14 replies to this topic

[kingdingeling]

Once again, ccokeman looks at a video card, this time it's the Sapphire HD4890 Vapor-X 2GB!

[PingoPongo]

I see no point of paying an extra $40 for the card... Am i seeing double or is the 2GB of GDDR5 listed both as a pro and a con?

Anyway a uber-nice review Cokeman! :thumbs-up: Oh and a nice introduction sentence there King :thumbs-up:

[Bosco]

I see no point of paying an extra $40 for the card... Am i seeing double or is the 2GB of GDDR5 listed both as a pro and a con?

Anyway a uber-nice review Cokeman! :thumbs-up: Oh and a nice introduction sentence there King :thumbs-up:

Yes you are seeing it twice. It can be either a pro or a con depending on the game. Sadly there is not enough games out there to take advantage of that amount of memory

[PingoPongo]

What about GTA IV? Why isn't it in the tested games list? Im pretty sure that GTA IV does take advante of that, especially for distance draw or whatever its called...

[Timmy94]

What happened to the GTX295 in the reviews?

[Fight Game]

I believe they only put the 295 vs other sli/crossfire set ups.

[adonn78]

I own the 4870 2GB vapor X. The newer 4890 is 10% faster. But the editor really fails to see why 2GB of Ram on a video card is important. There are a few video RAM hungry games such as Grand Theft Auto 4 that can take Advantage of the 2GB memory buffer. In fact you need a card with 1.64GB RAM to max out all of the settings on GTA4. And You need that on a single card or per card basis if you are using SLI which uses mirroring of the memory. Please test the 2GB cards with GTA4 and check the results. I cannot give you a better reason to to buy a 2GB Card than GTA4. Other than that the vapor X runs like dream and is cool and quiet. I actually ahve a video of myself on youtube wher eI jsut upgraded my computer with the card and put the settings on GTA4 up. there are t3 parts but this is part 3 where I actually mess with the game.





I have a 3 year old Alienware computer
630watt PSU
Pentium d 830 3.0Ghz
4GB DDR2 675Mhz CAS 4
ATI 4870 2GB Sapphire Vapor-X
Audigy 2 Sound card
160GB 7200RPM HDD

Edited by adonn78, 24 July 2009 - 01:50 PM.

[PingoPongo]

Im 200% sure that the CPU is bottlenecking the HD 4870, big time!

[damian]

I own the 4870 2GB vapor X. The newer 4890 is 10% faster. But the editor really fails to see why 2GB of Ram on a video card is important. There are a few video RAM hungry games such as Grand Theft Auto 4 that can take Advantage of the 2GB memory buffer. In fact you need a card with 1.64GB RAM to max out all of the settings on GTA4. And You need that on a single card or per card basis if you are using SLI which uses mirroring of the memory. Please test the 2GB cards with GTA4 and check the results. I cannot give you a better reason to to buy a 2GB Card than GTA4. Other than that the vapor X runs like dream and is cool and quiet. I actually ahve a video of myself on youtube wher eI jsut upgraded my computer with the card and put the settings on GTA4 up. there are t3 parts but this is part 3 where I actually mess with the game.

isn't GTA 4 just a bad game because its a console port with loads of bug problems? I wouldn't think of GTA 4 to be a reliable benchmark for that matter.

I think heavy duty processor would be much more needed rather than extra memory.

Edited by damian, 24 July 2009 - 07:30 PM.

[maj.meathead]

Of course being professional reviewers you are aware that the extra memory isn't there to give you extra frames per second but to enable higher graphics settings right ? So how does this card fare when you crank up the AA beyond the 2 or 4 you have it set at compared with the same for the other cards in the test set up. ? 1gig vs 2gig at say 8 or 16AA or 16Q in Crysis........ and maximum settings in FarCry2. Does the extra memory help there ? I'll take Crysis for an example. I used an over clocked XFX GTX260 ( 640/2300 ) for a while. I wanted to see if the higher memory cards would make a difference so I purchased a 1792 card. At 16x10 with 8aa Crysis looked a lot better with the edges "cleaned" up and I could actually play it without any problems where as with the 896 version you couldn't turn the aa on. What say you ?.... and as I load FarCry2 again to play it reminds me of view draw distance.

Edited by maj.meathead, 25 July 2009 - 05:37 AM.

[SenitaL]

meathead is right, the extra memory comes in very handy if your like me and want to crank AA and AF up to max. I would love to see a few benches of games tested at 8x AA and full 16x AF. Also its not ONLY GTA 4 that will benafit from the extra gig, fallout 3 with the high resolution texture Packs from NMC would be a prime example for this card, and any other games which have moded comunity content for that matter im hoping to get one here in the uk but they have only just been releaced today apparrently and the prices are ugly at best, 250 GBP and this reveiw states the price as 250 USD!

Edited by SenitaL, 27 July 2009 - 07:21 PM.

[ccokeman]

500 buck is what they want over there? Man that is ugly!