Final thoughts
Final
'You have to know where you came from to appreciate where you're going
to', a certain Boris Becker mused when talking about the traditions of
Wimbledon, today.
Looking back just over a year, ATI's weak response to the
all-conquering G80 was the
Radeon
HD 2900 XT (R600) GPU. Impressive throughput numbers hid the
inelegance of the architecture. Yes, it was good on paper, but, at
the time, six-month-old GeForce 8800 GTX and nascent 8800
Ultra brushed it aside with consummate ease. ATI was playing catch-up,
big style.
Moving on another six months, to November 2007, ATI released
the
Radeon
HD 3870, a product that liberally cleaned up the R600
architecture, added a number of performance- and power-related tweaks,
and retailed at around £150. No GeForce 8800 Ultra-beater,
sure, but it made ATI focus on attempting to win the mid-range battle.
The HD 3870 enjoyed an on-paper specification advantage against the
GeForce 8800 GT and GTS SKUs but that petered out in benchmarks, where
it oftentimes lagged behind.
Moving on to last week and ATI's mid-to-high-end catalogue consisted of
the £89 HD 3870 and £239
Radeon
HD 3870 X2.
NVIDIA mopped up in-between, primarily with SKU based on the venerable
G80. The top-end was sown-up by the somewhat brutish, inelegant
GeForce
GTX 280, providing, on average, 50 per cent more performance
than any previous single-GPU design.
ATI's next-generation GPUs needed to ramp the performance quotient
whilst maintaining excellent value-for-money: a tricky task at the very
best of times.
Now, when news filtered through regarding Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870
(RV770, collectively) we raised the right eyebrow. After all, Radeon HD
4870 really is significantly better than HD 3870 in almost every way -
it enjoys a 242 per cent increase in arithmetic processing (shading)
and bilinear/FP16-type texturing, and a 158 per cent gain in memory
bandwidth. There are other behind-the-scenes advances that make it even
faster, too.
Radeon HD 4850, too, is no slouch, beating out HD 3870 by 202 per cent
for shading/texturing but losing out by around 10 per cent in terms of
theoretical memory
bandwidth, although ATI-stated optimisations probably erode that to,
well, nothing.
If our right eyebrow was already raised, the left one joined it as soon
as we learned of the price: $199 (£125, once rip-off Britain
is
factored in) for the HD 4850 and $299 (£175) for the HD 4870.
The
reason why ATI and its partners can make pricing so aggressive lies
with the die size, or lack thereof, with RV770 - it's only 35 per cent
larger than HD 3870's, mainly brought about by shrinking the SIMD
arrays and texture units and, of course, by keeping the slimline
256-bit memory interface.
If GPUs were evaluated solely via on-paper specifications - which,
thankfully, they're not- ATI's new mid-range and enthusiast-class GPUs
would have beaten NVIDIA current offerings to a small pulp. Bish, bash,
bosh! Take another look at the table on page four for confirmation.
However, once we factor in NVIDIA apparently seamless
developer-relations support that really does get the most out of the
architecture, the new Radeons' dominance wanes somewhat. What should
have been a massacre turns into a honest-to-goodness slugfest, and
that's only made possible by NVIDIA chopping the prices of its key
mid-range GPUs.
Thinking of in-game physics, NVIDIA's purchase of Ageia has yet to
reach full fruition with PhysX-enabled games (UT3 notwithstanding) and
ATI nascent tie-up with Havok will be felt in Q4 2008, we feel. Both
show impressive performance but NVIDIA's definitely got the advantage
here.
Let's take each of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards and come to some
kind of conclusion.
Radeon HD 4850 512MiB
The £125 Radeon HD 4850 - clocking in at 625MHz core and
shader,
and 2,000MHz GDDR3 memory - opens up a can of whoop-ass on
the
Radeon HD 3870; it has more of everything. Looking at our mid-range
results, it does a pretty good job on beating up on other supposedly
mid-range cards. Indeed, only the GeForce 9800 GTX, priced at
£175 today but mooted to drop to £125 soon, offers
real
resistance.
In fact, so potent is the dizzying combination of performance and
price, that we enter it into our high-end setup, running against GPUs
costing considerably more.
The performance numbers show that it delivers a little less than the
dual-GPU Radeon HD 3870 X2 and around the same levels as the GeForce
9800 GTX. You can see
exactly
why NVIDIA's reduced the pricing of that SKU to an estimated
£125, because it becomes an untenable proposition any higher.
Ignore the NVIDIA spin and concentrate on the fact that ATI's new
introduction has caused NVIDIA to wet the pricing bed with aplomb.
Muddying buying advice further is the soon-to-be-introduced GeForce
9800 GTX+ - a 55nm-based GPU that ships with higher core and shader
speeds than the regular GTX. Due mid-July with a street price of $229
(£150, probably), our tests show it to be a little faster
than
the Radeon HD 4850. We reckon that partner-overclocked HD 4850s will
fight against it, and that's for another day.
