Is the new ATi 4850 a good upgrade from a G80 (8800GTS)?

[tachikoma]

I'm currently running a GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (G80) and it's been fine for the last year or so. Now with the newer line of cards coming out it seems it's finally time to upgrade.

That being said, I see there is a deal at BestBuy with the 4850's being $149. I have called my local BestBuy and they have one set aside for me, and I have a print out of this so-called 25%-off Visiontek deal. I was wondering if it'd be a worthwhile upgrade, or worth my time, rather, to purchase it. It seems to be on par with the G92 9800GTX in most cases, but I'm not quite sure how much of a difference it will make in comparison to the G80 line. I wan't an improvement obviously, but not so small that I won't notice.

Should I wait for the 4870? This $149 deal seems to be killer though, and I can probably sell my G80 on Craigslist for about that price. So I end up spending almost no money.

 

[Extelleron]

The HD 4850 will definitely be a solid upgrade from a G80 8800GTS. The HD 4850 will be comparable, and in many cases faster, than the 8800GTX, which itself is a good deal faster than your 8800GTS. You could expect solid 30-40% gains across the board, maybe more.

 

[tachikoma]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
The HD 4850 will definitely be a solid upgrade from a G80 8800GTS. The HD 4850 will be comparable, and in many cases faster, than the 8800GTX, which itself is a good deal faster than your 8800GTS. You could expect solid 30-40% gains across the board, maybe more.

Excellent, this is what I was assuming, but I suppose I just needed some random fellow computer geek on the internet to agree with me prior to just jumping the gun and buying it Thanks.

Wife & I are heading to BestBuy now

Also, the stock cooler looks rather weak.
Anyone know if the coolers for the 3870 series will work?
Like this: Thermaltake DuOrb
http://www.thermaltake.com/pro.../CL-G0102/cl-g0102.asp
I would assume it would but I'm not 100%

 

[chizow]

I've read the mounting holes are the same as the 3870 so you should be fine. As for seeing much of an improvement, personally I don't think you will see that much gain. I went through a similar process in the Fall going from a GTS 640 to an 8800GT to an 8800GTX. But for $149 from a B&M I think its certainly worth it to see for yourself. One of the main reasons to buy from a place like BB is so you can return it easily and hassle-free and the fact its the best price available on a 4850 certainly doesn't hurt.

 

[SithSolo1]

Well is it an upgrade from 2x 256MB 8800GTSs in SLi?

 

[bryanW1995]

that card doesn't exist. do you mean 2x 8800gts 320 or 2x 8800gt 256?

 

[tachikoma]

Yay I got my card!
Visiontek Radeon 4850 512MB DDR3 PCI-E

$199.99 - 25% = $154.99 + tax = $167.00 out the door at BestBuy

Going to be doing sometests in comparison to my G80 in a bit.
If the 4870 ends up being a huge improvement over the 4850 I'll just sell the 4850 hah!

 

[SithSolo1]

oh the 8800GTS 320(G80 core), its my friends cards.

 

[modelCS118]

I would be very interested in your opinion. Today I did the exact same thing you are doing and just finished benchmarking this card in XP SP2 after applying the Hotfix. I was so excited going over to BB they only had 2 left.

According to my runs of 3D mark 06 the 4850 does not seem to succeed.

4850 ATI received 7819
8800 GTS 640 Received 8696 (overclocked)
CPU score was low because X2 3800 but clearly the 4850 lost all SM 2.0 runs and only won the Balloon SM 30 HDR

I also just ran a Crysis run through where it also fails to beat my 8800GTS by more than 2 Fps. This is at 1650 1080 with medium on all except shaders and textures high.

I ran FRAPs on Bioshock and was within range of what the 8800 GTS was doing around 45-53 and this was at 1920 x 1200 everything maxed.

It doesn't completely make sense to me and if you have Vista, you might have a different experience.

I thought I had done enough research but apparently not. Let me know how it turns out.

