3870 vs 4870 vs 4850

The 3870 is the slowest, a very bad option, it gets its ass kicked by the competing nvidia cards. The 4850 is much faster and is pretty much the bang for the buck deal right now, and the 4870 even faster for $100 bucks more and is in between the nvidia gtx 260 and gtx280, but closer to the 260.
 
MHz means even less in the world of GPUs than it does in the world of CPUs. The 500 MHz NV30 was blown out of the water by the 325MHz 9700 Pro, for example.

The 777 MHz 3870 is much slower than the 625 MHz 4850. The 4850 GPU is a much more optimized chip - it has 800 stream processors onboard, where as the 3870 only has 320.

The 3870 also had its memoery clocked higher, but the 4850 is better at utilizing the memory bandwidth due to optimizations.

The 4870 might appear to have slower memory than the 4850 (900 MHz vs 993 MHz).. but the 4870 has got GDDR5 RAM which means its effective bandwidth is 115.2 GB/s vs just 63.6 GB/s for the 4850.
 
If i have a 3870 now, should i wait before upgrading to a 4850,4870? Methinks these price wars and NV's die-shrink will yield some amazing deals soon.
 
Nvidia die shrink could be a while, and the prices are already very competitive. If you want a new video card, get one now.
 
PATSCRU said:
If i have a 3870 now, should i wait before upgrading to a 4850,4870? Methinks these price wars and NV's die-shrink will yield some amazing deals soon.
Click to expand...

Check the [H]otDeals section. I just picked up a 4850 from newegg for $145 AR. Now is a pretty good time to upgrade.
 
I think one 4870 is better than two 4850s. And I would recommend one 4870 over two 4850s. If your on a budget, a 4850 still performs outstanding.
 
PATSCRU said:
If i have a 3870 now, should i wait before upgrading to a 4850,4870? Methinks these price wars and NV's die-shrink will yield some amazing deals soon.
Click to expand...

Is it fast enough for the games you play at the settings you like? If yes, there's no reason to upgrade. If you notice slowdowns or stuttering, if you can't play at your monitors native resolution, if you can't enable certain effects that you want to enable, then yes, buy now :) If the 3870 is fast enough for you then holding off until the games you're playing choke it to death means you can snag a current gen card for less than they're selling for right now, or some next gen wonder for the same price as you'd pay for a card now.
 
BigCactus said:
I think one 4870 is better than two 4850s. And I would recommend one 4870 over two 4850s. If your on a budget, a 4850 still performs outstanding.
Click to expand...

wrong, two 4850's will easily outperform a single 4870, but two 4870's with easily outperform 2 4850's and will equal about one 4870x2, and dual 4870x2's blow just about anything out of the water.
 
coolxboxgamer said:
wrong, two 4850's will easily outperform a single 4870, but two 4870's with easily outperform 2 4850's and will equal about one 4870x2, and dual 4870x2's blow just about anything out of the water.
Click to expand...

I don't think two 4850s will beat one 4870 as far as the overrall gaming experience. Yah, maybe it will edge out a 4870 as far as average fps, but because of the 4850s limited bandwidth and gddr3 memory as opposed to the 4870s gddr5, your going to see a smoother gaming experience with on 4870 vs. two 4850s, especially at higher resolutions and when turning up AA/AF.

I agree that two 4870x2s will blow about anything out of the water though...but I think one 4870x2 is enough.
 
I guess you havnt look at 4850 vs 4850 at same clock speeds yet. The 4870 is only faster by 5-7% at same gpu clock of 800 so the ddr5 isn't that much faster. That being said i have my Asus 4850 at 1ghz @ 1.6v and D-Tek GFX2. And a 4870x2 is a lot faster than two 4870 mainly because it has 2x1GB Memory.
 
