System setup & notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MiB | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £117.49 | £124 | £179 | £150 (not available now)* | £130** |
||
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 4.0 | |||||
| Stream processors | 800 | 128 | |||||
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 625 | 750 | 738 | 675 | |||
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 625 | 750 | 1,836 | 1,688 | |||
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 2,000 | 3,600 | 2,200 | ||||
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | ||||||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | ||||||
| Motherboard | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | |||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P2B2 | P31 | |||||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | |||||
| Memory | 4GiB (4x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 | 4GiB (4x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | |||||
| Memory timings and speed | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1066MHz | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz | |||||
| PSU | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | |||||
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | ||||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | ||||||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 8.6 R5 | CATALYST 8.6 R4 | NVIDIA ForceWare 175.19 | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.74 | |||
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | ||||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
v2.103: DX9 - very
high quality Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL - vhq Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 - high quality Crysis v1.2.1 custom-recorded benchmark: DX10 - high quality |
|---|
* available in two weeks' time.
** based on pricing of the card on a pre-order basis.
Notes
First off, we're testing the PowerColor HD 4850 using our high-end setup; despite the card falling into the mainstream price-band.
The reason for this is quite simple, our initial review of the HD 4800 series showed the card didn't shine until the settings were turned up, with relatively little performance drop-off when switching from medium to high-end settings. Knowing the performance HD 4850 is capable of, it's unrealistic to expect people to choose mid-range settings when high-end settings run at an acceptable frame-rate.
In addition its competition, the GeForce 9800 GTX, has always been expected to compete on high-end benchmarks. To think new 9800GTX owners would run settings lower than existing ones, just because they paid less for the card, would be laughable.
If however, you
want to see how the Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce 9800 GTX fared on our
mid-range suite, the
results are available here.
As it stands, we will use our existing high-end benchmarks until we
complete the process of evaluating new benchmark suites - as always, we
at HEXUS are interested in your suggestions and opinions in our forum.
Secondly, we're running a different build of the CATALYST 8.6 driver
for
our PowerColor card than we did for our single-card Sapphire testing.
This is due to ATI releasing a newer driver build
(8.501.1-080621a-065814E-ATI) after we had finished our single-card
Sapphire
testing using the CAT
8.6 press driver
(build 8.501.1-080612a-064906E-ATI).
With the newer build superseding the publicly available hotfix, it was only right to use it to gauge CrossFire performance which would most benefit from any improvements, which we did in the initial review.
Running the PowerColor with
the newer driver allows us to see if there is
any impact on single-GPU results.
Thirdly, we're limiting our comparisons to the sub-£200
cards.
If you want to see how the Radeon HD 4850 compares to more-expensive
fare,
as well as comparisons using CrossFire and SLI, check out our initial
HD 4800-series roundup.
The GeForce 9800 GTX is currently available on pre-order for
£130, although pricing is somewhat higher if you want it in
your hand today. The 9800 GTX price-drop will coincide with the
upcoming GeForce 9800 GTX+ launch, however.
The 55nm 9800GTX+,
still a couple of weeks away, is NVIDIA's
attempt to steal some of ATI's thunder. Featuring faster core and
shader clocks than the GeForce 9800
GTX, it will debut at around £150 - right between the two
Radeon HD 4800-series SKUs. We've emulated its performance by
overclocking a regular GeForce 9800 GTX to its core and shader speeds.
Phew! That's a lot of notes.
