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ATI Radeon 4870 1GB Review October 14, 2008 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: With 1GB of memory and a $300 price tag, ATI's latest 4870 SKU is upping the ante against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260. See which games benefit the most from the added graphics memory in today's article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 13 ) |
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Under the same games the Radeon 4870 saw a performance drop of just 9% and 10% respectively!
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As smoothly as the Radeon 4870 handles 8xAA though, there is room for improvement. We’ve seen a couple of cases at 2560x1600 where the card runs out of memory running 8xAA at this res (BioShock, Lost Planet), and with graphically demanding games like Far Cry 2 on the horizon, gamers hoping to push 8xAA with these games may run into problems with the 512MB Radeon 4870 at higher resolutions.
To address this ATI has concocted the Radeon 4870 1GB. With double the amount of graphics memory onboard, the card is designed to handle the most demanding games at the highest resolutions with 4xAA and 8xAA. Let’s take a quick look at the performance of the Radeon 4870 1GB at 2560x1600 with 8xAA in those two games we mentioned in the previous paragraph:
Whereas the Radeon 4870 512MB basically runs into a wall at 2560x1600 in the above scenarios, the 1GB board continues to scale well. In Lost Planet the 4870 1GB ran 3 times faster than the 4870 512MB at 2560x1600 while the 1GB card ran 5 times faster in BioShock!
Both 4870 cards run at the same clock speeds, so this is a clear case where the larger frame buffer present on the 1GB 4870 card reaps huge performance benefits.
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A closer look at the 4870 1GB
Fundamentally the Radeon 4870 1GB shares the same board design and cooling as the Radeon 4870 512MB; physically both cards look identical to one another. And as we just stated, both 4870 cards ship at the same GPU and memory clock speeds.
The only difference is that one 4870 SKU is equipped with 512MB of GDDR5 memory, and the newer 4870 SKU ships with 1GB of RAM. ATI simply uses higher density modules on their 1GB cards.
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In terms of pricing, the Radeon 4870 1GB officially retails for $299.99. If you recall this is the exact same price that the Radeon 4870 512MB sold for just three months ago, so ATI isn’t charging a ridiculous premium for the added memory. ATI is pitching the card as a competitor to the 216-core GeForce GTX 260, but with the existing 512MB Radeon 4870 performing so well against the enhanced GTX 260, we see it more as a way of future proofing the 4870 line for upcoming games, particularly if you’re a fan of 8xAA gaming.
We did see some performance gains for the 1GB 4870 in areas beyond 8xAA gaming however. Let’s get to the benchmarks!
| System Setup | Page:: ( 2 / 13 ) |
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
ASUS P5E3 Premium
4GB OCZ Platinum DDR3-1333
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 260
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCX MAXCORE
ForceWare 178.13
ATI Radeon 4870
Catalyst 8.10 RC2
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 1
Benchmarks
Company of Heroes 1.71
World in Conflict
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1.2
Call of Duty 4 1.4
Half-Life 2 Episode Two
Lost Planet
Crysis 1.2
Quake Wars
BioShock
Devil May Cry Performance Benchmark #2
| World in Conflict Performance | Page:: ( 3 / 13 ) |
| Company Of Heroes DX10 | Page:: ( 4 / 13 ) |
| Quake Wars | Page:: ( 5 / 13 ) |
| Lost Planet DX10 | Page:: ( 6 / 13 ) |
| Call Of Duty 4 | Page:: ( 7 / 13 ) |
| Crysis DX10 | Page:: ( 8 / 13 ) |
Crysis High – Direct3D
| BioShock | Page:: ( 9 / 13 ) |
| Devil May Cry 4 | Page:: ( 10 / 13 ) |
| 8xAA Performance | Page:: ( 11 / 13 ) |
| 8xAA Performance (cont’d) | Page:: ( 12 / 13 ) |
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 13 / 13 ) |
In CoH, the 4870 1GB ran anywhere from 2-5% faster than its 512MB counterpart. Ultimately this wasn’t enough for it to overtake the GTX 260 in this title, but it’s a respectable gain nonetheless. We saw fairly comparable gains in Devil May Cry 4.
In our tests with Crysis and World in Conflict, the performance boost was much greater. In Crysis the Radeon 4870 1GB ran 5-14% faster than the 512MB 4870, while WiC ran up to 16% faster on the 1GB Radeon 4870.
These are significant gains that we hadn’t anticipated seeing.
As significant as these gains are however, we wouldn’t classify them as game changers. The 4870 1GB still trails the GTX 260 in our testing with games like CoH, CoD 4, and Lost Planet, and still wins in the games the Radeon 4800 has always excelled in like Crysis and World in Conflict. Just as NVIDIA didn’t really shake things up with the 216-core GTX 260, ATI hasn’t shaken things up with the Radeon 4870 1GB.
With a $299.99 price point though, the 4870 1GB doesn’t have to be a game changer. This is because the price premium ATI charges is so slim, it’s practically a no-brainer if you’re shopping for an ATI card with a $300 budget in mind.
Radeon 4870 512MB cards are getting cheaper though. Many cards are being sold in the $250 range, but thanks to mail-in rebates, the final price is as low as $230 on Newegg right now!
Saving $70 is a pretty considerable amount of money, particularly in these tough economic times. If you’re willing to give up a little future proofing, this card, or the original GeForce GTX 260 with 192 shaders, would be the suggestion we’d recommend to gamers on a sub-$250 budget (GTX 260 cards are currently selling for as low as $199.99 on Newegg).
However, once more ATI board partners get onboard with the 1GB Radeon and the mail-in rebates for the Radeon 4870 1GB begin to kick in this suggestion could change. VGA prices have been especially volatile this year, but fortunately the volatility has been to the benefit of consumers. If you’re pinching pennies and have the patience to wait a few weeks, it may not be a bad idea to see where Radeon 4870 1GB prices are around the end of this month. After all, street prices are only going to go down from here.