4860 Xfire Review

[DearSX]

Thanks Cecil for the review and folks for commenting/sharing. I've wanted a good bang for the buck system for a while. I wanted 4870 performance or better but for as little money as possible (about $120). After seeing this card on sale last week for $115 bucks and finding this review, I bought it. First card in 9-10 years, second all time.

I'm glad I bought it. Its doing pretty well. Relatively quiet.
Overclocks well and runs cool. Just like the reviewer comments.

Got an E2160 (o/c 55% 2.8ghz) ,$48+$48 G31 gigabyte MB, $100 Antec Sonata case, $15 1 Gb memory (I need more, but its ok), $50 500gb drive, and this $115 dollar card. Free windows 7 Ultimate. So under $400 bucks, and I think I can play most any game on my 62inch Tv (muhahahaha) though I need more memory for some.

I overclocked to 900/900 and its running fine. Does Furmark and stays about 70C with Under 70% fans.
Have not tried faster. Pretty pleased with the deal, even though I've spent enough time researching so that just buying a 4890 is perhaps more rational ie. worth my time. Still I think I located the best deal which is pretty cool, especially when I share with others.

I'm gonna try 975 for the memory soon. I wonder about something though.

What is my voltage when overclocked? Afterburner has no indication, nor everest, nor Bios, nor rivatuner, Gpuz, Hmonitor or Voltagetuner. I hope its untouched, considering the Temps it seems to be I guess.

also its on sale again

[Cecil]

I found a way around the software clock limits.

I set my clocks to the max 910/975, restarted pc with "enable OC at system startup" on, and when it came up the bars are only half way across.

[devilrain]

Originally Posted by Cecil

I found a way around the software clock limits.

I set my clocks to the max 910/975, restarted pc with "enable OC at system startup" on, and when it came up the bars are only half way across.

Wow, I just tried this and it works! At boot up it was at stock, but the OC goes further. Mine goes up to 1185 core/ 1270 mem!!! Thanks

[DearSX]

Its working for me also, but I'm scared to go too far.

update: I tried 1000/1000 and it froze and went black. Maybe I'll try 950/950 soon.

[Cecil]

Originally Posted by DearSX

Its working for me also, but I'm scared to go too far.

update: I tried 1000/1000 and it froze and went black. Maybe I'll try 950/950 soon.

When the PC freezes, the core is too high. If you get artifacts, the mem is too high.

I never found a single core setting that artifacted. It either worked, or would freeze the PC.

Couldnt get over 915 core, but thats still **** impressive. Ram stopped somewhere between 1000 and 1050.

[kistlerjm9]

i got this card yesterday... all i have to say is wow is blows a single 5770 away current core clock 910 mem clock 1005... thats with the stock tim! I got it at newegg for $15 dollars off plus a 10 MIR! 100 dollar 4890 cant beat this little beauty!!!!!

[SightUp]

Why do people call it Xfire? It's Crossfire. Xfire is a program used by gamers.

[Cecil]

Originally Posted by SightUp

Why do people call it Xfire? It's Crossfire. Xfire is a program used by gamers.

X is short for Cross. If someone says xfire involving two vid cards, its pretty obvious what they are talking about

[SightUp]

I get it but it's still wrong. It's like the TV sales men saying that, "This computer has 640gbs of memory. This is all the space you will ever need!" You get what he's talking about but people who are edumacated know that the salesmen is a moron.

[Cecil]

Originally Posted by SightUp

I get it but it's still wrong. It's like the TV sales men saying that, "This computer has 640gbs of memory. This is all the space you will ever need!" You get what he's talking about but people who are edumacated know that the salesmen is a moron.

I dont get the connection. That is flat out wrong. Saying Xfire is fine because X=Cross. Its just an abreiviation. There are lots of words and sayings that have multiple meanings.

[binhsterbinh]

When Crossfiring the 4860's, I started seeing artifacts at 1100mhz, so that was the limit of at least one of my cards. I'm guessing they both pretty much reach their max around there. I clocked down to 1050mhz and have had no issues. I'll probably just run it at 1000mhz for the sake of not getting too close to the limit. Not bad for DDR5 stock clocked at 750mhz.

