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It has arrived... :D :D :D! EDIT 7:30pm Eastern: I have posted World In Conflict results below as well as initial overclocking, working on Crysis (driver issue) and others shortly, most won't be tested for a few hours though (I'm aiming for a lot of results by midnight eastern). http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/8127/golden4870tg6.jpg EDIT2 9:06pm Eastern: Here's the highest overclock I can get, not because of instability/artifacting, but because the CCC Overdrive won't go any further and no other tools are around yet to go higher: Note that the memory speed is actually 4400mhz, 1100x2 DDR, and then doubled again by GDDR5, for an actual effective 4400mhz. The bandwidth shown is *half* the actual bandwidth due to GPU-Z not making this calculation properly. The stock GPU is 750mhz, and the stock RAM is 3600mhz. The effective bandwidth in this GPU-Z shot is actually 140.8GB/s. http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/2049/4870ocgoldentigerlw2.png Idle temps are around 55c with the BIOS flashed to 31% at 40c and above, 42% at 65c and above... once it gets under load at these speeds, it is hitting around 65-67c and staying there after 10 minutes of 3d use. The default fan profile in the BIOS were around 10-15% at all times, resulting in temps of 77-79c idle and 85c-ish load. HUGE difference by changing the fan speeds. ============= ooh yea she looks sexy. more pics please and benchies!! I'm waiting for non-reference designs and the 1GB version to drop first b4 I bite. Enjoy! ============= Sweetness dude. Pix and benches plz ============= Everything on the overdrive tab is greyed out using 8.6 hotfix drivers... is there something I'm missing :(? Benches and such soon, of course :). EDIT: Initial overclocking looks good... the max. CCC lets me set is 790 core, so I tried that with 1000 RAM (4000 DDR5, stock is 3600) and it's running rock-solid stable with Crysis timedemos looped many times. I'm still benching and fiddling... more overclocking, and benches from Crysis and other games will come late tonight once I'm done :). Pic: http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/2881/grayed4870yn6.png ============= Where did you order your 4870 from? I ordered one from NCIX and they don't even have them in stock yet. According to this Overdrive is automatic and not something you adjust manually. Says not available on some cards too. http://ati.amd.com/products/catalyst/top10-8.html ============= Click the Key icon. That'll unlock it ;) ============= Click the Key icon. That'll unlock it ;) +1 Nice card. I'd be tempted if I didn't get two 4850's for the same money. ============= I also just got my Sapphire 4870, can't wait to test this sucker out on Conan and Crysis. ============= It's a shame you have to tuck away that beauty in order to use it. Definitely an aesthetically pleasing unit. Superior in every way: form, function, and price! ============= I'll be buying a 4870 in a few weeks to replace my 9800GTX. :D ============= Initial overclocking looks good... the max. CCC lets me set is 790 core, so I tried that with 1000 RAM (4000 DDR5, stock is 3600) and it's running rock-solid stable with Crysis timedemos looped many times. I'm still benching and fiddling... more overclocking, and benches from Crysis and other games will come late tonight once I'm done :). I'm thinking of removing the stock HSF and re-applying the thermal paste, but temps are pretty good so far (80-85 load with this overclock). I got it from a Hong Kong seller on the 'Bay, $300 USD overnighted to me :). Thanks for the pointer on the OverDrive thing guys. Yeah, it is a beauty, it's a shame to have it tucked away where I can't see it... the plastic is like a ruby color (pun intended) :). ============= ooh yea she looks sexy. more pics please and benchies!! I'm waiting for non-reference designs and the 1GB version to drop first b4 I bite. Enjoy! +1, that's what I'm going to do too, or wait for the X2 version (I do want to replace my 2900xt pretty soon). It's going to be nice, since I remember hearing there will be factory overclocked versions of the 4870. ============= I'm getting... odd... Crysis results here. Other games are running fine, but Crysis seems WAY below the pack of games vs. the 280, whereas the 4870 is very competitive if not equal to it with 8x AA and 16x AF in the games I'm testing. Crysis seems to be having some major issues with tons of loading and complete stuttering at parts of the timedemo, while FPS stays the same whether I have no AA, or all the way up to 8x AA, the framerate stays exactly the same (the AA is changing looking by eye during the demo, just not the framerates). Any ideas? This card looks to be a beast, but I'm thinking there's a driver issue with Crysis at the moment. Other games are giving VERY good results though. Also, GPU-Z is showing the non-DDR5 bandwidth (i.e. bandwidth as though it was running at the RAM speed it actually is, rather than 4x bandwidth which = DDR5 bandwidth). Hopefully the next few days will see a new driver release and some bugfixes. ============= I have the 4850 and the hotfix drivers and when I run the timedemo, it has to loop at least twice. For about 25% of the first run, it seems very slow for some reason. I don't see this when I actually play so it's just weird. ============= Up to 4200 (stock 3600) on the memory rock-solid :eek:... really wish there was a way to pump the core further, I'm sure it could take it. Come on, developers, faster, make those tools faster! :p Still 790 on the core of course (stock 750) ============= Well the RBE bios editor by w1z is due out soon supposedly so we can see some BIOS editing very soon for some nice voltage + core clocks, especially with an aftermarket cooler on there. Nice mem clocks too, I can't even imagine when 5GHz+ GDDR5 comes out... Also, I dig the carbon-fiber look around the Radeon text. Nice little touch... ============= Yeah, I'm debating if I should spend the cash for an aftermarket... would come to around $50 with a fan for an Accelero S1 Rev. 2, or an HR-03 GT for around $61 with a fan. Not sure it's worth it when the card's only $300 and the overclock won't neccessarily be that different performance-wise with the aftermarket ones. I'm going to pop the cooler off later and see if re-applying Arctic Ceramique helps the temps out, though the fan never spins up right now which is part of why it's running hot. I'm not so keen on overclocking the core via BIOS without knowing it's stable first, because I don't have a PCI video card as a backup should something not work properly... and I'm not keen on trying to blindflash, either :p. ============= I'm getting... odd... Crysis results here. Other games are running fine, but Crysis seems WAY below the pack of games vs. the 280, whereas the 4870 is very competitive if not equal to it with 8x AA and 16x AF in the games I'm testing. Crysis seems to be having some major issues with tons of loading and complete stuttering at parts of the timedemo, while FPS stays the same whether I have no AA, or all the way up to 8x AA, the framerate stays exactly the same (the AA is changing looking by eye during the demo, just not the framerates). Any ideas? This card looks to be a beast, but I'm thinking there's a driver issue with Crysis at the moment. Other games are giving VERY good results though. Also, GPU-Z is showing the non-DDR5 bandwidth (i.e. bandwidth as though it was running at the RAM speed it actually is, rather than 4x bandwidth which = DDR5 bandwidth). Hopefully the next few days will see a new driver release and some bugfixes. What happens if you run through with Fraps on? Mine will be here tomorrow. I want to h20 cool it but for now I have a NIB TT Dualorb GPU cooler to hang off it if need be. ============= What happens if you run through with Fraps on? Good idea, will try. ============= Damn, mine doesnt arrive until next week. ============= I'll be buying a 4870 in a few weeks to replace my 9800GTX. :D and what will you do with your 9800 GTX?:D ============= Yeah, I'm debating if I should spend the cash for an aftermarket... would come to around $50 with a fan for an Accelero S1 Rev. 2, or an HR-03 GT for around $61 with a fan. Not sure it's worth it when the card's only $300 and the overclock won't neccessarily be that different performance-wise with the aftermarket ones. I'm going to pop the cooler off later and see if re-applying Arctic Ceramique helps the temps out, though the fan never spins up right now which is part of why it's running hot. I'm not so keen on overclocking the core via BIOS without knowing it's stable first, because I don't have a PCI video card as a backup should something not work properly... and I'm not keen on trying to blindflash, either :p. Looks like the same heatsink as the HD3870x2's that I have. I'd just wait until a utility is able to change the fan speed. I run my cards at 40% fan constant, temps never go over 80 during heavy gaming, and they idle around 45. Those heatsinks can move A LOT of air, it's just that the default fan profile is VERY conservative and it barely kicks in. ============= jus got mine picked it up at mwave ============= World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF and 4x AA *with* transparency AA, average of several runs: Resolution: 1680*1050 Detail Level: Very High Average fps: 29 Min fps: 17 Max fps: 45 System specs: Q6600 @ 3.15ghz 4GB RAM @ 5-5-5 1T eVGA 680i motherboard (NF68-A1) HIS Radeon 4870 512MB GDDR5 @ 790core/4200ram EDIT: World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF with *no* AA, average of several runs: Resolution: 1680*1050 Detail Level: Very High Average fps: 35 Min fps: 20 Max fps: 56 Very nice so far, 4x AA doesn't cause much of a hit at all :D ! ============= Looks like the same heatsink as the HD3870x2's that I have. I'd just wait until a utility is able to change the fan speed. I run my cards at 40% fan constant, temps never go over 80 during heavy gaming, and they idle around 45. Those heatsinks can move A LOT of air, it's just that the default fan profile is VERY conservative and it barely kicks in. Yeah, it seems to not do much spinning up at all, I can't wait for RivaTuner or whatnot to be updated with fan control and overclocking capability for these... I have a feeling they'll scale VERY well. 790core/4200ram so far, max. I can go to with CCC is 4400 which I'm going to inch up to shortly. ============= Buying and building a new computer tomorrow: e8400 /w noctua nh-u12p 4gb 1000mhz ram gigabyte p35 motherboard radeon 4870 /w accelero s1rev2 :) ============= I'm getting... odd... Crysis results here. Other games are running fine, but Crysis seems WAY below the pack of games vs. the 280, whereas the 4870 is very competitive if not equal to it with 8x AA and 16x AF in the games I'm testing. Crysis seems to be having some major issues with tons of loading and complete stuttering at parts of the timedemo, while FPS stays the same whether I have no AA, or all the way up to 8x AA, the framerate stays exactly the same (the AA is changing looking by eye during the demo, just not the framerates). Any ideas? This card looks to be a beast, but I'm thinking there's a driver issue with Crysis at the moment. Other games are giving VERY good results though. Also, GPU-Z is showing the non-DDR5 bandwidth (i.e. bandwidth as though it was running at the RAM speed it actually is, rather than 4x bandwidth which = DDR5 bandwidth). Hopefully the next few days will see a new driver release and some bugfixes. change crysis.exe to 1234.exe see what happens ============= Buying and building a new computer tomorrow: e8400 /w noctua nh-u12p 4gb 1000mhz ram gigabyte p35 motherboard radeon 4870 /w accelero s1rev2 :) A little suggestion if I may: P35's are notoriously bad for crossfire. If you want that option open, pick an X38 or X48 board (or at least a P45 board). ============= Who's going to be the first to burn up a 4870? :D ============= change crysis.exe to 1234.exe see what happens I tried this just now, and it resulted in a black screen with no hard disk activity twice in a row... something's DEFINITELY up here. ============= Everything on the overdrive tab is greyed out using 8.6 hotfix drivers... is there something I'm missing :(? Benches and such soon, of course :). EDIT: Initial overclocking looks good... the max. CCC lets me set is 790 core, so I tried that with 1000 RAM (4000 DDR5, stock is 3600) and it's running rock-solid stable with Crysis timedemos looped many times. I'm still benching and fiddling... more overclocking, and benches from Crysis and other games will come late tonight once I'm done :). Damn! That's one fatass OC on the memory! :eek: W00t! :D ============= Damn! That's one fatass OC on the memory! :eek: W00t! :D It gets better... Been fiddling with 4400 memory, going to grab a bite to eat and let it loop timedemos for awhile, but 10 minutes playing in-game worked 100% perfectly. The CCC Overdrive won't go any further, so I'm waiting on a utility if this works to push the core/mem higher. These puppies seem to be amazing OC'ers :D! ============= What are your temps like? ============= Golden Tiger, have you tried actually playing crysis with