4850X2

i dont have that game, but the numbers for that and the crysis results seem way off. and dont agree with the few other reviews i have seen. or my own results.
 
So as far as the connections it looks like it takes a 6 pin and 8 pin connector? Right now I have two 6 pin connectors coming off my PSU to the video card. Do you just need the 6 to 8 pin adapter on one of the connectors for the 4850 X2?
 
eggrock said:
Yay for you! :cool: :cool: :cool: The Zalmans will make a huge difference if you use them. I just finished up my card this morning.

P1060298.jpg
Click to expand...

Hey eggrock, nice set up there, bet those are a lot quieter.

Any ways, I plan to put some water blocks on this thing, and was wondering why you
used the zalman ram sinks instead of just leaving the stock heat sinks on the ram...
does it make that much of a difference?
 
their numbers dont agree with mine. results, that is. for crysis. the game. and the stock "heatsinks" for the ram are just aluminum plates, really.
 
I see. Might reinstall warhead just to see how it runs. Going to keep the aluminum
heatsinks on the ram...and keep things simple. I figured if sapphire thought it was efficient
enough...might as well. Anyways when I got the water blocks on this thing, heat
transfer is so efficient that the board remains cool to the touch...I would think that in itself
would help keep the ram cool.
 
Going by the latest comment attached to the Bit-Tech review, it appears the reviewer panned the card less for what it is and more because it set off what appear to be two pet peeves: loud stock fans, and some bizarre distaste for ATi's once-a-month driver policy.

I would take Bit-Tech's review with a grain of salt.
 
i didnt even read that far until now. the guy hated it. "too loud for a modern gaming system". what game is he playing, scrabble? every other review has been 90% positive, they all point out the fan thing. i dont hear the fans, but i guess thats just me. i live in nyc and there is always a high level of background noise, 24/7. this is a very cool running gpu, my fans are just about always at 20%, temps about 33c, case temp around 28c.
 
MocciBoo said:
I see. Might reinstall warhead just to see how it runs. Going to keep the aluminum
heatsinks on the ram...and keep things simple. I figured if sapphire thought it was efficient
enough...might as well. Anyways when I got the water blocks on this thing, heat
transfer is so efficient that the board remains cool to the touch...I would think that in itself
would help keep the ram cool.
Click to expand...

The stock aluminum heatspreaders should be fine. I put the Zalman's on because I could. :p
 
I don't know what the hell people are talking about when they bitch about the fan noise... Sure it gets a little noisy if I crank the fan speed up to 100% but what the hell environment are they expecting to operate in. My case blocks out most of the noise and even if I take the side panel off it isn't that bad. The ATI auto fan control works well and the fans hang around 20 - 30% most of the time.


Haven't tried to OC the card yet... but i did achieve a long time goal of scoring over 20,000 in 3dMark2001 :) (don't laugh my last build was a P4 northwood with a 9800pro)
 
I'm really interested in seeing sandman's results on the 4850 CF vs 4850x2. Are there any reviews out there?
 
Right now I'm on a 19" 1440x900 but I'm on the verge of getting a 24" 1920x1200 or the 23" 2048x1152. I've got one 4850 and am contemplating getting a second. So far all signs point to "it varies from game to game, but overall generally better performance." Which I'm fine with. I'm really not considering replacing my card with anything else, but just curious about any performance difference between CF and x2.
 
boltz man said:
Right now I'm on a 19" 1440x900 but I'm on the verge of getting a 24" 1920x1200 or the 23" 2048x1152. I've got one 4850 and am contemplating getting a second. So far all signs point to "it varies from game to game, but overall generally better performance." Which I'm fine with. I'm really not considering replacing my card with anything else, but just curious about any performance difference between CF and x2.
Click to expand...

X2 will be slightly faster and 1GB for each card would give the X2 an advantage.
 
