Video Review Under Way. UPDATED 10/08.08. Review with X48MB progressing.

October 08, 2008 Progress Report

Cat 8.9 fixed much of the crossfire scaling issues and we have completed all our testing with our e8600@4Ghz on our PCIe 1.0 P35 MB with 16x + 4x PCIe CF slots.  We definitely can recommend you do not use a p35 MB with a HD4870x2 in the primary slot and a HD4870 in the 2nd 4x slot, as the crossfire performance increase is just not there.

Our 5 GPU shootout – 4870×2/4870/2900xt/GTX280 and 8800GTX with Cat 8.8 is done.  If you have a 2900xt or 8800GTS/9800GT class of card, you will benefit greatly from an upgrade to either HD4870 or GTX280.  We are now in the middle of the final round of benching 4870/512MB, 4870×2 and GTX280 on our new ASUS P5e Deluxe MB to show the performance delta of PCIe 1.0 vs. 2.0 and will state so far, that this particular spec makes no practical difference for 4870 class of GPUs.

We are also paying particular attention to Crossfire X-3 performance in the ASUS x48 MB over the P35 MB and are pairing 4870/512MB with 4870/2GBx2 with some interesting results as the 4870X2 card is forced to use only half of its available memory.  You will find the results as interesting as we do, I think.  As soon as this current round of benching is done, we will post all three parts of our testing, beginning one right after another and hopefully starting this weekend!  It has been quite a marathon session of exhaustive testing which will provide some practical insights for upgraders.

Leon, another ABT tech editor and I, will also be exploring our ASUS P5e’s motherboard’s flash of its BIOS into their most deluxe board, Rampage and he will be comparing overclocking performance of two popular CPUs as we review this motherboard’s potential and I emphasize GPU performance.

There is lots to come very shortly!  Stay tuned.  Also a Stalker, Clear Sky review!

Also, you are invited to join our forums and comment on our reviews and articles.  We listen to you!

Mark Poppin

ABT editor

September 18, 2008 Progress Report

Within one hour of finishing our GPU shootout with Catalyst drivers 8.8 – Cat 8.9 was released by AMD.

Just in time too, as we were getting horrible results with Cat 8.8 and Crossfire-X3 – i.e. HD4870 + 4870×2.  Scaling is mostly broken and we hope AMD has put some time into fixing it with the latest drivers.

We are also adding Call of Duty4 benchmarks and will explore Crysis: Warhead performance as well as STALKER’s DX10-featured Clear Sky.

Stay tuned for Part One, slightly delayed as we rerun all our AMD benches over again. —

Right now I am in the middle of comparing HD4870x2, HD4870, 2900XT, GTX280 and 8800GTX.   I am benchmarking eight modern games at 19×12 and 16×10: Crysis, Unreal Tournament III, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Call of Juarez, STALKER, FEAR & Half-Life 2: Lost Coast; as well as 3DMark06 and Vantage.   This comparison will help you decide if you should upgrade from your 8800GTX or GTS, 9800 series, 2900xt or 3800 series to the latest and greatest video card.  We also explore the advantages of using a faster CPU; our e4300@3.33Ghz even ran out of gas compared to a stock e8600@3.33Ghz.  We will also overclock our e8600 until it screams as we test CrossfireX.  We also explore whether you need to upgrade your motherboard to x48’s 16x + 16X PCIe lanes to take full advantage of CrossfireX.

So far, the only oddity that I notice, is that 4870/512 MB is not SMOOTH in several games; especially in ET-QW and Crysis at 19×12. Even though the frame rate stays over 30 – and in some cases 40 FPS – as a minimum, there is some “hitching” that indicates to me that the frame buffer is insufficient. This never happens in UT3 even though the FPS may drop to 25, so i am guessing it is the way these respective games allocate memory.   I also see that in the games with these studdering issues, simply dropping to 16×10 resolution makes it much less noticeable.

Have any 4870 owners noticed this?  I do not see this mentioned in tech reviews. There is no hitching problem with the other GPUs as long as the FPS is acceptably over 30 or so. Now this is something worth exploring and i think you can see it when I upload FRAPS video later this week. Stay tuned.

ABT’s publisher is still in beta and the formatting is imperfect.  We launch October first. In the meantime, we will be publishing and uploading articles, reviews, news and blogs for you as we complete them.  Expect an excellent September-October “Builder’s Guide” by Leon Hyman by this weekend

-Mark Poppin

aka apoppin, ABT Editor

Update 10:25 PM P.S.T, 9.11.2008

I am done benching with 4870 and 4870×2 and nearly done with GTX280; then on to 8800GTX and 2900xt.   After that, we will explore Crossfire-X3 and O/C the e8600; and then finally change out the P35 MB to x48.  So we are less than halfway done with this very ambitious testing comparison.  I even went back and reviewed all my benches on my other partition [and they are damn close], because of the lack of fluidity I was experiencing with my 4870.   We have to be sure it is not something else that is causing it.

Here are a few preliminary conclusions:  It appears that stuttering is something all GPUs will show when pushed near their limit. For example, GTX280 still struggles with Call Of Juarez demo ; frame rate will dip to about 16 FPS at 19×12, 4xAA/16xAF with everything completely maxed out.  It exhibits hitching associated with low FPS and loses fluidity in some sections of the demo. However, when the FPS are above 20-something, GTX280 gets fluid in most games.  In contrast, my 4870 is still not smooth – in certain situations and in certain games – with the frame rate above 30FPS!  It appears that 4870 may be somewhat limited by it’s 512MB vRAM and relatively narrow 256-bit bus at or above 19×12 in some demanding games.

The games where hitching was most noticeable was in Crysis and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – especially “outskirts” and “salvage” benches. ET:QW was benched with the highest quality settings including 4xAA/16xAF and at 19×12 and 16×10 resolutions.  In the case with ET:QW, the minimum FPS is above 40 with 4870, 4870×2 and GTX280; the GTX and the X2 are noticeably smoother.  Please note that it is “noticeably” smoother, not a “night and day” difference.   It is probably something you wouldn’t notice in casual play with your HD4870, expect perhaps to think FPS was getting a little low.

–Much more later