the Devmode Display on? The Devmode display will show the FPS counter.. Edit:NVM guess u have tried to play it. ============= thanks OP, looking forward to some benchmarks and game play info ============= Congrats! Keep us posted about your Crysis progress! ============= It has arrived... :D :D :D! EDIT 7:30pm Eastern: I have posted World In Conflict results below as well as initial overclocking, working on Crysis (driver issue) and others shortly, most won't be tested for a few hours though (I'm aiming for a lot of results by midnight eastern). http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/8127/golden4870tg6.jpg looks pretty good to me.overclock it to the max :p ============= I so love ATI that even my current 8800gt PCB is of colour RED :D ============= Grats man! Waiting on tigerdirect to ship mine. Whats your initial impression on this vs. the GTX280 it replaced? IQ and real life gaming, same? ============= Golden Tiger, have you tried actually playing crysis with the Devmode Display on? The Devmode display will show the FPS counter.. Edit:NVM guess u have tried to play it. In-game play works fine with the devmode FPS counter, it just wouldn't run when I renamed the .exe to try to disable any optimizations causing weirdness. With how Crysis is running in the timedemo I am pretty sure something's up with the drivers. The timedemo is not running as well as the in-game gameplay is, which sends up a red flag right away that something's funky. What are your temps like? 85-87c or so load so far. Grats man! Waiting on tigerdirect to ship mine. Whats your initial impression on this vs. the GTX280 it replaced? IQ and real life gaming, same? I played some TF2 on Dustbowl and Goldrush for awhile earlier and honestly, while the max FPS didn't seem to reach as high levels, the minimum framerate was a bit higher seemingly than with the GTX 280 (never dipped below 60 with FRAPS running, max was somewhat lower, whereas the GTX 280 had dips to 50, of course due to the dynamic nature of the gameplay it will vary, but overall it seemed just as good if not better). As far as IQ goes, you'd be hard-pressed to find a difference in the AF, but the AA seems a bit better on this card (8x MSAA on the 4870 vs. 8x CSAA of the 280), less screendoor effect from shimmering edges/etc. and the transparency AA is just as good. I am noticing less of a performance hit with AA than the GTX 280 was taking (note it was overclocked to 687core/1444shader/2400ish RAM). I'm finding my results in actual gameplay with FRAPS running to be nearly identical, honestly. I am amazed with the quality of this card, not to mention its overclockability which I have a feeling is going to be insane once proper tools come out. My newest stable overclock is as high as I can go so far: 25 loops of the flyby Crysis bench with me watching most of the time, reading a magazine the rest while snacking, at 4400RAM (1100x4 DDR5, stock is 900x4=3600) and 790 core. 100% artifact free. The CCC overdrive will not go any further :eek:, but this card is barely heating up more with the overclock than it was at stock so it should go much higher :D. http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/4040/cccoverdrive4870sr6.jpg ============= wow that is some crazy overclocks on the stock cooler... very nice! ============= In-game play works fine with the devmode FPS counter, it just wouldn't run when I renamed the .exe to try to disable any optimizations causing weirdness. With how Crysis is running in the timedemo I am pretty sure something's up with the drivers. The timedemo is not running as well as the in-game gameplay is, which sends up a red flag right away that something's funky. 85-87c or so load so far. I played some TF2 on Dustbowl and Goldrush for awhile earlier and honestly, while the max FPS didn't seem to reach as high levels, the minimum framerate was a bit higher seemingly than with the GTX 280 (never dipped below 60 with FRAPS running, max was somewhat lower, whereas the GTX 280 had dips to 50, of course due to the dynamic nature of the gameplay it will vary, but overall it seemed just as good if not better). As far as IQ goes, you'd be hard-pressed to find a difference in the AF, but the AA seems a bit better on this card (8x MSAA on the 4870 vs. 8x CSAA of the 280), less screendoor effect from shimmering edges/etc. and the transparency AA is just as good. I am noticing less of a performance hit with AA than the GTX 280 was taking (note it was overclocked to 687core/1444shader/2400ish RAM). I'm finding my results in actual gameplay with FRAPS running to be nearly identical, honestly. I am amazed with the quality of this card, not to mention its overclockability which I have a feeling is going to be insane once proper tools come out. My newest stable overclock is as high as I can go so far: 25 loops of the flyby Crysis bench with me watching most of the time, reading a magazine the rest while snacking, at 4400RAM (1100x4 DDR5, stock is 900x4=3600) and 790 core. 100% artifact free. The CCC overdrive will not go any further :eek:, but this card is barely heating up more with the overclock than it was at stock so it should go much higher :D. You can always use Radeon BIOS editor if you know how. As far as the memory clock is concerned, that is impressive! ============= ... but this card is barely heating up more with the overclock than it was at stock so it should go much higher :D. Don't get overly excited.... ya never know. ============= You can always use Radeon BIOS editor if you know how. As far as the memory clock is concerned, that is impressive! I thought that it wasn't released yet for the 4870s, not for another day or two. Don't get overly excited.... ya never know. True, my guess is this will hit a voltage-limit/clock wall, instead of a heat wall, when overclocking stock. Still interested to see where this goes... ============= Well the 4850 one is out. Maybe try it out and see if it detects the 4870? Either way, it should be soon.. http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/RBE/ Radeon Bios Editor 1.11 v1.11 * Fixed values written if look up table is used. * Improved method of clock rates detection (old method was not working properly with some weired BIOSes). * Added some FireGL device IDs. * Added some stuff to the in-program-FAQ. * Undated link to WinFlash. * Fixed little bug occuring writing some BIOS infos. * Fixed some confusion regarding 3650 cards. * Added support for some exotic mobile card's BIOSes (experimental). * Added support for HD 4850 (experimental). * Added fan control for most 3870 X2s. People were achieving 800MHz on core for the 4850's... 900Mhz on water... I can't even imagine what an after market cooler (or water) + 4870 will hit ============= Well the 4850 one is out. Maybe try it out and see if it detects the 4870? Either way, it should be soon.. http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/RBE/ Radeon Bios Editor 1.11 People were achieving 800MHz on core for the 4850's... 900Mhz on water... I can't even imagine what an after market cooler (or water) + 4870 will hit That's the brand-new one they were saying was coming in a day or two on their forums... I'll see if it detects it and if so I may give it a whirl. :) Thank you. ============= 800MHz on 4850? *Joe Dirt Voice* Daaaaaaaang. ============= Nice going GT. I bought the same 4870 and the driver will not load in vista. Trying like mad to figure out what is wrong. ============= Nice going GT. I bought the same 4870 and the driver will not load in vista. Trying like mad to figure out what is wrong. So you could install it but are having problems booting up? ============= It will install but upon entering Vista, I get a no driver signal and the screen goes blank. ============= You can always use Radeon BIOS editor if you know how. As far as the memory clock is concerned, that is impressive! I can't get the clocks to increase with the BIOS at all, they just stay at the default values even if I enter something else and flash. The fan settings ARE working though, so I set up a profile that keeps it at 31% (quiet) most of the time, and 42% once it hits 65c, running ATItool's fur-cube is making it go to 65c and 42% fan (not too loud) which is keeping it right around that temp. Very impressive! The fan before was running at 10-15% full-time, with the default profiles, making my idle temps nearly 80c, now they're down to 55-56c, with much lower load temps. So, now that the temps are under control, I want to get the clocks higher! Any suggestions :)? EDIT: Purecain's XS thread has the goods on that. I'm up to 820core/1125(4500)ram now :). I'm going to try pumping the core some after I test this more thoroughly. ============= G.T. you say that the Crysis timedemo doesn't run well, but in-game it does. How would you describe the in-game experience? Compare it to other cards you've had, maybe an 8800 GT or whatever you used to run (besides the GTX 280). Would you say you get good even frames, even in the open foliage and mountain areas? Would you say it's better than a 9800 GX2? (I don't know what you ran before the new cards just came out, i'm only assuming you've had at least some type of SLI or 8800 GTX or ??.) :) I wouldn't mind a 35-40 fps on just HIGH even throughout the game. With SLI, you're either getting 70 fps or 20 fps. I think that's where timedemo benchmarks can be misleading. ============= EDIT: Purecain's XS thread has the goods on that. I'm up to 820core/1125(4500)ram now :). I'm going to try pumping the core some after I test this more thoroughly. :eek: My God sweet... Link? Vantage, 3dmark 06?? Give us some numbers lol ============= Here's the thread for it http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192411 ============= where do u find the correct drivers for it i checked the amd website and the only drivers i see are the ones up too 3870?? can some one link me? ============= where do u find the correct drivers for it i checked the amd website and the only drivers i see are the ones up too 3870?? can some one link me? Search the AMD site for 4800 drivers, you can't direct link as it is session based. ============= So you got 820 on core without any volt mod? ============= GT, you would be my absolute hero if you could do the following test for me... :) Just oblivion, 1680x1050 16x AF, 8x AA with everything (grass, shadows, view etc.) set to max... Just stand in the middle of a forest on a nice day... And see what you tend to get frame-rate wise. <3 ============= GT, you would be my absolute hero if you could do the following test for me... :) Just oblivion, 1680x1050 16x AF, 8x AA with everything (grass, shadows, view etc.) set to max... Just stand in the middle of a forest on a nice day... And see what you tend to get frame-rate wise. <3 I second that , make sure you have QTP3 installed though. ============= And MTAEVWD! http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=2420 So far we have not seen this card choke because of lack of VRAM at 1920x1200 and below. If anything out there can cause that, it would be this. ============= So you got 820 on core without any volt mod? Yes. I'm sorry guys, but the card died on me when I tried flashing to 870/4500 with a slightly higher voltage in BIOS... it worked fine for Crysis and others for about 15 minutes just running hot, but due to temps I flashed back to stock... suddenly bluescreen, now no boot... put in a card alongside it and it shows up in Windows, flashed to default BIOS with higher fan speeds and it won't come back to life still. So, just a warning, don't go above 820 for now on the core and 4400ram, to be safe I'd stick with OverDrive's 790/4400 limit, the card worked 100% fine at that for ages and even 820, but you really don't want to end up without a card like me!. What's weird is at 870 core and 4500 ram, the card performed at least 30% better than it did at 850 core/4500 RAM, almost as though some bottleneck had been lifted... until it died :(. Now trying to find somewhere to get a 4870 from that I'll take better care of /cry. I wouldn't try going beyond 820/4500 which I ran for hours without huge temperature gains just yet... at least not with BIOS flashing and such, wait for RivaTuner/ATItool/anything. ============= I always wonder at people flashing overclocks into their cards BIOS. Is using software really that bad? Sorry about your card, but hopefully others will learn from your mistake. PS - I get that you were trying to go over the limits of OD. ============= Omg. :( ============= Sorry to hear about the card GT. BIOS flashing is always risky :( going to wait for ATITool or RivaTuner (should be out sometime next month) to support the cars, or the new AMD OC tool. Good news is that the 4870's are supposedly going to hit the streets in much larger #'s by the end of next week so we might see some price drops too ============= Hey GoldenTiger: In this thread, some people that had modded BIOS's also killed a few video cards when they refused to POST but Jimmyz suggested: You flashed them already? if your clocks are too high for the voltage it will not post, there is your issue. If you can perform the volt mod they will most likely work, I had a 4850 refuse too boot at 900 , raised the volts and it boots