Being a PC hardware junkie, I caved in and decided to order a HD 4870 X2. Best Buy had a VisionTek Radeon 4870 X2 available for pre-order last week, with the price listed at $469.99. The price was the lowest listed price for a 4870 X2 (which is currently going for ~$550 average online, including Newegg.com). I decided to order one, and after a week of waiting, it finally arrived this week.
Top: PNY GeForce 8800 GTX (with third party heatsink attached)
Bottom: VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2
Upon opening the box and seeing the Radeon 4870 X2, I was surprised how large it was. It was also pretty heavy too, with the beefy copper heatsink that the 4870 X2 uses. It is almost twice as heavy than my 8800 GTX/Ultra with the third-party Arctic Cooling heatsink.
After installing the HD 4870 X2 and testing it out in a few games, all I can say is that it is a monster. I was able to run all my old games at 32X AA at 1920 x 1200 (yes, you read that right) at playable or smooth speed.
Oblivion with Qarl's Texture Pack 3 + 4096 LOD Texture Replacements mods (huge RAM hog, BTW) runs very well on the HD 4870 X2, thanks to the 2 GB of RAM on this card. I used to run into studdering in some heavy texture areas with the 8800 GTX 768 MB, as it would quickly use up all the available RAM, but not on the HD4870 X2.
Crysis on Very High settings at 1920 x 1200 res. runs pretty good on the HD 4870 X2, although running any AA makes the game completely unplayable.
Despite the huge performance increases, I did notice some minor bugs. Older games like Ragnarok Online don't seem to like HD 4870 X2 internal CrossFire mode, as it would flicker between loading screens and maps quite often. I had to disable it (by disabling Catalyst AI) for the problematic games. It wasn't a big deal, since old games like RO barely tax modern graphic cards. Since the card just came out, the minor issues will probably be fixed in the next few Catalyst updates.
The HD 4870 X2 is fairly quiet under idle. When playing games, the fan on the HD 4870 X2 can be heard, but isn't loud; it's more like a soft "whirring" sound. The HD 4870 X2 does put out a lot of heat, however. In some of the demanding games that I've tested so far, the temp tools show it running as high as 90 C!
AMD/ATI says that the card's temp is normal, but it is still pretty hot. If a better third-party 4870 X2 fan/heatsink comes out, I will definitely be getting one.
All I need now is for some more graphic intensive games to come out that will tax this card.
Jaegar wrote:Very fun and when you get the hang of it you feel invincible (stabbing people any way you want and sprinting across rooftops = yay). The controls do take some getting used to and adjusting though. I've jumped off waaaay too many roofs (instead of carefully dropping down the side to catch a ledge) and had to restart because I held a trigger button a fraction of a second too long, misjudged distance, or the camera failed to show me a drop (one of them I got sent back to a post-assassination fight with something like 2039423492483856734530 guards T.T)
The guard AI is also really weird. They're hypersensitive sometimes (usually on missions where you're not allowed to become "exposed" at any time or you fail, even if it's just that one guard for 1/2 a second before he dies) and complete morons at others (lol walk up to a guard with a drawn sword and hit him before he does anything).
One thing about the setting/gameplay that really annoys me is the super health regen. You can fight a nonstop battle and get hit frequently but if you take a few seconds out of sight every once in a while you're fine. On the same topic I think the fist fighting mechanics are messed up. There's no depth to it like the rest of combat despite the fact that you have to do it on occasion. It interacts weirdly with armed combat too rofl. Fighting a single guard? Punch him. Their recovery seems to be longer than yours and unarmed attacks can only be guarded by unarmed blocks it seems (was only bored enough to try it once).
Throwing knives are a little weird to target. Some fights I accidentally throw 1 or 2 knives instead of attacking and frequently I accidentally attack (from out of melee reach) when I want to do a close range throw. There seem to be a lot of little nuances in the controls that the manual doesn't mention. Anyway these are just the little flaws I've found. It's tons of fun (I can't seem to play for less than 5 hours at a time).
It's also pretty repetitive in the mission structure but the gameplay is enough fun that it's minor. My favorite mission type so far is the "merchant stand destruction." Only seen one of that type but it's soooo funny. You need to destroy the stands of some corrupt merchants so you need to grab guards (other people work, but I prefer to only kill guards) and throw them into the stand. Save the citizen is pretty fun too and there are a lot of those. You have to get rid of the guards harassing a person. My best ever is three dead in about 2 seconds without ever breaking stride (used two throwing knives and a counter kill btw). I got the controls to do exactly what I wanted that time.
Back on the topic of performance, I turned every setting the game has up to max and it got sluggish occasionally, but that's fine. It's a great looking game even without maxing out everything. Thanks yet again for the nice recommendation ^_^ I'm still in awe that I have a computer than can run any game I want to play >3
Hmm, sounds like a game I should pick up sometime. Glad to hear that your computer is working out for you.
EDIT: After playing around with the 4870 X2, I've concluded that the "Wide-tent" (32X AA) and "Narrow-tent" (24X AA) modes suck. They make the games look blurry, rather than crisp with smooth edges. Edge-detect AA (24X AA) is the best quality AA for the 4870 X2 and looks amazing. Even some older games like Oblivion look absolutely gorgeous with Edge-detect AA enabled. I'll post some comparison shots later, for those that are interested.
