looks just great. The X2 will probably be too rich for my blood, the 4870 makes sense.

 

[Magusigne]

Overall I am impressed with the performance of this card.

I do have many concerns though. I got some pretty nasty BSODS with high fan RPMs trying 3dmark and Vantage. Temperatures were fine but caused a major systems crash. (4 times) All four times during 3dmark06.

Games run fine, but haven't had a chance to really play for very long.

Hoping these are just driver issues and not my card.

 

[nib95]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Overall I am impressed with the performance of this card.

I do have many concerns though. I got some pretty nasty BSODS with high fan RPMs trying 3dmark and Vantage. Temperatures were fine but caused a major systems crash. (4 times) All four times during 3dmark06.

Games run fine, but haven't had a chance to really play for very long.

Hoping these are just driver issues and not my card.

Have you done the fan fix? When I'm gaming I use a 50% fan speed profile and my temps don't really go about the 75c mark.

 

[Magusigne]

Originally posted by: nib95

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Overall I am impressed with the performance of this card.

I do have many concerns though. I got some pretty nasty BSODS with high fan RPMs trying 3dmark and Vantage. Temperatures were fine but caused a major systems crash. (4 times) All four times during 3dmark06.

Games run fine, but haven't had a chance to really play for very long.

Hoping these are just driver issues and not my card.

Have you done the fan fix? When I'm gaming I use a 50% fan speed profile and my temps don't really go about the 75c mark.

Yes, My temps are as cool as my 8800GT, Fanspeed at 65%, a little audible but it doesn't bother me...Hovers 43 idle/60ish load.

 

[nib95]

My Akasa Vortexx Neo arrives tomorrow. So I'm going to fit that, along with some Zalman ram sinks for the VRM's and get overclocking. Some posters in UK forums have been getting fantastic results from the Vortexx Neo. Load temps in the low 40's! Hopefully I get something similar. Main thing is, the cooler is a lot quieter than the stock cooler for a lot more performance.

I still don't understand how it works though. When comparing the Vortexx Neo to the Stock cooler, the stock cooler actually has a bigger heatsink! I guess it must be to do with the Neo's fan and airflow.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: User5
^you can always "wait".. but then guess whats going to happen in a month? Speculation for the month after that, and the month after that, and from there its just a never ending cycle.

Blizzard's games aren't exactly demanding, and the next Crysis has even said to be optimized to perform within reach of actual computers out there. I'd say get a 4800 series card, these things are just monsters. I don't think benchmarks truly depict how great this thing is. It not only seems to "deal" with framedips better and make them less drastic than my old card, but it also seems to just LOVE aa. I was amazed to find that when increasing AA from 0x to 2x to 4x to 8x, there were maybe 2-3 fps differences each step.. I'd say its a great time to get one of these cards.

I upgraded from 3870s in Crossfire to 4850s in Crossfire, and I too was amazed at how turning up the AA (or turning on Adaptive AA even) on the 4850s barely decreased performance. Turning up AA on the 3870s caused major performance hits at each increase. I think the framrate dips are dealt with better simply because the 4850s are across the board faster.

Either configuration (3870 or 4850) simply eradicates the 8800GT I upgraded from. Also, I was quite lucky because I was able to sell my 3870s on eBay for $150+shipping each and I paid nearly exactly that for the 4850s (~$315 OTD actually). I spent maybe $30 out of pocket for the upgrade. Well worth it to me.