jcossin
09-18-08, 01:11 PM
Man, I'm such an upgrade junky, always have to spend my cash on the fastest....
Well, I was able to off my 4870 for what I paid for it and decided to try out the 4870X2. After the horrible experience of my 9800GX2 I'm surprised I did it, but I wanted to check it out. I figured in the worst case if Crossfire is broken in a game I still get a 1GB 4870 instead of 512MB...
I went with the Sapphire branded card since it game with PowerDVD software and Vantage. The card is very nice but as soon as I put it in my system started rebooting whenever I'd try to run a benchmark. I figured it was my trusty 600W Rosewill power supply causing the problem and sure enough after running up to Fry's to pick up an AMD approved 650W Antec, NO MORE REBOOTS. So there went another $95 into the upgrade, GRRRR... That Rosewill worked fine with my 4870 and 9800GX2 by the way....
Anyway, the first thing I noticed after swapping out the 4870 for the 4870X2 was that my 1920x1200 desktop on my LCD was bothering my eyes. Just like when I used to have a CRT monitor and if it ran in 60Hz instead of 75Hz or 85Hz. I've tried all kinds of things to get rid of the problem, but it's there. I'm dealing with it for now but if it keeps bothering me it might be the end of the card for me...
I fired up Call of Juarez (since that's what I'm currently playing), and immediately noticed the FPS rates on the loading screens were higher but there is this wierd shimmy flickering going up my screen on the title screen, kind of like when someone tries to film a TV where you get the bars moving up from bottom to top, wierd! Well it only shows in the title screen and in game everything looks great and plays super fast. After playing for an hour I was happy with the card in that game. My 4870 would choke in some places at 1920x1200 but this card eats it up!
So far that's all I've done with the card. My overall impression is that it is a fast card that can really pump out the frames, but once again I'd rather have a single chip that can do this kind of performance without resorting to dual chip tricks that might be hard on my eyes.
I'll play out some more games tonight and give some more impressions. I also need to try out the new Cat 8.9 drivers tonight as I'm running 8.8...
Well, I was able to off my 4870 for what I paid for it and decided to try out the 4870X2. After the horrible experience of my 9800GX2 I'm surprised I did it, but I wanted to check it out. I figured in the worst case if Crossfire is broken in a game I still get a 1GB 4870 instead of 512MB...
I went with the Sapphire branded card since it game with PowerDVD software and Vantage. The card is very nice but as soon as I put it in my system started rebooting whenever I'd try to run a benchmark. I figured it was my trusty 600W Rosewill power supply causing the problem and sure enough after running up to Fry's to pick up an AMD approved 650W Antec, NO MORE REBOOTS. So there went another $95 into the upgrade, GRRRR... That Rosewill worked fine with my 4870 and 9800GX2 by the way....
Anyway, the first thing I noticed after swapping out the 4870 for the 4870X2 was that my 1920x1200 desktop on my LCD was bothering my eyes. Just like when I used to have a CRT monitor and if it ran in 60Hz instead of 75Hz or 85Hz. I've tried all kinds of things to get rid of the problem, but it's there. I'm dealing with it for now but if it keeps bothering me it might be the end of the card for me...
I fired up Call of Juarez (since that's what I'm currently playing), and immediately noticed the FPS rates on the loading screens were higher but there is this wierd shimmy flickering going up my screen on the title screen, kind of like when someone tries to film a TV where you get the bars moving up from bottom to top, wierd! Well it only shows in the title screen and in game everything looks great and plays super fast. After playing for an hour I was happy with the card in that game. My 4870 would choke in some places at 1920x1200 but this card eats it up!
So far that's all I've done with the card. My overall impression is that it is a fast card that can really pump out the frames, but once again I'd rather have a single chip that can do this kind of performance without resorting to dual chip tricks that might be hard on my eyes.
I'll play out some more games tonight and give some more impressions. I also need to try out the new Cat 8.9 drivers tonight as I'm running 8.8...