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4870X2 Arrived, questions

1

1erCru

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 9, 2006
Messages
217
I had difficulty installing drivers, finally found some 8.8 betas that seem to work.

I notice little difference in performance playing Oblivion.

Do you have to enable Crossfire in the Catalyst CP with these cards or does the driver do this automatically.

So far I am disappointed, hopefully new official drivers will help although I have a bad feeling they won't.

Tested on 1650 *1080 and 1920 * 1080.

Brand new 800 Watt OCZ EliteXstreme

E8400 @ 4 Ghz
 
No, the 4870 X2 isn't Crossfire. Isttwo 4870's on one long PCB with a small onboard connector chip to communicate with both GPU's, so you dont need to enable anything(or at least thats how SLi works).

Or do you actually have 2x 4870 X2's?, if so then thats probably why your drivers are screwy. You'll have to wait for good drivers(since the cards just came out two days ago). Also that PSU isn't enough watts for 2x 4870 X2's.
 
It should do it itself.

Do not disable CAT AI in the CCC. That will defeat on board Crossfire. On the other hand, if you run into a title where Crossfire is not supported well, or it causes less performance than a single card, untick CAT AI and run the card is single mode.

The X2 does use Crossfire tech. A lot review sites explained the tech quite well. Try this from Hothardware.

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/ATI-Radeon-HD-4870-X2--AMD-Back-On-Top/?page=2
 
1erCru said:
I had difficulty installing drivers, finally found some 8.8 betas that seem to work.

I notice little difference in performance playing Oblivion.

Do you have to enable Crossfire in the Catalyst CP with these cards or does the driver do this automatically.

So far I am disappointed, hopefully new official drivers will help although I have a bad feeling they won't.

Tested on 1650 *1080 and 1920 * 1080.

Brand new 800 Watt OCZ EliteXstreme

E8400 @ 4 Ghz
Click to expand...
and what is the difference between your old card and this one ?
 
I just got mine as well. Running them in CrossfireX. Set up was a cinch. the only difficulty was plugging in the power cords as the plugs face down and a switch from my water tubes covered the bottom card's plugs. These things put off some crazy heat (althought they are idling at 76c)

Question: Catalyst is showing them at idle running at 507mhz core, 500 mem. I'm assuming this is the power saving kicking in, correct? or is Catalyst misreading?
 
I meant I have one 4870X2.

I guess I will just wait for drivers.

Certainly is not an improvement over my single 4870 in Oblivion thus far.
 
I wonder if this could be a driver issue. Never played oblivion myself, is that a pretty graphically intensive game?
 
BigCactus said:
I wonder if this could be a driver issue. Never played oblivion myself, is that a pretty graphically intensive game?
Click to expand...

Its a little older game. There are some texture packs, etc thats will make it a little more graphically intensive. If running the game stock, there might not be too much difference. The question is has the AA, AF, etc been cranked up? Was the 4870 performance poor and something a lot better was expected? Is this XP? Vista?
 
Hrm interesting...I'm thinking of upgrading to a 4870x2 as well (from an 8800gtx,) and one of the games I want more performance in is Oblivion. I'll definitely be watching this thread.

Have you seen a performance increase in any other games? Your 3dmark score looks correct at least...
 
1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1200 might not see a whole ton of benefits from a 4870x2 in this game unless you crank up AA. Try 24 x CFAA...
 
I was gonna say you need to be running high rez to take advantage of this card...1680x1050 is way low rez today.

The 4870x2 is made for 2560x1600 gaming, or 1920x1200 with like 8xAA...other than that there really is no point for this card.
 
That is not true at all. Look at the benchmarks in 1680, it still does well above the 8800gtx/260gtx etc...

1680 is hardly a LOW rez. A 22" monitor is more than sufficient in today's gaming world. I am tired of seeing sites only benchmarking for 24"+ monitors, I would bet at least 75% of gamers don't have a monitor that size.

This guy obviously is a biased due to his overpriced 30" Apple display, I would ignore his comment of it being pointless at 1680.

However if you are not turning up your graphics (AA, AF, Vsync, etc) than you may not see an increase. These cards are also DX10 so running a DX9 game will not allow you too see max benefits.
 
crawlgsx said:
That is not true at all. Look at the benchmarks in 1680, it still does well above the 8800gtx/260gtx etc...

1680 is hardly a LOW rez. A 22" monitor is more than sufficient in today's gaming world. I am tired of seeing sites only benchmarking for 24"+ monitors, I would bet at least 75% of gamers don't have a monitor that size.

This guy obviously is a biased due to his overpriced 30" Apple display, I would ignore his comment of it being pointless at 1680.

However if you are not turning up your graphics (AA, AF, Vsync, etc) than you may not see an increase. These cards are also DX10 so running a DX9 game will not allow you too see max benefits.
Click to expand...

Totally agree
 
Further Oblivion benchmarks.

Honestly the current drivers absolutely stink with this game.

I have access to both 1650 and 1920 screens. All the performance benefit of the X2 comes in the form of what I like to call overdraw, areas where the fps are already high simply render at a higher FPS

My 8800 GTX has better FPS in large scale fights with many NPC's than this card. My single 4870 rendered higher frames walking out in the wilderness.

So the X2 can run games that are already 60fps capable on cards half the price but don't scale barely at all when it comes to minimum FPS?

Can better drivers actually save this card?

Man the GPU market is so totally screwed up right now its not even funny.

An X2 does nothing for you playing Oblivion at 1080.

Is there any way to check to see if both GPU's are even working on this thing in games?
 
I have to agree. Unless you have a 24"+ monitor or play with 16x AA and 16xAF a 4870x2 is total overkill.
 
That's not necessarily true. Those with a 24 inch monitor will pick up the 4870x2, as it will be smoother and simply look better. A single 4850 will be stressed at 1920x1200 in cod4 if you max settings 4xAA/16xAF at times...especially when there are a lot of grass textures. I noticed that the 4870 however handles cod4 a lot better even when things get highly detailesd. The more head room a card has, the more smoother the game play. So the 4870x2 is a good candidate for people with 24 inch monitors that want to max everything and have the smoothest possible game play.

*Never mind, just reread your post and you do state 24" or above*
 
i have a 24 incher and i still went for a 4870x2... can't hurt to 1)have a little more AA 2) be able to play games that will come out next year
 
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