The Radeon HD 4870 1GB: The Card to Get
by Derek Wilson on September 25, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a better buy than both the GTX 260 and core 216 variant. AMD says MSRP is between $280 and $300, and a quick look at Google shows us that the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB is priced at $290. This is definitely not bad for the types of performance gains we are seeing. If the card is to be used for high resolution gaming with all the settings, then up to a 10% to 15% increase in price over the stock 4870 is not a bad investment (unless, of course, you only play the games that don't see a real benefit from the additional RAM). And at these settings, there's an additional bonus in that this performance improvement might just make the playability difference for some people in some of these games.
While the 4870 512MB part can be had for $20 or $30 cheaper than the 4870 1GB (if you shop around), many of the 512MB variants are still priced in the same range as the 1GB cards. There is no reason to buy the 512MB part if prices are equal, so we hope to see a downward shift in price for the 512MB version. We haven't heard any confirmation on this from AMD or their partners, but it really should be a matter of simple economics. It will be harder to move parts priced at $280 to $300 when you can get something that's better for the same amount of money. Thus prices should drop, if not for the minimum then at least for the average price of a 4870 512MB.
We can't say whether or not the 1GB card will have an advantage going forward, as there is a heavy push for making games more compute heavy. Larger textures and the like are always rolling out, but if the future direction leans on compute more we may see the 4870 limited in ways that it can't overcome. Conversely, the GTX 260 core 216 may benefit more or less in the future depending on what developers decide to do. While it'd be great if there were better answers here, it's a guessing game and it's all about balance. What we can say for certain is that the 4870 1GB and core 216 are both at least equal to their older siblings, so at least you'll never lose performance.
For now, it looks like the 1GB of RAM is a better balance for the RV770 GPU on current games, especially when leaning toward higher resolutions. At the prices we are seeing, it's a better balance for the consumer as well. The Radeon 4870 1GB gets our recommendation at the $280 - $300 price range.
And it's not only that. While the 4870 was actually competitive with the GTX 280 in some cases, the additional RAM actually increases that competitive edge. Yes, this is only in a few games, and we can't recommend the 4870 1GB over the GTX 280 in the general case, but there is clearly a value advantage here that can't be overstated. If you don't need the best of the best (or you aren't willing or able to spend the money for it), the 4870 1GB is a very strong solution.
So, what's the bottom line? This is currently the card to get.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
I would hope that someday soon AMD will address this with drivers or something... but seriously they dropped the ball here. I mean, 4850 and 4870 are the same GPU, so the only difference is clock speed and voltages. You can't expect me to believe that in this day and age they can't get clock and voltage adjustments to work on-the-fly. A BIOS flash can work it seems, but that just begs the question: why wasn't the BIOS programmed "properly" in the first place? (Possibly they discovered in testing that there were problems with the different voltages?) Users should *NOT* have to flash a GPU BIOS for stuff like proper power saving.Finally - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
Hmm. You are the test-guy. You should know (and tell us, please! :p)@HD4870vs.HD4850: You forgot 1 thing: the HD4870 has GDDR5, but the HD4850 has GDDR3. As it has been proven, this makes a big difference. So you can't say that they are the same. GDDR5 seems to be much more undervolting and power-saving-friendly.
Spoelie - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
Could you check with ATi if powerplay (down throttling clockspeed *and* voltage) is in the pipeline for a future driver release?I've been hearing forum voices saying "it's in the next release" for quite some time now.
Jedi2155 - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
In higher resolutions, I think this is a reality.I think the article is very truthful and quite a few other sites and come to back this up.
There is a problem with the frame buffer at higher resolutions and settings, especially if you understand how anti-aliasing among other things work.
Use Rivatuner to check the memory usage on the frame buffer yourself at those resolutions....
NullSubroutine - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
I don't have a problem with them using 8.7 for the 4870, far as I have last heard its a great driver for that card. But that is a horrible driver to use for the 4870 X2. While it wasn't the card being looked at, it can skew the results if you are trying to decide which card to get.Tiamat - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
Page 2:512MB -> 1024MB is a 100% improvement (i.e. double the ram) not 50% improvement. 50% improvement would have been to 768MB ram.
DerekWilson - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
heh ... you are quite right. sorry about that. i'll fix this.Spoelie - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
Power consumption: "Significantly" more in *both* idle and load?idle yes, load no
DerekWilson - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
by significant i mean the differences is not negligibleDiosjenin - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
I was rather under the impression that the 1GB per/2GB total RAM on the 4870 X2 was generally the reason it could be found in many cases to scale better than two 4870s, since the latter option included only 512MB per/1GB total RAM.Now that we have 4870s with 1GB RAM, can you stick two of them together and do a 2x 4870 1GB vs 4870 X2 comparison to see how that can affect the scaling disparities we've seen there before?