Worthy Upgrade? HD4870 from 8800GTX

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aFive

2[H]4U
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I wasn't really concidering an upgrade up until I got offered a killer deal. I would basically be paying $25 out of my pocket to trade up to HD4870. Just wondering if it's worth it? I play games at 1680x1050; mostly COD4. I do plan on checking Far Cry 2 out and maybe beating some of the older shooters. I want to play through Crysis, but my GTX only gave me about 25-35 fps on custom config, which is something I could not deal with. From reading the reviews, It looks as if though the HD4870 will ovver about 35% performance incrase in Crysis and 45% increase in COD4 over 8800GTX? THoughts?
 
nissanztt90 said:
For 25 dollars i would do it. I play at the same res.
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Well, it will be a tad more with shipping, I might actually have to pay around $60. I guess my main cocern is it being a stupid idea. GTX does have 768mb vs 512mb, is the performance increase all that significant?
 
it is significant, honestly

512MB is enough, ati has better mem management anyways..

and for $25, its a steal
 
I say no if you don't need something better like right now plus the fact that there is the X2 right around the corner. But hey, if thats what you really want, go for it.
 
iTYPE said:
I say no if you don't need something better like right now plus the fact that there is the X2 right around the corner. But hey, if thats what you really want, go for it.
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With me having to live on limited income and spending most of it towards college expenses anyway I am in no position tothrow $500 towards a video card. At this stage, my 8800GTX runs mostly everything fine; it's just a heck of a deal i would be getting. If Far Cry 2 proves to be demanding, upgrading today may really be worth it?
 
for the money yes. I am thinking about doing this and I don't have that good of a deal. I am just going to sell mine on ebay. but I am playing at 1920 by 1200.
 
For $25 yes, for $60 no. Its a slight upgrade, the 8800GTX was a VERY capable card.
 
per who?
and who is raping you with 35 bucks in shipping charges?
I went from a 8800GT 512mb OC bfg version and even i didnt see a 40% increase to my 4870.
 
aFive said:
Was?
But isn't it an average of 40% performance increase over 8800GTX?
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It varies, as always. The 4870 shows its true merit at high resolutions and high anti-aliasing. If you're planning to crank the res or AA, it may be worth the $60. However, from what I've seen a GTX should be capable of taking care of everything but Crysis at the res you're at. I'm not quite sure how Nvidia friendly Crysis is, but I know it prefers Nvidia.

As always, its up to you if you need it. I should have put a disclaimer that I am a cheapass and only buy from every other generation of video card. I will be getting a GTX360 though :).
 
Rydawg5143 said:
per who?
and who is raping you with 35 bucks in shipping charges?
I went from a 8800GT 512mb OC bfg version and even i didnt see a 40% increase to my 4870.
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Well, I was to sell my GTX + 8600GT in the same bundle; it would leave me about $25 short of getting HD4870. But, it seems as if though I can only sell my 8800GTX, will mean that I will have additional expenses.
The main thing I was looking at was COD4 performance, from viewing benchies it was nearly 30FPS increase in some cases. I do have issues playing Overgrown as it tends to lag up a bit in the creek area.
 
See, thats just it, your not going to lose on this deal but I question how much you'll win.
In my experiance with this card versus my own GTX I will say the card is better as well as image quality to boot but I wouldn't say its 40% better, no.

aFive said:
Was?
But isn't it an average of 40% performance increase over 8800GTX?
Click to expand...
 
I recently went through this. The 7800GTX in my gaming rig was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I had to decide whether to move the 8800GTX from my workstation, which I rarely game on, to the gaming machine and put the 7800GTX in the workstation, which would be fine.

I did a lot of research, looked at a lot of charts, and what I determined was the 4870 really does smoke the 8800GTX. Hard to swallow since I paid almost $600 for that 8800 just over a year or so ago!

I got the 4870 and put it in the gaming rig. Been very happy with it.
 
iTYPE said:
See, thats just it, your not going to lose on this deal but I question how much you'll win.
In my experiance with this card versus my own GTX I will say the card is better as well as image quality to boot but I wouldn't say its 40% better, no.
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Yea, my GTX is pretty awesome still; here's why I am even considering this upgrade:
Crysis: runs eh, few more FPS would make the game more enjoyable.
COD4: runs great, there are occasions on some maps where few extra FPS would fix everything.
AOC; I do not play it, but one of the reason I quit was poor performance; few extra fps will fix it.

As you can see, few extra FPS would fix a number of problems for me; I thought that is what HD4870 could just do.
 
BTW... Is this a public deal? If so, where from?

