ATI HD4870 & HD4850 Crossfire Performance Review

Conclusion

After now using Crossfire for the better part of two months with the HD4800-series we can safely say that ATI’s multi card solution has come a long way since its inception with the X800-series. Not only have the drivers and game profiles improved in leaps and bounds but the price you pay for living the Crossfire dream is now more affordable than ever. Since we have been using a number of drivers (five different ones to be exact) for the 4800-series in Crossfire since their release to reviewers, one thing has struck us as beyond impressive: with every revision to the drivers, Crossfire performance has increased. This means that as time goes on, the performance of the 4800-series will continue to increase so the benchmark numbers you saw in this review will probably only be the beginning. And what a beginning it is!!

With the HD4800-series it seems that Crossfire has finally matured to a point where it is a perfectly good option for those of you running a Crossfire-enabled chipset while wanting a significant boost in performance over a single card. A pair of HD4870 cards is a good option if you are looking for the best of the best to go with your Intel-based motherboard but with a price of at least $540, it is a bit too expensive to outright recommend. Especially with the imminent release of the R700. On the other hand, the HD4850 presents consumers with the perfect Crossfire card since it is relatively cheap even when you buy a pair of them (under $400 in some cases) and they perform amazingly against the similarly priced GTX 280. Finally we have mixed Crossfire which to be honest with you is a bit pointless for the vast majority of consumers. It works like a charm but there performance is disappointing when the more powerful card is forced to downclock.

All in all, baring a few games here and there it seems that Crossfire scales very, very well from one game to the next. In Call of Duty 4 we say some pretty amazing performance increases while even Crysis saw some noticeably higher framerates with Crossfire enabled. There is however one small caveat: you need a hell of a processor to take advantage of the extra horsepower a HD4800-series Crossfire setup brings to the table.

With rumors of the 790i boards being gradually pulled from production by several large manufacturers and 780i boards not really providing much incentive to buy them, building a new SLI system seems to be nothing but an afterthought in the minds of many consumers. However, with the current crop of Intel chipsets supporting only Crossfire, it seems ATI’s multi card setups are gaining popularity very quickly. While with two cards running at full tilt power consumption naturally increases to pretty astounding levels, this in itself is not a reason to discount Crossfire.

When push comes to shove, based on the current crop of high-priced Nvidia SLI motherboards and the wide variety of Intel boards supporting Crossfire, we would give the ATI solution the edge over SLI in terms of market exposure. It should also be interesting to see what AMD has up their sleeves in terms of upcoming Crossfire chipsets. So with great performance, support from Intel and well-priced cards, the future is definitely bright for Crossfire.

So, what should we look forward to next? We will see….