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Guest SpeedBird192

ATI 4870 Crossfire Cat 8.7 Beta...WOW!!

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Guest SpeedBird192

Not sure why Tom's Hardwared tested the ATI 4870 with Cat 8.22 Beta drivers?? Maybe the WHQL Cat 8.6's didn't work with all the games they were testing (including FSX)?Regardless, I'll post my testing results of two 4870's in Crossfire compared to my 8800GTX OC. So far, the results have been IMPRESSIVE. No texture flashing with shadows (and all along I thought this was just a problem with FSX code), image quality really does appear to look better than my 8800GTX. Frame rate is smooth and doesn't suffer any fluctuations regardless of the scene. Even have ActiveSky/Graphics X and clouds (even when set to 100 mi) don't seem to impact frame rates.I've only done testing on WinXP boot (FSX DX9 SP2). I'm still working on the Vista x64 boot/install, but I hope to get those tests done by sometime this weekend. Very interested in the Vista testing as these 4870's are DX10.1 compliant where as my 8800GTX and the GTX 280 are NOT DX10.1 compliant.Strange that I had to get the Cat 8.7 Beta drivers from Guru3D.com rather than ATI who appear to provide a "hot fix 8.6" driver only. Anyway, word from ATI/AMD is that the Cat 8.7 WHQL will be out next week on their main driver web page.Stay tuned for pics and Fraps results for both WinXP SP3 and Vista x64 SP1 using the latest Cat 8.7 Beta drivers.Final thought, edge detection AA setting for the 4870's appears to actually work in FSX in crossfire mode (4XAA with edge detection on) -- really has removed any vestige of the jaggies.So far very impressed with the 4870.

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Good news! I have just ordered this card to replace my 3780. I had the dodgy performance with clouds until I reverted to a older driver, does this mean the problem is fixed?Rob


Rob Prest

 

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Yes, is the AA on clouds issue fixed?ATi's recent offerings all seem to suffer with AA in heavy cloud conditions reducing FPS sharply.If this has been solved, I may be interested in two 4850's

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Guest SpeedBird192

No issues with Clouds from the ActiveSkyX and GraphicsX addon with AA and even with "edge detection" ON which surprised me....Bare in mind I'm running this on a QX9770 @ 4Ghz on a DDR3 based motherboard and we all know that FSX loves as much CPU as you can toss at it.Yes 3xxx series ATI cards did have AA problems. These were addressed in the 4xxx series.I'm a little surprised there is no "official" Cat driver from ATI/AMD that supports the 4xxx series. But happy Crossfire is working even if only using the AA edge detection processing.Just got thru a Crysis test and was blown away with how much faster two of these cards are over my 8800GTX OC -- 4X faster!! Really didn't expect that. Just looked at Tom's and I'm about 10 fps higher than what Tom's reports for two 4870's which is considerably higher than the GTX 280 also. Wow -- really am surprised.I got both 4870's for $299 each which is about the same as one GTX 280 for $599. But the 4850's look to be a good deal, especially getting two of them for $199 each.Haven't even started overclocking the 4870's yet, but from what I hear they have some good headroom with the right cooler as they're on 55nm fab (compared to the 65nm fab for GTX 280).Now I see why nVidia had to drop the price of the GTX 280 and GTX 260.Will post more concrete pics/results this weekend.

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Very interesting.....I just found the Visiontek 4870's on sale at NCIX for $289 CDN.Might go for one now and another one later instead of two 4850's now.Thanks for the report!

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Guest djt01

>Regardless, I'll post my testing results of two 4870's in>Crossfire compared to my 8800GTX OC. So far, the results have>been IMPRESSIVE. No texture flashing with shadows (and all>along I thought this was just a problem with FSX code), image>quality really does appear to look better than my 8800GTX. >Frame rate is smooth and doesn't suffer any fluctuations>regardless of the scene. So all of sudden CPU bound FSX takes advantage of dual GPU

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So if you run these cards in crossfire, with each card having dual monitor output, does that mean you can connect 4 monitors? Will there be reduction in performance the more monitors you connect?

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Guest D17S

Ya'll saw this?http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=c...D8F0ACD3F1669F7The 8800GT still provides all the capacity FS can use, but if a Crysis player (like me) is gonna spend da big bucks on a a next-gen card, this set appears to be a Very short lived transition (I mean 30 days). The Nvidia rumors are flying too. It's called the GTX300 at 45nm. Things are heating up.

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>Ya'll saw this?>>http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=c...D8F0ACD3F1669F7>>The 8800GT still provides all the capacity FS can use, but if>a Crysis player (like me) is gonna spend da big bucks on a a>next-gen card, this set appears to be a Very short lived>transition (I mean 30 days). The Nvidia rumors are flying too.>It's called the GTX300 at 45nm. Things are heating up. Well it just gets silly . I was waiting for the 1gig 4870 but I may as well wait for the R700 now

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Guest D17S

Good point. I'm holding out for the QX4870.

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Guest djt01

>Good point. I'm holding out for the QX4870.I

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Hi , I have a Sapphire 4870, and want to know if someone with these new Radeon series suffer the ALT key bug in FS9 (when ALT key is pressed, takes the menu 3-4 sec to be shown).I have tried 8.6 Hotfix and 8.7 betas. No success. I have submitted this possible bug to the Catalyst Team.I am not so impressed with performance in FS9. The 9800GTX or 8800GTX were very similar (sometimes better) to this 4870. I am talking about FS9...no others games tested. Waiting for new drivers...Best.Miquel.

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