-Larry
 
TechLarry said:
BTW... Is this a public deal? If so, where from?

-Larry
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No, I found somebody with really good heat that is offereing HD4870 in a week for a very good price.
TechLarry said:
I recently went through this. The 7800GTX in my gaming rig was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I had to decide whether to move the 8800GTX from my workstation, which I rarely game on, to the gaming machine and put the 7800GTX in the workstation, which would be fine.

I did a lot of research, looked at a lot of charts, and what I determined was the 4870 really does smoke the 8800GTX. Hard to swallow since I paid almost $600 for that 8800 just over a year or so ago!

I got the 4870 and put it in the gaming rig. Been very happy with it.
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I looked at a ton of charts last night, that is the conclusion that I have arrived at myself. I too paid nearly $600 for my GTX last year :(.
 
Not worth it.

I just returned my 4870, still have an 8800 GTX that is closing in on its second birthday.

Example: Oblivion, 4870 actually performs worse in certain situations than an 8800 GTX. The reviewers didn't properly benchmark the card for this game. Ironically, in interiors the 8800 GTX runs faster than a 4870 during heavy combat, even when the 4870 is overclocked. The 8800 also beats Oblivion in cities. The 4870 leaves the 8800 GTX behind by a fair margin out in the wilderness, which makes me think the 4870 is simply optimized to renders grass and trees. The exterior performance of the 4870 lead me to believe the card was a monster for this game. Maybe the drivers suck, I just don't see how drivers are going to raise these minimum frames by the same degree they do out in the wilderness.

I'll wait for the 4870X2 or the 55nm Nvidia refresh.
 
My question is, " Why were those cards in there various places to begin with ?"

TechLarry said:
I recently went through this. The 7800GTX in my gaming rig was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I had to decide whether to move the 8800GTX from my workstation, which I rarely game on, to the gaming machine and put the 7800GTX in the workstation, which would be fine.

I did a lot of research, looked at a lot of charts, and what I determined was the 4870 really does smoke the 8800GTX. Hard to swallow since I paid almost $600 for that 8800 just over a year or so ago!

I got the 4870 and put it in the gaming rig. Been very happy with it.
Click to expand...
 
i myself had the choice of getting a 4870 for $299 or a second 8800gtx for $189
i picked the 8800gtx due to the fact that i paid $625 for the first one almost 2 years ago and it still owns everything i throw at it, but i wanted to be a bit more future proof.
also the last time i ran an ATI card was a pretty awful AGP x800pro that had hardware and drive problems.

that and 8800gtx SLI is +/- 5 fps from a gtx 280
 
aFive said:
Well, it will be a tad more with shipping, I might actually have to pay around $60. I guess my main cocern is it being a stupid idea. GTX does have 768mb vs 512mb, is the performance increase all that significant?
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I was hesitant upgrading to 4870 from and 8800 GTX due to the less memory. After playing with both rigs side-by-side for about a month now (in single and dual card SLI/Crossfire mode), I can say the 512mb frame buffer is not a problem, even at 2560x1600. I'm playing the following games at 2560x1600 with AA on 4870 Crossfire with absolutely no problems: Witcher, Mass Effect, HL2 Episode 2, Assassin's Creed, Age of Conan, Crysis. The lower frame-buffer may prove to be an issue in future, but doens't seem to be in current games.
 
SpoonMaN-EQ said:
i myself had the choice of getting a 4870 for $299 or a second 8800gtx for $189
i picked the 8800gtx due to the fact that i paid $625 for the first one almost 2 years ago and it still owns everything i throw at it, but i wanted to be a bit more future proof.
also the last time i ran an ATI card was a pretty awful AGP x800pro that had hardware and drive problems.

that and 8800gtx SLI is +/- 5 fps from a gtx 280
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You chose wisely I think (especially since you saved a Benjamin). My 8800 GTX SLI noticably edges out my 4870 rig in single-card mode. Once the 4870 is in X-fire, however, there is no contest.
 
SpoonMaN-EQ said:
i myself had the choice of getting a 4870 for $299 or a second 8800gtx for $189
i picked the 8800gtx due to the fact that i paid $625 for the first one almost 2 years ago and it still owns everything i throw at it, but i wanted to be a bit more future proof.
also the last time i ran an ATI card was a pretty awful AGP x800pro that had hardware and drive problems.

that and 8800gtx SLI is +/- 5 fps from a gtx 280
Click to expand...

Yea, I would do the same thing but I have P35 motherboard which doesn't really work well with SLI.
 
