4850 Crossfire vs. GTX 260

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bubbakja

Weaksauce
Joined
May 29, 2006
Messages
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I have a crossfire mobo, would 2 4850's outclass a GTX 260? Also, I know the older cards you had to get a specific crossfire card for your secondary, is that still the case or is it two of the same?
 
Outclass? Both cards are pretty smart. :D

Out perform? Yes. In some cases, a couple 4850s in Crossfire will outperform GTX 280s. Only in certain resolutions, and in certain games that scale Crossfire well.

Back when Crossfire was first conceived, you had to have the "Crossfire Edition" of a given card with that stupid dongle on the back, but they did away with that pretty quickly. The 2900 series cards and up have only needed the SLI-like bridge between the cards.
 
Personally, after my terrible SLI experience I lean to towards 1 card that meets the requirements instead of mixing 2 cards that alone cant meet the requirements. So here I would aim for either the GTX 260 /280 or a 4870 / 4870x2.
 
Go crossfire. Much more value for your money and down right better performer IMO.

I haven't come across a game yet that I can't run at 1920x1200 on high settings, except for GTA IV but that's a freak of nature due to the many many many issues it has.
 
bangmal said:
yes it will, 4850 CF whoops the little arses of both 280 and 260 in all games, in some cases, the moronic "200 SLI":

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15293/5
:p
Click to expand...


Written August 12th. Drivers have vastly improved. I highly doubt thats the case any more. Use [H]ardocp's benches instead of Tech Report please. COD4 isn't what I would call a "stressful" game on any GPU. Put Far Cry 2 on both systems and then get back to me on your "results". :rolleyes:
 
That Linux Guy said:
Back when Crossfire was first conceived, you had to have the "Crossfire Edition" of a given card with that stupid dongle on the back, but they did away with that pretty quickly. The 2900 series cards and up have only needed the SLI-like bridge between the cards.
Click to expand...

Actually the X1950 Pro was the first ATi card to have dongle-less crossfire...

OP, I'd personally recommend a GTX 260 just to avoid any scaling issues.
 
don't pay too much mind to good ole bangmal, just out local ati troll trying to stir people up.
 
i like a gtx 260 better. i had 4850 cf setup, and it does worse on min. fps. You only see the average or max fps on those benchmarks. When those 4850s dip down on cod4 with the smoke etc, you will see a gtx 260 does better. I have a $200 plus cf mobo, and sold off my ati cards, and went back to a bigger nvidia single card. I would rather have a 4870 than 4850 cf.
 
Vycka said:
I call bullshit on that chart.
Click to expand...

How about this chart here:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU1OCwxNSwsaGVudGh1c2lhc3Q=

The true shining star that we have identified is the Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire! (Interestingly enough Kyle had picked out 4850 CrossFire back in July as possibly the best value for his own rig.) We have found that it offers performance rivaling GTX 260 SLI and GTX 280, for a much less expensive price. If you are building a new Intel platform, and we know a lot of you are these days, a 4850 CrossFire configuration might make a lot of sense as an economical but powerful gaming system right now.
Click to expand...
 
dccmadams said:
i like a gtx 260 better. i had 4850 cf setup, and it does worse on min. fps. You only see the average or max fps on those benchmarks. When those 4850s dip down on cod4 with the smoke etc, you will see a gtx 260 does better. I have a $200 plus cf mobo, and sold off my ati cards, and went back to a bigger nvidia single card. I would rather have a 4870 than 4850 cf.
Click to expand...

min FPS would also be largely related to your CPU, as in your CPU cant feed both cards enough data so you get lower drops in FPS, but with your CPU i cant see that being so true.
 
bubbakja said:
I have a crossfire mobo, would 2 4850's outclass a GTX 260? Also, I know the older cards you had to get a specific crossfire card for your secondary, is that still the case or is it two of the same?
Click to expand...

4850 crossfire is bang for the buck king. There are a few games (memory limited games) that will see better performance with a GTX260 or a 4870 1gb. (grid is one)
 
Keep in mind that ati drivers are HORRIFIC, especially for crossifre users. Myself and many others are unable to install certain versions of ati drivers due to BSOD's, 2nd monitor incompatibilities, and a litany of other problems. I currently have a 4850CF setup and it runs most games stellar, but updating drivers is a nightmare that 50% of the time leads to crashes and eventual system restore. I grow very weary of ati drivers and therefor am going to sell one of these cards and put the other one in my htpc when the gtx280 refreshes come out. I have also learned in the meantime that I will not be able to get PCM sound thru my HK254 receiver with the 4850 because of driver problems with the hdmi port. It's always something with ati drivers. I had some issues with my 8800 back when vista was first released and nvidia having abysmal driver support for that OS for months, but they sorted it out quickly and all was well after that. The 48x0 cards have been out for well over 6 months now and every driver release since then stays the same or gets worse. I'm done. My experience and many others as well. Yours may vary.

