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Note: I haven't proof read this, cut me a little slack. 
Alright guys, I saw another member did a really outstanding review for us, comparing his 4870xf vs GTX 280 experience. It was very insightful. I would like to share a similar experience, but please do not hold me to the standards of the other review. I have several points to make and I will probably jump around a bit, sorry, I just hope it may help some of you out there.
For starters the test system is in my signature. I am not a fanboy of either camp. I like a good gaming experience, period. I have owned many graphics cards. Recent cards include:8800gts 512mb, 3870x2, 9800gx2, 4850s in xfire and a GTX 280.
A little over a week ago, I sent my BFG 9800gx2 in for trade up on a GTX 280. A couple days later, I had the opportunity to jump on the Best Buy Hot Deal to nab two 4850s for about 320.00 with tax. I had no video card and Im a hardware nut, so naturally I jumped all over it.
I played with them in crossfire for about a little over a week. Here are a list of NON-GAMING related positives on the cards:
-The ATI Vista drivers rock. With the recent cards I have owned all listed above, all the nVidia cards (excluding the GTX, Ill get there) have caused some random lock ups (usually after waking the pc) or a rare BSOD. Not major issues, happening once every couple of days, but annoying to say the least. With the ATI cards, not one lock up or anything. What a relief. My girlfriend actually booed last night when I mentioned throwing in the GTX because she hated the nvidia lock ups.
- Keep in mind Im talking about the 4850s here, but they are small! I was so damn excited how short they are! Every other recent card I have owned has been so damn long I am occassionly forced to move a hard drive. They are also only single slot, sweet! You can run crossfire with these puppies without having to worry about killing air flow.
-Dual monitor support while in crossfire, nuff said!
-Low power requirements, one 6pin connector per card!
-Keep your sweet a$$ intel chipset that overclocks like a champ!!!
A few non-gaming negatives: HOT!!! Yes I know the new nvidia gpus are warm as well, but holy sh*t! The stock coolers on these guys just arent pushing enough heat out the back of the case right now. Ive read here on the forums that this may be a driver issue, causing the fans to not run at high enough speeds. Anyway, I have a very well ventilated case. Outside of using software temp sensors, I also have one hardware temp sensor that reads out onto an lcd on the front of the case. I place that guy right in the center of things to read ambient air temps inside the case. When I went from the gx2 to these two 4850s, ambient idle went from 77F to 83F, under full load it went from approx. 91F to 110F!!! You either need a driver update or new coolers. Good news is for the $ it costs to get them, you can afford a third party cooler.
Now onto the games . I can already hear the uproar, but I only play a few games right now. The main game I test with right now is Crysis, it is demanding as hell, Im looking forward to Crysis Warhead and Far Cry 2. Sorry, Im a huge FPS fan. Im also playing the Witcher and Quake Wars. Again guys, Im just looking to maybe help a few people who may be playing these games. It looks like performance can vary widely depending on the game you are into right now, especially with the early drivers from both camps.
The 4850s.
-Crysis: Oh Crysis. Whether its your coding or uber use of DX10, you punish hardware. For a solid benchmark comparison I always use a custom demo I created. 1920x1200, all settings high, very high shaders. I have Crysis patched to 1.21. No matter what I tried, I could not get Crysis to scale properly in this game. I tried posting on multiple forums, to no avail. My old gx2 ran the demo at 32fps, these guys did it at 21-24fps. That is whether crossfire was enabled or disabled. I tried everything guys. I used Catalalyst 8.5 and 8.6, both with and without the hotfix for the 4800 series. It just wouldnt work. At the settings mentioned above, I obviously had to really turn down options for a decent gaming experience. I dont know what those perfect playing options would be, out of frustration I simply gave up after a week. I assume that 8.7 catalyst should remedy this and when it does, I sure hope it provides a very nice experience. I REALLY WANTED this to work.
