Time for an upgrade

[SUBMAN1]

I debated about buying the i7 but ended up getting the Phenom II 955. Its about time I get a CPU upgrade anyway. I'm still running an X2 4400+ until my stuff arrives.

-S

[AVGWarhawk]

I'm running the Phenom X4 9850. No issues at all and are fast. I have them hooked to an MSI 9N SLI V2 mobo, 8 gig RAM and Vista 64 to utilize the 8 gigs. Vid card is a EVGA 9800.

4 cores working for you make computing great. So many applications can be opened and running at the same time without a burp!

Have fun!

[stabiz]

Anybody know how much faster the HD4890 1Gb is than the HD4870 512? The 4890 is really cheap right now, and i cant get nVidia. (current drivers totally **** up rFactor in DX9)

[SUBMAN1]

Anybody know how much faster the HD4890 1Gb is than the HD4870 512? The 4890 is really cheap right now, and i cant get nVidia. (current drivers totally **** up rFactor in DX9)

You mean the 4870 is really cheap right now. And the 1GB 4870 is the better buy. It is actually faster than the 512 and worth the extra $10.

The 1GB 4890 is not much faster since it is a the same GPU, just slightly modified electrically and clocked up a bit. Same memory. Same everything. The only real advantage, besides the extra 5% to 10% performance (is that really worth $80 for 5%?) for the higher clock is that the new electrical layout allows it to overclock more. Since I hardly ever overclock a board except for benchmarking, this is not a big deal to me.

The point is, the 4870 is an awesome buy. I own one. The 1GB of course. If the 4890 were properly priced at about $200, then it would be worth the extra $$$, but it's not. It is hovering around a premium price of $230 to $240.

-S

PS. BTW, my 4870 clocks to 790 MHz fine. I could probably go faster, but I don't care because a 4870 already plays every game I have maxed out with full detail / resolution. I clocked the memory up to 5500 MHz (DDR5 @ 1100) and that works fine too. The 4890 clock speed is 850 Mhz GPU, and 975 MHz (4875 Mhz) memory. So with my extra clocks on the mem, and within 60 Mhz of the GPU, I was probably pulling similar performance numbers to the 4890.

PPS. Here is an example of the performance numbers with Crysis maxxed out at crazy resolutions. Notice the speed difference between the 1GB 6870 and the 512MB 4870. THe 1GB version seems to give you a 10% performance advantage for only $10!!! Now that is worth it ($10) for 10%, wouldn't you say? As you can see though, any of these boards are fast that are in this list. Even the outclassed 4850 in these charts is still pulling decent numbers, and so is the NVidia options. They would all make decent boards to own. Remember, if you can get 25 FPS with detail maxxed out in Crysis, you can play any game on the planet for now or the forseeable future with full detail. Nothing will catch Crysis for some time for video card stressing.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/radeonhd4890_040209033751/18713.png

Same test at lower resolution. Notice the speed gap between the 512 and 1GB again:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/radeonhd4890_040209033751/18711.png

[stabiz]

Yeah, but i have the 4870 512, looking for more performance. Dont want dual GPU or nVidia, hence 4890 1GB. Thanks for the info!

[SUBMAN1]

Then that answers it - you are already good. The 4870 is already overkill for every game on the market, and you should be able to play any game at max detail for at least a year.

Save your $$$.

Even dual core is adequate for 99% of everything these days unless you do long compressions. It is Blu-Ray that ultimately decided that I must upgrade to a quad core. I need to cut down my 12 hour compression times. Games still work fine on my dual core however so I wouldn't have upgraded if I didn't have a need.

The point being is that the 4870 is fine and the 4890 is the same GPU just re-wired. There is a new ATI card coming out anyway so hold out for a bit if you are adimate about doing it. A new generation of DX11 boards is on the way.

Time to go to bed. Its been a 15 hour work day for me, so this is the only post you get out of me tonight......

-S