A closer look at HD 4870 Custom Filtering Antialiasing

Well even though AMD has been eaten up in the last few months both in the CPU department and the GPU one, it seems they have finally at least got one of them right. The 4800 series has proven to be the best performance vs price cards in the market, costing half as much as the competitor (*nVidia*) for almost the exact same performance... and the way the 4870 X2 is turning out to be, it seems its almost twice as powerful as the GTX 280, and in some tests actually twice as powerful, if the 4870 X2 will cost $500 - $600, its is perfect bang for buck, i will finally update my 8800 Ultra's with I card that is worthy, and a monster. A true high-end card, i never thought ATI had it in them, and for those who argue that its not fair to put 2 * 4870 against one GTX 280 and that the test should be with SLI, don't forget that a 4870 X2 in Crossfire should shatter the GTX 280 configuration... I really can't wait for these cards... Even though AMD has beenp a huge disappointment in the CPU Market lately, they finally got something right, and for the right price.

Man I love myself some AA.

Ditto, Sunny; ditto.

I'm waiting for the 4870x2 so that I can buy another card... I'm just torn as to whether that card should be another 4870, or a 4870x2 and do some Tri-Fire.

Wait for some results and see, eh?

edit: Although, thinking about it, Crossfire with a 512MB 4870 and a 2GB 4870x2 seems a bit... stupid, since you'd be limited to 512MB.

Uhh...I probably we'll never have a monitor that does higher than 12x10, but I think I will go ahead and get the 4870X2 (not two), cuz by the time I actually get a 24" or bigger screen, the 5000 series will come out and the 4000 series will be not be a viable purchase for me.

And I'm waiting for somebody to come out with an XBOX360 or PS3 emulator for the PC, so eventually when that happens i will have a reason to have a crazy Gaming PC.

@sigmapsicharlie - a HD 4870 X2 on a 1280x1024 res monitor ? Why ? A single HD 4870 is more than enough for that .
But that new CFAA mode is rather interesting ... and what's great is that it should work prettymuch anywhere ( exept in DX10 games ) .

CFAA is available with the 4870, and was on my 3870 as well... although, as you might expect, it didn't work for crap with the 3870.

"sigmapsicharlie" I disagree, i think the 5000 Series will be like the 3000 series after the 2000 series was released, it was just for marketing, fake, and didn't provide a huge performance boost, it was like what 10% performance increase... You have to know when to get you hardware. When i got the 2900 XT for my bro, and the Ultra's for me, they have been nothing but good until nowadays, when games are beginning to stress them out badly...

EDIT: also as pointed out by Radiator, a 4870 for a resolution like yours is an overkill anyway, a 4850 would be good enough... I can't believe i switched from an nVidia fanboy to an ATI one, these cards are amazing.

The new CFAA mode isn't supported by the HD 3870 and as the [H] article says , the narrow and wide tent modes are both craptacular .

I can't understand a word from the article....>.

I don't know how the 5000 series will pan out, since this new 48702x2 isnt even out yet, but I am going to a bigger screen soon and I figure I may as well have a new card so when I do upgrade to a bigger screen I wont have any problems with a highers rez.

CFAA is running on my 3870 pretty well acutally. Well, my pair of 3870's. There's a small performance hit that's noticeable with them, but overall it's pretty good. Edge detect is an option for me, and yes it needs to be disabled with anything DX10, and it's certainly not "free" with DX9 games either, but still handles fairly well. 12x CFAA in TF2 with every option on @1440x900 (only have a 19" LCD) I still avg around 65FPS.

Sorry, Radiator, but you're wrong; the 3800 and, even, the 2900 series support edge-detect, and have since Cat 7.7 was released.