I've been in the market for a new vid card for a while now. I bought my X1900XT over 2 years ago and it was starting to show it's age in a number of games - Crysis (duh), STALKER, COD4, etc. In games like HL2: Episode 2, BF2 and Farcry it was managing to pull 50FPS at most parts, but I am looking to get a new monitor - 24", 1920x1200 - in the next few weeks, and I know that at such a resolution I'd have to bump the settings down so it can handle it.
I've looked at the 3870s for some time and was pretty close to buying one, but after hearing about the 4-series on these forums I decided to hold out until they were released. They were released earlier in the week here in Aus, but only though online stores in the eastern states. After having problems buying a videocard though the net already, I wanted to get it at an actual shop so if this card dies I can go there and punch someone get a replacement rather then fire off an email and wait 2 months.
The shops in my area were advertising it's release in 2 weeks. However, this afternoon I went on to one store's site (looking for a monitor) and lo and behold I see:
Radeon HD4870 - Just In, Low Stock - $419
Me:
After running down there and buying it, I got home and set to work:
The Box:
The Card:
The cooler design is rather similar to the HD2900 series and to some extent the G80 8800GTSs.
And yes, I had the flash on. I turned it off for a second shot, but it was all blurry.
All the stuff it came with: drivers, 3Dmark06, crossfire bridge, power cables, DVI/analogue and DVI/HDMI converters and TV-out cables:
A side-by-side comparison with my X1900XT, in all it's curved-PCB-and-bent-PCI-bracket glory:
As you can see, it's only slightly longer and despite the larger cooler, It isn't much heavier then the X1900.
And what is it with graphics card companies and having hot chicks who are more often than not heavily armed and wearing skimpy clothes on their coolers?
Installed:
Still plenty of room for the power cables.
Two of the reasons I didn't want to wait for the 260GTX to drop in price or for the 4870X2 to come out:
1) They couldn't easily fit in my case and
2) My PSU would probably cark it. Indeed, I wasn't sure if it could even handle this.
So with some uncertainty I hooked my comp back up and turned it on. It passed the first test: it didn't explode and burn my house down. A very important test this one, generally if a card fails this it doesn't do very well in the benchmarks.
The red stands out quite I bit as you can see in this photo, but it doesn't look that bad IRL.
Heres the 3Dmark score @ 1280x1024 using:
Core 2 Duo E6400 (stock)
Asus Commando
2GB of DDR2 800 Geil RAM (either 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12, I'm not sure)
74GB Raptor
Windows XP Home with SP2
And of course, the 512MB 4870
It seems rather tame I know (I can already hear people going "i get 342667 points with mah gefors 678900GTSGTXGSXTX overclocked rape edishun!!1) but considering I had 5700ish with my X1900 I'm rather happy with the results. I know my CPU and RAM are a large bottleneck but this card will get me a far better in game frame increase then if I had spent the same money of a quad core and RAM and stayed with the X1900.
I don't have Crysis installed at the moment, but when I put it on I'll screw around with the settings and see what i can come up with.
I've looked at the 3870s for some time and was pretty close to buying one, but after hearing about the 4-series on these forums I decided to hold out until they were released. They were released earlier in the week here in Aus, but only though online stores in the eastern states. After having problems buying a videocard though the net already, I wanted to get it at an actual shop so if this card dies I can go there and punch someone get a replacement rather then fire off an email and wait 2 months.
The shops in my area were advertising it's release in 2 weeks. However, this afternoon I went on to one store's site (looking for a monitor) and lo and behold I see:
Radeon HD4870 - Just In, Low Stock - $419
Me:
After running down there and buying it, I got home and set to work:
The Box:
The Card:
The cooler design is rather similar to the HD2900 series and to some extent the G80 8800GTSs.
And yes, I had the flash on. I turned it off for a second shot, but it was all blurry.
All the stuff it came with: drivers, 3Dmark06, crossfire bridge, power cables, DVI/analogue and DVI/HDMI converters and TV-out cables:
A side-by-side comparison with my X1900XT, in all it's curved-PCB-and-bent-PCI-bracket glory:
As you can see, it's only slightly longer and despite the larger cooler, It isn't much heavier then the X1900.
And what is it with graphics card companies and having hot chicks who are more often than not heavily armed and wearing skimpy clothes on their coolers?
Installed:
Still plenty of room for the power cables.
Two of the reasons I didn't want to wait for the 260GTX to drop in price or for the 4870X2 to come out:
1) They couldn't easily fit in my case and
2) My PSU would probably cark it. Indeed, I wasn't sure if it could even handle this.
So with some uncertainty I hooked my comp back up and turned it on. It passed the first test: it didn't explode and burn my house down. A very important test this one, generally if a card fails this it doesn't do very well in the benchmarks.
The red stands out quite I bit as you can see in this photo, but it doesn't look that bad IRL.
Heres the 3Dmark score @ 1280x1024 using:
Core 2 Duo E6400 (stock)
Asus Commando
2GB of DDR2 800 Geil RAM (either 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12, I'm not sure)
74GB Raptor
Windows XP Home with SP2
And of course, the 512MB 4870
It seems rather tame I know (I can already hear people going "i get 342667 points with mah gefors 678900GTSGTXGSXTX overclocked rape edishun!!1) but considering I had 5700ish with my X1900 I'm rather happy with the results. I know my CPU and RAM are a large bottleneck but this card will get me a far better in game frame increase then if I had spent the same money of a quad core and RAM and stayed with the X1900.
I don't have Crysis installed at the moment, but when I put it on I'll screw around with the settings and see what i can come up with.
Last edited by Sup3r_Dr4gon (2008-06-27 05:52:50)
