its amusing to see comparison of HD4870x2 (which actually is 2 cards on 1 PCB by logic) with an actual single GPU. anyways, im not here to judge anything here. it hasn't taken any time for nvidia to beat that too. besides, the so called "best" of ATI has its own sets of disadvantages with increased power.
tafen from softpedia news -
"The CrossFire configuration nears the 3-way SLI, although it does not outperform it, but leaves far behind all the other cards. The Half Life 2: Episode 2 puts the cards on top of the list, but Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Crysis do not scale up so good on them.
The power consumption goes to high values when the CrossFire configuration is used. Also, the cards run really hot, registering 90 degrees Celsius under load and 80 degrees when idling. The cooler also seems to get a little louder when the card is under load, but the noise level is similar to that of other high-end graphics cards."
gtx 280 as a single gpu mode or in 2 or 3-way SLI mode doesn't have that problems. even after i play games for more than 4 hrs, my temperature hardly crosses 80 degrees on full load constantly with simple air cooling. (considering i have 3).
taken from hexus.net -
"The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is as inelgant as it is powerful. Yes, it's the fastest board of them all, but such is the base performance of the £179 Radeon HD 4870 and £219 GeForce GTX 260, that X2 only comes into its own if you're consistently playing at resolutions of 1,920x1,200 and above.
At an educated guess, £299-£349 is going to buy you frame-rate heaven in the form of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and, of course, it's a fundamentally niche product, populating the £300+ market. We're just nonplussed by the obvious way it goes about it, via internal CrossFire and a loud cooler. We'd rather opt for two Radeon HD 4870s and place them on an Intel or AMD chipset - they'll give you the same performance, for similar money, but offer quieter cooling and a wider range of display options. CrossFire is CrossFire, after all."
HD4870x2 still costs arm & a leg. whereas gtx280 has come down. HD4870x2 hasn't beaten gtx280 with so large a difference that it would make owners of gtx280 throw away their gpus and hog the ATI ones. HD4870x2 uses gddr5 whereas even with all these drastic improvements its still not that impressive against gddr3.
Besides, nvidia is already aware of HD4870x2 and has already introduced gtx285, gtx295. and well, lets face it, posed a competition to their newly introduced HD4870x2 that hasn't had that much long time to attempt the lion's share of the market.
@desi
i can do this with you fanboys all day if i want. you pint me your "genuine" reviews, i'll point you my "genuine reveiws".
but, the competion everywhere speaks for themselves. the market speaks for themselves. a single gtx 280 can & HAS beaten everything ATI has got with the exception of HD4870x2.
you dont believe it? its not my concern.
but if you insist on taking this argument further, im all game. bring it on. fun isin't it? and please, dont say what you CAN do. speak what you HAVE done already.