Here were my detailed comparisons:

ATI 4850
3DMark Score
7819
SM2.0 Score
3367
HDR/SM3.0 Score
4257
CPU Score
1550

8800 GTS OC
3DMark Score
8696
SM2.0 Score
4006
HDR/SM3.0 Score
4254

CPU Score
1837 (slight overclock)

 

[bryanW1995]

first of all, don't compare an overclocked card to a stock card. if you want to compare both at max oc or both at stock that's ok, but you're not giving yourself a good comparison otherwise. secondly, 4850 sucks in 3dmark 06. g80 and g92 (and rv6xx) are great in 3dmark06 b/c they were optimized for it. 4850 is NOT optimized for 3dmark06 b/c 3dmark Vantage is a much better indicator of future game performance (and current games for that matter). You have to pay a few $$ to run it, but vantage will give you a good indication. 8fps difference at 45 fps ~ 18% difference. That's not enormous, but it's nothing to sneeze at. oc the 4850 and try it again in crysis, bioshock, and a few others.

oh yeah, get a new cpu, too. You're going to find that you're cpu limited in many situations with that poor of a unit. You can get a p35 mobo with an e7200 for ~ $200 these days and oc it to 3.5 easily on stock cooling. That should take care of your cpu bottleneck AND help you to get the most out of whatever card you end up deciding to use.

 

[modelCS118]

The overclocked scores were the ones I had saved detail on. Without the overclock they test about equal in total score from what I recall. But hey the 8800 is 14 months old at the 4850 has 800 streaming processors right? It seemed fair. I do understand bias in these tests too, just wanted to demonstrate to myself my money was spent on a improvement.

But if I can't notice any improvements in actual games either it just seems strange despite the old cpu. I will know soon enough, I have a p45 board and E7200 in the cart, need to wait a week.

 

[tachikoma]

Why are you still running XP?
Vista is definitely superior in every way (if you have the RAM, I have 4GB) especially now that Service Pack 1 is available. These new cards are DX10 cards, why not use what they're meant for?

EDIT--

Anyways I removed the G80 with it's drivers and ran Guru3D's driver sweeper. All seemed well. I shut down the PC, installed the 4850, booted it up and installed ATI's 8.6 Catalyst drivers, and now it blue screens every time it boots. Haha, I can't even get into Safe Mode. Of course I shouldn't expect bleeding edge to have no issues
I'm currently troubleshooting it right now.

 

[bryanW1995]

vista has gotten a lot better in the past 18 mos but I personally can find a LOT of things I'd rather spend $100 on than vista home premium oem... like a nice dinner, theater tickets, or maybe a root canal

 

[tachikoma]

Ok apparently I fail and finding drivers on ATI's website.
I just assumed that the standard 8.6 Catalyst set would have included 4000 series support but apparently not.
You have to use these "hotfix" (beta) drivers.
http://support.ati.com/ics/sup...r.asp?questionID=35298

Why not just have those listed beneath the official drivers? Hah, that would make to much sense apparently

 

[modelCS118]

I'm probably running it for reasons that others are also running it. Initial reviews for Vista were bad, SP1 reactions so-so, personal few day test frustrating, too much tweaking and turning things off. And the worse outlook would be that it is short lived OS, replaced by Windows 7 in 2010. So the longer I wait the less it seems I will go that route. But since I like research I'll see if there is recent Xp and Vista gaming compare somewhere. I realize that it was my oversight forgetting that many sites only focus on Vista benches now.

But I'd still like to see what you think since you had the 8800 in Vista and now the 4850 in Vista.

 

[tachikoma]

OK everything setup and running great now.

