Due to the high price of the new GTX200 line, some of the AMD options are looking more competitive. $199/$349 is looking better and better until NV annouced they we're dropping the price on 9800GTX to $200 and a new 9800GTX+ for $220.

I hacked another Best Buy exploit by talking them into pulling cards out of the back that arn't supposed to be on sale until Monday and getting 25% off because it was a VisionTek, which are on clearance because of the new cards coming out. Two cards for $318 that will outperform the new GTX 280 by 8-10% for $325 less. Heat is going to be a problem I bet but we shall soon see.

released their results crowning teh HD4800 series for their price range, and rightfully so imo.

Call of Duty 4


Crysis



Also, MultiGPU results we're interesting as I see my baby which will be done this weekend is going to be serving it up, Kikkomax style.

I think ATI can take the CF dual card crown with the release of the 4870X2, which would obviously compete with the 9800GX2. They're set to be priced in the $500 range. Not good bang for the buck, but it would be a wake up call for nvidia

I jumped on the HD4850 at best buy today, and I have to say for all the reading i've done on it, I'm still pleasently surprised at it's performance, possibly the only cons I can find about this card is how hot it runs and the physical length.

Runs COD4 maxed settings @ 1280x1024 (highest res my LCD can go) over 90FPS (used com_maxfps command to up FPS ceiling to 125), all this on DX9c

In the next couple days I'm gonna throw crysis and other games at it, but so far i'm loving it.

It's a sexy performer and unbeatable dollar for dollar~ did you nix it off them for $130-150?

I picked up my 2nd 4850 from newegg and I'm running both voltmodded @ 750/1000 so I basically have a 4870 minus the 120GB/s memory bandwidth lol

I'm going to OC the q9300 i picked up hopefully to 3.6Ghz to keep these cards fed with data.

Once I get that I'll see if i can get the pair past 800Mhz core
PS with the Zalman VF900's and an HB2 pencil you basically get a 4870 for the price of a 4850 and the above items.

What does a drawing pencil have to do with it?

I already feel like I'm getting mass performance even with my stock setup since the two HD4850s for the price of one HD4870, but 30-50% faster on applications that scale. Did you upgrade your motherboard or the second card running at 4x?

nope motherboard provides 2 PCIe 2.0 8x slots for graphics.

The pencil was to bypass a resistor in the voltage reg circuit for the GPU on both cards, gives each GPU a little bump up in voltage.

Didn't know you had upgraded to a P45 motherboard and processor already~ I had my mind set on the new P45 boards from Asus but caught too many reviews showing 8x holds the HD4800 series back due to the insane bandwidth they can push if your system can keep up. Experiences?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... p?t=197219

it's working out alright, but the thing that's holding my system back the most is the CPU clocks. If you look up 3D mark scores you have to have like 4Ghz or more to get these cards going at their full potential, which is absolutely insane. Here's my 3dmark scores for different CPU speeds:

CPU @ 2.50Ghz: 13000
CPU @ 3.10Ghz: 16700
CPU @ 3.26Ghz: 17300

3Dmark06 is somewhat biased towards CPU performance though, but it's noticable in games too, when i played COD4 @ all max w/ stock CPU speed certain scenes would cause the FPS to dip, but at 3.1Ghz it holds a steady 125FPS.

Right now I'm kind of experimenting with what'll effect performance more: a high FSB clock or a high CPU clock. Im at a 466Mhz FSB and a decent CPU OC.

I ran 3DMark06 when I first built the system on the hotfix drivers at factory stock and scored 15480 @ Vista64.

I was running the Cat 8.9 beta. I hear cat 8.54's are pretty good.

I couldn't even get the 8.8 or 8.7 version to install. I just tried to install 8.9 and it won't install either on Vista64.

Here's the review that ran me away from buying the P45 board I wanted so badly...
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/ ... index.html

I looked for some others very briefly but only found a lot of P35 comparisons, which is obviously very different.

Edit: I fixed the catalyst install problem finally by using the CLI installation interface.
ATISetup.exe -Install -output screen

Yeah P45's biggest downfall is it only has 16 pci lanes for graphics so that's split on xfire boards to 2 PCIe 2.0 8x lanes. Im reading that for crossfire this lack of bandwidth is a limiting factor because the cards are highly bandwidth dependent. 2 8x's are still better than a 16/4 setup.