How much better is the 4870 than the 9800gtx? (hd, game, graphics)

[skel1977]

How much better is the 4870 than the 9800gtx?

Friend has one sitting in a box and is offering to sell it to me. What would be a good price and is the upgrade worth it? Currently having frame per second issues in the game(rift) im playing.

[NJGOAT]

The 4870 is definitely an upgrade over the 9800GTX. The 4870 even outperforms the GTX260 and is nearing the total performance of twin 9800GTX's. It will be faster than your current card, so as long as the price is right, then I would go for it. A fair price would be something between $30 and $50. If you had to pay much more than that, then you might as well just save a little and step up to one of the more modern cars like the GTX460 or the ATI 5xxx or 6xxx line.

[djmilf]

Tom's Hardware website provides a summarized review of video cards at various price points every month and provides a comparison chart of all cards going back years. The chart is at:

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart : Best Graphics Cards For the Money: March 2011

The guys at the website recommend upgrading when your current card is three or more levels below your desired card. The NVidia GeForce 9800 GTX is on the 7th row and the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is on the 6th row. That's only one level...you might not notice that much of a performance improvement.

[NJGOAT]

Overall the 4870 falls between the GTX260 and GTX280 in performance. Overall the 4870 is about 20% - 30% faster than a 9800GTX in benchmarks. Of course, it all really comes down to the program you are running and the resolution you are playing at as to how much of an actual performance benefit you will get. As long as you can pick up the 4870 CHEAP, as in $30 or $40 cheap, than it might be a decent upgrade and would net you better performance.

Any more than that and you are hitting the point where the dollars really aren't worth the bump in performance compared to say a $170 Radeon 6850 that pretty much doubles the performance of the 4870.

If you are looking at some good reviews look for ones where people pondered going from a 9800GTX to a GTX260 as that is the general performance bump you are looking at and there are a lot more articles and forums out there discussing that upgrade than going from the 9800GTX to a 4870.