Sparkhard said:
I don't know what the hell people are talking about when they bitch about the fan noise... Sure it gets a little noisy if I crank the fan speed up to 100% but what the hell environment are they expecting to operate in. My case blocks out most of the noise and even if I take the side panel off it isn't that bad. The ATI auto fan control works well and the fans hang around 20 - 30% most of the time.


Haven't tried to OC the card yet... but i did achieve a long time goal of scoring over 20,000 in 3dMark2001 :) (don't laugh my last build was a P4 northwood with a 9800pro)
Click to expand...

I wanted something quieter than my old system which wasn't very loud to begin with. The stock fans killed that deal--who are you kidding anyways, this card is extremely loud. From what I've read it is louder than any other (recent) card on the market. Sapphire could have done a better job; the shroud was a good idea but the heatsinks were average, the fans were noisy and had 2-pin connectors--and hence couldn't be monitored or controlled by 3rd party apps. Basically it was a poor job on an otherwise excellent card. It is well worth the cost to use an aftermarket cooling solution.

It was too loud in my P182 (which is designed for noise reduction.) My opinion of course.
 
I'm finding the stock cooling too loud for my tastes as well... Even at the lowest speed it is pretty noisy.

I'm not too concerned about the noise once the fans ramp up since I'm in game anyways, but I can't stand it at idle... waiting on the zalman vf900 now..

although i guess since i came from an 8800gt with a passive accelero, anything with fans would be louder than what i had...
 
Do you guys keep the computer up on your desk or is it on the floor next to it ? I mean, if I turn all of my case fans off I can hear it but even then it isn't that bad....

Just trying to get a feel for what the complaints are about. Of course all of this is relative
 
I wonder if this card is as loud as my old 4870x2 once I watercool it...the voltage regs
on the 4870x2 made weird high pitch frequencies / electrical noises. That was one
of the main reasons why I shyed away from the 4870x2. Guess I'll find out next week
when my other block for this card comes in. Anyone do some vantage runs with this
card...I'm not a big fan of 3dmark scores...but it came free with the x2...so might
as well give it a run and see how it does.
 
Sparkhard said:
Do you guys keep the computer up on your desk or is it on the floor next to it ? I mean, if I turn all of my case fans off I can hear it but even then it isn't that bad....

Just trying to get a feel for what the complaints are about. Of course all of this is relative
Click to expand...


i keep mine on the floor now with all case fans on hi. while i dont use delta 120x38 or 120x76 fans anymore noise level has never been a primary concern with me. i use lots of voltage so i need lots of airflow. i swap out my hardware way too much to watercool, ie i would be hunting down new waterblocks constantly. i got the zalman silent heat pipe psu, but i didnt even consider how loud or quiet it is when i bought it.
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
i keep mine on the floor now with all case fans on hi. while i dont use delta 120x38 or 120x76 fans anymore noise level has never been a primary concern with me. i use lots of voltage so i need lots of airflow. i swap out my hardware way too much to watercool, ie i would be hunting down new waterblocks constantly. i got the zalman silent heat pipe psu, but i didnt even consider how loud or quiet it is when i bought it.
Click to expand...


I keep my A05 on a table near my desk - it's still pretty loud but not horrible. I haven't had the courage to watercool anything yet. Though I think this card NEEDS the VF-900 to manage that noise/heat in such a smaller case like mine.
 
Mine's right up on top of my desk about 1.5' from my head.

I pushed the temps and clock speeds with FurMark and CCC and they do get up there. 77C at stock speeds and 85C using the CCC autotune settings.

Autotune set the GPU clock to 690MHz (625MHz is stock) and memory to 1188MHz (993MHz is stock). Suprisingly, the card seems to be stable at those settings, at least in FurMark. I don't have much need to test it out with anything else but I suppose I'll run FutureMark at some point since it comes free with the card. I'd rather play games than benchmarks. ;)

This is one hell of a card.
 
