High-end test setup
Hardware
| Graphics cards | Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MiB and CrossFire | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MiB and CrossFire | Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB | BFG GeForce GTX 280 1024MiB | ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MiB | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MiB | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX and SLI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £125 (£250 for two cards) | £175 (£350 for two cards) | £239 | £439 | £299 | N/A (£150?) | £179 (£125 soon?) |
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 4.0 | |||||
| Stream processors | 800 | 800 | 320 | 240 | 256 | 128 | 128 |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 625 | 750 | 777 | 615 | 600 | 738 | 675 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 625 | 750 | 777 | 1,350 | 1,500 | 1,836 | 1,688 |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 2,000 | 3,600 | 2,252 | 2,214 | 2,000 | 2,200 | 2,200 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | 512 | 512 (2x 256) | 256 | 256 | ||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | ||||||
| Motherboard | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | |||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P2B2 | P31 | |||||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | |||||
| Memory | 4GiB (4x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 | 4GiB (4x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | |||||
| Memory timings and speed | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1066MHz | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz | |||||
| PSU | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | |||||
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | ||||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | ||||||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 8.6 press (newer driver for XF) | CATALYST 8.6 press (newer driver for XF) | CATALYST 8.5 | NVIDIA ForceWare 177.34 | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.53 | NVIDIA ForceWare 175.19 | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.74 |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | ||||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 - very
high quality Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL - vhq Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 - high quality Crysis v1.2.1 custom-recorded benchmark: DX10 - high quality Futuremark 3DMark Vantage b1.0.1 |
|---|
Notes
Looking at the high-end setup, we have more of the big-hitting GPUs, run on a higher-performing CPU. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 and BFG GeForce 9800 GTX are carried over from the mid-range comparison, though. The high-end look debuts the Radeon HD 4870 performance.Please note that the Radeon HD 4850 is likely to be priced at around £125, hence the comparison to cards costing over twice as much is unfair, yet ATI has made significant performance strides to enable the evaluation without the HD 4850 embarrassing itself in this lofty company.
We're also including numbers for the Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 in two-board CrossFire, along with two-board SLI performance from the GeForce 9800 GTX.
The 55nm-based GeForce 9800 GTX+ is an interesting GPU. Not hard-launched for a month, it's NVIDIA attempt to sabotage ATI's party. Faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX on core and shader, it will debut at around £150, or just between the two all-new Radeon SKUs. We've mimicked its performance by overclocking a regular GeForce 9800 GTX to its core and shader speeds.
A total of 10 graphics setups, ranging from £125 through to £439. The one glaring omission is the GeForce GTX 260, and we'll fill that later on this week.
All cards are clocked in at reference speeds apart from the BFG GeForce GTX 280 - a recipient of a slight overclock (615/1,350/2,214MHz vs. 602/1,296/2,214MHz).
ATI released a newer driver - 8.501.1-080621a-065814E-ATI - late on Monday, superceding the publicly-available hotfix.. We've used it to gauge CrossFire performance and are in the process of evaluating the impact it has on single-GPU results. As such, the HD 4850 and 4870s have been run with the original press driver - 8.501.1-080612a-064906E-ATI
Higher resolutions - up to 2,560x1,600 - and detail settings mean that all cards receive a thorough workout, much more so than in our mid-range look, of course.
No UVD2 numbers are included for the simple reason that ATI failed to provide a supporting PowerDVD copy in time. We'll update the review as soon as we have it.
The look of the graphs has changed, because it became too difficult to discern between 10 sets of results when graphed in the normal fashion. ATI's CrossFire results are in pink and single-card scores in red. The one SLI platform is in teal whilst all others are in green. These will become self-evident as you look at the graphs.
