I've just updated the theoretical GPU capacity table in this review to correct the fill rate numbers for the GeForce GTX 260. The revised numbers are slightly lower. The performance results remain unaffected.

This is one great review.Techreport is the number 1 hardware site.
Screw guru3d, Hexus, anandtech, bjorn3d.....and all Nvidia paid out sites.
Techreport and tomshardware are the best.

You can get a 9800GX2 for $280

It actually beats the 4870X2 in Crysis and stays within a small margin in many other games.

Not bad for a card that costs upwards of $300 less.

I think it's time to start showing Assassin's Creed without the DirectX 10.1 codepath, as well as all-the-way up-to-date. It almost seems a little ATI-bent if you keep doing the benchmark while Assassin's Creed has the DX 10.1 codepath, a lot of players (myself included) will probably own an ATI card, and would like to see how well it does fully updated (for stability and in-game bug reduction) even with an ATI card.

Also, I'm gonna second the resolution notion... I really think that tests should start at 1440x900 at minimum, and there probably ought to be a set of 1280x1024 benchmarks out there.

I know it's hard work, but... I mean, that's what Tech Report is. Tech Report has the most thorough reviews on this side of the blogosphere, I mean... there's no comparison. That's why I'm here at Tech Report, because shy of you and Anandtech, NO ONE ever publishes 3D Studio Max or Adobe Premiere Pro scores for a CPU. Well, the same goes for graphics cards, and while I'm perfectly content observing the scores at 1920x1200, a lot of other people could (and probably are) missing out on the sheer amazing that is Tech Report.

Just my thoughts...

I'm confused. 3D guru did a review of the 280 and got better numbers than the 4870, and in their review they used newer drivers than in the TR review.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/bfg-geforce-gtx-280-ocx-review/9

It just dawned on me that AMD has come full circle. The AMD x2 4800 cpu came out, what, 5 years ago and now we have an AMD 4800 series that comes in X2 flavors, except as video cards and not cpu's.

!Yes, folks, the atomic frog has joined the red team, and he's apparently kinda cheesed off about something. Watch out, or he'll unleash his robotic bagpipes on your ass. They are full of liquid metal awesome.

Call 911 I'm laughing so hard I can't breath!

Looking forward to a review on the 4850, that's probably more likely to be my next card.

To pile on to nVidia's woes....

The Inquirer is reporting that G92/G94 desktop parts are failing as well and not just the G84/86 notebook models.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/12/nvidia-g92s-...

nVidia has a problem.

aww why isnt it red??

Listen to me very damned carefully.

I love this site, it's well written it has a good layout and the writers are clearly 'proper' enthusiasts with experience.

However this is the third article I've seen where the Crysis benchmarks START at 1920x1200.
I'm having difficulty writing this post without swearing, ranting and typing in all caps at the stupidity of this, I'm going to hold back, how I don't know but I'm going to.

Can you, pretty, pretty damn-well please at least START at 1680x1050 benchmarks?
do you guys even know what the percentage of 24" monitor ownership is out there? seriously?
Sigh.

EDIT: Infact, when I *did* own a 1920x1200 24" monitor, I STILL ran Crysis in 1280x800 because that's all my 8800GT could do, I for one don't mind being in non native resolution in games, if it means decent FPS, so even some of the 24" owners might want to see lower resolutions!

From what I've read at Anandtech and others here are the downsides of the 4870 X2 "FOR NOW" (hopefully this will change in the future)
-X2 doesn't work properly playing games in a window. Why would someone do that? Well, there are a lot of multi taskers out there that can pause a game and do other things like chat with friends, post messages, do work, etc. So from a resolution stand point it may not be ideal but, today's PC's have the horsepower to handle a game in the background while you do several other things at once.

-Side port is currently disabled. Anandtech states that it may never be enabled and speculated that the traces for it can be removed for cost savings. I cannot agree with the speculation but I still haven't forgotten the UVD debacle of the 2900 either.

