The recent release of AMD's newest line of graphics cards has shaken up the GPU industry a bit, to say the least. Following their traditional "Fastest, Most Powerful" schema (along with their traditional high pricing), NVIDIA creates the GT200-series graphics cards: The GTX 260 and GTX 280.
Let there be no question, the GTX 280 is the fastest, most powerful single-GPU graphics card available today - with an original release price upwards of $600. I place special emphasis on the words "original release price". Enter ATI HD 4850 and HD 4870.
To sum up the comparitive performance with the ATI GPUs:
- 2 x HD 4850s are just about as fast as the GTX280
- 1 HD 4870 is faster than the GTX 260, and not quite as fast as the GTX 280 (but real close)
- 2 x HD 4870s, just plain fast.
Why am I not comparing Crossfire with SLI? The answer is simple...price.
A single HD 4850 costs less than $200. The HD 4870 comes in at less than $300. The GTX 260, less than $300; GTX 280 $449+. NVIDIA does not have competitve products in these price segments. They are, however, trying. The e-tail price of a GTX 280 has dropped as much as $200 in just 2 weeks.
Wait. I think I'm forgetting something....hmmm....
THE ATI HD 4870X2 (dual GPU, single card) is coming August 12th.
Ok, back to the original intent of this post. If you're considering new Crossfire build, Legion Hardware just posted an article detailing the performance of Crossfire-capable chipsets. It's definitely worth a read.
Source: LegionHardware
Let there be no question, the GTX 280 is the fastest, most powerful single-GPU graphics card available today - with an original release price upwards of $600. I place special emphasis on the words "original release price". Enter ATI HD 4850 and HD 4870.
To sum up the comparitive performance with the ATI GPUs:
- 2 x HD 4850s are just about as fast as the GTX280
- 1 HD 4870 is faster than the GTX 260, and not quite as fast as the GTX 280 (but real close)
- 2 x HD 4870s, just plain fast.
Why am I not comparing Crossfire with SLI? The answer is simple...price.
A single HD 4850 costs less than $200. The HD 4870 comes in at less than $300. The GTX 260, less than $300; GTX 280 $449+. NVIDIA does not have competitve products in these price segments. They are, however, trying. The e-tail price of a GTX 280 has dropped as much as $200 in just 2 weeks.
Wait. I think I'm forgetting something....hmmm....
THE ATI HD 4870X2 (dual GPU, single card) is coming August 12th.
Ok, back to the original intent of this post. If you're considering new Crossfire build, Legion Hardware just posted an article detailing the performance of Crossfire-capable chipsets. It's definitely worth a read.
Quote:
| By simply firing up 3Dmark Vantage we found that the new X48 chipset was able to provide 17% more performance than the older P35 chipset when using two Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards in Crossfire mode. Moreover, the X48 was less than a percent faster than theX38 and P45 chipsets. These numbers would not exactly have X38 owners rushing out to pick up an Intel X48 motherboard. As we began testing with some real games such as Crysis, we quickly discovered that the X48 chipset was in fact slightly faster than the P45 while still delivering similar performance to the X38 chipset. All up we saw a 41% increase when adding a second graphics card in Crysis on the X48 board. Although the Crysis performances was impressive, Crossfire is not all that well suited to this particular game, so we continued on and hit Devil May Cry 4, which works a treat. Now when testing with the new hit title Devil May Cry 4 we found that a typical P45 setup is going to be 36% faster than a P35 system at 1920x1200 when running Crossfire Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards for example. The X48 was also roughly 6% faster than the P45 chipset, and I would suggest that this is a best case scenario for the high-end X48 chipset. Here the X48 and X38 chipsets delivered identical performance at 1920x1200. Right now it is possible to purchase a decent ASUS P45 motherboard, such as the P5Q Pro for example, at just $150 US. Pairing this board with Crossfire Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards would cost around $550 US, making for an extremely lethal combo! The cheapest ASUS X48 board on the other hand, is the P5E Deluxe at $220 US, and we are not sure that at this price it is worth the 5% Crossfire performance gain. Still, if you are looking to get the most out of your Crossfire setup, then the X48 is the weapon of choice. |