**Disclaimer** - No ati trolls required to flame me for my opinion pls, thx.
 
Oh it's you again, Mr.Expert. You always post in every thread that mentions ATI cards to warn people about the horrific driver but when you were asked about your problems, you didn't answer it. I would suggest people to search for Astrodave's posts first before believing what he said.
 
It's just not worth the trouble for SLI/CF unless you allready own an exsisting card, and allready have a CF/SLI motherboard. A GTX260 is the better choice if you don't allready own a single 4850. You don't have to deal with driver and application profile BS. Most games will run 'smoother' - As a user who has run both CF/SLI setups, I can tell you that the min. FPS always dips down, and it isn't pleasant.

Not to mention being limited to only 512MB of VRAM is a pretty limiting factor these days if you have a big 24''+ screen. GTAIV runs lightyears better on my GTX260 compared to my 8800GT SLI setup. Even though the SLI setup has more rendering power, that lack of VRAM kills it at those higher resolutions.


Anyways, thats just my humble opinion as someone who has owned similar setups. The pain in the ass that is constantly having to deal with application profile / drivers for SLI/CF in new games; really is a huge pain the ass.
 
alg7_munif said:
Oh it's you again, Mr.Expert. You always post in every thread that mentions ATI cards to warn people about the horrific driver but when you were asked about your problems, you didn't answer it. I would suggest people to search for Astrodave's posts first before believing what he said.
Click to expand...

Hey reject, what about the disclaimer DIDN'T you understand? If they read my posts, apparently unlike you, they would realize that my performance is excellent now with 8.10 and that my issues are solely with updating drivers and with warhead. Now beat it trollboy.
 
bubbakja said:
I have a crossfire mobo, would 2 4850's outclass a GTX 260? Also, I know the older cards you had to get a specific crossfire card for your secondary, is that still the case or is it two of the same?
Click to expand...

2 4850's would be fastest (by far in many games) when there are crossfire profiles for the games. Until one's made (or they at least give an option to make our own profiles like Nvidia), you are reduced to single card performance. There are a lot of crossfire profiles for different games, so you'll more likely to get better performance in general. Except for selected few, it seems newer games scale in crossfire as well.

Don't let the "ATI drivers are worse then Nvidia or visa versa" infantiles get to you. I've had less issues with ATI then Nvidia, but I expect having some issues nevertheless. People are loud if they've had problems. Thats how it is.

For those claiming superiority of Nvidia drivers and that everything is plug and play, check this out:

NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007
Click to expand...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/

Is everything peachy without problems with Nvidia?:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=25

ATI ain't better:
http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=260
 
ATI’s drivers aren’t perfect, but they are pretty damn good. If you actually take a moment to understand what minor issues your hardware might have and how it works instead of just blaming the drivers for everything, you can work around most issues fairly easily.

If you use windowed mode instead of fullscreen, that will cause only one GPU to be used in most situations.

There is an issue where if you overclock your cards and also use dual monitors, it will cause flickering and the display driver will crash. This is due to an issue with the 2D/3D clocks. To get around this you can either not overclock, only use one monitor, or flash a custom bios onto the cards which keeps them at the 3d clocks all the time.

Also, the 4850’s run really hot, it’s important not to forget about that. I keep both my cards at 100% fan speed all the time and they still get pretty toasty. Having them both on automatic should be good enough as it will bring up the fan speed if/when it really needs it. What isn’t okay is manually setting the fan speed at a low percentage, and keeping it there. That might give you better temps at idle than leaving it on auto but you’re basically not allowing it to ramp the fan speed up at all, and even with a manual fan speed as high as 60% or so you could easily end up with higher temps under load than leaving it on auto.

I have not had any issues whatsoever with my 4850 crossfire setup in terms of installing new drivers. I just use the built-in uninstall utility first and it works great, every time.

Considering that 4850 crossfire is in GTX280 territory, it would be pretty silly to get a slower GTX260 instead. You would need two of those, at least, to best the crossfire setup.
 