If you have the time to change the fan. I think that you should at least find some time to OC your card properly, not just let a program to do it for you. ;)
 
Someone run vantage, it came free with our 4850x2.:D. I'm thinking over 17k with this
beast easily with a 3.6ghz OC....
 
The Vantage Performance score is going to be weak...no PhysX. I get around 10,500 with just a dual Core 2 @ 4 Ghz. Most of the tests get double the FPS of my old GTX 260 (which scored around 12,000 in the same system), but the physx tests just kills the score with the X2.

It honestly bruises your ego a bit to have a lower score with a dual GPU card, but my gaming performance is significantly better.
 
I got close to 11,000 at stock clocks. I blieve it was 10,959. I'll OC my Phenom II & 4850x2 and see what I can get out of it.
 
TheSandman2236, you totally need to throw one of those single 4850s on there and try out some Tri-fire love. :) I'd love to see how well it scales.
 
Is there a way to get scored without the physx test? Oh well, that was a very high 3dmark06 score though at 22k. I would think this card would get at least 17k but I guess not, I thought vantage threw out the whole physx element.
 
First run...stock clocks on the 4850x2 and 3.2ghz OC on the cpu. The gpu score is putting up numbers
close to the gtx280 / 4870x2. I could OC my quad to 3.8 and my gpu to probably around 700/2000 pretty easily...I'm guessing though it would only hit about 14k to 15k though. I'll wait to oc thing thing when I get my water blocks.

4850x2-1.jpg
 
So let me get this straight... An ATI card comes with a benchmarking tool that will only score high on nVidia cards (or possibly systems with a PPU?) :rolleyes: Dumb, but what do I care. I got the card to play games. If GPU e-peen is really a factor, get FurMark and run a 'contest' benchmark. Mine scored 11th highest all time, but I have a strong suspicion that a lot of those lower 4870x2 scores were benched without Crossfire enabled.
 
Ogilvy said:
The Vantage Performance score is going to be weak...no PhysX. I get around 10,500 with just a dual Core 2 @ 4 Ghz. Most of the tests get double the FPS of my old GTX 260 (which scored around 12,000 in the same system), but the physx tests just kills the score with the X2.

It honestly bruises your ego a bit to have a lower score with a dual GPU card, but my gaming performance is significantly better.
Click to expand...

My score seems to be a tad higher than yours perhaps because I'm running a quad. Any ways, it is very difficult to score 12k with this card. Had my cpu up to 3.6ghz and the gpu to 700/2000 and I got around 11900. A common score with the 4870x2 seems to about 14k with a quad oc'd to 3.6.....so the 4850x2 is a good 2.5k off the mark. You can't expect this card to score the same as a 4870x2 I guess, lol. It was interesting that going from 3.2 to 3.6 on the cpu yielded a negligible performance gain on my gpu score...just goes to show you that 3.2 OC is all you really need.
 
Yeah, Mocco. I mean, I still have it. despite the lower score. I run through video cards like water through a faucet. I'll ditch a card after one day if I don't like it. I could have gotten in on the GTX 280 Buy.com deal early, perhaps picked up a GTX 280 for cheap there or elsewhere...but I know enough from the 260 and Core 216 to know that this card is better than a 280. It's exactly what I wanted in price-performance. nVidia's inclusion of PhysX in Vantage was a stroke of brilliant marketing, though...you gotta hand it to 'em. And if there are more PhysX titles in the works...we're all going to be wanting an nVidia card anyway for that second or third PCI-e slot.
 
Well if a member here got 12k with a 4870 512mb card...Vantage to me makes absolutely no sense as the 4850x2 performs better than 4870 512mb crossfire in games, lol. I go through cards fast as well, but considering what I payed for this card, and the performance I'm seeing...this is probably the first card I'm going to keep for at least a year.

But hell, I'll probably change my tune once the 5800 series come out. As for PhysX...all the games I play don't seem to use physx..and I have pretty much all the hot titles out, like fallout 3, cod5, crysis warhead, etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top