ATI 4870X2 60+ benchmarks from Greece with love :)

psolord · 01:14 AM

Hello my vr-zone friends.

In order to fulfill my promises, regarding the 4870X2, I would like to bring to your attention a bunch of benchmarks I run, on my 4870X2, so you can see, what it can and can’t do. Actually there is nothing it can’t do but there are some driver issues and/or lack of optimization for many games. Actually these results will be submitted to ATI in order to fix them.

I have written a full 15 page review of both the ATI 4870X2 and the Philips Cineos 9603 32’’ which you can find here (10000 words-impossible to translate and post here). It is in Greek though so it will be…errmm…all Greek to you. You could try an online translator but I think you have to be registered in order to see the pics.

Besides the standard 3dmark06 and Vantage tests, there are 60+ tests I have conducted, most of them in 1920*1080 resolution and I have pitted the 4850 against the 4870X2 (no ATI vs NVidia this time,sorry) with no AA and with 4XAA scenarios. Also since I noticed problems with various games on the 4870X2, I decided to include a full run of all the games with AI disabled too. In my understanding, by disabling the AI , one of the rv770s gets disabled too.

My logic for this, was to compare the 4870X2 with a card 1/3 of its price. I know we can’t expect 300% improvement here, yet you should consider the following. The 4870 (single) is 30% faster than the 4850 (aka reaches 130% of its performance), so the 4870X2 should be 2X130%=260% in a best case scenario. We all understand that this is very hard, since we are talking a dual chip/dual memory solution.

I have gathered all my results (300+ runs) in an excel file. I will post the screen captures of this excel file in jpg format, for all those that do not have excel installed. There are many notes there for each benchmark, along with MIN,MAX, AVERAGE fps values.

Moreover, I have created a simplified version of the above benchmarks keeping only the AVERAGE values, so it could get much smaller. The reason for this is that I could easily change the data sorting, so I could easily see things like, Highest to lowest frame rate games with and without AA, Highest percentage difference of 4870X2 vs 4850 etc. You can sort them to your liking of course once I give the file links further below.

Ok, enough talk. Let’s cut to the chase. I wanted to try something like a mini review here, with mega benchmarks along with temperature reading and power consumption, but due to vr-zones’ limits, I cannot use more that 10 img tags, so you will have to make do with the super light version. You can download the file containing the jpg files and see for yourself instead (not containing temps and power usage though). I have named the files appropriately so you can make heads or tails of them.

ATI RADEON 4870X2 - 3DMARK VANTAGE

First of all we are going to see some 3dmark Vantage scores. The system is a Q6600@3600 (9X400),4X1GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 4-4-4-12,Asus Commando.

ATI 4850, STOCK, “Performance setting” (1280X1024), Catalyst 8.8, Score 7307

ATI 4870X2, STOCK, “Performance setting” (1280X1024), Catalyst 8.8, Score 13915

ATI 4850, STOCK, “High setting” (1680X1050), Catalyst 8.8, Score 4433

ATI 4870X2, STOCK, “High setting” (1680X1050), Catalyst 8.8, Score 9743

3d mark Vantage Results Board

Great results indeed, for the 4870X2. We see that ATI busted their fingers on the keyboard in order to get such good results. We are talking 235% difference here people on the last GPU test. Pretty close to the theoretical 260% improvement I mentioned earlier.

ATI 4870 X2-GAMES' BENCHMARKS + OTHER BENCHMARKS

The simplified results only

Please note they are sorted by highest percentage improvement of the 4870X2 over the 4850. By downloading the excel file you can do your own sorting (basic Excel knowledge required).Also in the full version of the benchmarks results, you will see that I have used both Vista 64 and XP. The reason for this is that XP’s driver sucks.

What will definitely catch your eye here is the very small gaming differences between the 4850 and the 4870X2 and you will have every right to go WTF? Why is this beast giving only 156% of the 4850 AT BEST (1920X1080@4XAA)??

The answer is simple my friends. Launch driver! Really now, what did you expect? I am not disappointed at all from these results. If you somehow feel disappointed look at the first 10 scores instead. You can see your favorite “benchmark” games that showed what a beast the 4870X2 is. Yes ATI gave priority to these games and kudos to them. The problem is that they should fix the rest.

As a side note, when you open the excel file, I have added an average score of the tests from No2 to No35 (No1 is ignored since it is obviously a driver issue of the 4850). Then you will see that the average score of the 4870X2 is 174.12% of the 4850’s.

I did that because I wanted to measure all the benchmarks above the theoretical 30% improvement of the 4870 over the 4850 (all the scores of 130%+ of the listing). I consider the rest of the benchmarks faulty and notwithstanding until ATI fixes them.

Interesting Conclusions that can be drawn from the above tests

- The ATI 4850 can run with an average of 60fps, 45 of the above 69 tests, without AA
- The ATI 4850 can run with an average of 60fps, 38 of the above 69 test with AA, while keeping reasonable framerates for the rest.
- The 4870X2 runs at more than 60FPS, 53 of the above 69 tests, with and without AA the number is the same!
- The 4870X2 performs ONLY 17.85% better than the 4870X2 with AI disabled, without AA, which if anything, it shows how much work needs to be done on the second core. I mean, come on, they even managed Crysis to give a 54.29% improvement over the single core for God’s sake. Not to mention the 205.11% of the overall score of the 4850 with AA.