-The Witcher: This one surprised me. With my old 3870x2, this game LOOKED MUCH nicer than on my gx2. Shadows were much more organic and lively. Fire and lighting looked incredible. When I ran this game on my gx2, fire and lighting had a very light but noticeable green tint and shadows were much less appealing. The 4850s, after the hotfix, ran this game very beautifully. There is noticeable micro stutter on this game with dual gpus. The stutter, to me, was unbearable on my 3870x2. When I moved to the gx2, it was much less noticeable. The 4850s were a very similar experience to the gx2 only with much nicer graphics, YES!
-Quake Wars: again, after the hotfix, I noticed no difference between this and my old gx2.
Well last night, after staring at the GTX 280 on my desk for a second day, I finally decided to pop it open and throw it in (thus dropping its value immediately, but what can I say? Im an [H]er).
-Crysis: I was actually surprised here. I knew from reading the Hardocp review, that this card should be able to handle higher settings than my gx2, but I thought it would lose in a demo benchmark, I was wrong. On the custom demo I mentioned earlier, the GTX topped 35fps EVERY time. It was also the first time I realized that I had microstutter on the gx2 in the demo. I didnt even realize it until I saw how smooth this card plays the demo, very nice. After playing the game for a bit, its a much nicer experience than my old gx2 and obviously blew the crossfire setup out of the water since the drivers need work. Be warned, one driver update may turn the tables here. The only thing that I question is whether or not the microstutter will be there.
-The Witcher: What a relief! Upon loading it up, something is different in nvidias gpu or drivers now. The shadows and lighting look identical to the ATI cards! What happened? Not sure but I like it. The second surprise, the fps. After seeing an awful lot of benches with the Witcher favoring ATI cards, I expected this card to get trounced. It did not. While the fps peaks never hit what the crossfire setup did, the lows never came close to the ATI drops. The 4850s were topping out in the 90s, but hitting lows in the high teens to low twenties! The nvidia card never topped 60fps, but also never dropped below mid thirties, interesting. In the end the GTX is a smoother gaming experience.
-Quake Wars: this game is owned. I could not tell the difference between either setup period.
Important notes on the GTX: my ambient system temp, once again tops out around 90-92 on full load. As for noise, this thing gets loud when the fan is spinning. For me, it doesnt matter, I have a Panaflo intake fan that is LOUD. The PC has to be shut off to watch a movie in the same room! So I dont care, but many might. I tried swapping the intake fan to see how loud it was. Holy sh*t! Its probably not any louder than my old gx2, but I honestly dont know. I never tried the gx2 with a normal intake fan. The GTX is also HUGE, I couldn't imagine SLI with these guys. Just to much card blocking airlfow for me.
Obviously for me, Im keeping the GTX. Its been an incredibly difficult decision for me. I could have sold the GTX and put an extra 300.00 in my pocket, very tempting. If I were a paycheck to paycheck guy, a college student or saving for something, I would do just that. But like I posted in another thread, this is my hobby. I dont fix up cars, fish, hunt or golf. So for me the 300.00 towards my hobby is no big deal. Not everyones circumstances are the same.
I was also tempted to sell and go for a couple 4870s in xfire, but opted not to for a couple reasons. The GTX dominates what I play, and it would be work at this point to sell it off and acquire new gpus. Also, after playing with the 3870x2, 9800gx2 and two 4850s, Im sick of scaling issues, micro stuttering and driver fixes. Thats just me. Some people do not care about those things at all.
No question about it, two 4850s in xfire offer the best damn value out there right now, period. Sweet cards with some great perks! For me, the GTX was just worth it. Mind you I was upgrading via trade up and never would have sunk a fresh 650.00 into it.
I was going to mention the Vista drivers on the GTX. Im at around 14hrs, no freezes, but thats no guarantee.
Hope this helps at least one person. Just typed it up while I had my coffee this morning. Please guys, if you have any questions, let me know.
NOTEWORTHY UPDATE: So get this... After enjoying some gaming today, starting having problems in Crysis. FRAPS would not show a decrease in FPS BUT games started jerking! Kind of weird, not ocing or anything.... Decided to reboot, same thing after about five min into the game. After some poking around with the fan settings and opening the side of the case. My damn card is getting too hot. Great airflow in my case too. Contacted BFG, yup, RMA. Damn! Throwing the 4850's in now for the time being. Who knows what the hell I'll do now.