ATI drivers are not bad at all. In fact, AMD has produced some very good driver support in recent years.

ATI wins this round of GFX card roundup. As far as Astrodave and his rants, if he has a problem upgrading drivers, then he might need to learn a thing or two about cleaning up drivers before the install.

I have always had more problems with nVidia cards than any of the ATI cards I have owned though, so I am partial.
 
Astrodave said:
Hey reject, what about the disclaimer DIDN'T you understand? If they read my posts, apparently unlike you, they would realize that my performance is excellent now with 8.10 and that my issues are solely with updating drivers and with warhead. Now beat it trollboy.
Click to expand...

is the pot calling the kettle black here? and its not that people don't understand your disclaimer they just don't think much of a veiled attempt to troll themselves without being called on it.
 
TheGooch69 said:
I haven't come across a game yet that I can't run at 1920x1200 on high settings, except for GTA IV but that's a freak of nature due to the many many many issues it has.
Click to expand...

No, thats because your two HD4850 cards effectively only have 512mb. , high textures needs at least 768mb, more depending on the resolution.
 
ebilcake said:
No, thats because your two HD4850 cards effectively only have 512mb. , high textures needs at least 768mb, more depending on the resolution.
Click to expand...

You may be right about high textures needing 768mb (and by the way, Crossfire = 1gb with my setup) but you're wrong. GTA IV is a poor port.

Read up on it.

Regarding 4850 temps, I usually stay at 60 degrees under load. But I have a lot more cooling than most people, including a desktop fan blowing into the side of my rig. :D
 
TheGooch69 said:
You may be right about high textures needing 768mb (and by the way, Crossfire = 1gb with my setup) but you're wrong. GTA IV is a poor port.

Read up on it.

Regarding 4850 temps, I usually stay at 60 degrees under load. But I have a lot more cooling than most people, including a desktop fan blowing into the side of my rig. :D
Click to expand...

Moving to my single GTX260 off of my 8800GT SLI setup - Performance was GREATLY improved in GTAIV - Primarily because of the increased VRAM.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
2 4850's would be fastest (by far in many games) when there are crossfire profiles for the games. Until one's made (or they at least give an option to make our own profiles like Nvidia), you are reduced to single card performance. There are a lot of crossfire profiles for different games, so you'll more likely to get better performance in general. Except for selected few, it seems newer games scale in crossfire as well.

Don't let the "ATI drivers are worse then Nvidia or visa versa" infantiles get to you. I've had less issues with ATI then Nvidia, but I expect having some issues nevertheless. People are loud if they've had problems. Thats how it is.

For those claiming superiority of Nvidia drivers and that everything is plug and play, check this out:


http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/

Is everything peachy without problems with Nvidia?:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=25

ATI ain't better:
http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=260
Click to expand...


Thats to be quite expected, however. Everyone knows that nvidia had crap Vista support when Vista first came out. Nvidia's drivers are, to quote Borat, 'Very Nice' in Vista at this point
 
Mchart said:
Thats to be quite expected, however. Everyone knows that nvidia had crap Vista support when Vista first came out. Nvidia's drivers are, to quote Borat, 'Very Nice' in Vista at this point
Click to expand...

This is not true, now is it? Check out a quick search of the newest WHQL drivers:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=180.48+crash&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

or do you compare to 2007 and Nvidia Vista drivers?

In any case I think you missed my point. It was not about how good or bad Nvidia drivers was, but that there is no proof that Nvidia drivers are more stable then ATI drivers. Its really a bad argument, especially since I can "prove" what caused most Vista crashes in 2007 and it wasn't ATI drivers...

Using such argument is FUD.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
This is not true, now is it? Check out a quick search of the newest WHQL drivers:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=180.48+crash&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

or do you compare to 2007 and Nvidia Vista drivers?

In any case I think you missed my point. It was not about how good or bad Nvidia drivers was, but that there is no proof that Nvidia drivers are more stable then ATI drivers. Its really a bad argument, especially since I can "prove" what caused most Vista crashes in 2007 and it wasn't ATI drivers...

Using such argument is FUD.
Click to expand...

+1 :)
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
This is not true, now is it? Check out a quick search of the newest WHQL drivers:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=180.48+crash&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

or do you compare to 2007 and Nvidia Vista drivers?

