AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 Ready by August

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DigiTimes, citing anonymous sources in the graphics card industry, say that the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be ready by August and have an estimated retail price of $499.

Evaluation samples are schedule to be available in mid-July, and AMD will begin shipping reference design boards with 2GB GDDR5 memory at the end of the month, the sources detailed. In mid-August, AMD will also begin shipping the 4870 X2 (RV770XT) GPU to partners wishing to design custom cards, the sources added. HD 4870 X2 graphics cards are expected to be priced around US$499, the sources detailed.
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1gig per core, not exactly over kill, they are going for the top rez king, they need the extra memory
 
Hot damn, so soon? "Makes a list and checks it twice." :D

Thanks for the heads up, Steve.
 
I was going to buy a card here in the next month, but this is going to get me to wait a little longer.
 
but this card will only benefit with games that support crossfire, correct?
 
I remember hearing a rumor a while back that this card is actually going to share the vram so it actually going to be 2 gigs of ram being used. The card will see the vram as one and not 1 gig pure card. Not sure if this is still a rumor or confirmed though.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
I remember hearing a rumor a while back that this card is actually going to share the vram so it actually going to be 2 gigs of ram being used. The card will see the vram as one and not 1 gig pure card. Not sure if this is still a rumor or confirmed though.
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i think Ati is trying to open a suprise can of whoop ass with the 4870X2... so u wont hear exacts until real close to launch
 
wow, shibby, good stuff. Things are looking good for building a new system from the bottom up in Sept. :)
 
sulfur_lad said:
wow, shibby, good stuff. Things are looking good for building a new system from the bottom up in Sept. :)
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get u a nice yorkie... a intel xfire board and a 4870x2 and some fast ram...

me thinks u will be kicking major boooo tayyy :cool: for some time
 
Well, if true looks like I'll be hawking two 4870s in August...

However, I really doubt these will be available in volume in August: a) there is a shortage of GDDR5 with only Samsung producing it b) 2gb GDDR5 is expensive and will reduce AMD's margins.

In any case, 2gb is overkill, but if so, $499 is impossible unless AMD has a death-wish.
 
harmattan said:
Well, if true looks like I'll be hawking two 4870s in August...

However, I really doubt these will be available in volume in August: a) there is a shortage of GDDR5 with only Samsung producing it b) 2gb GDDR5 is expensive and will reduce AMD's margins.

In any case, 2gb is overkill, but if so, $499 is impossible unless AMD has a death-wish.
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i think 4870 cores must be fairly cheap for Ati to build..... but i think the 499 price is to put direct pressure on nvidia and its gtx280
 
Hm, two gigs of GDDR5... they really want that performance crown this year, don't they.
 
Im glad to see amd back in the game. With some maturing of drivers and that much memory is going to be a must card to have.
 
ATi is moving in the right direction. They are doing exactly what I said that nVidia should be doing months ago. It will be nice to get more bang for your buck. You see I have this whole philosophy that if you pay alot you should get alot. ATi knows what's up. nVidia needs to get on board.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
I remember hearing a rumor a while back that this card is actually going to share the vram so it actually going to be 2 gigs of ram being used. The card will see the vram as one and not 1 gig pure card. Not sure if this is still a rumor or confirmed though.
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I doubt this will happen. The card is still essentially 2 4870 GPUs on one board, with a PCI Express switch in between.
 
trudude said:
ATi is moving in the right direction. They are doing exactly what I said that nVidia should be doing months ago. It will be nice to get more bang for your buck. You see I have this whole philosophy that if you pay alot you should get alot. ATi knows what's up. nVidia needs to get on board.
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Well Nvidia problem was being on top as King for a long time, When you're on top you regulate the prices and when someone else comes out with something better and cheaper, it'll all fall down on you for being too greedy.
 
digitalfreak said:
I doubt this will happen. The card is still essentially 2 4870 GPUs on one board, with a PCI Express switch in between.
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Actually, there have been rumors and leaks referring to a redesigned switch that makes it act more like a hyper-transport connection than a Crossfire bridge, if thats true, it will be like a dual core processor sharing the same ram.
 
Narisatu said:
Actually, there have been rumors and leaks referring to a redesigned switch that makes it act more like a hyper-transport connection than a Crossfire bridge, if thats true, it will be like a dual core processor sharing the same ram.
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If thats the case, then sign me up.
 