Alright guys, I saw another member did a really outstanding review for us, comparing his 4870xf vs GTX 280 experience. It was very insightful. I would like to share a similar experience, but please do not hold me to the standards of the other review. I have several points to make and I will probably jump around a bit, sorry, I just hope it may help some of you out there.
For starters the test system is in my signature. I am not a fanboy of either camp. I like a good gaming experience, period. I have owned many graphics cards. Recent cards include:8800gts 512mb, 3870x2, 9800gx2, 4850s in xfire and a GTX 280.
A little over a week ago, I sent my BFG 9800gx2 in for trade up on a GTX 280. A couple days later, I had the opportunity to jump on the Best Buy Hot Deal to nab two 4850s for about 320.00 with tax. I had no video card and Im a hardware nut, so naturally I jumped all over it.
I played with them in crossfire for about a little over a week. Here are a list of NON-GAMING related positives on the cards:
-The ATI Vista drivers rock. With the recent cards I have owned all listed above, all the nVidia cards (excluding the GTX, Ill get there) have caused some random lock ups (usually after waking the pc) or a rare BSOD. Not major issues, happening once every couple of days, but annoying to say the least. With the ATI cards, not one lock up or anything. What a relief. My girlfriend actually booed last night when I mentioned throwing in the GTX because she hated the nvidia lock ups.
- Keep in mind Im talking about the 4850s here, but they are small! I was so damn excited how short they are! Every other recent card I have owned has been so damn long I am occassionly forced to move a hard drive. They are also only single slot, sweet! You can run crossfire with these puppies without having to worry about killing air flow.
-Dual monitor support while in crossfire, nuff said!
-Low power requirements, one 6pin connector per card!
-Keep your sweet a$$ intel chipset that overclocks like a champ!!!
A few non-gaming negatives: HOT!!! Yes I know the new nvidia gpus are warm as well, but holy sh*t! The stock coolers on these guys just arent pushing enough heat out the back of the case right now. Ive read here on the forums that this may be a driver issue, causing the fans to not run at high enough speeds. Anyway, I have a very well ventilated case. Outside of using software temp sensors, I also have one hardware temp sensor that reads out onto an lcd on the front of the case. I place that guy right in the center of things to read ambient air temps inside the case. When I went from the gx2 to these two 4850s, ambient idle went from 77F to 83F, under full load it went from approx. 91F to 110F!!! You either need a driver update or new coolers. Good news is for the $ it costs to get them, you can afford a third party cooler.
Now onto the games . I can already hear the uproar, but I only play a few games right now. The main game I test with right now is Crysis, it is demanding as hell, Im looking forward to Crysis Warhead and Far Cry 2. Sorry, Im a huge FPS fan. Im also playing the Witcher and Quake Wars. Again guys, Im just looking to maybe help a few people who may be playing these games. It looks like performance can vary widely depending on the game you are into right now, especially with the early drivers from both camps.
The 4850s.
-Crysis: Oh Crysis. Whether its your coding or uber use of DX10, you punish hardware. For a solid benchmark comparison I always use a custom demo I created. 1920x1200, all settings high, very high shaders. I have Crysis patched to 1.21. No matter what I tried, I could not get Crysis to scale properly in this game. I tried posting on multiple forums, to no avail. My old gx2 ran the demo at 32fps, these guys did it at 21-24fps. That is whether crossfire was enabled or disabled. I tried everything guys. I used Catalalyst 8.5 and 8.6, both with and without the hotfix for the 4800 series. It just wouldnt work. At the settings mentioned above, I obviously had to really turn down options for a decent gaming experience. I dont know what those perfect playing options would be, out of frustration I simply gave up after a week. I assume that 8.7 catalyst should remedy this and when it does, I sure hope it provides a very nice experience. I REALLY WANTED this to work.
-The Witcher: This one surprised me. With my old 3870x2, this game LOOKED MUCH nicer than on my gx2. Shadows were much more organic and lively. Fire and lighting looked incredible. When I ran this game on my gx2, fire and lighting had a very light but noticeable green tint and shadows were much less appealing. The 4850s, after the hotfix, ran this game very beautifully. There is noticeable micro stutter on this game with dual gpus. The stutter, to me, was unbearable on my 3870x2. When I moved to the gx2, it was much less noticeable. The 4850s were a very similar experience to the gx2 only with much nicer graphics, YES!