The files (I added megaupload links for my Singaporean friends)

Excel file 55KB
MEGAUPLOADS -> http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B20UG0Z4
RAPIDSHARE -> http://rapidshare.com/files/14489255...EMBER_2008.rar

Benchmarks in JPG 5.6MB
MEGAUPLOADS -> http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DPQT5XC0
RAPIDSHARE -> http://rapidshare.com/files/14450900...ptember_08.rar

And last but not least, my 4870X2 Youtube videos

ATI 4870X2 COMPANY OF HEROES BENCHMARK 1920X1080 DX10 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze3alcCeuwM

ATI 4870X2 CALL OF DUTY 2 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLqMsoF5M60

ATI 4870X2 CALL OF JUAREZ 1920X1080
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUVN899GvQI

ATI 4870X2 SEGA RALLY 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCWgf3k4-eI

ATI 4870X2 LOST PLANET 1920X1080 4XAA 16XAF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPdsCzgj3c4

ATI 4870X2 SUPREME COMMANDER FORGED ALLIANCE 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWIPoN_b1Ro

ATI 4870X2 CALL OF DUTY 4 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3S4OAudi94

ATI 4870X2 UNIGINE TROPICS DX10 DEMO 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5CniIfh5nw

ATI 4870X2 UNIGINE TROPICS DX9 DEMO 1920X1080 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDWNTLo7ZdE

ATI 4870X2 RACE DRIVER GRID 1920X1080 16XAF 4XAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tVa1cGg3eE

ATI 4870X2 FLAT OUT ULTIMATE CARNAGE 1920X1080
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQndWB6kEGs

ATI 4870X2 SANCTUARY UNIGINE 0.4 DEMO 1920X1080 4XAA 16XAF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq5SRwjzkyU

ATI 4870X2 FEAR 1920X1080 4XAA 16XAF BUILT IN TEST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0z9o-3pUAo

ATI 4870X2 DEVIL MAY CRY 4 BENCHMARK 1920X1080 4XAA SUPER HIGH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJhaUROGi6I

ATI 4870X2 3DMARK VANTAGE "PERFORMANCE" DEFAULT RUN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-9XoYxOn4

ATI 4870X2 PT BOATS DX10 1680X1050
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju3FaBlaw5I

ATI 4870X2 DEMO MODE 3DMARK06 1920X1080 PART2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONMzmjaphLg

ATI 4870X2 DEMO MODE 3DMARK06 1920X1080 PART1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG2e7c4o_b8

ATI 4870X2 3DMARK2006 DEFAULT RUN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OwJt65PJqU

ATI 4870X2 LIGHTSMARK 2007 1920X1080
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffisme42NtQ

ATI 4870X2 CRYSIS BENCHMARK 1680X1050 DX9 HIGH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfRc7m1u_IA

ATI 4870X2 Call of Juarez DX10 Benchmark 1680x1050
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5cvTsTw51k

ATI 4870X2 Colin McRae DIRT 1920x1080
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNINfORWPME

ATI 4870X2 1680x1050 Crysis DX9 High NoAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyjJ_fP-5KM

Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it and find some use of it!

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psolord · Sep 15th, 08, 01:22 AM

Ah what the heck i can always put the full version of the benchmarks in a second post.

(<- plus an emoticon)

m4dn355 · Sep 15th, 08, 01:24 AM

Great work man! You put a lot of effort to do all these testings. Since the VR-Zone never managed to test 4870X2, thank God that we have you

ORiN · Sep 15th, 08, 01:35 AM

Very comprehensive review but I am happy with my HD3850 at the moment. Maybe I will upgrade when someone decided to sell their HD4850 or HD4870X2.

konstantine · Sep 15th, 08, 01:50 AM

Great job.appreciated.

felix_w · Sep 15th, 08, 04:09 AM

Etsi , etsi...Very Nice , man...Keep On...

f4lcon · Sep 15th, 08, 04:14 AM

great job

p3ncil · Sep 15th, 08, 05:53 AM

really detailed

such benchies are hard to come by
Thanks for you time

john133 · Sep 15th, 08, 10:37 AM

Thank you very much mate!!

ImmortalZ · Sep 15th, 08, 01:02 PM

Thank you for your time and effort dude

psolord · Sep 15th, 08, 01:29 PM

Thank you for your kind comments my friends.

I barely managed to squeeze enough time, in order to release these results prior to the 8.9 release.

Of course it's impossible to test every driver release, but i do intend to do one more full run with the 8.12 driver, which i believe will be mature enough. And ATI had better fix all of these issues by then (I believe they will, since there will be another dual chip card out by then, the 4850X2).

overclock · Sep 15th, 08, 04:45 PM

Really good work : compared to your review, other ones done by websites are really pale.

Your review gives a comprehensive and accurate performance analysis of the 4870X2.

I have 1 question : is the OS Windows XP ou Vista ? Indeed, bi-GPU works better under Vista.

glyfone · Sep 15th, 08, 05:08 PM

wow! so many tests! Good work

psolord · 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by overclock

Really good work : compared to your review, other ones done by websites are really pale.

Your review gives a comprehensive and accurate performance analysis of the 4870X2.

I have 1 question : is the OS Windows XP ou Vista ? Indeed, bi-GPU works better under Vista.

Thank you my friend and the rest of the guys too.

Most of the tests are under XP. That's the OS i started benchmarking until i figured out that there was something wrong. Wherever i used Vista64, i have noted it. I guess XP can do bi-GPU just fine. What worries me is the 2GB of video ram of the 4870X2 and maybe there is some kind of problem there. I am just an end user and i couldn't know! Still, XP works just as good in most games, so i think it is a driver optimization issue.

My work is completely amateurish though. I have no intention to compare myself with large review sites, which works i deeply appreciate and always take under consideration before buying. You were very kind for saying this though.

kyouta · Sep 15th, 08, 07:39 PM

thank you!