

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)
Better performance than Radeon 4830, which will be discontinued










For more detailed benchmarks, please visit AnandTech.

Comments     Threshold


RE: CrossFire connections necessary?
By Motoman on 4/28/2009 4:10:52 PM , Rating: 2
In 2 years, THIS will be the $50 video card. And don't get too caught up in the timeframe anyway...the point is that there's an attractive upgrade path there, and it appeals to people, and quite frankly is an expected feature of any modern video card. If either ATI or Nvidia came out with a card that didn't offer Crossfire/SLI, there'd be hoards of webtards going "WTFOMFGBBQ!!1!" all over the place.

By MrBungle123 on 4/28/2009 5:12:56 PM , Rating: 3
It would be a good upgrade path if performance scaled linearly and there were never any new 3D features added to the DX spec, since this is not the case when it is time to upgrade you are better off just buying a new video card from the current generation then running multiple cards from an older generation. SLI/Crossfire is a good deal for ATI/nVidia not the consumer.

RE: CrossFire connections necessary?
By Belard on 4/28/2009 6:57:01 PM , Rating: 2
Doing "future upgrades" 1-2 years never works out. Multi-GPUs are only good when the PC is first built.

Of all the people who buy SLI/CF motherboards with only a single card... only 1% EVER bother to add another card.

1 - Performance doesn't scale like Original SLI (understandable) because Card A did Odd lines, Card B did even lines and synced them on the output to the monitor. It would be nice.

2 - The extra expenese required: PSU, cooling, cabling, etc.

3 - A newer card comes out that is faster. Two 6600GTs ($200+ org each) is out-classed by a single $180 7600GT. Or if you "invested" $500 on the 7900GT card and thought about adding a 2nd one... the new 8800GTs comes out for $350 and ends up being faster or the same... so what do you do? Spend $250+ (back then) for another 7900 or sell what you have for $150 and buy the 8800GTS?

Another example, the 7900GT is just over 3years old. A great card in its day. What should the owner do?
A - buy another USED 7900GT for about $50... when a single $90~100 9800GT or ATI 4830 would easily be faster? Besides, with his PC being 3 years old, it ability to make use of such a powerful card goes down.

The SLI/CF function is for thouse who have the money and want every frame they can get. Some of them for braggin right when they can call themselves AWSOME because they get 130fps on their rig vs you at 125fps. Meanwhile, I'm playing pretty good at 60fps (Vsync on) with a $70 4670 card ;) (Crysis not included of course)

So yeah, its great to that these options for 1~4 video card setups. Its a great option.

But if I was in need of a video card and was offered two 7900GTs vs a single 9800GT, the choice is simple. Doesn't matter if they're free or $100, the 9800GT would win.

Oddly enough, some are still selling ATI Radeon X1950 XTX for about $250?! (msrp $500) Considering that a $65 ATI 4670 is about as fast (give or take 2%) as 1950XTX in crossfire.

Or lets say a person built a Core2Duo PC 12 months ago and went with a $85 7600GT. They could spend another $30~35 for another 7600GT. With Call of Duty 4 in 1680x1050 max details, their FPS goes from 14 to 21. For $50, a 1year old 3850 card would do 43fps... or a $65~75 4670 would hit 57fps. For $15, they double their performance and they can sell their old card for $25... which in the end, ends up cheaper than going SLI. The difference in all these cards is 1 year. 7600 is being phased out, but is still on store shelves.

So in the end... it makes more sense to spend $90 on a standard Mobo, rather than $200 to possibly "upgrade" to a crossfire with an intel setup (P45 vs X48). A 600watt PSU will handle ANY single video card solution. So for "possible upgrade" the person buys a 750~900watt PSU. Then to find out they never bother to buy a 2nd card. Put the $200 saved for the next CPU/GPU upgrade ;)

Note: AMD Crossfire is far cheaper than Intels. $90~120 for 2x PCI 2.0 x16 slots.

RE: CrossFire connections necessary?
By MrBungle123 on 4/28/2009 7:47:11 PM , Rating: 2
Did i just agree with like 95% of something Belard said? holy crap... something's wrong :)

RE: CrossFire connections necessary?
By Belard on 4/29/2009 1:16:55 AM , Rating: 2

Sorry, I mistook who I was responding too... It was for Motoman.

Sorry again ;)

By Aloonatic on 4/29/2009 4:05:01 AM , Rating: 2
They are all good points of course, but people on a tight budget may find some value in being able to add another card that they find on eBay for a little extra boost in performance that they will find noticeable, useful in a year or so's time.

Not everyone is able to afford to rebuild every couple of years. The question is whether people who don't will also be the people who want cross fire and Sli, havea mother board that will support it, know how to implement it and keep their drivers/bios up to date. As it is, they probably aren't/wont.

One of the only times when I have seen that a relatively low end card having multiple card support is with the inclusion of physics on GPU. I seem to recall (and may be wrong =D ) that the physics on the Green Teams card can be carried out on one cards and the traditional graphical calcs on another, and they don't have to be matching cards. Not sure if you can specify which card does what and this is only an nVidia thing of course.

I'm guessing that the main reason why this card has xFire support is because a decision was made to make all cards support it rather than bothering to have some that do and some that don't and if it's a feature that is available then why not? - See other's comments above, lol :)