If your card is Blazing through the games you are playing save your money for the cards you want than jumping into one that you will sorry you purchased in a few days/weeks. Remember price is realitive to realease dates. Upon release you paying for all the research and devolpment that went into the cards as well. As the 4870x2 was released a few days back the price wars will be heating even more soon. There is nothing worse that a making a purchase only to see that price dropped or better card came out weeks later.
On the hand ask yoursellf;
1. Why am I ma looking to Upgrade
2. Are my games playing as well as when I got the card and do the games that I play or will plaing in bext 30 warrant a new purchase.
3. Are you willing to put out the money for the one YOU want.
AS for Performance;
1.4870x2
2.4870
3.4850
4.3870

Laslty To stay Bleeding Edge costs Money. Happiness is priceless!
 
Pen3 said:
I guess you havnt look at 4850 vs 4850 at same clock speeds yet. The 4870 is only faster by 5-7% at same gpu clock of 800 so the ddr5 isn't that much faster. That being said i have my Asus 4850 at 1ghz @ 1.6v and D-Tek GFX2. And a 4870x2 is a lot faster than two 4870 mainly because it has 2x1GB Memory.
Click to expand...

A 4850 vs 4850 comparison wont give any result??
2x1GB memory on the 4870x2 is not the main reason for any performance increase unless you have exceeded 512MB memory (ie high AA modes at very high res).
Also, it is effectively only 1x1GB mirrored to each GPU, the full 2GB is not addressable by each GPU, they only get to see 1GB each.
 
BigCactus said:
I don't think two 4850s will beat one 4870 as far as the overrall gaming experience. Yah, maybe it will edge out a 4870 as far as average fps, but because of the 4850s limited bandwidth and gddr3 memory as opposed to the 4870s gddr5, your going to see a smoother gaming experience with on 4870 vs. two 4850s, especially at higher resolutions and when turning up AA/AF.

I agree that two 4870x2s will blow about anything out of the water though...but I think one 4870x2 is enough.
Click to expand...

The 4850X2 will be placed above the 4870 in the price ladder. It will also perform significantly better in any game where a Crossfire profile is available. Same for two 4850 cards in crossfire.

The 4870 is about 30% faster than the 4850 - ~20% of that is due to the higher GPU clock and about 10% due to GDDR5. However two 4850's have the potention to be twice as fast as a single 4850, if the game scales with Crossfire.

There will always be games that don't scale, and you'll fall back on the performance of a single 4850 GPU. This is especially a problem if you don't play the latest shooters (which ATI spends the most time optimizing their drivers for because all hardware sites use them for benchmarking), but other games like sims, rpg's, racers etc. It's in ATI's best interest to make sure these X2 cards perform well over a wide range of games, so let's hope they keep improving Crossfire support, which is already much better than when the 3870X2 launched.

For most users except thsoe who own a 30" LCD, I think the 4870X2 is overkill. The 4850X2 will be priced more reasonably and for typical 1920x1600 or 1600x1050 gaming with 4x+ FSAA and 16X AF, that card will be perfect (provided your games scale with Crossfire). Also, two "X2" cards makes little sense since you see dimishing returns beyond 2 GPUs.
 
BigCactus said:
I don't think two 4850s will beat one 4870 as far as the overrall gaming experience. Yah, maybe it will edge out a 4870 as far as average fps, but because of the 4850s limited bandwidth and gddr3 memory as opposed to the 4870s gddr5, your going to see a smoother gaming experience with on 4870 vs. two 4850s, especially at higher resolutions and when turning up AA/AF.

I agree that two 4870x2s will blow about anything out of the water though...but I think one 4870x2 is enough.
Click to expand...


Wow, speculation concerning the fact that 4870 will beat 2 4850's when there is hard evidence of this being false on many major hardware sites is utterly retarded.

Beep Beep coming through, Your short bus is here BigCactus
 
i think the best bang for the buck will be when the 4850X2 comes out. Really excited about that.
 
Damnit man, I just traded for a 3870. Oh well, its going to be better then the x1300xt I got anyway, lol.

So....

3870>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>x1300xt.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top