fine, the card with only 1 led is not getting juice, i bet it is your secondary right? Link (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192759) Take a look. If you have a second card laying around, trying using that to boot in and reflashing your BIOS again to a stable setup. ============= Pity... I was never planning to flash the BIOS to overclock but it looks like we'll all have to do it anyway to fix the horrible fan speed and idling clock. Is that relatively safe? Or is there some other way to do it? ============= Yes. I'm sorry guys, but the card died on me when I tried flashing to 870/4500 with a slightly higher voltage in BIOS... it worked fine for Crysis and others for about 15 minutes just running hot, but due to temps I flashed back to stock... suddenly bluescreen, now no boot... put in a card alongside it and it shows up in Windows, flashed to default BIOS with higher fan speeds and it won't come back to life still. So, just a warning, don't go above 820 for now on the core and 4400ram, to be safe I'd stick with OverDrive's 790/4400 limit, the card worked 100% fine at that for ages and even 820, but you really don't want to end up without a card like me!. What's weird is at 870 core and 4500 ram, the card performed at least 30% better than it did at 850 core/4500 RAM, almost as though some bottleneck had been lifted... until it died :(. Now trying to find somewhere to get a 4870 from that I'll take better care of /cry. I wouldn't try going beyond 820/4500 which I ran for hours without huge temperature gains just yet... at least not with BIOS flashing and such, wait for RivaTuner/ATItool/anything. Dammit, RIP. Mine should be here today, Fedex tracking says 6/27 by 3PM EST. Funny, its 6:10PM EST here and still no card yet. :mad: ============= Got mine! Impressed at how it handles things with all settings on high wooooot. ============= I don't ever overclock my video cards anymore for this reason. My 4870 will stay at stock speeds and keep me happy enough. Last time I modified the video bios was to fix the memory clock on EVGA's crap 7900GT video cards but that was to lower the ram speed and not OC it. EVGA break enough video cards all on their own by overclocking without any help from me. In fact, I made sure neither of my 2 8800GT cards were factory overclocked for this reason. ============= Dammit, RIP. Mine should be here today, Fedex tracking says 6/27 by 3PM EST. Funny, its 6:10PM EST here and still no card yet. :mad: Jun 27, 2008 4:45 PM Departed FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN Ship date Jun 26, 2008 Estimated delivery Jun 27, 2008 by 3:00 PM Service type Standard Overnight Still not delivered - 8:37PM EST now. What time does Fedex deliver till? Fuck this is making me mad. ============= I don't think they deliver past 9pm local time and even then i've never had anything come that late. Usually in my experiences if they aren't there yet, it probably got put on the wrong truck or something and you won't see it till Monday unless your local center is open tomorrow you may be able to pick it up. ============= I don't think they deliver past 9pm local time and even then i've never had anything come that late. Usually in my experiences if they aren't there yet, it probably got put on the wrong truck or something and you won't see it till Monday unless your local center is open tomorrow you may be able to pick it up. Yea then ZZF is refunding my $27 for overnight shipping, thats BS, they sat on it too long. This was ordered weds with overnight. Now I wont have it till monday. ZZF FTMFL. ============= Yea then ZZF is refunding my $27 for overnight shipping, thats BS, they sat on it too long. This was ordered weds with overnight. Now I wont have it till monday. ZZF FTMFL. Sucks that you have to wait. I know how it feels to have your expectations shattered. I'm glad that ZZF atleast compensated your for the shipping. It also doesn't help that our shipping companies pretty much suck. UPS is my least favorite, but Fedex isn't much better and they are pretty odd. I can have 4 things coming to me via fedex on the same day, but depending on how its shipped it can arrive in 4 different trucks throughout the day. UPS (if they don't screw up) delivers everything on one truck or atleast in my area. ============= Sucks that you have to wait. I know how it feels to have your expectations shattered. I'm glad that ZZF atleast compensated your for the shipping. It also doesn't help that our shipping companies pretty much suck. UPS is my least favorite, but Fedex isn't much better and they are pretty odd. I can have 4 things coming to me via fedex on the same day, but depending on how its shipped it can arrive in 4 different trucks throughout the day. UPS (if they don't screw up) delivers everything on one truck or atleast in my area. He said he wants them to refund the shipping, not that they have :(. ============= He said he wants them to refund the shipping, not that they have :(. Oops, read that wrong. I hope they do, or atleast they should. ============= Oops, read that wrong. I hope they do, or atleast they should. yea, I will just wait and see if by some miracle it shows up uber late. Its going on 10PM EST here - still no delivery, last note in trackign at 4:45 leaving Memphis TN. We dont have Saturday delivery here so I wont get it till monday. But ordering it weds with overnight should not have taken so long. I couldve gotten the free shipping and had it monday. Or ordered from Newegg and had it yesterday. Im pissed off, never again will I order from ZZF. ============= Try calling up FedEx and see whats up. They once supposedly lost a delivered a package of mine in the morning that wasn't at my door and they didnt come back til the afternoon after I called them about it. ============= yea, I will just wait and see if by some miracle it shows up uber late. Its going on 10PM EST here - still no delivery, last note in trackign at 4:45 leaving Memphis TN. We dont have Saturday delivery here so I wont get it till monday. But ordering it weds with overnight should not have taken so long. I couldve gotten the free shipping and had it monday. Or ordered from Newegg and had it yesterday. Im pissed off, never again will I order from ZZF. 4:45 AM or PM and do you live in or near Memphis? Usually it should say "Out For Delivery" or something similar from you local facility. If it doesn't already say "Out For Delivery" its more likely that it didn't reach the local facility in time or still hasn't gotten there for whatever reason. ============= Nope, they fucked me. :mad: Called Fedex and said there was a freeway closed 2 days ago and the package is now rescheduled for monday. Funny, the package went out yesterday so wtf does that have to do with a closed freeway 2 days ago??? I reamed the idiot on the phone out. Of course he's some fucking shithead sitting in a call center in india so what the fuck does he care.... I have written an email to ZZF requesting being reimbursed for the $27 for overnight shipping. Fedex and ZZF will never be delivering items for me again. Newegg / UPS only from now on. ============= Sorry to hear that.:( I don't think I'd really overclock these 4870's a lot if at all. AMD is probably pushing these babies pretty hard as it is to get all the performance they can. At some point you've got to leave well enough alone. ============= Anyone know if BB is stocking them in store yet? I'll pick one up over the weekend and just refuse this package monday. Fedex and ZZF can suck on it. ============= Nope, they fucked me. :mad: Called Fedex and said there was a freeway closed 2 days ago and the package is now rescheduled for monday. Funny, the package went out yesterday so wtf does that have to do with a closed freeway 2 days ago??? I reamed the idiot on the phone out. Of course he's some fucking shithead sitting in a call center in india so what the fuck does he care.... I have written an email to ZZF requesting being reimbursed for the $27 for overnight shipping. Fedex and ZZF will never be delivering items for me again. Newegg / UPS only from now on. Sorry card is running behind. But why get on ZZF's ass? ZZF has to pay FedEx and it was FedEx's mistake. And its not like they don't move a zillion packages a day. Not to mention how all the shippers are getting reamed by fuel costs. We've all had shipping mistakes occur but at the same time if we think about how often they happen, its pretty rare overall. ============= Sorry card is running behind. But why get on ZZF's ass? ZZF has to pay FedEx and it was FedEx's mistake. And its not like they don't move a zillion packages a day. Not to mention how all the shippers are getting reamed by fuel costs. We've all had shipping mistakes occur but at the same time if we think about how often they happen, its pretty rare overall. Cause it was ordered weds. Newegg would have shipped it weds - but ZZF being lazy sat on it another day. Im pissed at ZZF cause they should've shipped it the same day. The order was in early. Failure on both parts. I should've ordered from Newegg I would have had it yesterday. ============= We'll see overclocks on the 4870 soon since Unwinder is getting a 4800 sample from Guru3d soon: lmimmfn - Yes of course. I've dispatched a 4800 card to Unwinder so he can start working on the RT compatibility, after which we'll max out the OC and likely update the reference article. The overclocking guide might be a good idea, in fact even to include in all reviews. Source (http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=2750171&postcount=41) BIOS editing is always risky, especially when voltages are used but RivaTuner should alleviate that. ============= That sucks, sorry to hear that. Hopefully ZZF will take care of the shipping costs. I had a similar situation happen with UPS. On my tracking information it said my shipment was delayed due to train derailment. It actually happened a few months ago and was in the news any everything, I guess I should feel honored that my package was one of the affected. :rolleyes: ============= Cause it was ordered weds. Newegg would have shipped it weds - but ZZF being lazy sat on it another day. Im pissed at ZZF cause they should've shipped it the same day. The order was in early. Failure on both parts. I ordered my third GTX 280 from NewEgg last Friday, before noon PST with all the verification done before noon PST and even paid $3 for rush processing and NewEgg didn't ship the card till Monday. I've order tons from both ZZF and NewEgg overnight and from time to time it doesn't ship till next day. Most of the time but not always. Neither one guarantees same day shipping. ============= We've all had shipping mistakes occur but at the same time if we think about how often they happen, its pretty rare overall. I think my wife would have to disagree with you.:p She has witnessed every issue i have with either UPS, DHL,and Fedex and can truthfully say that my packages are delayed for one reason or another more than 50% of the time. I have the direct number to both my UPS and Fedex local facilities and am on first name basis with the UPS supervisor. I'm not rude, but its almost comical how often i end up having to call them up. I don't even bother calling the 800 number anymore because all they do is put in a ticket to have the local facility call you, no point since I can call them. :D I'm thankful that none of my shipments have been lost, just delayed and usually its simple human error. ============= Well... my 2x4870's, CPU, mobo, ram, heatsink, vista dvd, artic silver 5 tube, usb extension cable, and plastic zipties came in record time and they are now sitting on my desk. Unfortunately my new computer case and power supply were in a second package. A second package that no one was at the front desk to accept delivery for when UPS came by. ... ... WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!??!?!? :( ============= I ordered my third GTX 280 from NewEgg last Friday, before noon PST with all the verification done before noon PST and even paid $3 for rush processing and NewEgg didn't ship the card till Monday. I've order tons from both ZZF and NewEgg overnight and from time to time it doesn't ship till next day. Most of the time but not always. Neither one guarantees same day shipping. ZZF used to be really really good a couple years ago. Not only were almost all of their items free shipping, but they were about as consistent as Newegg. I have noticed with my last few orders with them that when they say 1-2 business days processing time, they aren't kidding. Newegg, atleast for me, usually has the item out the door the same day. ============= Depends on when you place your orders too. Too late in the day and itll likely slide to the next day I have the benefit that Neweggs CA warehouse is a 2 minute drive from my house so UPS ground is usually UPS Next Day. The fact i have to pay for shipping and can't pick it up though is ridiculous :( ============= Depends on when you place your orders too. Too late in the day and itll likely slide to the next day I have the benefit that Neweggs CA warehouse is a 2 minute drive from my house so UPS ground is usually UPS Next Day. The fact i have to pay for shipping and can't pick it up though is ridiculous :(Yup, same here. I ordered at ~1pm yesterday with UPS ground and it was in my hands at 10:00am today! Sucks when they randomly decide not to ship your order from CA though... :P ============= Normally that is the case, but i would assume the 4870's popularity might have something to do with it as well. I ordered 2 4870s from Newegg with their standard ground shipping (3 days) and at about the same time (12PM CT) ordered my mobo from ZZF with 2day shipping and they didn't ship it till the next day and both shipments are scheduled to be here monday. No biggie for me since i work all weekend and won't have a chance to start my build until Monday evening. ============= Yup, same here. I ordered at ~1pm yesterday with UPS ground and it was in my hands at 10:00am today! Sucks when they randomly decide not to ship your order from CA though... :P Yeah they catch me off guard every once in a while with shipments from NJ and stuff haha. I guess that's what we get for having tax though. ============= I think my wife would have to disagree with you.:p She has witnessed every issue i have with either UPS, DHL,and Fedex and can truthfully say that my packages are delayed for one reason or another more than 50% of the time. I have the direct number to both my UPS and Fedex local facilities and am on first name basis with the UPS supervisor. I'm not rude, but its almost comical how often i end up having to call them up. I don't even bother calling the 800 number anymore because all they do is put in a ticket to have the local facility call you, no point since I can call them. :D I'm thankful that none of my shipments have been lost, just delayed and usually its simple human error. 