Radeon HD 4770 xfire unbeatable at €200

Seifer

Just read this article today on Tom's.
It shows two 4770's in crossfire will beat the new radeon 4890 in almost all scenarios and is pretty much on pair with the nvidia gtx280.
You can get a pair of them for €200 on hardwareversand while the 4890 and 275 are each around €225.
Gonna be building towards the end of May, what do you think of this as a graphics solution?
Are there many issues with running a crossfire set up?

AlmightyCushion

The 4890 is (or at least it was, may have changed now) 190 on pixmania. I'd still probably go with that. You save the extra money you would have spent on a xfire board plus not all games scale well with xfire/sli.

CrinkElite

I got the 4890 from pixmania and I'ts an absolute beaut! it was only 189 and when i get the cash I'm gonna get another one, only problem is I had to invest in a new PSU cause my old piece of crap can't give it enough juice for more than 2 mins of crysis play.
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/2719635/art/pixmania/radeon-hd4890-1-gb-ddr5-p.html

go for it man, you'll be glad you did when you need anothe upgrade

uberpixie

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The 4890 is (or at least it was, may have changed now) 190 on pixmania. I'd still probably go with that. You save the extra money you would have spent on a xfire board plus not all games scale well with xfire/sli.

Plus the extra heat and noise generated by running two cards at once over running 1.

Seifer

uberpixie wrote:

Plus the extra heat and noise generated by running two cards at once over running 1.

Actually, if you look at the fourth page of the article, the crossfire setup runs at a slightly lower temperature at idle (54 vs. 59) and only slightly higher temp at full load (75 vs. 73).
The 4890 has a reputation for being quite a noisy card where as the 4770 is supposed to be very quite from the reviews I've read, so I'm not really sure noise would be a factor either.

uberpixie

Seifer wrote: »

Actually, if you look at the fourth page of the article, the crossfire setup runs at a slightly lower temperature at idle (54 vs. 59) and only slightly higher temp at full load (75 vs. 73).
The 4890 has a reputation for being quite a noisy card where as the 4770 is supposed to be very quite from the reviews I've read, so I'm not really sure noise would be a factor either.

Fair enough.

I would still look at the crysis benchmark where the 1gig cards start to pull ahead of the 4770 512mbs in xfire at the higher resolutions and higher levels of AA and AF.

Remember x2 4770 512mb cards can still only use 512mb of ram in games as the data is mirrored on both cards.

Personally I would get a cheap 4870/4890 1gig: fairly uniform performance in all games with 1gig of memory for high res and higher levels of AA + AF.

Xfire or SLI is only for the hardcore on 24/30" monitors who pair fast 1 gig cards.

Otherwise its a waste of time unless you want to play with it.....

TerrorFirmer

Definitely think about this before you purchase. Remember - performance of dual cards depends on support within a given game. You are not guaranteed any level of scaling, even though it would be very high in select AAA games, in many others it would be far lower, and occassionally, not really supported at all (remember the disaster with Medal of Honor Airborne; it ran twice as fast on my 7950GT then it did my 7950GX2; had similar problems with COD4 as it wasn't fond of 7 series SLI). I would have said as well that video memory would be a problem, but the results are really strange in this test. The 512MB card is still outscoring the 4890 1GB, even in Crysis at 1920x1200. I know thats without AA, but even that's surprising, and AA isn't that essential at 1920x1200 anyway. I remember when comparing the 4870 512MB to the GTX260 896MB, the GTX really took the lead at 1920x1200, which I assumed was attributable to the lack of vram. Very surprised by the lack of a hit here at 1920x1200 with dual 512mb cards I have to say.

Still though, you also have to look at the price. If they are 200 for two on HWV, that's about 230-ish from an Irish retailer I'd estimate, and then you have to consider the 4890 1GB is only 189 from Pixmania.ie, so there's not parity at all in price like you've suggested - and you've got guaranteed stable performance in every title with the 4890 (unless there's driver problems obviously, but you know what I mean, the inherent ability of the card), which dual card setups can never give.

I myself picked up dual 8800GTS (112SP edition) 640MB's for 100 euro for my new machine, show me a card that'll outperform that for the same price. Dual cards are always really only worthwhile when buying 2nd hand, or adding to an existing setup to increase performance for a small price

BadCharlie

I have 2x4850 in crossfire since september last year. I went for this set up cause i could get them cheaper for the same price as 1x4870. And at the time they were not just slightly ahead of the 4870 + GTX280 but a good bit ahead.

You can have problems with crossfire. I my self have had maybe 1 or 2 problems but an up to date dirver would sort them out.

Looking at the market i think i would go for the 4890 before 2x4770.
1. The 4890 is cheaper.
2. 1gig of ram is a big +.
3. Some games will result in lower FPS in crossfire then with the 1 card setup.
4. The noise from 2 video cards in your machine when they heat up is worse then just have one fan.