The upsides:
-performance king
-driver maturity will increase performance
-all games seem to scale well
-etc

How come these tests always use 16xAF, I find 8 or even 4 does the job fine and the difference between that and 16 is negligible, but they do the AA at 4x and not max, so why AF max and AA more realistic?
You should do a poll on what AF people generally use, I would be interested to see the results on that one.

Well at least test are done with some AF, I think you must run test always with at least some AF because playing nowadays with no AF is just silly and unacceptable, and yet you still see sites do test without any AF and I don't imagine anybody runs games with no AF at all, in fact I wonder why there even is an 'off' position in control panels for AF, and I think one of the companies should have the balls to set the minimum at 2xAF, after all there's no 'turn off DX acceleration' button either is there.
Well maybe for 2D style games it's handy to be able to turn it off, although those games are hardly taxing the card enough to need to turn it off.

ATI simply razzing Nvidia - because Nvidia always brag with performance crown. ATI was waiting long time for this moment since the days of R300.

Check out this video
http://forum.donanimhaber.com/m_25688835/tm.htm

I still wonder why people worry so much about heat?

If company tested and released this beast; who cares if it runs hot, ATI guarantees for 2 years before it dies.

Looks like a lot of games are being topped out already. Time for another Crysis.

Conclusion:
HD4870 x2 crossfire is pointless and ineffective but I expected that.
HD4870 x2 is a great card never the less.

Why does Anand report that the Sideports are disabled?
Can you confirm this?

Sorry to post off-topic here but EVERY time I see this sentence I can't help but wonder how TR gets away with it :)

"Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. Their quality, service, and support are easily superior to no-name DIMMs."

In my books that's a veiled insult - using the lowest possible baseline to compare them against.

Change the context just slightly and the veil becomes more transparent:

"Thanks to McDonalds for providing us with food during our testing. Their flavour, service, and aftertaste are easily superior to scavenging for food in a dumpster."

Great review.

Since we are slowing in the folding department, I think a good way to get us back on course is to really start pushing gpu folding, any idea how many ppd a 2x 4870X2 system with a nice quad core would get?

Now it is hard to get ppd accurately especially since support for the newest cards isn't always there at 100% on launch, but still maybe it might be worth including folding benchmarks in gpu reviews now just like in cpu reviews.

Just a thought.

Reply to #10

No confirmation to other sites this might be untrue or probably they got a defective sample.

The drivers may not fully supporting it right now possibly since this is new.

wtf is with all the "lay off the drugs" comments? I like this style of writing - funny and informative. This is the first review where I haven't just skimmed the benchmarks and shrugged in quite a while. Bring on MORE drugs, says I.

Posted at 09:15 AM on Aug 12th 2008
PRIME1
#1, Can't find it on Newegg.

Posted at 11:47 AM on Aug 12th 2008
PRIME1
Newegg has em up now

lol oh no...a 2 hour paper launch :)

Holy power consumptions, Batman!

I bet the framerate can go higher on CoD4. The ' /com_maxfps' command is probably set to 85-90 thus keeping it from going much higher.

Great review.
I'm still suprised that after all the buzz about AC and Dx10.1 and how it impacted preformance in a positive way, that it's all of a sudden swept under the rug and only comes to light when TR tests a video card.
I'll take +~20% preformance with a Dx10.1 code path anyday over a PhysX enabled driver. Chalk it up to Mainstream impressions I suppose.

I can't wait until we have CPUs that can push these GPUs to their limits. I hate seeing CPU limited configurations in high-end tests. Maybe heavily overclocked Core i7s can get the job done (prolly not...).

Awesome review, great card. How about availability though? Have they committed to this being a hard-launch?

Call me BoBzeImpressed. I must say ATI is ahead of Nvidia in terms of multi-gpu maturity. Their 2x 4870X2 crossfire scaled pretty damn well.

Newegg has em up now $560 -$580
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&De...

Nice review! Looks like a lot of those configurations are bottlenecked by the CPU. Any chance of OCing the CPU and running a test or 3 again?