50% of the time? Do you live near a sigularity!:D Seriously, there's no way these companies could stay in business if that was their average performance. ============= ZZF used to be really really good a couple years ago. Not only were almost all of their items free shipping, but they were about as consistent as Newegg. I have noticed with my last few orders with them that when they say 1-2 business days processing time, they aren't kidding. Newegg, atleast for me, usually has the item out the door the same day. Yeah, the disappearance of free shipping was out of their hands. Fuel costs are really hurting shippers these days. ============= 50% of the time? Do you live near a sigularity!:D Seriously, there's no way these companies could stay in business if that was their average performance. I'm sure its not 50% for most people or even business. I really think I just have bad luck, its almost an omen telling me not to order online or atleast that's what my wife would prefer. :p ============= Doh! Newegg is now giving away World in Conflict free with the CPU I just bought yesterday! I wonder if they'll be cool if I give them a call... :-( ============= Give it a shot, they're usually pretty good about this stuff or you could always send it back and re-order it with WiC ============= Ya, I'll give it a try... their customer service dept is closed till monday morning though. Hope the deal will be alive for that long. ============= We'll see overclocks on the 4870 soon since Unwinder is getting a 4800 sample from Guru3d soon: Source (http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=2750171&postcount=41) BIOS editing is always risky, especially when voltages are used but RivaTuner should alleviate that. Yup, I am sticking to software-only solutions from now on like I had in the past... finally decided to dip into the BIOS flashing thing and it burnt badly. So, I sent an email to my seller about the card, and they agreed to let me send it back for a full refund :eek: . Yeah, I'm as shocked as you guys are, I expected a "too bad, you borked it" kind of message back. I'm ordering a new one once I see it instock somewhere :D such as newegg or whatnot. I am so unbelievably lucky on this I really can't believe it! ============= you dodged the bullet with that one, nice break! :D ============= Looks Hot! ============= So I was about to pack it up to send back tomorrow for $50 shipping through the USPS when I saw W1zzard asking for volunteers at XS for a fix. After testing, the card is 100% fine again :D. If anyone else had this issue, he has posted a how-to article here: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/152 for fixing it up. ============= Good work GT! :) ============= Been playing at the same overclock I had early in the thread before I goofed around with the BIOS without issue (790core/4400ram), going to stick to that until RivaTuner/whatnot supports overclocking this card, load temp is around 69c at these speeds with 34% fan with the CCC Profile tweak :D. Performs like a beast... I'm sure it has much more room too. ============= I read a bunch of reviews and I'm still confused on this 7.1 audio support. Does this mean it is basically a sound card too? If I have onboard sound will this automatically take over? How do I connect it to my receiver? Can I use both the DVI outputs at the same time? One would go to the monitor and another to the receiver via HDMI adapter? ============= Not sure DaNotorious, might want to make a new thread on that but it is just a passthrough, not a sound card in and of itself. :) http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/5708/gt4870octt8.gif Woot :D it's back 100% perfect again! 790core/4200ram effective. ============= Good to hear!!! I'm getting excited as my cards should be here tomorrow. ============= Glad you got it working! Quit screwing around and play some games!:D ============= Good to hear GT, looks like GDDR5 was not to blame at all. Once software OC'ing is around and some aftermarket coolers get thrown on these things, we might see some ridiculous clocks. Diamond is suggesting their WC'd card (that comes at 800Mhz) can hit 950... ============= omg i dont think i would be able to hold on for another month to get one of these ============= Glad you got it working! Quit screwing around and play some games!:D Yep, no more fiddling until the software OC utilities come :D. I'm going to just enjoy the thing until then ;)! Yes, I do think we'll see some absurd clocks once those utilities hit... for grins and giggles I flashed to 840 core and it was running OK, but then flashed back (before I posted that screenshot before) and have been gaming on it at 790/1050(4200) now, will do so until the utilities come. The temperature wasn't too hot, but I don't want to hurt the card :p. If it turns out heat becomes the limiting factor I will probably grab an Accelero S1 Rev. 2 for it plus the fan module or a DuOrb or the Zalman VF1000... but I'm not so sure it will, especially if I raised the fan further. ============= Give that ram all she's got!!! :D http://3dxtreme.net/other/HIS%20HD4870/gpuz.jpg ============= Aye aye, Captain :D ! http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4834/4870gtoc2bo9.gif To quote myself earlier in the thread before the whole truncated BIOS issue: I'm sorry guys, but the card died on me when I tried flashing to 870/4500 with a slightly higher voltage in BIOS... it worked fine for Crysis and others for about 15 minutes just running hot, but due to temps I flashed back to stock... suddenly bluescreen, now no boot... put in a card alongside it and it shows up in Windows, flashed to default BIOS with higher fan speeds and it won't come back to life still. The card was stable at 870/4500... stock cooling 32% fan if I recall, just running hot... I think we're going to see some really high overclocks on stock cooling with 50% or higher fan once a normal software OC utility comes out. The clocks apparrently had nothing to do with the card crashing on me, and I'm not even sure that editing the BIOS voltage did anything (somehow doubt it). Even though flashing with the proper 128Kbyte BIOS has proven to work now through cold boots, I'm not going to try any higher speeds than CCC Overdrive allows for actual use until I can do it in software. I did test 820/4500 again with a higher fan setting (37%) and it worked fine for a good 20 minutes until I flashed back to normal, and am using CCC for 790/4400 until the time comes. I've little doubt if I were to set the fan to around 55% and flash 870/4500 it would run just fine since it was just very hot before with the lower fan setting. There is 100% definitely tons of headroom on these... imagine with aftermarket cooling to boot! ============= Hey GT, congrats on the card. You are one of the reasons im considering the 4870. ITS NOT IN STOCK ANYWHERE! lol. A friend of mine works for bestbuy he said he can get it for around 270. but he doesnt know when they will come into stock. Im still on the edge of purcashing a 4850 combo (Visiontek 4850+2gb ddr2 for 200.48 + 10 MIR). But i have 4gigs already lol. I wish the shipments came out. I have a 6600 vanilla and playin bf2 is just dreadful at 1680 x 1050 ============= Thank you... I'm quite relieved that I won't have to shell out ~$50 to ship it back to Hong Kong, and that there isn't an actual issue with the 4870s as a whole, personally. I wanted to get another one but was actually thinking toward the 4850 at the time because of the supposed death-phenomenon that turned out to be bad BIOS flashes (truncated files). I went and bought a 4850 over the weekend before my 4870 was revived, because of these concerns and figured since it's 100% returnable opened to BestBuy without a restock fee, I would see what happened but have my rig up and running in the meantime. It was definitely a downgrade, but it still provided a good level of performance. The 4870 was the card I really wanted. We'll probably see plenty of the 4870s in-stock tomorrow, due to weekend restocks/etc. As far as Bestbuy since they haven't had any shipment yet apparrently for their site orders, I doubt any of the stores got them either. So, you're probably in good shape if he orders one for you with the discount... I would tend to think they'll get their first batch soon, but just a guess. I did use a 4850 this weekend figuring I was going to have to return the 4870, and while it performs nicely there was noticeably worse performance in TF2 for me (I didn't play/bench anything else). It also overclocked very poorly, wouldn't nudge beyond around 670core/1025ram(2050 DDR3) for me stock. I'd wait until the morning regardless before actually deciding if the in-stock status if one of your main worries. Still, the price is a lot lower than the 4870, though if you're planning on replacing the stock cooler of the 4850 bear in mind the 4870's stock one is pretty darn beefy, so the price difference may not be as big as it appears for you. They are both excellent cards, but for me the decision came down to the overclockability of the 4870, the 2-slot cooler, and the GDDR5 which (seemingly) helps with the AA/etc. performance a lot. If you have the cash to do it, I'd go for the 4870, but really if you don't, I would think most people would be hard-pressed to be disappointed in the 4850's performance come the end of the day. ============= Good to see you've worked it out! It also goes to show that it's probably prudent to investigate an issue thoroughly before concluding that it's a manufacturing issue :) ============= nice, i have the cash thats not the problem, its my jewish blood that keeps be back haha. I will be getting a e7200 in the next 2 days for free. So in hopes of passing the 3.4ghz mark and gaining performance I am really wanting to get the 4870. Do you still have the 4850 at your house? This computer hardware hobby is just so addicting. People who arnt into this just dont understand. I wanted to see the 4850 get 750 on the core, saw gurusan from xtremesystem forums get 900+!!!!! i mean thats crazy! Then i thuoght to myself. Look at the 4870, at 800-900 core and then the bandwidth provided by the ddr5 shuold boost FPS even farther. I played crysis a lot when i had my 9800gtx but lately i got bored of it, infact i was bored of it after playing it so much. The custom levels kept me going but i just play bf2 now. a 4870 for bf2 lol....sounds perfect. He just texted me saying that he doesnt know when the next shipment comes, not listed in computer. i have no school or work on july 4th and july 7th, so i really want to get my card before then. want to enjoy some GRID and Alone in the Dark or somethign else in my spare time. All i know is july 4th is gonna be a bbq and lots of people over so i dont want to play games then. just want to get it early. on xtremesystems my username is ZaraZa i saw the volt mods and everything, very interested in that stuff on the 4870. ============= I'm getting... odd... Crysis results here. Other games are running fine, but Crysis seems WAY below the pack of games vs. the 280, whereas the 4870 is very competitive if not equal to it with 8x AA and 16x AF in the games I'm testing. Crysis seems to be having some major issues with tons of loading and complete stuttering at parts of the timedemo, while FPS stays the same whether I have no AA, or all the way up to 8x AA, the framerate stays exactly the same (the AA is changing looking by eye during the demo, just not the framerates). Any ideas? This card looks to be a beast, but I'm thinking there's a driver