In any case I think you missed my point. It was not about how good or bad Nvidia drivers was, but that there is no proof that Nvidia drivers are more stable then ATI drivers. Its really a bad argument, especially since I can "prove" what caused most Vista crashes in 2007 and it wasn't ATI drivers...

Using such argument is FUD.
Click to expand...

You will see users reporting crashes - regardless of the driver version. Thats a fact of life. It should also be noted that nvidia has much larger marketshare in the lower/mid-end OEM market. We know that 2007 was a bad year for nvidia drivers. As someone who has owned both sides, I know this. What I also know for a fact - is that in the past 6-8 months nvidia drivers have improved by a substantial amount. Not only have I had 0 nvidia driver related crashes (Even with a finnicky SLI setup) since the end of May, but I also got cool new features like multi-monitor w/ SLI enabled. I also know, for a fact, that Nvidia has been releasing 'fixes' for games like GTAIV much faster then ATI.
 
alg7_munif said:
Oh it's you again, Mr.Expert. You always post in every thread that mentions ATI cards to warn people about the horrific driver but when you were asked about your problems, you didn't answer it. I would suggest people to search for Astrodave's posts first before believing what he said.
Click to expand...

I also can't update or install my ATI drivers. The ONLY ones that work are the ones windows update installs.
 
pissboy said:
I also can't update or install my ATI drivers. The ONLY ones that work are the ones windows update installs.
Click to expand...

If you need help to get your system working, you could start a new thread. People here are more than willing to help you out with the problem. That would be much better than just bitching about "ATi driver sucks" in every thread that mentions an ATI card.

It is also a good idea to listen to what others have to say on the problem first before jumping into a conclusion like "X driver sucks because even as a computer expert, I can't solve the problem".

I'm not saying that you have this attitude but if you search for "someone's" posts, you will only find that kind of attitude from him.
 
pissboy said:
I also can't update or install my ATI drivers. The ONLY ones that work are the ones windows update installs.
Click to expand...

Generally with video card drivers, you should always do a complete uninstall before installing to avoid issues. However, as stated, you should probably start a new thread with your issues there.
 
alg7_munif said:
If you need help to get your system working, you could start a new thread. People here are more than willing to help you out with the problem. That would be much better than just bitching about "ATi driver sucks" in every thread that mentions an ATI card.

I'm not saying that you have this attitude but if you search for "someone's" posts, you will only find that kind of attitude from him.
Click to expand...

Not trying to troll the thread, just posting that I also had issues with 4850CF+drivers.

ZMTToxics said:
Generally with video card drivers, you should always do a complete uninstall before installing to avoid issues. However, as stated, you should probably start a new thread with your issues there.
Click to expand...

Two fresh formats and vista installs, 4850CF just doesn't want to play nice with the downloaded drivers, and I don't plan on wasting anymore time with it. Its quicker and easier to just sell off the cards and pop in a single ATI/nVidia. Not sure which way I'll go though, I just popped in here for research. :)
 
TheGooch69 said:
You may be right about high textures needing 768mb (and by the way, Crossfire = 1gb with my setup) but you're wrong. GTA IV is a poor port.

Read up on it.
Click to expand...

I never said it wasnt a poor port, it is but you still need more then 512MB to use high textures with decent performance in this game, so no i'm not wrong.

Crossfire = 1GB only if both cards used are 1GB models, if both cards have 512mb then it's still effectively limited to 512mb, It doesnt double up.
 
I would get a 4870 if i were you seeing as you have a crossfire board you could crossfire it with another in the future.
 
TheGooch69 said:
You may be right about high textures needing 768mb (and by the way, Crossfire = 1gb with my setup) but you're wrong. GTA IV is a poor port.
Click to expand...
ebilcake said:
Crossfire = 1GB only if both cards used are 1GB models, if both cards have 512mb then it's still effectively limited to 512mb, It doesnt double up.
Click to expand...

a better explanation would be because the texture is duplicated in each cards memory. think of it like the memory is in raid1 but it has nothing to do with redundancy.

 
ALL4AMD said:
a better explanation would be because the texture is duplicated in each cards memory. think of it like the memory is in raid1 but it has nothing to do with redundancy.

Click to expand...

Not really, everything is being done twice but it's neither faster or more secure as a result, so nothing like raid.
 
ebilcake said:
Not really, everything is being done twice but it's neither faster or more secure as a result, so nothing like raid.
Click to expand...

well raid1 is not for performance. i was only using it to illustrate how the memory was being used, not redundant as explained above. it is duplicated which is like raid1

 
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