My x-fire 4870 set had no micro-stuttering while the x2 did have stuttering. I don't believe 4870x2 had better results than 2x 1gb 4870. Here's a source to back up my personal experience.
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/crossfire_vs_sli/12.htm
You people are unbelievable. I can back up my opinions with fact and still it feels like I'm only met with harassment. Bad card, bad price. You don't just lump 5870gpus together and kill the clock by a few hundred MHz. Are they trying to impress people with how much it can overclock by selling a horrendously underclocked card, or is the heat just that bad? Remember these cards do throttle when they get hot enough.
Bad card, bad
price sums up my feelings to the initial article written where e-tailers are asking for over 500 euros for the video card. Here is the difference between the euro total and the USD total. 514.46 Euros = 764.950574 U.S. dollars. Google is cool eh? That's slightly more than 5850 crossfire. Nice. Has anyone noticed that I don't own a 5870 or a 5850? One package almost got me to jump and that was the Vapor-X model. I just keep reminding myself that I've had better, and the idea of buying it for even $50 less than the GTX295 seems absolutely bonkers. It's not that the 295 is a NVIDIA card, but it's that my 295 clocked from 576MHz core clock, 1,242MHz shader clock, and 999MHz memory speed to 800/1710/1350 once watercooled. Before that on air I used 2xGTX295s to achieve 41K in vantage, and the fps in games were just outrageous. What am I supposed to say about the 5870 from my experience? Am I'm going to be surprised or amazed and taken to a whole new level of the visual experience?
THe problem with such benchmarks as you've pointed to lie in the fact that they only show the
average FPS of certain configurations, and typically only the average MAX FPS - on top of that, linking to one specific game benchmark is not a good judge of hardware configurations across various games, either . . .
if you had taken the time to look through the rest of the games tested in
that specific benchmark comparison, you'd see that for about almost all other titles, the 4870x2 runs slightly faster than two 4870s paired up.
Honestly, when it comes to benchmarks, the biggest areas that we should be concerned with are not only the average FPS, but the average MIN FPS.
The micro-stuttering is most of the time system dependant. Whereas you might've had more micro-stuttering with a 4870x2 instead of two 4870s . . . I can claim completely otherwise . . . even after adding a second 4870x2 into the mix. As well - what kind of motherboard are you running? If you're primary PCIE slot doesn't support the 2.0 standard, then yes, it'll bottleneck the living hell out of a 4870x2.
And back to pricing . . .
we cannot compare USD amounts to EURO amounts. These are two totally different markets with differing price structures, taxes, emargos, inflation amounts, alcohol, smog content, rad ppm, and various other variables between the two.
USA != EUR
If such were the case, we'd have the same prices for our goods over here, that europeanoners pay across the pond.
And then to the issue of heat - sure, 90% of all newer hardware will throttle themself if temps get out of control. But, heat is relative to each users individual case setup. Just because your setup is borked and you can't keep a card from frying itself doesn't mean that such is a typical experience for other users. It's actually quite unbelievable how quickly people place blame on a manufacturer's hardware when typically the issue lies in their setup.
You're totally right, according to the last generation the x2 card will fail to the crossfire solution. Wolf shouldn't have explored the different frequencies of his card to see if performance was like a 5850 or near 1/2 what we might see in the 5970. I appologize for bringing it up? You figure out something better.
Nice play on my user name - and very mature, I might add. It fills me with such delight to see such childish behaviour, especially when the total debate is starting to swing away from a user's opinion.
You want a better comparision idea? How about waiting until the hardware is released to the review sites for testing, instead of jumping to conclusions based on another user's unfounded testing with questionable methods.
At least, that is what would make sense, and be the logical thing to do, right?
It amazes me how quickly others are willing to jump on what is essentially "heresay" and follow through with it. It also amazes me that when ever someone starts stouting more logical and sensical information, said user is labeled as a fanboi - even though I shouldn't have to, anyone of the other regulars who've dealt with my posting over the last few years will be more than willing to tell you that a fanboi I am not . . . but, I guess when one is proven wrong and you have no other logical means to back yourself up, namecalling is the only logical retort, correct?
:shadedshu