I spent Sunday playing around with a pair of Radeon HD 4850 video cards running in CrossFire and testing went great. It was the best CrossFire testing that I have done to be honest. The flickering in the background that I was seeing on the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and others a pair of Radeon 3000 series cards is gone. Performance scaling seemed to work great also. The system idled at roughly ~180W and peaked at ~380W, which is not bad for a multi-GPU system. A single GeForce 9800 GX2 consume 332W, a Radeon HD 3870X2 320W and a single GeForce GTX 280 consumes 296W just to compare against some other cards.
Here is a picture of the test system running in CrossFire:
- radeon_4850_crossfire.jpg (139.92 KiB) Viewed 2898 times
Both of the cards ran pretty toasty and my only issue thus far with the Radeon HD 4850 is the amount of heat they put out... The cards are so hot I have to let them cool before I remove them after testing with either one or two installed. The CrossFire interconnect is also hot as heck when running a pair together.
I'm sure you want to see some benchmark numbers, so I'll give a game and a synthetic benchmark to hold you over for a few days. The final charts will include the Radeon HD 4870's and if time allows some GeForce GTX 260 numbers.
Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire numbers in 3DMark Vantage with Performance Settings:
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- 3dmark_vantage.jpg (54.54 KiB) Viewed 2895 times
For the game I'll use Company of Heroes:
- coh_crossfire.jpg (85.17 KiB) Viewed 2896 times
As you can see in CrossFire the pair Radeon HD 4850's were able to really compete with the PNY GeForce GTX 280. This GeForce GTX 280 runs standard clock speeds, so it was close to the same at 1920x1200. The overclocked EVGA GeForce GTX 280 was the overall leader, but remember it costs $879!
Hope you guys enjoy this sneak peak at some upcoming numbers... The charts will be bigger the next time you see them and they will include 10 applications/games later this week.
