4870x2 HardOCP Preview - taking the fluff out of reviewing t -.- t

Any X2 card, or sli cf setup with these latest cards will be cpu bottlenecked. I almost like [H] way of doing reviews, it is different, and brings a few insightful things

LOL, trade ya straight up for a slightly used GTS320....PLUS Ill throw in a slightly used 1900xt512mb

Nice performance and with pre-release drivers so it should be very interesting soon. I am running a single 8800GT @ 1920x1200 and I can play all my games maxed except Crysis and still neither of these setups even SLI and Crossfire can do that so I think I might have to wait for the next generation to upgrade.

O.O

Wow... just... wow...

Yea, and you criticized me for calling a test on a 3.2 ghz cpu a fluff test

Now do you understand how much a higher clocked CPU can show the potential of a gpu?

Anyways..

Nah, by the time Nehalem is out we'll have a whole new suite of games to bench on...

Far Cry2 and Stalker : Clear Sky being the two most anticipated for next gen graphics.

All the cpu "experts" criticised me for saying this a few months ago, that common cpus will bottleneck this gen of gfx cards, makes me wonder if they arent all caught up in a bunch of hype. Like more cores? Whats funny is, gpus are the parallel processors heheh

That's why I decided to go with the E8400 when everyone was saying Q6600. I'm going to build a new system when Nehalem comes out though, I don't think I'll be able to resist.

hehe, yea; I use an e8400 too, 4.05ghz

I think when Nehalem hits i'll drop in a last gen penryn quad core at that point, whatever is highest on the clock list with a locked multiplier; should be pretty cheap by then.

I think i'll wait to adopt Nehalem, prolly gonna be too expensive and I like to tweak for my dollar value

Who me?

4870x2 is 2 put together so crossfire is really 4 right? but compared to the 280 in sli so only 2 of them? i assume this is a price thing? because can't you sli 3 of the 280's? but i guess if you can get 4870x2 in crossfire for the price of 2 280's then it is a valid comparison. for people who are trying to eek out every bit of performance it would be interesting to see a comparison of the best available. so max 280's vs max 4870's. just a thought.

Very nice performance with Age of Conan. My 4870 at 780/1065 gets about 55fps with all shadows on high, bloom, 8xMSAA, 16AF, all settings maxed on 1650 x 1080 in that same zone (Old Tarantia), 200+ indoors . I cant complain one bit. Although my Q6600 MIIIIIGHT be holding it back, its OC'ed to 3.0, Im gonna push it higher once I put my AC7 on it and ditch this faulty Xigmatek. Im idling at 50c right now...

The 4870 X2 was obviously built for max settings at extremely high resolutions, something nothing else on the market can do under $1000 basically. I say it wins despite the poor drivers, mass heat and ear drum blowing noise.

right. i get that they don't scale which is really to bad. if they did we would see some crazy numbers. it just would be nice to see best available vs. best available. not that i don't want to see comparably priced items compared (assuming they are??). that is probably more valuable to the average person since you buy based on price (typically). but also keeping in mind lots of people considering buying 2 X 280's or 2 X 4870x2 could probably afford to throw another 280 into the mix if it was worth it. so a comparison would be nice.

What? No Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning?

I'm not that into MMOs really, but from what I saw (last year) with WHo - the graphics didn't seem to be that groundbreaking...

In titles with next-gen graphics, the GPU will more than likely become the bottleneck again as there will be more demand on it; for instance if you take lets say a 3way SLI gtx280 or a quadfire 4870x2 and put them at maximum forcible details at 2560*1600 on a 30" display with highest possible AA - its reasonable that they could become the bottlenecking factor even in today's titles. In real world terms though even if you pressure the hell out of a gpu or pair of gpus, you still need a good processor to back them up regardless.

^^ You are quite right, though the CPU still need to tell the GPU what to do (while not doing it itself) which is why it'll (the bottleneck) still increase but at a slower rate, though I can't be sure.

BTW wasn't there benchmarks done recently showing that AMD vs Intel processors didn't do that much of a difference in games (cept the ones that were hard core CPU intensive) I think there was a thread about it like 2 weeks ago... don't remember

Well AMD/ATI has both Havok and PhysX open to them, I wonder if you could have a game doing both?

Also, are you sure that havok and physx are stuck as CPU and GPU implementations?

This is somewhat true, its largely that it doesn't matter what kind of processor you have as long as your gpu's are the limiting factor

For instance, Crysis with 16x Quality AA on an Nvidia setup is going to be GPU bottlenecked; likewise on an AMD 24xCSAA it will be bottlenecked

However, thats about where it ends right now for ultra high end hardware. More to the point, if you have like lets say an 8800 GT single gpu card - you might see some small improvements between AMD->Intel processors running at the same clock speeds, but it won't be astronomical.