-Quake Wars: again, after the hotfix, I noticed no difference between this and my old gx2.
Well last night, after staring at the GTX 280 on my desk for a second day, I finally decided to pop it open and throw it in (thus dropping its value immediately, but what can I say? Im an [H]er).
-Crysis: I was actually surprised here. I knew from reading the Hardocp review, that this card should be able to handle higher settings than my gx2, but I thought it would lose in a demo benchmark, I was wrong. On the custom demo I mentioned earlier, the GTX topped 35fps EVERY time. It was also the first time I realized that I had microstutter on the gx2 in the demo. I didnt even realize it until I saw how smooth this card plays the demo, very nice. After playing the game for a bit, its a much nicer experience than my old gx2 and obviously blew the crossfire setup out of the water since the drivers need work. Be warned, one driver update may turn the tables here. The only thing that I question is whether or not the microstutter will be there.
-The Witcher: What a relief! Upon loading it up, something is different in nvidias gpu or drivers now. The shadows and lighting look identical to the ATI cards! What happened? Not sure but I like it. The second surprise, the fps. After seeing an awful lot of benches with the Witcher favoring ATI cards, I expected this card to get trounced. It did not. While the fps peaks never hit what the crossfire setup did, the lows never came close to the ATI drops. The 4850s were topping out in the 90s, but hitting lows in the high teens to low twenties! The nvidia card never topped 60fps, but also never dropped below mid thirties, interesting. In the end the GTX is a smoother gaming experience.
-Quake Wars: this game is owned. I could not tell the difference between either setup period.
Important notes on the GTX: my ambient system temp, once again tops out around 90-92 on full load. As for noise, this thing gets loud when the fan is spinning. For me, it doesnt matter, I have a Panaflo intake fan that is LOUD. The PC has to be shut off to watch a movie in the same room! So I dont care, but many might. I tried swapping the intake fan to see how loud it was. Holy sh*t! Its probably not any louder than my old gx2, but I honestly dont know. I never tried the gx2 with a normal intake fan. The GTX is also HUGE, I couldn't imagine SLI with these guys. Just to much card blocking airlfow for me.
Obviously for me, Im keeping the GTX. Its been an incredibly difficult decision for me. I could have sold the GTX and put an extra 300.00 in my pocket, very tempting. If I were a paycheck to paycheck guy, a college student or saving for something, I would do just that. But like I posted in another thread, this is my hobby. I dont fix up cars, fish, hunt or golf. So for me the 300.00 towards my hobby is no big deal. Not everyones circumstances are the same.
I was also tempted to sell and go for a couple 4870s in xfire, but opted not to for a couple reasons. The GTX dominates what I play, and it would be work at this point to sell it off and acquire new gpus. Also, after playing with the 3870x2, 9800gx2 and two 4850s, Im sick of scaling issues, micro stuttering and driver fixes. Thats just me. Some people do not care about those things at all.
No question about it, two 4850s in xfire offer the best damn value out there right now, period. Sweet cards with some great perks! For me, the GTX was just worth it. Mind you I was upgrading via trade up and never would have sunk a fresh 650.00 into it.
I was going to mention the Vista drivers on the GTX. Im at around 14hrs, no freezes, but thats no guarantee.
Hope this helps at least one person. Just typed it up while I had my coffee this morning. Please guys, if you have any questions, let me know.
NOTEWORTHY UPDATE: So get this... After enjoying some gaming today, starting having problems in Crysis. FRAPS would not show a decrease in FPS BUT games started jerking! Kind of weird, not ocing or anything.... Decided to reboot, same thing after about five min into the game. After some poking around with the fan settings and opening the side of the case. My damn card is getting too hot. Great airflow in my case too. Contacted BFG, yup, RMA. Damn! Throwing the 4850's in now for the time being.
Who knows what the hell I'll do now.