issue with Crysis at the moment. Other games are giving VERY good results though. Also, GPU-Z is showing the non-DDR5 bandwidth (i.e. bandwidth as though it was running at the RAM speed it actually is, rather than 4x bandwidth which = DDR5 bandwidth). Hopefully the next few days will see a new driver release and some bugfixes. I guess you don't know that crytek pretty much built crysis as a benchmark tool for nvidia. Nvidia paid for some of the engine r/d and was pretty much involved in the development of crysis by crytek. That's probably why even newer ati cards perform rather poorly compared to newer and older nv gpus and that fps gains from crossfiring either 4850s or 4870s are virtually nonexistent. ============= I guess you don't know that crytek pretty much built crysis as a benchmark tool for nvidia. Nvidia paid for some of the engine r/d and was pretty much involved in the development of crysis by crytek. That's probably why even newer ati cards perform rather poorly compared to newer and older nv gpus and that fps gains from crossfiring either 4850s or 4870s are virtually nonexistent. that would make sense since its a The way its meant to be played game. ============= Alright, so what is the deal with Furmark? It pretty much crashes me everytime. The load temp with the duo orb is only hitting low 70s, then it will reboot or just lose video signal. I've got a water block on the way- my OC'd GTX never broke 41 water cooled in furmark - has anyone else had issues running furmark with a 4870?? ============= Not trying to steal your thunder Goldentiger and glad you're getting a workable card. I received my HIS HD 4870 on the 26th as well since I had it overnighted from NewEgg and Wow! :eek: pretty much sums up what I think of the card. Initially I had a problem loading the 8.6 Hotfix drivers. l did a custom install of the Hotfix Cat 8.6 drivers and the installation failed. Re-installed from the Bin folder directly and then the screen blacked out on me and didn't come back. Let it sit until the hard driver stopped churning. Re-booted and everything was fine. Drivers were installed, Cat Control Center was functional. Perhaps I should have installed the HIS CD Drivers first before the Hotfix I don't know. Everything was working fine after that though. Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75F-77F. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards. Anyway, played a quick round of Prey, and I'll I can say is incredible IQ. Thought my previous GTS 512MB looked great. This card looks phenominal. I was playing at 1680x1050 using 8X AA / 8X AF with V-Sync Always On. Later bumped up to 16X AF My Framerates NEVER dipped below 60 FPS. IQ off the hook. Gave Turok a play which is a little more demanding than Prey. :) Also bumped up my settings to 8X AA / 16X AF all in game settings maxxed. FPS = 57-60 / V-Sync enabled. Smooth as butter. Never skipped a beat. Played Call of Juarez with the same AA/AF settings as Turok. All in game settings maxxed except for the Shadow Map Size which I left at 1024 as 2048 caused a major drop in framerates. Also tried "Land of the Dead" for kicks. Even this old game looks so much better using this card. Also happened to find out using Fraps that V-Sync doesn't work with this game as I was getting 215-310 FPS. Also interesting note on the HIS. I read before buying it that it came with a screwdriver. At the time I thought it was pretty silly, but it's actually pretty cool extra as it's also a flashlight and level. I'll leave the real benchmarking for Goldentiger to do, as I'm having to much fun using the card. :p:D:p No comments on my wiring job by the way. :p My main goal was to keep the wiring away from the motherboard. No case window anyway. :) http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/3848/card2xj0.jpg http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/5955/case2cf9.jpg ============= Not trying to steal your thunder Goldentiger and glad you're getting a workable card. I received my HIS HD 4870 on the 26th as well since I had it overnighted from NewEgg and Wow! :eek: pretty much sums up what I think of the card. Initially I had a problem loading the 8.6 Hotfix drivers. l did a custom install of the Hotfix Cat 8.6 drivers and the installation failed. Re-installed from the Bin folder directly and then the screen blacked out on me and didn't come back. Let it sit until the hard driver stopped churning. Re-booted and everything was fine. Drivers were installed, Cat Control Center was functional. Perhaps I should have installed the HIS CD Drivers first before the Hotfix I don't know. Everything was working fine after that though. Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75C-77C. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards. Anyway, played a quick round of Prey, and I'll I can say is incredible IQ. Thought my previous GTS 512MB looked great. This card looks phenominal. I was playing at 1680x1050 using 8X AA / 8X AF with V-Sync Always On. Later bumped up to 16X AF My Framerates NEVER dipped below 60 FPS. IQ off the hook. Gave Turok a play which is a little more demanding than Prey. :) Also bumped up my settings to 8X AA / 16X AF all in game settings maxxed. FPS = 57-60 / V-Sync enabled. Smooth as butter. Never skipped a beat. Played Call of Juarez with the same AA/AF settings as Turok. All in game settings maxxed except for the Shadow Map Size which I left at 1024 as 2048 caused a major drop in framerates. Also tried "Land of the Dead" for kicks. Even this old game looks so much better using this card. Also happened to find out using Fraps that V-Sync doesn't work with this game as I was getting 215-310 FPS. Also interesting note on the HIS. I read before buying it that it came with a screwdriver. At the time I thought it was pretty silly, but it's actually pretty cool extra as it's also a flashlight and level. I'll leave the real benchmarking for Goldentiger to do, as I'm having to much fun using the card. :p:D:p No comments on my wiring job by the way. :p My main goal was to keep the wiring away from the motherboard. No case window anyway. :) Welcome to the club! :) ============= Just got my HIS 4870. That little screwdriver/LED/leveler tool rocks. Worth getting the HIS model just for that. :D ============= Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75C-77C. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards. Why are you running your system in a room that is 171 degrees farenheight and then complaining that it's hot? ============= Why are you running your system in a room that is 171 degrees farenheight and then complaining that it's hot? I think he got confused and used celsius instead of Fahrenheit for room temperature. Unless he was in the middle east or sahara there is no way he could get one of his rooms to get that hot unintentionally. Last summer when I was in UAE for internship I sometimes worked outside during day time and temps would climb to 140 F or higher. You think thats bad factor in average 50-60% humidity and you feel like you're swimming in an ocean of heat (and sweat). ============= Why are you running your system in a room that is 171 degrees farenheight and then complaining that it's hot? No, I don't believe I was complaining at all, but thanks for playing JC..... I think he got confused and used celsius instead of Fahrenheit for room temperature. Brain Fart is all. :p Thanks. I need to fix that on a few forums. ============= Damn how are people getting 48 C idle? I get 60 C idle at 35% fan speed. I thought maybe the thermal paste was a hack job and reapplied some myself. Same result. ============= Damn how are people getting 48 C idle? I get 60 C idle at 35% fan speed. I thought maybe the thermal paste was a hack job and reapplied some myself. Same result. I'm now at 37% fan speed on my 4870 in an AC'd room (68-70F I'd estimate ambient), it's running at 45-48c idle and 65-67c load at 790core/1100(4400)ram. I do have a case with a side panel fan that blows onto the 4870 as well (CoolerMaster 690, got it for $50 awhile back and love it!), so maybe that has something to do with it or the airflow in your case. So tempted to flash up the clocks, but I don't want to tempt fate :p ... come on RivaTuner/whatnot!!! :D ============= Damn how are people getting 48 C idle? I get 60 C idle at 35% fan speed. I thought maybe the thermal paste was a hack job and reapplied some myself. Same result. :D http://3dxtreme.net/other/HIS%20HD4870/TT%20Duo%20Orb/IMG_5298.JPG ============= and then a red led turn on at the back of the card... had to replace the original heatsink. Run furnark for 2 hours with no problem and load temp @ 89 Weird because the GPU temp was only 55-59 at load with Accelero,something else on the card must overheat. ============= :D http://3dxtreme.net/other/HIS%20HD4870/TT%20Duo%20Orb/IMG_5298.JPG Hmm no cooling on the vrm modules or anything on the right of that board.... is that safe? ============= Mine's on stock cooling, and I'm seeing low temps. Furmark I've heard posted around is very unstable on cards, so I'm not even thinking of running it *shrug*. :) ============= Hmm no cooling on the vrm modules or anything on the right of that board.... is that safe? They are cooled - the vitec chips arent cooled by anything with the stock cooler. Just air. These guys have theirs cooled the same way (http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/8162-palit-radeon-hd4870-512mb-graphics-card-review-21.html) http://3dxtreme.net/other/HIS%20HD4870/TT%20Duo%20Orb/IMG_5299.JPG you can see here there is nothing but a hole over the vitec chips - http://3dxtreme.net/other/HIS%20HD4870/TT%20Duo%20Orb/IMG_5286.JPG ============= EDIT: Doublepost. ============= Yes, this is stable/artifact free, with ~50% fan speed (I figured out using the lookup table rather than the default profiling system in the BIOS got the fan to work properly when flashing higher clocks): http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7535/gt4870oc2rb4.gif Going for more... I've gotten it to run 3D at 870/4500 but heat is a huge concern, it pumps out too much at 45% fan, I may experiment with higher but the noise is high at 60+ (though stable). ============= What kind of framerate increases are you seeing with that OC? Is 790 core a BIOS limitation or just a limitation of Overdrive? ============= What kind of framerate increases are you seeing with that OC? Is 790 core a BIOS limitation or just a limitation of Overdrive? It's a limitation of Overdrive only. I haven't done much benching at this speed yet, just was stability testing while keeping a sharp eye for artifacts/etc. I will do some benching at these speeds vs. stock soon, though, just for grins. ============= Just like I experienced with 870 core when I ran it, I'm seeing a large jump in maximum FPS and a small average one, yet little minimum gain... World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF and 4x AA *with* transparency AA (8x in control panel, 4x set ingame like below), third run out of four tested (840core/4400ram): http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/5516/4870testt2tma6.jpg For reference, here's my results earlier in the thread... ------------ World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF and 4x AA *with* transparency AA, average of several runs: Resolution: 1680*1050 Detail Level: Very High Average fps: 29 Min fps: 17 Max fps: 45 System specs: Q6600 @ 3.15ghz 4GB RAM @ 5-5-5 1T eVGA 680i motherboard (NF68-A1) HIS Radeon 4870 512MB GDDR5 @ 790core/4200ram ============= http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6054/48708404400ramcrysishigtf2.jpg Earlier in the thread at 790/4000, I got 20.2 FPS in the same test. This is at 840/4400. Below is 790/4000: http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/1121/48707904000ramcrysishighq6.jpg ============= nice results thx for sharing would be better if there wasn't limitation for oc ============= Played a bunch of Call of Duty 4 online, the average and max. FPS are far higher in the same given areas of a map it seems. I haven't FRAPS'd but I have had the FPS counter from FRAPS running full-time and been keeping a sharp eye on it. I haven't seen it dip below 65-70 except for smoke grenades which tank it to 50ish, generally it's running 80-90 FPS during heavy action even outdoors. I'll bench with FRAPS on the same maps with the two speeds soon probably, but there's a HUGE performance increase that doesn't correlate exactly to the clock speed increases just like with Crysis (25% for 10% on the memory and 6.3% on the core... odd but it is repeatable for me. I noticed the same phenomenon at 870mhz where the performance skyrocketed over this clock even, non-linearly. I don't know what the cause of it is, but this is quite interesting... like a bottleneck is being lifted somewhere. ============= nice results thx for sharing would be better if there wasn't limitation for oc With the BIOS flashing I'm doing now with proper tools, there's no limit except for no POST which would require doing a blind flash :D . 