DH Preview: ATI R700 Preview

craig5320

Read The Preview Here
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For the past year and a half ATI have had a tough time competing with Nvidia at the high end of the graphics card market. Products such as the 2900 and 3800 series struggled to perform at levels comparable to the GeForce 8800, 9800 and GTX 280 however ATI did eventually work out a good pricing structure which made them attractive to consumers.

3DChipset

Did ATI/AMD Choose which games you can show benchmarks for?

Necrosis

I wonder how the upcoming die shrink for Nvidia could effect their release of a X2 of their own? Wonder what the price will be the R700 $450.00?

Veridian3

We chose the games after testing our entire suite.

OldBuzzard

Damn...my 3870 X2 just wet itself, and is now over in the corner whimpering like a little girl

Sure would have liked to see a 'nekkid' side by side photo of the two X2s. It sure would be nice if the Koolance water block on my 3870 X2 would fit the 4870 X2. Probably not...but one can hope.

mkk

Good news on the idle/2D voltage being lowered for the final product. Have you seen any information from AMD/ATI regarding possible changes to idle/2D voltages for the existing 4850/4870 product line? Those are using up a bit much juice when idle.

Veridian3

No to go too off topic but i have seen 4 different bios versions kicking about for the 4870 and the more recent ones all had updated voltages.

swimtech

For those games that have the driver support I have just two words:

Holy Cow!

In between about the last year or year and a half, and with the growing maturity of the x2 architecture, we're seeing close to a tripling (!!!) of performance available at the highest end - and for, um, the same (or less) money? Way to go ATI - woot!

I think the purchase of a monitor with native res at 1920x1200 is now fully justifiable (meaning video smooth gaming at that res, with all of the recent games - except, well, you know...) for even value minded enthusiasts (yes, like me!).

OmegaRED

Jumping Jesus Jehosaphat!

The 4850 was a good start but not quite enough and the 4870 was impressive but still only a hair better than Nvidia. Then the R700 comes along and annihilates everything else! I couldn't believe those World in Conflict benches that is some incredible power...just look at what it does to a 9800GTX+.

I was skeptical about AMD regaining the performance crown but this card settles it for me. If it's this good now it'll surely be even better with mature drivers.

Galacticus

Extremely impressed with those results.

But what's up with Crysis? How is it completely pounding the GTX280 in every benchmark and gets embarrassed in Crysis?

Just game/driver support?

OmegaRED

HardOCP has some great high res pics up from CoD4 and Oblivion too, apparently this card can use a custom AA which doesn't tax the bandwidth. Oblivion with 24xAA and Qarl's Texture pack

Please do some Medieval 2: Total War (or Kingdoms) benches in the full review! This card just might have enough memory to handle 10,000+ units on screen.

ViRuS2k

Sweet card, this is the card i will be ditching my 8800GTX for on my Formula Rampage x48 Board

Gregix

why the hell u make tests crysis...and with crappy 1280x1024 res?
all other games 2560*1600 and crysis 1280...
this isnt game(i call it benchmark) to play/test with newest gfx with such as low resolutions, try 1680*1050 at minimum please
and this card is beast, sadly i dont have enough power in my wallet/rig to put it in

Cow_160483

Holy S***t this card is totaly hard core makes me want to wait and not get the HD4870 just yet !

LukeK

Dude where have you been for the last year? what is the point of DH testing Crysis at 2560x1600 when it will probably run at about 10fps? Crysis is a system killer (crap game too).

brutusmaximus

I am still not sold to be honest. Sure, the performance is great, but its a rather inelegant power consuming monster. I am positive the power draw will be lower when it hits retail however doesn't anyone else feel this is just a method to compete with another company who are producing faster hardware? I mean the end user is still going to be tied into crossfire drivers. This is a huge negative, because while the games on test all have crossfire drivers, they are firmly established on the market .... what happens when new games are released? Many people are going to running them in single card mode until ATI release updated driver support which can be frequently several months.

I am sorry, I just don't see how slapping an "extra card" onto a product is in anyway competitive or worthwhile to the end user especially as the performance will be basically halved when new games hit the scene (I know I waited for months for driver support on games I had just beaten!).

What if Nvidia release two 280's on a single card? It all just seems to me to be so sloppy and lazy. My view is either get a single card design out, or a "dual" core card that always uses both cores.

Veridian3

Quite simply that would be pointless as the card just manages 12x7 (minimum FPS of 26).

Alex

Funny you mention that, I noticed Hardocp tested crysis at 1920 or something, but the frame rates are frequently hitting single digit! like 5-6fps. That is absolutely unplayable and pointless. So much for real world testing there! apples for apples my arse.

humonous

lol, who uses Hardocp for accurate hardware reviews anymore anyway? Kyle is so far up his own ass and slagging other sites off in their threads that he doesnt realise that gamers dont actually play crysis at 10fps! Yes I read that page as well and they tested at a high res with unplayable frame rates.

Didnt they also test with "high" settings? which disables all the DX10 goodies? they are best just running the DX9 configuration mod to play it in full DX9 if they are going to do that.

Apples to Apples? more like Pears to Grapefruit.

brutusmaximus

While we are on the subject of Hardocp I noticed that they mentioned some new mode called "custom filtering AA"? why didnt you guys mention it in this review? surely thats a breakthrough?

Veridian3

When I saw your comment I was a bit surprised so I've gone over and had a quick read at their article. It seems they have called that one wrong.

Custom Filtering AA has been present in the ATI drivers since the R600 (2900), in fact we covered it on this page: http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/...ewz/whatis.php about half way down.

About 3-4 months after that launch a 3rd mode was added (edge-detect) and since then all 2000, 3000 and 4000 products have been able to use this feature. Although, like any other demanding setting, you need faster cards to take advantage of the higher settings.

Alex

Thanks Veridian3, your article was the best on the net by the way. You certainly know what you are talking about which is refreshing from the regurgitated crap I read on other sites.

tamalero