My HD 4890 Vapor-X OC (Stock 870/1050) pulls mid 70fps average in Resident Evil 5 Bench. Overclocked to 950/1100mhz, it gets in the low 80's fps. The 4890 (especially OC editions) by itself will still outdo an OC'ed 4860 but for the value, the obvious choice would be to crossfire 4860's together. No regrets so far. I put the HD 4890 into my other computer.

[soulbandaid]

I have successfully flashed the bios. Doing so has two small advantages over msi afterburner.

You can now overclock using CCC. Eliminated a program running in the background.
Rivatuner now works. I havn't played with it a lot, but it will now let me overclock and use the hardware monitor.

I still can't find anything to let me mess with the voltage which was my original intention when doing this...

!*!*!*!*!*!*!WARNING FLASHING YOUR BIOS MIGHT F UP YOUR CARD

most of the time this can be fixed by flashing a new bios on (which is really difficult without a display output!)
Sometimes it will simply brick your card.

To do so, make a dump of your bios using atiflash with a dos boot disk. make it 128 bytes since you have gddr5.
Edit it with RBE, make sure to change the fan settings as the stock only maxes the fan out when the gpu reaches 100C (by which point its too late).
Change the identity to 4890. Change the manufacturer if you want to try and use overclocking tools by that manufacturer. I've heard something about changing cards to asus for this reason. IDK anything about it, and don't really care to try. I love the simplicity of overclocking in CCC.
Save this bios and reflash it using atiflash and the boot disk.

If these directions don't make some sort of sense to you don't try this.

I've tested this, and it is furmark and bioshock 2 stable

Be careful with afterburner, if you change the clocks with afterburner, close afterburner(which should reset the clocks) and restart windows CCC overrive will use those as your low clocks. To fix it just do the same thing, but with lower clocks.

[trakaill]

So I have one of these in my comp now? Question!!!
When I change things in afterburner what do I have to press so they stick? When I pressed apply it just went back to default 700/750 ...
And I did the change from 0 to 1 in the cfg file..
Im a first time user btw so take it easy!!

Additional Comment:

Like a noob that cant follow instructions I did it wit wordpad rather then notepad.. well that doesnt work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So its working now

[travy25]

Originally Posted by trakaill

Like a noob that cant follow instructions I did it wit wordpad rather then notepad..

Glad you got it working, although it still does not allow for OC above 910 on the core which I would likem and to set the record straight these do not have the voltage regs that allow for voltage tweaking. The card will do 910/975 (max in afterburner) standing on it's head and there's got to be more in there.


Question, how were you able to get the mem beyond the 975 software limits? My 4870 is kicking this things ***, lol.

EDIT: I see the "apply at start up" trick now. Would be nice to find a more conventional fix though.

[Cecil]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=205

Maybe try that version.

[travy25]

Originally Posted by Cecil

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=205

Maybe try that version.

Thanks man, will give it a shot. I got it to bench at 920/1030. It pwns a 4870 512 when AA/AF are cranked. I'm really liking the bandwidth and the 1G GDDR5.

Here is the comparison of the two in an X3 run with the settings cranked (WD's settings) and my 550BE @ 3.8GHz, ram running 1066 5-5-5-15 2t. 21.1 FPS improvement is not too shabby, but expected with the extra ram.

[reddog007]

I have a 4860 and am very pleased with it. It's a bad apple as far as overclockig.
875 is the max core I can go. Memory is fine up to 1025 but I just leave it at 975. The card already has more than enough bandwidth.

I have tried several different bios flashes to increase voltage as stock is 1.31v, but I have yet been able to get it increased. I was really hoping to hit 1GHz.
Temp wise I am at 36c with 40% fan and 56c at 55% fan, so the thing runs pretty cool. This is also overclocked temps.

The card performs well and maxes all games out that I play at 19x10 with 8xAF on all games. Just Cause 2 so far has been the only game I play at 13x7 with everything maxed out, but I think I could 19x10 if I turned off saoo is it?