Help with basic 280 and 4870 information

D

Dethman

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Jan 4, 2005
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Hey guys, to be honest, im a little overwhemled with all the threads about these cards, and cant find just the broken down information that im looking for,

Questions are.

Anyone know when the 4870x2 is comming out? and the aprox. price?

Which is faster? 4870 or the 280? and aprox. by how much?

Price/ performance, which is the best buy between all the new gen cards...looking to spend 200-400 dollars...

how can the 4870 be faster if its still only 256bit

Thanks...i know i could find all this information...but there are just way too many pages to go through of people just talking bs about fanboy wars rather than talking about the facts.

Ive had both nvidia and ati/amd. ..i like them both, i upgrade every generation.. i just always go for the best price/performance ...ussualy not spending more than 400...saving money is always a plus...
 
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1318960

4870 is neck-in-neck and faster in some cases (slower slightly too in others), but costs $300 MSRP, while the GTX 280 is a little faster overall but costs $650 MSRP.

The Radeon 4870 uses GDDR5 which runs at around double the frequency of normal GDDR3, so even though it has a 256-bit bus, it nearly equals the 280's bandwidth.

Hands-down, 4870 if money is a concern at all, and even if not, two of them in crossfire is a huge amount faster than a 280 across the board.
 
For the money you want to spend, 4870 is definitely the card for you. It isn't as fast as a GTX280, but it's also less than half the price. However, dollar for dollar, the 4870 is much more of a good buy than a GTX280 -- in other words, although the GTX280 costs about 120% more than a 4870, you don't get even close to a 120% increase in performance.

Also rumors are that the R700 -- which is two 4870 on a single chip (think 9800GX2) -- will be faster than a GTX280, and probably as expensive, or perhaps cheaper. That card comes out sometime in August.
 
The 4870 is about 0.93 times the GTX 280, your eye wont be able to tell a difference between them. GTX 280 is slightly faster than the 4870 in more games than the 4870 is faster than it. You should definately buy the 4870.
 
Will be interesting to see the tests with the 1GB versions of the 4870 as well, since most tests are in high resolutions, where more memory play a large role due to larger textures. :)
 
1 GiB wont make much difference, except for those games where 4870 at 2560 just doesn't cut it and gets 0 fps. Though perhaps ati may surprise us?
 
aight pretty sweet, im out of town till the end of august.just sold my 8800gts320..(for $200 gotta love international pricing when your selling and US prices when your buying :)

..so it looks like ill be getting the 4870...and if the 4870x2 if its in my price range, So by august there is really nothing nvidia can do to make me go to them, unless they possibly lower their price of the 280 to that of a 4870, and possibly shrink the die to provide more overclocking room

when you buy a 4870x2...is it Crossfire?/ condisiderd 2 cards...or is it considered 1 card with 2 gpus

btw thanks for the links to that thread, that was the exact information i was looking for...i didnt see that one
 
Dethman said:
aight pretty sweet, im out of town till the end of august.just sold my 8800gts320

you buy a 4870x2...is it Crossfire?/ condisiderd 2 cards...or is it considered 1 card with 2 gpus
Click to expand...

That's the million-dollar question: some rumors state it will be like one card with a shared memory architecture, while others think it will be just like 2 cards, but in 1 slot.
 
Dethman said:
aight pretty sweet, im out of town till the end of august.just sold my 8800gts320

..so it looks like ill be getting the 4870...and if the 4870x2 if its in my price range, So by august there is really nothing nvidia can do to make me go to them, unless they possibly lower their price of the 280 to that of a 4870, and possibly shrink the die to provide more overclocking room

when you buy a 4870x2...is it Crossfire?/ condisiderd 2 cards...or is it considered 1 card with 2 gpus

btw thanks for the links to that thread, that was the exact information i was looking for...i didnt see that one
Click to expand...

We don't know that yet, the rumor mill is spinning on full rpm regarding that case. But AMD has the card finished, only need to fix their drivers, then they can release the card, whatever they may call it. It is supposed to use a second gen crossfire birdge of some sort to eliminate the problems with alternate frame rendering.
 
Regarding the 280 vs. 4870 argument, i believe the first Chinese review of the 4870 said it best....with the 4870, you get 80-90% of the performance of the 280 at 46% of the price.
 
Out of them all, the best bang for buck card is the 4850 but if you want a lil more juice the 4870 is the one for you, number 2 spot in the bang for buck hehe.

Did you guys see the hexus review ? Interesting bang 4 buck stuff.

Guys, what about the GTX 260 ? Wasnt that one coming out today to rain on Atis parade ? LOL.

Cant seem to find it on any etailer though.
 
Juic3 said:
Guys, what about the GTX 260 ? Wasnt that one coming out today to rain on Atis parade ? LOL.

Cant seem to find it on any etailer though.
Click to expand...

It's available on pny.com (a manufacturer's site) for $399, but why on earth would you buy one when the 4870 for $299 far outperforms it? :)

EDIT: They pulled it off for online ordering apparrently :p .
 
GoldenTiger said:
It's available on pny.com (a manufacturer's site) for $399, but why on earth would you buy one when the 4870 for $299 far outperforms it? :)
Click to expand...

Wouldnt ever, I just wanna have a laugh :D .

I got a sapphire 4870 overnight ordered already.
 
I don't know if this was discussed or not, but this makes me wonder... is ATI taking a loss or going break-even on these new cards to regain market share, or is nVidia just gouging people badly because they won the last several quarters by a mile? Or is it just that nVidia's 200 series architecture is just too complicated, too hot, too much, and ATI pulled an R&D coup with a much more efficient chip?
 
wildfire99 said:
I don't know if this was discussed or not, but this makes me wonder... is ATI taking a loss or going break-even on these new cards to regain market share, or is nVidia just gouging people badly because they won the last several quarters by a mile? Or is it just that nVidia's 200 series architecture is just too complicated, too hot, too much, and ATI pulled an R&D coup with a much more efficient chip?
Click to expand...

The last scenario you postulated :).
 
wildfire99 said:
Is nVidia just gouging people badly because they won the last several quarters by a mile?
Or is it just that nVidia's 200 series architecture is just too complicated, too hot, too much, and ATI pulled an R&D coup with a much more efficient chip?
Click to expand...
It's a combination of the above.
 
Now if only they could turn around and work that same magic on the Phenoms to make some real barn-burner CPU's... AMD/ATI might recover some of its lost market share.
 
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