But once you start talking about dual gpu setups thats when CPU bottelneck becomes more of a priority - as typically the GPUs will be able to handle a lot between them, but they will get held back by a slow cpu - this is all app dependant of course.

Does the dx10.1 reduce the proses that GPU have to do, but the CPU vs GPU depate is very program dependable. Reach for the star use very intensive AI that reguires a lot of CPU power... the graphic can be handled by even with intel's integrated graphich... And then there is crysis...
The problem is balancing the whole thing. Many game developers are really annoyed by the difference between normal home PC and enthusiast pc. How to make a game that can run with single core celeron and "blindlindly fast IGP", and scale it for quadcore and sli or cf...

Summasummarum... the botlenecking situation is very much situation dependable.

^^ So pretty much your beef is that we're calling it a botleneck when you think it should be called a limiting factor? (your post isn't very clear on that subject)

Isn't a bottleneck and limiting factor are the same thing, it's the component/program that is the slowest and limits the flow of information of the system. (like a bottle's neck)

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your post but it just doesn't seem to make sense.

*Edit* " but no one will listen" lol might want to take a look at your sig then

Hmmm... it's not easy task if this is true at all...
What this hydra is pupposed to do is to split the rendered are to different craphic cards and the combine these "fragments" somehow... Not an easy tast for similar GPU's extremely difficult to different kind of GPU's...
Everybody knows that Nvidia and ATI does render the same picture a little bit different. So we would end having a pusle with parts that does not completely fit to each others... maybe with some clever blending...

I am expecting more when we see some GPU maker with solution with shared frame buffer with identical GPU cores...

ye, but IMO and in the sense alot of people mis-use is that it will limit your performance in an unplayable way.

a bottleneck should be used to mean something which holds back the performance to such an extent that it cripple play. the reason being is that other wise you will not notice it. if a cpu or gpu allows for playable fps, it ain't bottlenecking a system.

the way people use it now, it leads people to think that it is a major thing when in fact they won't even notice it in most cases. too much crap on here just confuses people and gives wrong impressions especially to the cash conscious people who really don't need to spend as much as they might to get the same noticeable performance. the maximum fps most lcd's can handle is 60 and they may not be quick enough to display even that.

the worse case is when people quote average or max fps at low res, wtf has that to do with real world i do not know and yet they use the word bottleneck, something that brings mind an extreme reduction.

sorry, but it is wrong solely for the way newbies react to it and the confusion over how it should be used.

Were you trying to make a point, because i'm not understanding exactly what you were inkling at.

Yea rodney, but thats why I don't buy into bs fluff reviews anymore because again in that techreport article they aren't pushing either card near enough.

1: they are using too low-clocked of a processor (3.0ghz) for EITHER gpu array

2: they aren't forcing high AA modes to really show what either configuration can do.

Thats why hardocp's article is superior to any of this trash, is because they are actually pushing the limits on the hardware in extremely intensive scenarios to show what they are truly capable of.

I'm honest to god really surprised people are still using blasted Half Life 2 benchmarks .. who cares. The game runs on anything you throw at it, and its very cpu limited in their testing

I didn't make a "custom timedemo" but on gtx260 SLI I can do a Lost Coast timedemo and get 156 avg fps on a e8400@4.05 ghz in 1680*1050,16xAF, 6xAA, max possible details - in their testing it shows a gtx280 SLI getting 118 fps which is a total joke and shows that the testing platform was bogus. Furthermore the 4870 CF should perform a lot higher as well at that resolution and at the higher resolutions.

This is really all aside the point - the bottom line is that the 4870x2 is largely superior to the gtx280 because the 4870x2 has better anti-aliasing hardware and while the 4870 doesn't really show this as a solo card or in crossfire, the 4870x2 has a more efficient design that allows it to really flex its anti-aliasing muscles, especially in quadfire mode - but don't use articles like techreport because it doesn't really show the true story at all and 3 year old games just don't push these cards enough.

Fine, but you're just blinding yourself to the issue that all of these previews have - which is making cpu the limiting factor and not pushing either gpu hard enough. I really don't give a flying crap if people can get 120 fps at 4x aa 1920*1200 in Half life 2 on these gpus - why? Because you could probably get the exact same FPS with 16x quality AA on an Nvidia array - or likewise you could get the same FPS at 24xCSAA on the AMD array because both configurations are held back by the cpu on this old game.

I don't really care if you like Hardocp's articles or not - because they have given unbiased and highly positive reviews of the 4850, 4870 and now the 4870x2; so if you "don't trust them as far as you could throw them" when they have the amount of data available to back up their claims as they do - then you might as well write off Tomsadvertisingguide because THG has been doing trash reviews and has shown how they sell themselves off (ibuypower, system builder marathon, tri-sli vs quad sli)