Well it seems like ATI got things right this time. I wish them well. If the 4870 X2 performance is better than the 280 GTX, I'm so getting one. And I think using GDDR5 and supporting Directx 10.1 was a nice move, unlike NVIDIA.
 
If it is built more on the hyper-transport model than the crossfire link, every game probably will. Maybe some to a much lesser degree, but all games should benefit from it.
 
lucky777 said:
Doubt it.
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The few TWIMTBP games and benchmarks that somehow, as if by magic, have unexplainably shit ATI performance and CF scaling definitely won't.

Everything else? Considering how well the 4800s delivered the hype, I think they just might do it.
 
tvdang7 said:
2 gigs? dang overkill.
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No it isn't. When using any AFR type rendering methods between two GPUs all the data is copied between two frame buffers. So if ATI wanted a true 1024MB frame buffer that was actually usable they had to double the amount of RAM so that both GPUs could have access to a full 1024MB of RAM.
 
John Vuong said:
Well it seems like ATI got things right this time. I wish them well. If the 4870 X2 performance is better than the 280 GTX, I'm so getting one. And I think using GDDR5 and supporting Directx 10.1 was a nice move, unlike NVIDIA.
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If the 4870 X2 isn't faster than the Geforce GTX 280 I'll be VERY shocked. The fact is that the 4870 is fairly close to the performance of the Geforce GTX 280 as it is. Combine the power of two RV700 chips (which is what RV770 really is) and you'll have a monster on your hands. It will be a power hungry beast though if what we've seen from the 4870 is any indication.
 
Dan_D said:
No it isn't. When using any AFR type rendering methods between two GPUs all the data is copied between two frame buffers. So if ATI wanted a true 1024MB frame buffer that was actually usable they had to double the amount of RAM so that both GPUs could have access to a full 1024MB of RAM.
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so what is all this talk of the 4870x2 being improved to share the ram
or is the improvement based on how the 2 gpu's talk to each other
 
POPEGOLD said:
so what is all this talk of the 4870x2 being improved to share the ram
or is the improvement based on how the 2 gpu's talk to each other
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The improvement's I heard about (nothing you couldn't read yourself on the internet) were in how the 2 GPUs communicate with each other. The overhead is reduced by a considerable amount as is latency. That's at least what I've come to understand. I too heard the rumors about shared memory but I don't pretend to know what those changes might be. I figured initially it might be that they'd find a way for them to share memory but that doesn't change how AFR works. So if the card uses anything like AFR for rendering then most of the time the two GPUs would both need the same amount of memory for most of their work. The only improvement you'd see by sharing the RAM between the two would come from situations where the multi-GPU scaling was completely worthless. In those situations if you could disable the second GPU or the second GPU would automatically get disabled or do very little then the entire frame buffer could be made available to the primary GPU.

Take this with a grain of salt as I don't have any information on this that none of you can't find yourself on the web.
 
Dan_D said:
The improvement's I heard about (nothing you couldn't read yourself on the internet) were in how the 2 GPUs communicate with each other. The overhead is reduced by a considerable amount as is latency. That's at least what I've come to understand. I too heard the rumors about shared memory but I don't pretend to know what those changes might be. I figured initially it might be that they'd find a way for them to share memory but that doesn't change how AFR works. So if the card uses anything like AFR for rendering then most of the time the two GPUs would both need the same amount of memory for most of their work. The only improvement you'd see by sharing the RAM between the two would come from situations where the multi-GPU scaling was completely worthless. In those situations if you could disable the second GPU or the second GPU would automatically get disabled or do very little then the entire frame buffer could be made available to the primary GPU.

Take this with a grain of salt as I don't have any information on this that none of you can't find yourself on the web.
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I am sure u are on point... we will see when a 4870x2 is compared to (2) 4870's in X-fire
 
POPEGOLD said:
I am sure u are on point... we will see when a 4870x2 is compared to (2) 4870's in X-fire
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Well hopefully ATI doesn't pull an NVIDIA 9800GX2 on the part. Meaning that hopefully ATI doesn't dumb down the specifications of the GPUs onboard the 4870X2 and put them between the 4850 and the regular 4870. NVIDIA did that with the 9800GX2 which kept the card from being all that it should have been.
 
The HD 4870 x2 looks to be an awesome card. Nvidia had better take notice.
 
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