4870 is out

Good news for those upgrading. Price wars help the consumers. :)
 
does this help determine when we will get it? I wanna burn my eBay coupon lolol.
 
Should be any day if the early HK releases of the GTX280s were any indication.
 
Awesome. Can't wait. This card is looking like pure awesome (it's really late here LOL).
 
Ouch...is this card being released with only 512Mb of vRAM? Sounds like it might hurt AA and shader performance at high resolutions.
 
Perhaps this means AMD will lift the NDA sooner? Benchmarks please! :D
 
Ouch...is this card being released with only 512Mb of vRAM? Sounds like it might hurt AA and shader performance at high resolutions.

It didn't hurt the 4850 all that much and that card has half the memory bandwidth of the 4870.
 
It's officially "next week" now.. When will the big hardware sites post proper reviews of the 4850 (which has been available to consumers for at least a week) and the 4870 (which is becoming available now)? This is ridiculous, I almost prefer paper launches - at least you get plenty of info before the cards are made available, then..
 
It's officially "next week" now.. When will the big hardware sites post proper reviews of the 4850 (which has been available to consumers for at least a week) and the 4870 (which is becoming available now)? This is ridiculous, I almost prefer paper launches - at least you get plenty of info before the cards are made available, then..


Wensday
 
By wednesday we will already have dozens of user reviews and "leaked" benchmarks from europe and asia.. There's too much uncertainty, guesswork and false rumors when you find out about videocards that way.

I could order a 4850 today and receive it by the middle of this week, if I wanted to, but I have to wait until [H] and a few other hardware sites I trust publish their proper reviews. There are still a few things I want to confirm and read up on before I decide. Why make the cards available before anyone is allowed to write about them properly?
 
So that $320 price point means they could push the 1 GB DDR5 version at prices anywhere from $350 to $400. I expect the sweet spot will be around $379.99.
 
So that $320 price point means they could push the 1 GB DDR5 version at prices anywhere from $350 to $400. I expect the sweet spot will be around $379.99.

Yes pricing would throw an interesting spin to the whole 4870X2 vs GTX 280 (I own the latter right now).

We know for almost a FACT that 4870 is at least on par with a GTX 280, judging from the 4850 benchmarks (on Anand's, numbers coincide with a number of private users' reports), backed also by the following:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/251953-33-crysis-4870-benchmarks-includeshttp:

Let's just assume it is slightly under, in some situations, drivers voodoo coming into play etc.

Point worth noting is the 4870 1G will be selling at a 40% discount to GTX.

(I suspect the Asus 4870 1G is already out in the shops in HK....didn't have time to check today).
 
Yes pricing would throw an interesting spin to the whole 4870X2 vs GTX 280 (I own the latter right now).

We know for almost a FACT that 4870 is at least on par with a GTX 280, judging from the 4850 benchmarks (on Anand's, numbers coincide with a number of private users' reports), backed also by the following:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/251953-33-crysis-4870-benchmarks-includeshttp:

Let's just assume it is slightly under, in some situations, drivers voodoo coming into play etc.

Point worth noting is the 4870 1G will be selling at a 40% discount to GTX.

(I suspect the Asus 4870 1G is already out in the shops in HK....didn't have time to check today).

I highly doubt that is real. The official slides showed the 4870 as not fighting the GTX 280 or 9800 GX2. If it could have fought those, you would be looking at a much higher price stag than where it currently stands. Don't say that ATI is looking for the best bang for the buck, because ANY company will try to earn as much money possible on a product regardless.
 
They do run a bit on the toasty side of life and exhaust to the inside of your case so you better have your cooling in order before you cross too many fires.
 
Whensday?

Srsly though, this is fairly exciting news. Not so much as early benchmarks, but I'll take what I can get.
 
would the ddr5 being so fast lessen the need for 1G of ram in anyways since it can process data so much faster?
 
would the ddr5 being so fast lessen the need for 1G of ram in anyways since it can process data so much faster?

Not really, running out of onboard RAM is thousands of times more costly than having slower RAM.
 
So in the past few years we went from paper launches with the card's retail presence still weeks if not months away, to hard launches with immediate availability of the hardware, to finally retail presence before it is even announced that the cards are available and the NDAs lifted?

Someone pinch me...
 
...to finally retail presence before it is even announced that the cards are available and the NDAs lifted?

Someone pinch me...
I would pinch you but I also am in severe shock. The launch of P45, HD4800, and GTX200 have exceeded their launch times...the only thing I'm sitting around waiting on is Intel's Q3 price drops.
 
I think that the next step will be that the cards will be available before anyone even knows they're being designed :p

And yes, the coming price drops will be healthy indeed :)
 
I've never really understood the whole issue with video card memory.

Looking back at the 8800gts 320/640, I kept hearing that the 640 flavor would pull ahead in future games, over the piddling superiority it had previously. When I grabbed my 320, I got it for $230, and the best slickdeal on a 640 was for $300. Did this pull-ahead ever actually happen or did everyone who bought a 640 version get as screwed as it initially appeared?

Does memory size really matter that much, or is it just another excuse to get you to waste $80 or so more for inconsequential gains?
 
I've never really understood the whole issue with video card memory.

Looking back at the 8800gts 320/640, I kept hearing that the 640 flavor would pull ahead in future games, over the piddling superiority it had previously. When I grabbed my 320, I got it for $230, and the best slickdeal on a 640 was for $300. Did this pull-ahead ever actually happen or did everyone who bought a 640 version get as screwed as it initially appeared?

Does memory size really matter that much, or is it just another excuse to get you to waste $80 or so more for inconsequential gains?

When you bought that 8800gts most people were gaming at 1280x1024, so memory didn't really matter. Now that the resolution seems to be 1920x1200 (as 24" monitors are cheap) so video memory is more of a concern. 512MB will be limiting at 1920x1200, which is why I'm hoping for 1GB cards to come out soon.
 
I think most people are still on 12x10. Most are probably moving on to 22 inch widescreens.
 
The only resolution where the 640 pulled ahead significantly was at 25x16 or with settings that performed poorly on either card as far as I can tell though.
 
I think most people are still on 12x10. Most are probably moving on to 22 inch widescreens.

I don't know about "most" people, but I'm using a Samsung 22".

I'm keeping a close eye on the current price/performance war to see whether nVidia or ATI gets my video-card cash this time around... ;)
 
1280x960 for me 1920x1080 or 1200 takes up to much memory bandwidth... Im a compition gamer and its better to have a large lcd with low resolution like 1280x960 and low mouse sensitivity.

I use 1920x1200 just for eye candy purposes.
 
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