4x Radeon HD 4670 or 1x Radeon HD 4870

Hi its nearly my birthday (good for me) and I can't decide whether to get a Radeon HD 4870 or 3 more 4670's. I have the MSI K9A2 motherboard with support for 4 way crossfire but I have doubts about whether 4 cards will actually fit as I have a PCI Wi-Fi card which won't allow the heatsink of the graphics card (me thinks) also the bottom PCI-E is really low and I'm not confident that a card will fit because of the bottom of my case. The other thing I'm pondering is how good will the 4 be against a 4870. Here in the UK the 3 cards cost £200 about the same as a 4870. The card I currently have is the MSI R4670-2D512/D3 and the 4870 I want is the XFX HD-487A-YDFC. finally I may at a later date wish to crossfire the 4870. does any one have 4x crossfire? is it good? is the 4870 the most simply kickass? please tell me! Oh I forgot my monitor only goes up to 1440x900 so thats the resolution I will be running the card(s) at

 

-Probably should have checked this first but I was right I can only have 2 4670's the one above my Wi-Fi card simply won't go in and the one on the bottom has nowhere to draw air from making a hole in the bottom of my case might work........

anywho is a 4870 worth the extra cash or is it worth making a hole for a third 4670 or just rather boringly should I get 2 4670's

 

Quad crossfire does not have very good support, and as far as I'm aware, isn't even supported on the 4670s, I think you can only use two of those. Two HD4670s are about equal to one HD4870 at best, but in many cases, are still only as fast as one HD4670, and for that reason, the single card is better.
If you're using 1440x900, you don't really need either though. Such a low resolution is more suited to a cheaper card like an HD4850.

 

Each card you add in CF/SLI gives your proportionally less performance. Especially when you go past 2 GPU's. 4 GPU's won't give you twice the performance of 2 GPUs.

 

That's not strictly true. There's nothing to stop four GPUs scaling at 400% performance of the single card. This is the case for Stalker:Clear Sky with the 4870s, but the chance of it happening is rare.

 

Thanks I think I'm gonna buy an XFX 4850 the version with the cooling slot because I've seen the single cards have cooling problems. The £77 difference from the 4870 can pay for RAID

 

They don't actually have cooling problems, people just THINK the high temperatures are an issue, or have crappy cases, but whatever, you aren't losing out by using an XFX card, they're excellent.
Also, 4870s aren't £77 more than 4850s. You can get a 4870 for £180 if you look hard enough.

 

I've just found a Sapphire 4870 for £175 think I'm gonna get that and a new PSU (mine has no 6 pins and the card needs 2) good old Ebuyer. RAID can wait

 

The Force3D one? No idea how good they are, but no harm in trying one out I suppose.

 

I don't think so... its this one here

 

Oh yes, I see it now. £175 for that card is good.

 

is the sapphire 4870 the 512mb version? if it is, then i would just forewarn you that SOME of them have problems in which you would need to flash your bios. the problem with some of the sapphire's 4870 512mb is that they would freeze in-game with a pixelated image or make your screen turn black. again, this only happens to some, and are otherwise very good cards. i havent heard of any reports where this has happened to any other HD4870 brand or the Sapphire 1gb versions.

 

It's happened with the X2 aswell, I've not heard of it with the 1GB. It seems like a random issue. Either way, I have a Sapphire 4870X2 arriving this week to play with, so if I experience it I'll let you know.

 

I'd say get a good solid single card, multi cards are not that great and generally lead to heat build up, so its best to get one great card, IMO.

 

-I'd forgotten about this thread.

I got a single XFX HD4850 512MB so I can cheaply (by comparison) double up in the future.

My mate got a Sapphire 1GB 4870 simply to outdo me and it performs similarly on most games (on a Nvidia chipset Intel socket mobo (if it makes any difference)) (no way worth the extra £60+) also mine is shorter and less of a pain to get in although it needs taking out before swapping memory and sits on the heatpipe to my southbridge meaning after doing anything inside my case needs shoving back in place.

 

Too much of a CPU bottleneck if he has the same CPU as you, the 6000+ is a pretty low-end CPU to be paired with a 4870. At high detail levels with a good CPU, trust me, the HD4870 is worth the extra money. Also, nvidia chipsets - not nice. There's no compatibility issue, they're just not good chipsets.

 

The bottleneck makes sense as he has a 2.2GHz core 2 duo @2.4 or something (I don't pay much attention to Intelness).

I tried to tell him maybe it was worth getting a new CPU before a new graphics card but he wouldn't listen....

and he has now refused to get an AMD quad/mobo and has ordered a pretty slow Intel core 2 quad (should be Phenom II X4!!!) and an Intel board.

we'll see what the results are (I'm getting a told you so ready....)

personally I'm waiting for some faster AM3 quads to come out.

 

Lol, there are a hell of lot more Core 2 Quads that are faster than Phenom IIs than the other way around.

Phenom 93,94,95,96,9800 series - below any Core 2 Quad

Phenom 9950 ~ Core 2 Quad Q6600/Q8200
Phenom II 920 ~ Core 2 Quad Q8300
Phenom II 940 ~ Core 2 Quad Q9400

Core 2 Quad Q9550, Q9650, QX9770, Core i7 920, 940, 965 - all above any Phenom

It's been a long time since AMD have been top dog for CPUs.

 

I was gonna argue AMD were cheaper but there not.....

 

The intel stuff is about 100$ and you can not gauge CPUs on speed alone, you have to look at what its over all specs are thus why the AMD cpus beat out everything intel had up till the arrival of the C2D then their CPUs finally showen a 10-30% boost in performance with the normal CPU speed gap between the brands.

The intel stuff is still about 100$ more.
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I just picked up a 70$ 3870 512 DDR 4 Sapphire card and its as good if not a tad better at SM3 than my 400$ last year EVGA 8800 640MBDDR3 0-o

I got the ATI card for my uncle.