Crysis Warhead

I've decided to keep this title in the test suite but have run the benchmark in DX10 mode - even though the 'Gamer' settings don't really utilise any DX10 instructions. It still most definitely makes the cards choke though.

As is typical of Crysis, the Nvidia card is favoured and the Crossfire solution is punished. Whilst adding the second 4770 provides roughly 50% more performance, they still don't get very close to the 4890, which in turn gets beaten by the GTX 275 - until the AA is turned on that is, which evens things up between the high-end cards.

RaceDriver GRID

Now we return to the good old DX9 titles. ATI cards typically fare better with GRID, and Crossfire can be a hit or miss affair.

The Crossfired 4770s don't quite beat the GTX 275 at the two lowest settings, but it pulls ahead by barely twitching when AA is switched on showing that not all available power is being used at the lower settings. The 4890 pulls out another solid performance all round, but the real eye-opener here is the single 4770 - over 50fps on 1920x1200 at 4xAA with a "budget" card? Groundbreaking stuff for sure.

Call of Duty 4

Another popular title which usually does well with Crossfire solutions; can the dual 4770s come out top dog in this one perhaps?

A resounding 'yes' on that one, with the 4770 Crossfire setup smashing the 4890 by up to and over a 20% margin. They also consistently beat the GTX 275, and there's definitely a huge boost from doubling the cards up.

Fallout 3

Last but not least, the úber-immersive post-apocalyptic RPG from Bethesda.

Methinks we're hitting a CPU bottleneck around the 65 - 70fps mark here, nevertheless you can still see that Crossfire again provides a huge boost in performance and the Nvidia card suffers noticeably once AA is enabled at high resolution.

Average FPS

So after all that, who won? If we add all the results together (excluding 3DMark), then average them out, we get a better picture overall of how the cards fared.

The 4770 Crossfire setup fared very well indeed, beating out the more expensive GTX 275 at the highest settings and only marginally losing at the other two. If we compare the single 4770 to the dual solution, we get roughly a 30% performance increase at 1680x1050, 40% increase at 1920x1200 with 0xAA and a mammoth 70% increase with 4xAA enabled! This is where the value of Crossfire really lies.

Dollars per FPS

Speaking of value, how do the results weigh up once we factor cost in?

Here you can see that a single 4770 is the most economic card - but obviously you don't get a lot of performance out of it. If you want to be hitting 60fps and more in these games then you have to choose from the other three setups. From these, the 4770 Crossfire solution provides the best value at 1920x1200 with AA both on and off. Only at 1680x1050 does the GTX 275 and 4890 become slightly better value.

Noise, Power, Heat

 

These 3 factors can be a big influence on people's purchasing decisions. Noise can be a particularly big factor, but I'm pleased to report that the XFX 4770s are very quiet - actually more quiet than the 4890 is once it has heated up and is spinning at full speed.

Power shouldn't be a concern to anyone as long as you have at least 170W or 15A spare on your 12v Rail. Again this is lower than the 190W TWP of the 4890.

As for heat - like I said earlier, the XFX cooler expels heat out the back of the case, but the cards don't create much in the first place, topping out at 58'C during testing, and hanging around the low 40's whilst idling.

Conclusion

It should be painfully obvious by now, but I like these XFX cards a lot, and for many reasons. The coolers are much better than the reference ATI ones. In Crossfire they actually return results for your investment, particularly at high resolution and high settings, something which hasn't always been true for multi-GPU solutions. Usually a more expensive single card will do a better job which isn't the case here. You can stagger your purchasing of two cards if you can't afford both at once. And I know that deep down every gamer wants to brag about having a Crossfire setup.

If you own a Crossfire motherboard, and you want a decent gaming upgrade without breaking the bank, then two of these cards will not fail you at all.

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Our thanks to PlayTech for providing the review samples.