Down boy! AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2, 4850 X2 hits market

Posted Aug 12, 2008 at 11:54AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: PC Gaming Tags: AMD, ATI, gaming accessories, GPU, PCIe, Video Cards

AMD's next best thing has finally arrived, says the company via press release, and the dual-GPU packing ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and (yes, surprise!) Radeon HD 4850 X2 are probably heating up the market like brushfire in a mid-summer's day.

Advanced Micro Devices says that their 2.4 teraFLOP computing powerhouse (the HD 4870 X2) is the fastest computing card yet, and it's likely to stay that way while NVIDIA hasn't offered up a dual-GPU option.

We've covered ground on the 4870 X2 before, so we'll be taking a gander at AMD's next "next best thing": the Radeon HD 4850 X2. What we hear from the most trusted of hardware enthusiast review sites is that if you do get one, be prepared to pack double the RV770 (at 625 MHz each) and shader unit count (1,600 streaming in total ).

You also get an upgrade in RAM clock rates (up by 114 MHz to 1107 MHz base clock) and capacity (2 x 1024 MB GDDR5).

While still basically running on a 256-bit PCIE 2.0 interface, the 4850 X2 will sport double the bus width all in all, granting a 256-bit interfacing to each chip. If that wasn't enough, AMD's new Gen2 PCI-E bridge interconnects both RV770 chips and is reinforced with a two-way 5 GBps sideport communication link, and that's a whole new idea for the HD 4800 X2s from the old HD 3800 X2s.

But how much are they going for? What the HD 4870 X2 will cost the early purchaser around US$ 550, the cheaper HD 4850 X2 will go for around US$ 400. Tips from certain retail sites say they've got bargains readied for the first few buyers, and some brands have a sweet price going around.

We're waiting for the official plugs from the manufacturing companies, but while we're at it, go check out the numerous reviews rolling out right now. Bottom line: it packs the power, but it doesn't pack the power-per-unit-price that AMD's been leading in recently.

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If we're talking sheer power here, the 4870 X2 wins hands down against the GTX 280. The GTX 208 beats the 4850 X2, however.

Power won't be the only factor though, as cards like the HD 4870 X2 will obviously be criticized for its price.

If you're looking for cost-per-unit-power, the HD 4870 X2 is the priciest beast you'll come across for 2008, unless NVIDIA sorts through the size issues of the GTX 200 chips and serves a GTX 280 X2 as well.

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Down boy! AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2, 4850 X2 hits market

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