CrossFire performance is a little lower than twin GeForce 9800 GTXs,
though, and that's something that ATI needs to continue working upon.
Taking all this into account, and bearing in mind the multimedia
upgrade, single-slot cooler and DX10.1 compatibility, the Radeon HD
4850
becomes our choice
of GPU at £125, even if NVIDIA partners' pricing
for the
GeForce 9800 GTX drops to the same levels. Why? Because it's so much
more elegant in almost every way.
Radeon HD 4870 512MiB
The bigger brother is the HD 4870. Faster core and shader
clocks
- 750MHz - are allied to mind-numbingly faster memory,
operating
at an effective 3.6GHz and facilitated by new-fangled GDDR5. The
memory-speed lets the architecture breath, to the extent that it's
around 25 per cent faster than the HD 4850.
Performance is such that it sits between GeForce 9800 GTX+ and, most
likely, GeForce GTX 260. The shipping price of $299 (£175)
means
that it has no direct single-GPU competitor from NVIDIA, so if you've
got £175 to spend, we'd look towards recommending it.
CrossFire performance scales incredibly well in some games but is
lacking in others; that's the pitfall of dual-GPU rendering, we're
afraid.
NVIDIA still retains the overall performance crown, comfortably, with
GeForce GTX 280, but that's not batting in Value Park, is it?
Overall
ATI's introduction of the Radeon HD 4800-series GPUs has
upset
the status quo in no uncertain fashion. Blistering compute power and
incredible memory bandwidth from a 256-bit bus means that small-die
RV770s are fundamentally better than the Radeon HD 3800-series they
replace.
Looking towards the competition, the only way that NVIDIA's been able
to compete against the salvo of keen pricing and the Radeon
HD
48x0's efficient, powerful architecture is to reduce prices across the
board- and that incredibly telling in itself.
Bottom line: we'd be happy to recommend the Radeon HD 4850 at the
£125 mark; it's a fundamentally better design than the
18-month-old technology of the GeForce 9800 GTX and, even with the new
pricing factored in, makes for a better all-round performer. The Radeon
HD 4870 extracts the most out of the architecture through, in the
main, super-fast memory, and we'd give it a tentative recommendation,
waiting to see just how partners employ the GeForce 9800 GTX+
ATI's back in a big, big way in the sub-$300 space. NVIDIA, apart from
price-chopping, what's new, huh?
Then, of course, there's the twin-GPU
R700,
as well. Just take a look at HD 4870 CrossFire performance and you'll
appreciate where it will sit in the pecking order.
HEXUS.awards
The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 receives the HEXUS Gaming Recommended award
for combining an excellent architecture to a surprisingly low price.
It's our best buy for ~£125.
The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 receives the HEXUS Gaming Innovation award
for bringing GDDR5 memory and excellent performance in the enthusiast
class. A solid recommendation at £175.
HEXUS.where2buy
Radeon HD4850 range - Scan.co.uk
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 pricing TBC.
HEXUS.right2reply
At
HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on
our articles. If Sapphire or ATI (AMD) chooses to respond, we'll
publish its commentary here verbatim.
HEXUS related reading
HEXUS.net- HEXUS.reviews
:: BFG
(NVIDIA) GeForce GTX 280: does it rock our world?
HEXUS.net- HEXUS.reviews
:: NVIDIA
(BFG) GeForce 9800 GTX. Got £200 for a graphics card? Read
this
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews
:: MSI
vs. ZOTAC: shootout at the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 Corral
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews
:: ATI
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HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews
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(ZOTAC) GeForce 9800 GX2 - the champ is back!
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HEXUS.community :: your right2reply
Adding it in to the already-poor engine reduces it, at times, to a crawl - it barely runs smoothly as it is.Quote
The reason there's no AA is down to playable frame-rates.
Adding it in to the already-poor engine reduces it, at times, to a crawl - it barely runs smoothly as it is.
I see your point BUT i think a lot of people like to have AA on, even if they have to reduce the res and textures to play it. Thusly its a bit daft to have reviews without a comparison of how each card can handle the AA. I personally dont care but i have seen from other benchmarks and reviews that AA is something that the AMD cards can handle especially well and it would be nice to have seen the hexus benchies agree/counter as i genrally regard the hexus reviews higher than most other sites/zines.Quote
presently i believe Tarinder is correct and that, on balance, HEXUS have got it right.
however, we'll *certainly* take on board what's been said and have a think about *all* the implications. in fact we may discuss the matter today :)
anyways, it certainly seems that the 'what goes round, comes round' technology merry-go-round wheel is once again turning...
oh, and i'm grateful HEXUS' efforts to keep you informed seem to be appreciated.
cheers,
PDQuote
both seem to be very popular games, but i cant find benchmarks for them anywhere :(Quote
any chance of a benchmark for wow or trackmania forever??
both seem to be very popular games, but i cant find benchmarks for them anywhere :(
I'm pretty sure it will be because the games themselves are not very demanding to other recent games, and they will pretty much play on anything even if its been out for a few years or so.Quote
Reply