AMD doubles up, announces ATI HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2

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AMD on Tuesday announced dual-GPU versions of the HD Radeon 4850 and 4870, pushing graphics performance – and prices – into the upper high end of the market.



Sure, times might be tough at AMD, but that's not stopping the crew at ATI from gunning for NVIDIA's newest gear -the new HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2. Aimed at the "super high-end" of the market, the $399 4850 X2 and $599 4870 X2 feature two GPU chips on a 625 or 750MHz bus, respectively, with up to 2GB of 900MHz GDDR5 RAM. ATI says that there's a 20 percent overhead from pairing up the processors, so the X2s should offer 180 percent of the single GPU cards -- certainly enough to outgun a single NVIDIA GTX 280, and reportedly enough to match a dual-280 setup depending on the game. We'll see for sure when the inevitable flood of benchmarks hits when these bad boys arrive next month -- any gamers out there going to take the plunge?

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is currently shipping for $399, while the 4870 X2 is available for a whopping $599, more than the price of some low-end PCs.

That would be good news, as an early performance preview of the HD 4870 suggested that AMD had some work to do: "When ATI finally ships the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the scaling over a single Radeon HD 4870 needs to range from "good" (50% or more) at mid-level resolutions to "fantastic" (80% or more) at high resolutions with AA/AF enabled," Jason Cross wrote. "It looks like it's there on some applications, and not on others. If dual-GPU solutions are going to be the norm for ATI's high-end graphics from here on out, they really need to nail it."

AMD has traditionally tried to exploit other elements besides raw clock speed in the design of its microprocessors and graphics cards, dating back to the design of the original Athlon. In June, AMD showcased "Cinema 2.0", highlighted by a "video" of a realistic street scene, that, when paused by an AMD executive, revealed itself as a virtual scene that could be traversed using the "camera". That video was rendered using two HD 4870 cards, rather than the single X2 card that the company launched.

"We're going to create the next generation of image solutions, focused on processing power, rather than just having a faster widget," said Nigel Dessau, the company's newly appointed chief marketing officer, in an interview Monday.

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Looks like all the Cinema 2.0 fuss that AMD has been blustering about with its new RV770-based GPUs is fully warranted. The benchmarks are in and AMD's new $549 ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 -- what AMD calls the "world's fastest graphics card" -- is an out and out screamer, besting the best cooked up over at NVIDIA thanks to that RV770 GPU pair nuzzled up next to 2GB of GDDR5 memory. As noted by PC Perspective, the new champ, "is able to run away from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 1GB card handily. Our various game tests proved this - Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and GRID showed big gains for AMD's new card at resolutions 2,048 x 1,536 and 2,560 x 1,600," though performance gains are less dramatic as resolutions drop to 1,600 x 1,200. Not that any self-respecting gamer would push so few pixels. CrossFireX performance was disappointing, however, as the systems didn't scale well when going from 2 to 4 GPUs. In fact, Crysis seemed to barely notice the additional CrossFireX horsepower, something that should be corrected with future driver releases. Make no mistake though, as power-hungry, expensive, and hot-running as the new HD 4870 X2 may be, it's a big day for AMD as it retakes the graphics crown from NVIDIA, as short-lived as this victory may be.


source : engadge

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On the paper, multi-chip solutions *should* scale well, but in reality, this is a complex software problem and it is not uncommon to see titles that don't scale very well, especially if these games are not used as benchmarks. And the more GPUs you add, the more problematic it becomes. We hope that ATI has pulled it off, but we would be cautious until we real world numbers. And, by the way, this is true for multi-GPU in general, including NVIDIA's SLI.

Recently unveiled in photos, graphics card with two GPU Radeon HD 4850 X2 AMD should make its appearance in official trade at the end of next week. Pending the arrival of the first copies, some have already had occasion to have an idea of the performance of the card. In an article removed from the site, presumably at the request of AMD, the site VR-Zone has revealed earlier this week that the Radeon HD 4850 X2 in 3DMark Vantage achieved a score of 12,741 points in "performance" when it was associated with i7 Core processor running at 3.3 GHz and mounted on a platform X58. Under the same conditions, the card would get tested an average score of 26.33 frames per second (fps) in Crysis Warhead in 1600 x 1200 pixels.

Incidentally, the characteristics of the card are confirmed: it therefore meets two RV770 GPU, engraved in 55 nm and posting an operating frequency of 625 MHz. The 2 GB of onboard memory on the card for their work to 993 MHz. According to some indiscretions committed by some European retailers and relayed by Fudzilla, the card should be joining a price between 370 and 400 euros on the old continent. To the extent that it is roughly the rate which is negotiating a Radeon HD 4870 X2 (from approximately 405 euros), it should quickly fall to stabilize at around 300 or 350 euros. Finally note that the site donanimhaber.com that unveils the final design of the model developed by Sapphire, pictured below.

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can we play Warhead in High or Very High setting with this card?