I dont understand, how is the 4870 not an amazing deal for $25 over the ultra?

thats like stepping up from a 8800ultra to a GTX260 for $25. how is that not a bloody good deal?

512MB framebuffer doesnt limit the 4870, as seen by the reviews.

edit: to the OP, id say go for it
 
I didnt have an 8800GTX but I did have an 8800GTS 512 that was highly overclocked and going from that to a stock clock 4870 was a big difference in COD4. I can turn on all options and max out all settings @ 1680x1050 and the game NEVER chokes. My 8800GTS 512 would choke under heavy smoke conditions below 30 fps. I could not max out COD4 settings without taking fairly large FPS hits. The 4870 just blows away my old card. Don't know if this helps.
 
I did this very upgrade... more of an incremental improvement for the most part, with the exception being Conan, where the 4870 just blows the 8800gtx out of the water for some reason (also at 1680x1050 resolution).
 
even a 4850 is better than the 8800 rubbish, 4870 is not even a question
 
I am not questioning the fact that 4870 is a better card, I am questioning just exactly how much it would benefit me. The thing is that I barely game these days, quite busy.
 
Update: I actually went down to Best Buy to grab VisionTek 4870 so that I can decide if I want to go through with the deal here on [H], I plan to return this one in a week or so ( w00t for no restocking fee).

Anyway, my impressions so far, 9/10. I love the card, it's smaller than the GTX which leaves a bit more space in my case.

Performance wise, I have played Age of Conan, Call Of Duty 4, Crysis, Lord Of the Rings Online on both cards today. First I went ahead and ran everything on my 8800GTX, then took it out, ran driver sweeper and stuck HD 4870 in the rig, Crysis is now playable. The few extra frames that I am getting are making a huge difference. Call Of Duty 4 runs way better with AA enabled also, there are not any jaggies present on maps such as Overgrown. Age of Conan seems to be better too. It's hard to tell, my sub has expired so I used my own buddy key to invite myself and check out the noobie area. I felt as if though I was getting about 10 extra FPS with 4XAA and bloom enabled vs what i have had on 8800GTX. I will post back with more results as soon as I get to Tortage. As far as LOTRO goes, there was an about 15 fps increase in areas that are dynamically shadowed. Before, any zone ( old forest ) that has a ton of shadowing would chop up at 30fps, now it's at about 50.

My only gripe is the fan noise. At default settings, card was getting to 80C. I edited the XML profile and set it to 100%, was awful, I could not hear myself talk. I ended up playing with it some, anything above 40% is noticeable. At 40% my temps do not get above 55C.
 
aFive said:
Update: I actually went down to Best Buy to grab VisionTek 4870 so that I can decide if I want to go through with the deal here on [H], I plan to return this one in a week or so ( w00t for no restocking fee).

Anyway, my impressions so far, 9/10. I love the card, it's smaller than the GTX which leaves a bit more space in my case.

Performance wise, I have played Age of Conan, Call Of Duty 4, Crysis, Lord Of the Rings Online on both cards today. First I went ahead and ran everything on my 8800GTX, then took it out, ran driver sweeper and stuck HD 4870 in the rig, Crysis is now playable. The few extra frames that I am getting are making a huge difference. Call Of Duty 4 runs way better with AA enabled also, there are not any jaggies present on maps such as Overgrown. Age of Conan seems to be better too. It's hard to tell, my sub has expired so I used my own buddy key to invite myself and check out the noobie area. I felt as if though I was getting about 10 extra FPS with 4XAA and bloom enabled vs what i have had on 8800GTX. I will post back with more results as soon as I get to Tortage. As far as LOTRO goes, there was an about 15 fps increase in areas that are dynamically shadowed. Before, any zone ( old forest ) that has a ton of shadowing would chop up at 30fps, now it's at about 50.

My only gripe is the fan noise. At default settings, card was getting to 80C. I edited the XML profile and set it to 100%, was awful, I could not hear myself talk. I ended up playing with it some, anything above 40% is noticeable. At 40% my temps do not get above 55C.
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Sounds awesome. I went from sli 8600s to the 4850 - havent regretted it for a second. I heard the ati drivers were garbage but to be honest they are more stable for me then the nvidia drivers ever were. Also, sli is terrible - even when it works (atleast for me).
 
ZMTToxics said:
Sounds awesome. I went from sli 8600s to the 4850 - havent regretted it for a second. I heard the ati drivers were garbage but to be honest they are more stable for me then the nvidia drivers ever were. Also, sli is terrible - even when it works (atleast for me).
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I have owned many ATI cards in the past, never had a problem with drivers. I did however had major issues with 175's Nvidia's, so...
 
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