For those looking at the new ATI 4870 x2

[LarryRF 0]

What it means is there may be a problem with the drivers and FSX..A driver update may solve the issues with low framerates. This is a new card design and there are bound to be bugs. Give them a driver release or 2 and we'll see. If you read the beginning of the article, it says they were having driver problems and could not run at all resolutions. I have the wait and see attitude. 4870X2 looks real good, and seeing how it performs, It will be a dominant force, once the price drops a bit :)I'm running an 8800GT right now so I expect this card or even the single 4870 to give me a decent boost.Larry

[LarryRF 0]

I personally will be getting this card, mostly because I want to run 2 in crossfire :) Is that possible with the X2's? :)FSX is not my only interest, and I see this card excell in the games I'm currently playing.Notice the benchmarks for the 3870X2 and the 4870X2, they are almost the same...Seems like either their drivers or FSX can't figure out how to use the power of the cards...and they are the same at both resolutions with not much difference whether AA and AF are on or off...anybody have any ideas? The 4870 actually is a tad quicker across the board. Bus width should not be a problem for the x2 compared with the 280, both are running 512, although x2 is running 2x256. Is this just FSX not being able to use both GPU's?Larry

[Guest jahman]

>I personally will be getting this card, mostly because I want>to run 2 in crossfire :) Is that possible with the X2's? :)You can use 2x 4870X2's in CrossFire, but I recall reading that ATIis not planning to release a driver capable of actually using 4 GPUsat this time.>FSX is not my only interest, and I see this card excell in the>games I'm currently playing.>>Notice the benchmarks for the 3870X2 and the 4870X2, they are>almost the same...Actually every review I've read shows the 4870X2 (and the 4870)with vastly superior performance in just about every game!>Seems like either their drivers or FSX can't>figure out how to use the power of the cards...Well, there's not much a video card can do when the FSX bottleneckis the CPU.>and they are>the same at both resolutions with not much difference whether>AA and AF are on or off...anybody have any ideas?This is where the R770 GPU in the 4870 and 4870X2 with its hundredsof stream processors (as in 1.2 and 2.4 TeraFLOPs, respectively)really shines!The fact that you can do AA and AF without seeing an increase in FPSis actually "a good thing": It means your GPU can handle theadditional AA and AF processing load and *still* not become theprocessing bottleneck! (The FPS doesn't increase because FSX isstill CPU-bound.)So use the power of the R770 for more AA/AF or more screens orhigher resolutions (or all three!) without having the video cardbecome the processing bottleneck.>The 4870 actually is a tad quicker across the board. >>Bus width should not be a problem for the x2 compared with>the 280, both are running 512, although x2 is running 2x256. >>Is this just FSX not being able to use both GPU's?>Indeed, FSX is not optimized for multiple GPUs and the drivers arestill green in this respect, but performance may increase as driversmature. (Example: The HD4870X2's 5 MBPS GPU-to-GPU data bridge iscurrently not used being by the video driver.)Cheers,-jahman.

[LarryRF 0]

According to AMD, there is a system called Crossfire X that will enable 3 and 4 GPU crossfire modes.http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfirex_about.aspxAnd heres a guy who says he's done it already..whether it's actually working correctly is subjective.http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...3&enterthread=yWouldn't this CrossfireX be a 4870X2 use eventually... ? I do concede it is not listed in their specs ..yet.. :) But the 3870X2 is.. The benchmarks I was talking about were for FSX, sorry :) .If you compare all 3 cards, all are within a frame or 2 in FSX bench..hence my question, is there something in FSX ATI has so far, not been able to beat? Seems like the 4870X2 would be running a bit higher on the frames than the older 3870X2. I find that a little weird. But I'm no tech so it may be weird only to me :)No arguments that it wups up on just about everything else out there in the higher resolutions..I think Nvidia still does well in the lower res's though..Although if your going to spend this kind of money on a video card, I'd think you'd want the monster monitor to show it off LOL.Larry

[Guest jahman]

>According to AMD, there is a system called Crossfire X that>will enable 3 and 4 GPU crossfire modes.>>http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfirex_about.aspxInteresting... It says "supporting up to four ATI Radeon HD graphicscards" so could that be up to eight GPUs? Perhaps I was wrong andwhat ATI said is it wasn't going to support more than 4 GPUs in thedriver at this point.>And heres a guy who says he's done it already..whether it's>actually working correctly is subjective.>>http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...3&enterthread=y>>Wouldn't this CrossfireX be a 4870X2 use eventually... ? I do>concede it is not listed in their specs ..yet.. :) But the>3870X2 is..> >The benchmarks I was talking about were for FSX, sorry :) .If>you compare all 3 cards, all are within a frame or 2 in FSX>bench..hence my question, is there something in FSX ATI has so>far, not been able to beat? Seems like the 4870X2 would be>running a bit higher on the frames than the older 3870X2. I>find that a little weird. But I'm no tech so it may be weird>only to me :)Think of a "processing bottleneck" by analogy to a pipeline with asqueeze in it: It doesn't matter how much wider you make the restof the pipeline, the squeezed part will still keep limitingthroughput. Same for FSX: It doesn

[LarryRF 0]

I checked out their system specs for the test...definitely no slouch there. Still, why does Nvidia go faster with the same CPU? I guess it just does some things better than ATI's in FSX..go figure LOL.I'm curious if they used Vista 64 or 32 though. I thought I read that 32 bit could only address 1 gig of the video ram? Like it can only access , what, 3 gigs of system memory? So this card may be handicapped running 32 bit OS's? Anyone hear anything about this? Does 32 bit OS consider the Vram part of the overall ram? If it does, this card could kill your system ram :( It carries 2 gigs. Unless the drivers somehow lock out part of the vram. Also I did not see if they ran FSX in DX9 or DX10 mode..Would be curious to see how each fared.I'm still going to buy it though...just looks awesome all around.Larry

[LarryRF 0]

Read thishttp://game.amd.com/us-en/unlock_radeonhd4870x2.aspx?p=1"ATI CrossFireX