840/4400 current stable overclock with low temps and 47-52% variable van speed. ============= COD4 on the Creek map, 4x AA, 16x AF, MSAA Transparency AA, 1680x1050 max ingame settings, set to 125 maximum FPS in console: Frames Time(ms) Min Max Avg. 12933 120000 54 128 107.775 12020 120000 64 128 100.167 10635 120000 64 126 88.625 I made sure to get a smoke grenade in the mix each time I died, that's what hurt the minimums so much... except for smokes I never see it go below 75ish when I'm watching the FRAPS display. I tried forcing 8x AA in the control panel (CCC) but it isn't taking, only if I set it to application-controlled and allow COD4 to use its in-game max of 4x does it work, same with AF. Not sure why, anyone have a solution? I'd like to try it with a higher level of AA for comparison purposes. Radeon 4870 set to 840core/4400ram. ============= Just add my experience here since it's not worthy of a new thread. my 2 Sapphire 4870's arrived today, added them to my rig I've just finished building a few days ago, a Q9450 @ 3.6ghz, thats with 4Gb of ram in 1:1 with the FSB which is running at 450Mhz, so 1800mhz effective. Got my new Velociraptor in today and a new build of Vista x64 to go along with it. The only thing I benchmarked before I took out my old 8800GTX was CSS built in test, I was getting 84fps average with my 8800gtx, thats 3 runs rounded to nearst fps and then averaged (mean). Plonk in the new pair of 4870's and that shoots up to 278fps average, and a realise that fpsmax setting is limiting that, so i set that to something like 1000fps and the average leaps to 340fps!! So from 84 avg to 340 avg in CSS canned benchmark, impressive in my eyes. Thats all in 2560x1600, 8xMSAA and 16xAF with reflections set at "reflect all" I tried a bit of CoD4 online in a 24 player server, had that maxed at 2560x1600, 4xAA set in the menu, ranging from approx 80fps average ourdoors and in heavy firefights roughly 250-300fps average when indoors Tried the first part of Crysis, 1920x1200 all very high with no AA, about 25-40fps average throughout the cutscens and the first beach area, thats with 1.2 patch and no mods (apparantly mods supposedly make the game look better and run better also so I'll try that tomorrow) Set fanspeeds using the fix suggested on the forum, to 40% for both cards and they're bareable noise wise, and lowered idle temps from 80 to 50 for the top card and 40 for the bottom one which isnt blocked as much. No overclocking yet but Im very happy with these cards, no microstuttering obvious in CoD4 or CS but with such high frame rates that seems obvious. The low frame rate of crysis displayed a bit of discrenable microstutter intermittently. I'll be dropping the hideous motion blur to a more appropriate "medium" or "low" and that should kick the fps up enough to make it playable, although most people seem to have expectations of 30fps in this game i feel 45ish would be better, and even thats low compared to my normal expectaion of about 50-60. As far as Im concerned thats 1920x1200 all "very high" gaming for the average joe in Crysis, and Crysis looks impressive at this res with all settings very high, the 40fps inside the plane cutscene at the start shows immense detail on their suits which previously looked low res and jaggy. I know from benchmarks that the cards dont scale well in crysis, nothing like the source engine based games or games like CoD 4 where scaling is almost 100% so there maybe room for a decent improvement in Crysis still, and there is always overclocking as well so if that kind of frame rate isn't enough for you between graphical mods and overclocking you should get the 1920x1200 all "very high" gaming experience. I will report back tomorrow with further testing once I get TF2 back downloaded and installed and AoC updated, that should all happen nicely over night. Oh its Vista x64, SP1, with the default drivers on the CD which i've check as v8.6 ============= did you figure out why there is a 5fps boost in crysis when you get to 840core? does it happen in other games too? ============= No, I have no idea still why it does that... it does do it in other games to boot across the board (a far larger increase than it should be). I was hoping someone might know... :). In COD4 for example smoke nades took me to 45FPS if I stood near one and looked at it, now the minimum with them is around 60... and that's just between 790/4400 and 840/4400, a 6.3% clock difference making over a 25% speed increase just doesn't make sense. ============= I noticed the same phenomenon at 870mhz where the performance skyrocketed over this clock even, non-linearly. I don't know what the cause of it is, but this is quite interesting... like a bottleneck is being lifted somewhere. Maybe shaders clocks are tied to core clocks?? Maybe the shader speed is the bottleneck?? Just kinda tossing up ideas.... ============= Maybe shaders clocks are tied to core clocks?? Maybe the shader speed is the bottleneck?? Just kinda tossing up ideas.... Interesting... I'd forgotten but I did read somewhere (I think) that these cards had a seperate (hidden) shader clock that ran a little faster than the core... perhaps it is hitting a threshold where it makes a large jump, like what can happen with the nVidia cards going in steps at times. Good thought, it is certainly possible... ============= Interesting... I'd forgotten but I did read somewhere (I think) that these cards had a seperate (hidden) shader clock that ran a little faster than the core... perhaps it is hitting a threshold where it makes a large jump, like what can happen with the nVidia cards going in steps at times. Good thought, it is certainly possible... Yeah I remember reading, a while back, that the shader clocks on the 4800 were supposed to be able to be changed but apparently not. Maybe they have to be at a set ratio compared to the core clocks or else it might not work correctly. Maybe that's why we can't change them. If the shader clocks are a set ratio, say (gpu) 1:1.1 (shader) for example, then that could explain the larger jumps in performance when you get the core clock to a certain speed, because the shader clocks are being increased by even more. Just another wild guess.... ============= Hey GT, did you notice any really tangible difference between 790 and 840? From stock 750, I would imagine a 90mhz OC might prove to be useful, but I don't want to screw around with my BIOS if I can avoid doing so :) Anyone interested in my impressions, mini review and Oblivion benches? ============= Hey GT, did you notice any really tangible difference between 790 and 840? From stock 750, I would imagine a 90mhz OC might prove to be useful, but I don't want to screw around with my BIOS if I can avoid doing so :) Anyone interested in my impressions, mini review and Oblivion benches? Read the last page as far as differences between 790/4400 and 840/4400... there's a HUGE one, much more than you'd think by the 6.3% clock increase. It's translating into 20-30% extra performance depending on the game :eek: . I'd love to hear 'em! :) ============= Read the last page as far as differences between 790/4400 and 840/4400... there's a HUGE one, much more than you'd think by the 6.3% clock increase. It's translating into 20-30% extra performance depending on the game :eek: . I'd love to hear 'em! :) Ok, well, that settles it... I'll definitely flash it tomorrow. I'll also post my thing tomorrow afternoon or late evening, depending on my 16 hour work shift :( ============= Since it seems like this is becoming the De Facto post pics of your 4870 thread :) http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0219.jpg http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0227.jpg http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0228.jpg Got a little wire management to do. ============= This is strange. You are reporting a huge performance boost with minimal OC, and a guy in an other thread reports that fps lowers when he overclocks his CPU. I wonder what is going on. Perhaps there is a lot of hidden potential in this card. ============= Since it seems like this is becoming the De Facto post pics of your 4870 thread :) http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0219.jpg http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0227.jpg http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m270/nicolaskl/DSC_0228.jpg Got a little wire management to do. Nice! Let's see some numbers!:) ============= Jerry Orbach approves... :D ============= Jerry Orbach approves... :D You're damn right he does. :) RIP Jerry. ============= Well I decided to give the o/c a shot, When i first got this thing at 750/900 i was idling at 80C and full load 87C, decided to push the fan up to 40% and maxed the o/c to 790/1100 now I idle at 60C and full load at 69C, I have to admit impressive results I can't wait for the aftermarket coolers to show up along with a new version of rivatuner because this thing has some serious room to overclock massively. ============= [QUOTE=GoldenTiger;1032705626]http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6054/48708404400ramcrysishigtf2.jpg How are your fps levels for 1680 with 4xaa lower then the ones from toms hardware review (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-9.html). ============= How are your fps levels for 1680 with 4xaa lower then the ones from toms hardware review (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-9.html). You can't really compare across systems, settings (the page doesn't even specify), etc. and to a cruddy review site at that ;). I can't tell what AF level they used in that review (unspecified if any) (Tom's isn't the most reputable site in any case), but I was running 4x AA with transparency AA (they don't specify), and 16x AF in my tests for that comparison. ============= RIP Jerry Orbach. ============= You can't really compare across systems, settings (the page doesn't even specify), etc. and to a cruddy review site at that ;). I can't tell what AF level they used in that review (unspecified if any) (Tom's isn't the most reputable site in any case), but I was running 4x AA with transparency AA (they don't specify), and 16x AF in my tests for that comparison. For 1680 res they were running with 4xaa 16xaf. Their rig is here (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-5.html). Is yours faster or slower then theirs? ============= Those results seem weird... What happens if you lower CPU speed to stock? Because a guy in an other thread gets a massive performance decrease when overclocking the card. ============= How are your fps levels for 1680 with 4xaa lower then the ones from toms hardware review (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-9.html). Tom's :rolleyes: ============= Oh yeah I took a few pics with my webcam since i dont have a camera, so they're a little low quality, but it shows my setup :) http://www.flickr.com/photos/28160652@N04/ ============= For 1680 res they were running with 4xaa 16xaf. Their rig is here (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-5.html). Is yours faster or slower then theirs? My specs are listed several times earlier in the thread... again, refer to my last post as far as why the comparison doesn't work. They also likely used the default fly-by bench whereas I used assault_harbor which is much more strenuous on the system. ============= Frostex. Nice system you are assembling. Although you do not need me to mention this, 40% fan makes overclocking with CCC almost a no brainer. ============= hey GoldenTiger, who'd u buy your cards from? I know Ebay, need the name for purchasing. ============= hey GoldenTiger, who'd u buy your cards from? I know Ebay, need the name for purchasing. I purchased from seller "x1387" which is a Hong Kong one. Unless there's some specific reason you want it from them (they do have a listing up at the moment for the 4870s), you're probably best off for ease and possibly price buying from someone on this side of the ocean :). Their customer service (via email) and shipping speed was great, though. If I were looking for another product about to be released/slightly pre-release I'd order from them again. The package did include an invoice that could be used for warranty/etc. ============= I saw them...wasn't sure that was the same dealer. Thanks a bunch. ============= Well, I had the chance to pick up a 4870 for around 290$ locally, and of course, I jumped right on doing so! It should be a substantial upgrade from my 8800GT640, and will cost about HALF of what I paid for that nVidia card, only 2 short years ago. I noticed that there was a severe lack of testing of Oblivion with these new cards, from both camps, so I decided to jump on that grenade, and get some results out. First Impressions: The card it's self is gorgeous and extremely heavy. The way the product was boxed was also quite nice as well... Just enough packaging to do it's job and not seem overly bloated. The HIS bundle was kinda cool, and I really dug that screwdriver combo, it let me install the new card in the dark! Bootup The very first thing I noticed was the noise. At startup, this card's fan produces one hell of a whirl! luckily by the Windows XP screen, it had quieted down to an almost inaudible level... I took some quick exhaust temperatures of the card at idle, and recorded between 59c and 64c... So, this card does push out quite a bit of heat. Also, I tried unplugging the 6 