System Specs:

Microsof Windows Vista x64 w/SP1
AMD Athlon X2 6400+
ASUS M3A Socket AM2+ (AMD 770 Chipset)
4GB DDR2 800Mhz Timings=5-5-5-15
320GB (2 x 160GB) RAID-0 Samsung HDD's
VisionTek ATi Radeon 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E 2.0
RealTek HD 5.1 Audio


3DMark Vantage (I average the point system because each run can vary up to +/-50pts)

Nvidia G80 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E 1.0
Overall Score: ~3800


ATi Radeon 4850 512MB PCI-E 2.0
Overal Score: ~5700

Image of 3DMark Vantage 4850 Run


So far, aside from AMD/ATi not providing easy user friendly access to their beta drivers, I'm very satisifed. Especially considering it won't cost me hardly anything after I sell my G80 The card does run hot, I have a 250MM fan installed on the side of my case and a 120MM in the front and rear and it still hits around 70C at idle, and shoots up to 84C while under full load. However it doesn't seem to impair anything, which is fine by me. I'm still going to put a non OEM cooler on it though, just to be safe.

 

[Tempered81]

Rivatuner 2.09 will allow you to control the automatic Fan speed for your HD4850. You can then find a decent noise/cooling ratio to help keep the card cool.

 

[tachikoma]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
Rivatuner 2.09 will allow you to control the automatic Fan speed for your HD4850. You can then find a decent noise/cooling ratio to help keep the card cool.

I'm running RivaTuner 2.09 right now and it has no support for the 8.6 catalyst beta drivers that are required for the 4000 series cards.

ATi Tool 0.27b4 also does not work for fan speeds.

 

[Tempered81]

using this fix?

http://support.ati.com/ics/sup...ledge&questionID=35298

 

[tachikoma]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
using this fix?

http://support.ati.com/ics/sup...ledge&questionID=35298

That isn't a "fix" per se.

It's the full *BETA* 8.6 drivers that you have to use in order to get the card even running. And yes there's no support in Rivatuner yet.

 

[Tempered81]

actually the 8.6 suite from ATi is 36mb
the hotfix i pointed you at is 47.5mb and designed for your card...
http://game.amd.com/us-en/driv...t.aspx?p=xp/radeonx-xp June 18 / 36mb
http://support.ati.com/ics/sup...ledge&questionID=35298 June 19 / 47.5mb

could be that the hotfix includes 64 bit as well, but i'm fairly sure there is a difference. Here are some more downloads:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Vi...lyst-(32-bit)_c18.html

 

[tachikoma]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
actually the 8.6 suite from ATi is 36mb
the hotfix i pointed you at is 47.5mb and designed for your card...
http://game.amd.com/us-en/driv...t.aspx?p=xp/radeonx-xp June 18 / 36mb
http://support.ati.com/ics/sup...ledge&questionID=35298 June 19 / 47.5mb

could be that the hotfix includes 64 bit as well, but i'm fairly sure there is a difference. Here are some more downloads:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Vi...lyst-(32-bit)_c18.html

Ugh I hate being a dick but please learn to read.

The regular WHQL 8.6 Driver suite does NOT work with the 4000 series cards right now. I know, I tried, and blue screened haha.

You need the BETA 8.6 release that's on their support section on their site (they call it a "hotfix" that you linked me to already). It's really a BETA set of driver(s).

You should NOT install both. That's just idiotic and would break your system It even says on the site...

This Hotfix improves overall performance and stability. The Hotfix includes the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center.

EDIT - And yes, it's large size (48MB) is due to having both 32-bit and 64-bit in one executable.

 

[x2 3600 rules sazakky]

ckyant

 

[Tempered81]

ah Okay, I see. Have you found a program to control your fan speed yet? I found some DNA 8.6 Hotfix HD4xxx series drivers if you are interested. They could possibly work with RT or another program for controlling fan speeds. Good to know you got it working though, and apologies for the barrage of drivers. heheh.

http://www.donotargue.com/foru...rums.php?m=posts&q=163

 

[BolleY2K]

@modelCS118: Looks like your CPU is way too slow for both cards. For example my 3DMarks at different CPU and GPU overclocks with a 8800 GTS 640 in XP:

8250 Marks - with E4300 @ 2295 MHz
8796 Marks - with E4300 @ 3015 MHz
11463 Marks - with E4300 @ 3050 MHz AND Card overclocked to 650 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory

Overclocked G80 an also the 4850 should perform much better with a faster CPU.