*** 4870 vs 4850 Battle! ***

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gurusan

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Both cards 512mb!

So I got a 4870 today....threw it under water and clocked it to 860/1000 before doing some benches.

I will keep this very short and to the point...as you can see, the 4870 is about 8% faster overall at the same clocks...possibly 9% if you clock the memory even higher to 1100 (4400). The biggest difference looks to be the maximum fps of Crysis with 4xAA. The 4870 also seems strong at 3dmark06 in comparison to the 4850 if you look at the individual sm2/sm3 scores...this shows that there's some power on tap here from the extra memory bandwidth...

Also keep in mind that the 4850 512mb was pencil modded and needed 1.37V for 860mhz...the 4870 did it on stock voltage which was measured with a DMM to be 1.277V under load. Both cards are under water and I will be vmodding the 4870 to see if I can get some more out of it :)

I will leave you all to draw your own conclusions as to the extra price of the 4870 over the 4850...hopefully this will spark some interesting discussion :)


Notes:
  1. Settings in games are all maxed out (ultra, enthusiast..etc).
  2. Resolution is 1680x1050 except 3dmark06 is the default 1280x1024

System test setup is:

  • Server 2008 64bit
  • E8500 @ 4607mhz
  • 4x1gb OCZ SLI @ 1164mhz 5,5,5,15
  • P5Q Deluxe
  • Catalyst 8.12 BETA drivers, installed without CCC so default driver settings (balanced AFAIK)

4870vs4850vx9.png



3dmark06 breakdown:

4850
  • 16181 3DMarks
  • SM 2.0 Score 6378
  • SM 3.0 Score 7917
  • CPU Score 4216

4870
  • 17798 3DMarks
  • SM 2.0 Score 7040
  • SM 3.0 Score 9192
  • CPU Score 4198
 
Re: 4870 vs 4850 Battle!

Interesting. The price difference is about $50-100 depending on the card. So for 30% more cost you get ~10% more performance. I wonder how these stats would look at higher resolutions.
 
Re: 4870 vs 4850 Battle!

Interesting. The price difference is about $50-100 depending on the card. So for 30% more cost you get ~10% more performance. I wonder how these stats would look at higher resolutions.

the 4870 should win by a wider margin at higher resolutions because its got the extra bandwidth of GDDR5 memory...

you're pulling some nice 3dmark scores outta those cards gurusan... you should try it with a quad core!
 
One thing to consider is that most 4850s will not hit 4870 speeds (750mhz) except for a few non-reference models.

That said, pencil modding is really easy....and they usually do 690-710mhz and 1100 memory.
 
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