pin power connectors just to see what the card would do. I was pleasantly surprised when the card booted up, and displayed a warning right after POST to connect the power cables... No high pitched squeal ala nVidia. Quite elegant IMO. Drivers... Now, if you know me, you know I hate cables in my case. You might also know that, to circumvent extra cabling mess, I don't have an internal optical drive... Unfortunately, my external DVD burner decided to take a dump on my installation plans. No problem, I'll just boot up, get to ATI's website, and download the drivers! Well, there are no drivers on ATI's site yet... So, I navigated to HIS's website, and eventually found the drivers, which at 177mb, downloaded at a painstaking 17kbps. Killer. I'm going to take the time to describe how difficult it was to browse the internet without the driver installed. Using Window's default VGA driver, screen rendering was *unbearably* slow. I was literally counting fps on screen refreshes, even at 1024x768... It would take about 15 seconds for the firefox main page to render, after the window was already open... Compared to my old 8800GTS' default "VGA driver" rendering prowess (which is at least 300% faster than this 4870s') I was quite disappointed. I would not recommend this card for a computer without a CD rom drive, and I would dare not lose your driver disk! Oblivion Now, as I said earlier, this post was mainly supposed to be a review of Oblivion's performance with the 4870... As my favorite game, I'm always screwing around with it's configs, addons and settings to provide the highest level of immersion... But with my 8800GTS, I wasn't able to get good frame rates with more than 2x aa, and the settings I had chosen. This was my main push to upgrade! The settings I play with are as follows: Resolution: 1680x1050 Textures: Large Tree, Actor, Item, Object, Grass "Fades" and View distance: 100% Distant land, buildings, trees: ON Interior and Exterior shadows: 100% Self Shadows: OFF (caused strange glitches for me... so...) Shadows on Grass, Tree Canopy shadows: ON Shadow Filtering: High Specular Distance: 100% HDR: ON Water, Reflections, Ripples: High or ON (nVidia) AA: 2x (forced in Control Panel) (nVidia) AF: 8x (Forced in Control Panel) (nVidia) Texture Filtering: Highest Quality (ATI) AA: 4x Edge Detect (Forced in Control Panel) (ATI) AF: 16x (Forced in Control Panel) Additionally, I had the following Mods installed: Qarl's TP3 Better LOD textures Natural Environments HDR Weather Overhaul Exnem's, Ren's and a bunch of race/item mods I then tried to find the most graphically intensive spot I could find (with relative ease) to take down some numbers standing, running around and fighting (using the console to spawn some enemies). I settled on the following area: [INSERTPIC] (I'll post it in a little bit...) With the 8800GTS I was scoring between 24 and 34fps, and these would dip down to 21fps during some battles with 1-3 enemies at once... Sorry, I have no screenshots to prove this. With the 4870 I was scoring between 38 and 60 fps... With a higher AA and AF setting... As you can see, this is quite a big freaking difference... We're talking almost a 100% increase in raw fps, with higher settings to boot. I was very pleased. [INSERTPIC] (again, gimme time). There were a few issues though, which I suspect will be resolved when I re-install windows later this summer (I'm overhauling my case for the *hopefully* last time) mainly a longer than normal hitch every time new textures had to be loaded, and some strange loading times on application startups... It might be of interest to someone that the card does squeal, just like the 8800's... It emits a high, variable squeal that changes pitch based on GPU load... The squeal is much less noticible than the old 8800GTS I had, but is still the loudest noise in my entire system (yes, over the stock 4870 fan). Overclocking: I'm an overclocker and a modder by heart, and therefore, It was almost sinful to leave this card at it's stock clocks... So, I fired up the Catalyst Control panel once again to see what I could do for myself... I topped out 2hrs gaming stable at 790/1070... Which is quite a nice OC over the stock 750/950 settings! Going from 750 to 790mhz netted me about 5fps difference with the above settings on Oblivion, and 2fps in Crysis (although, I don't care enough about Crysis to include it's numbers in this review). Going from 950mhz QDR RAM to 1070 netted me another 2fps in certain situations. The maximum temperature attained without modifying any of the fan controls was 87c on the core (wow!) but the card was fairly inaudible during the play time. I measured the exhaust temperature with a handheld IR thermometer at 71c peak (wow again!). ============= time to change your sig now ;) Good information. I'm thinking about this for my secondary rig. ============= Well, I had the chance to pick up a 4870 for around 290$ locally, and of course, I jumped right on doing so! It should be a substantial upgrade from my 8800GT640, and will cost about HALF of what I paid for that nVidia card, only 2 short years ago. I noticed that there was a severe lack of testing of Oblivion with these new cards, from both camps, so I decided to jump on that grenade, and get some results out. First Impressions: The card it's self is gorgeous and extremely heavy. The way the product was boxed was also quite nice as well... Just enough packaging to do it's job and not seem overly bloated. The HIS bundle was kinda cool, and I really dug that screwdriver combo, it let me install the new card in the dark! Bootup The very first thing I noticed was the noise. At startup, this card's fan produces one hell of a whirl! luckily by the Windows XP screen, it had quieted down to an almost inaudible level... I took some quick exhaust temperatures of the card at idle, and recorded between 59c and 64c... So, this card does push out quite a bit of heat. Also, I tried unplugging the 6 pin power connectors just to see what the card would do. I was pleasantly surprised when the card booted up, and displayed a warning right after POST to connect the power cables... No high pitched squeal ala nVidia. Quite elegant IMO. Drivers... Now, if you know me, you know I hate cables in my case. You might also know that, to circumvent extra cabling mess, I don't have an internal optical drive... Unfortunately, my external DVD burner decided to take a dump on my installation plans. No problem, I'll just boot up, get to ATI's website, and download the drivers! Well, there are no drivers on ATI's site yet... So, I navigated to HIS's website, and eventually found the drivers, which at 177mb, downloaded at a painstaking 17kbps. Killer. I'm going to take the time to describe how difficult it was to browse the internet without the driver installed. Using Window's default VGA driver, screen rendering was *unbearably* slow. I was literally counting fps on screen refreshes, even at 1024x768... It would take about 15 seconds for the firefox main page to render, after the window was already open... Compared to my old 8800GTS' default "VGA driver" rendering prowess (which is at least 300% faster than this 4870s') I was quite disappointed. I would not recommend this card for a computer without a CD rom drive, and I would dare not lose your driver disk! Oblivion Now, as I said earlier, this post was mainly supposed to be a review of Oblivion's performance with the 4870... As my favorite game, I'm always screwing around with it's configs, addons and settings to provide the highest level of immersion... But with my 8800GTS, I wasn't able to get good frame rates with more than 2x aa, and the settings I had chosen. This was my main push to upgrade! The settings I play with are as follows: Resolution: 1680x1050 Textures: Large Tree, Actor, Item, Object, Grass "Fades" and View distance: 100% Distant land, buildings, trees: ON Interior and Exterior shadows: 100% Self Shadows: OFF (caused strange glitches for me... so...) Shadows on Grass, Tree Canopy shadows: ON Shadow Filtering: High Specular Distance: 100% HDR: ON Water, Reflections, Ripples: High or ON (nVidia) AA: 2x (forced in Control Panel) (nVidia) AF: 8x (Forced in Control Panel) (nVidia) Texture Filtering: Highest Quality (ATI) AA: 4x Edge Detect (Forced in Control Panel) (ATI) AF: 16x (Forced in Control Panel) Additionally, I had the following Mods installed: Qarl's TP3 Better LOD textures Natural Environments HDR Weather Overhaul Exnem's, Ren's and a bunch of race/item mods I then tried to find the most graphically intensive spot I could find (with relative ease) to take down some numbers standing, running around and fighting (using the console to spawn some enemies). I settled on the following area: [INSERTPIC] (I'll post it in a little bit...) With the 8800GTS I was scoring between 24 and 34fps, and these would dip down to 21fps during some battles with 1-3 enemies at once... Sorry, I have no screenshots to prove this. With the 4870 I was scoring between 38 and 60 fps... With a higher AA and AF setting... As you can see, this is quite a big freaking difference... We're talking almost a 100% increase in raw fps, with higher settings to boot. I was very pleased. [INSERTPIC] (again, gimme time). There were a few issues though, which I suspect will be resolved when I re-install windows later this summer (I'm overhauling my case for the *hopefully* last time) mainly a longer than normal hitch every time new textures had to be loaded, and some strange loading times on application startups... It might be of interest to someone that the card does squeal, just like the 8800's... It emits a high, variable squeal that changes pitch based on GPU load... The squeal is much less noticible than the old 8800GTS I had, but is still the loudest noise in my entire system (yes, over the stock 4870 fan). Overclocking: I'm an overclocker and a modder by heart, and therefore, It was almost sinful to leave this card at it's stock clocks... So, I fired up the Catalyst Control panel once again to see what I could do for myself... I topped out 2hrs gaming stable at 790/1070... Which is quite a nice OC over the stock 750/950 settings! Going from 750 to 790mhz netted me about 5fps difference with the above settings on Oblivion, and 2fps in Crysis (although, I don't care enough about Crysis to include it's numbers in this review). Going from 950mhz QDR RAM to 1070 netted me another 2fps in certain situations. The maximum temperature attained without modifying any of the fan controls was 87c on the core (wow!) but the card was fairly inaudible during the play time. I measured the exhaust temperature with a handheld IR thermometer at 71c peak (wow again!). The crysis numbers would be interesting to me.. ============= The crysis numbers would be interesting to me.. Me too. This is a game that the 4800 hasn't done well with in professional reviews. ============= Me too. This is a game that the 4800 hasn't done well with in professional reviews. Where did you read that? ============= No card does well with Crysis and we would all be better off if everyone stopped using it as a yardstick for any hardware. I know the first agument is that it was just ahead of it's time, but this is the second Crytek engine in a row that runs like ass on current and upcoming hardware, so shouldn't we all see a pattern here? When every other game gets smoked by new hardware but one game runs like ass (or finally becomes barely playable), that game is a poor benchmark. ============= No comments on my wiring job by the way. :p My main goal was to keep the wiring away from the motherboard. No case window anyway. :) http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/5955/case2cf9.jpg I can't help myself, I've never seen someone with a modular PSU has such a messy case;) Awesome card though, ordered mine last night. ============= No card does well with Crysis and we would all be better off if everyone stopped using it as a yardstick for any hardware. I know the first agument is that it was just ahead of it's time, but this is the second Crytek engine in a row that runs like ass on current and upcoming hardware, so shouldn't we all see a pattern here? When every other game gets smoked by new hardware but one game runs like ass (or finally becomes barely playable), that game is a poor benchmark. The truth is...it's the exact opposite. It's become the only benchmark that matters. And I don't know where people get the misconception that the HD 4870 doesn't do well in Crysis. It does very well, in fact. Better than any SLI i've ever had. I think a lot of people think because a GX2 will put out more raw framerates than a GTX 280 or HD 4870, that these new cards don't run Crysis well. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've run 9800 GTX SLI and the HD 4870 blows it away when it comes to minimum framerates and smooth, even game play. SLI might run 120 fps in a corridor or looking up at the sky, bumping up average frames, but in open spaces with mountains and foliage, i've never had a better experience in Crysis. My only dilemma is whether the GTX 260 performs as well, and when the next price drop is going to take effect on it. ============= The truth is...it's the exact opposite. It's become the only benchmark that matters. Wishful thinking, it's just obsessiveness when even Crytek says the game is poorly optimized and they made some mistakes. They have re-written huge chunks of the engine for Warhead because they know it is broken. It is a measurement of nothing, as software history has shown you can throw hardware at bad code and it usually gets noticably better, then Crytek rolls in and shows they can deliever code so shoddy that a rule of thumb no longer applies. I enjoyed parts of Crysis, but it it no measure of a system any more than 3D Mark has been for the last couple of versions. ============= No card does well with Crysis and we would all be better off if everyone stopped using it as a yardstick for any hardware. I know the first agument is that it was just ahead of it's time, but this is the second Crytek engine in a row that runs like ass on current and upcoming hardware, so shouldn't we all see a pattern here? When every other game gets smoked by new hardware but one game runs like ass (or finally becomes barely playable), that game is a poor benchmark. You see, that was then. The 280s can do well at resolutions up to 1920*1200 on high to very high. So for the average 22 incher, you're doing just fine hence the need for benchmarks from readers who actually own this card. Im hearing alot of "driver issues" with the game or "bad stuttering" causing lockups or artifacts. So maybe the reason people arent showing this game off is for the simple fact it aint performing too well period. It's not a bad thing, it just goes to one spectrum of optimization that isn't there for ATI. Will it soon? Who knows. We all know Crysis was ahead of the game or very unoptimized for it's time. We are however catching up. That is how we're benchmarking our hardware--as a point of reference, that DOES give us a good idea where we are or will be. What are you all going to say when the 4870x2 eats Crysis up, or at least fares better? You'll be sitting just like some Nvidia owners are. So Crysis is a relevant benchmark, even if you think it sucks (like me, for gaming but that IMO :)) and I don't think there's one hardware site that would dismiss any card that can play the damn game at decent FPS. ============= My specs are listed several times earlier in the thread... again, refer to my last post as far as why the comparison doesn't work. They also likely used the default fly-by bench whereas I used assault_harbor which is much more strenuous on the system. Ok found them. How does your 4870 overclocked stack up against the 280. I seem to recall you had a 280 before you sold it off to get the 4870 right? ============= There are two annoying things about Crysis performance: 1. There's a huge amount of loading from disk and memory thrashing, especially once the settings at are all high or above. The problem is worse when using DX10. Perhaps having more than 512 MB of video RAM helps? GoldenTiger said he got 25% more fps in Crysis with a higher overclock, but in reality there is a ton of disk loading in the GPU benchmark, especially with 4xAA, and this can really throw the benchmark results off. For reference, I've gotten 24.7 fps before, using the same settings with the 4870 @ 790/1100. I've also gotten as low as 22 fps due to random hitching, and this is not counting the first run. 2. All the different performance bottlenecks. It's not so simple in Crysis -- it's leaves you scratching your head as to why performance isn't better. A typical overclock usually won't improve the playable settings in Crysis. Remember [H] tested an 800Mhz 8800GTS 512 and it didn't do better than a regular one. Below are some of my results, using the built-in CPU benchmark, at both underclocked and overclocked speeds. The CPU benchmark has far less memory thrashing than the GPU benchmark, and while the explosions and physics are different every time, any real differences in frame rates will still show up. 1680x1050, DX10 High ----------------------- 650/1075: 31.8 fps 675/1075: 33.0 fps 700/1075: 34.5 fps 725/1075: 35.1 fps 750/1075: 36.3 fps 775/1075: 37.2 fps 800/1075: 37.2 fps 825/1075: 37.1 fps So apparently we've hit a bottleneck at 775 Mhz already. If we raise our CPU speed from 3.2 to 3.5 GHz, we gain very little while there's still no difference between 775 and 825 Mhz. It's shocking to see the lack of scaling at sub-40 fps in any game. 775/1075: 37.4 fps 825/1075: 37.4 fps Now if we raise the resolution to 1920x1200 we see some scaling. Also, performance goes down a bit if we set memory clock back down to 900 Mhz. 775/1075: 31.6 fps 825/1075: 33.5 fps 825/900: 32.8 fps We see good scaling if we drop the resolution down to 1280x1024 and set everything to Very High. 750/1075: 30.2 fps 775/1075: 31.3 fps 800/1075: 32.2 fps 825/1075: 33.1 fps ============= HERE ARE MY RESULTS. http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/5743/crysisdx10chartwv5.jpg DX 9 1280X720 = 62.185 FPS 1680X1050 = 47.97 FPS 1920X1200 = 40.25 FPS (SORRY DID NOT FEEL LIKE MAKING ANOTHER CHART, LOL) and in xp under dx9 I get around 3-4 for fps more. I have taken pictures, if people don't trust me I can post them, too tired to put all of them up right now. ============= the fact that u did anything is great stuff ============= I am doing lost planet with with different settings right now, hdr on medium high, motion blur on high or no motion blur with 4xAA at 1920x1200, done with dx10 so far, and testing dx9 right now, will post some later. ============= Frostex. Nice system you are assembling. Although you do not need me to mention this, 40% fan makes overclocking with CCC almost a no brainer. Thanks :) I've updated that link with piccies of the cards installed and cramping my Asus Xonar soundcard which is taking a pummeling from the heat, but so far seems to be stable. http://www.flickr.com/photos/28160652@N04/ Fanspeeds were at 40% for both cards, I tried 60% for both last night because I was getting bad errors in 3dMark Vantage, and jesus fucking christ it's loud, I'm not putting them bad boys at 100% because quite frankly Im scared too, i have mental images of fan blades snapping and flying out the case :D Anyway turns out 35% is a real sweet spot, a degree or so more of heat and what seems like a lot less noise I think some overclocking is in order tonight :) BTW, anyone else had problems with 3DMark Vantage? Looks like in the first test the height of the water isn't being correctly calculated, and it mostly shooting to some stupid height, which causes all sorts of funky water flickering effects all over the screen. ============= There are two annoying things about Crysis performance: 1. There's a huge amount of loading from disk and memory thrashing, especially once the settings at are all high or above. The problem is worse when using DX10. Perhaps having more than 512 MB of video RAM helps? GoldenTiger said he got 25% more fps in Crysis with a higher overclock, but in reality there is a ton of disk loading in the GPU benchmark, especially with 4xAA, and this can really throw the benchmark results off. For reference, I've gotten 24.7 fps before, using the same settings with the 4870 @ 790/1100. I've also gotten as low as 22 fps due to random hitching, and this is not counting the first run. 2. All the different performance bottlenecks. It's not so simple in Crysis -- it's leaves you scratching your head as to why performance isn't better. A typical overclock usually won't improve the playable settings in Crysis. Remember [H] tested an 800Mhz 8800GTS 512 and it didn't do better than a regular one. Below are some of my results, using the built-in CPU benchmark, at both underclocked and overclocked speeds. The CPU benchmark has far less memory thrashing than the GPU benchmark, and while the explosions and physics are different every time, any real differences in frame rates will still show up. 1680x1050, DX10 High ----------------------- 650/1075: 31.8 fps 675/1075: 33.0 fps 700/1075: 34.5 fps 725/1075: 35.1 fps 750/1075: 36.3 fps 775/1075: 37.2 fps 800/1075: 37.2 fps 825/1075: 37.1 fps So apparently we've hit a bottleneck at 775 Mhz already. If we raise our CPU speed from 3.2 to 3.5 GHz, we gain very little while there's still no difference between 775 and 825 Mhz. It's shocking to see the lack of scaling at sub-40 fps in any game. 775/1075: 37.4 fps 825/1075: 37.4 fps Now if we raise the resolution to 1920x1200 we see some scaling. Also, performance goes down a bit if we set memory clock back down to 900 Mhz. 775/1075: 31.6 fps 825/1075: 33.5 fps 825/900: 32.8 fps We see good scaling if we drop the resolution down to 1280x1024 and set everything to Very High. 750/1075: 30.2 fps 775/1075: 31.3 fps 800/1075: 32.2 fps 825/1075: 33.1 fps Thanks for the info...I do prefer the GPU bench though for comparing video cards.. I do not notice all this hitching you speak of...the first run is a few frames off..then very slowly rises. less then 1 fps gain after 2nd run.. ============= You see, that was then. The 280s can do well at resolutions up to 1920*1200 on high to very high. So for the average 22 incher, you're doing just fine hence the need for benchmarks from readers who actually own this card. Im hearing alot of "driver issues" with the game or "bad stuttering" causing lockups or artifacts. So maybe the reason people arent showing this game off is for the simple fact it aint performing too well period. It's not a bad thing, it just goes to one spectrum of optimization that isn't there for ATI. Will it soon? Who knows. We all know Crysis was ahead of the game or very unoptimized for it's time. We are however catching up. That is how we're benchmarking our hardware--as a point of reference, that DOES give us a good idea where we are or will be. What are you all going to say when the 4870x2 eats Crysis up, or at least fares better? You'll be sitting just like some Nvidia owners are. So Crysis is a relevant benchmark, even if you think it sucks (like me, for gaming but that IMO :)) and I don't think there's one hardware site that would dismiss any card that can play the damn game at decent FPS. Crysis just exposes system flaws better then other games....any bottlenecks will be revealed.. Poor coding...dunno I don't write game code....neither do many of you! ============= Crysis just exposes system flaws better then other games....any bottlenecks will be revealed.. Poor coding...dunno I don't write game code....neither do many of you! Bonus marks for me then! I have written gdi and dx9 stuff before! I didn't like it though, almost failed that course. :p ============= Ok found them. How does your 4870 overclocked stack up against the 280. I seem to recall you had a 280 before you sold it off to get the 4870 right? Yes, I had a GTX 280 before this card that was overclocked pretty heavily as well. The 4870 matches or beats it in everything I've tested/played, GRID especially is faster, TF2 is a little faster as far as minimum framerate goes, and the other games are pretty much the same (Crysis, WIC, etc.). I'm very glad I made a hundred off the resale of the 280, and then saved another two hundred off the price I'd paid for the 280... because in reality, I'm finding no negative gaming difference that's tangible, if any exists. ============= There are two annoying things about Crysis performance: (snip) Excellent post, and you brought up a lot of good points as well. I'm noticing in Crysis benching on Assault_harbor sometimes it goes very quickly (high framerate) off the bat, sometimes it's about the middle of the timedemo before it goes to what it should and is about 10fps lower than it is after it picks up... I can watch it and suddenly in the same spot it magically picks up a lot of frames and keeps going at that point. I haven't noticed this in actual gameplay yet, though. ============= Thanks :) I've updated that link with piccies of the cards installed and cramping my Asus Xonar soundcard which is taking a pummeling from the heat, but so far seems to be stable. http://www.flickr.com/photos/28160652@N04/ Fanspeeds were at 40% for both cards, I tried 60% for both last night because I was getting bad errors in 3dMark Vantage, and jesus fucking christ it's loud, I'm not putting them bad boys at 100% because quite frankly Im scared too, i have mental images of fan blades snapping and flying out the case :D Anyway turns out 35% is a real sweet spot, a degree or so more of heat and what seems like a lot less noise I think some overclocking is in order tonight :) BTW, anyone else had problems with 3DMark Vantage? Looks like in the first test the height of the water isn't being correctly calculated, and it mostly shooting to some stupid height, which causes all sorts of funky water flickering effects all over the screen. Taking a look at your system, can you put the Xonar in the black PCI-E x1 above the top HD4870? If you can, it would certainly save it from the heat. ============= Wait wait, where did you get an Antec 1200? Those things are out already? ============= Wait wait, where did you get an Antec 1200? Those things are out already? Yeah they came out a couple of weeks ago. They're not cheap though (newegg's price is around $215). ============= vBulletin® v3.6.8, Copyright ©2000-2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. |