AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB Preview - R700 a bit early

Today's preview of the HD 4870 X2 card from AMD proves that this time AMD was planning ahead. Our review of the RV770-based Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 cardsshowed the new GPU architecture to be very potent indeed and NVIDIA is very scared of what the dual-GPU version, known as R700 previously, would do to its line of cards. Today we were allowed to post a short "preview" of the card's performance and I have to say you will likely be impressed.

In our email about this preview AMD asked for us to "keep this high level and not go deep on the architecture" since they were "leaving something for the full NDA" at a later date. Hmmm....okay how's this:

• Two GPUs
• One board
• Radeon HD 4870 cores
• PCIe v1.1 bridge chip
• GDDR5 memory
• HD 4870 clock speeds
• 512MB buffer to each GPU for 1GB total
• 1x8-pin PCIe and 1x6-pin PCIe power connectors
• Remember the HD 3870 X2 design? Yeah, pretty much like that.

The card continues in the tradition of long PCBs, matching the size of the HD 3870 X2 as well as the 9800 GX2 and 9800 GTX designs. The cooler for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is of course a two slot design.

Though there are some bugs on the GPU-Z screen shot, you can see that the core clock is running at 750 MHz while the GDDR5 memory is running at 900 MHz- the same speeds the single GPU HD 4870 512MB card runs at. AMD is obviously serious about getting as much performance out of their GPUs as possible and would we would likely see an HD 4850 X2 card at some point too - much like we saw the HD 3850 X2 1GB card from ASUS this year.

Let's see some performance numbers from this new card:

Yes, I know we only got to test three games and 3DMark Vantage for our quick preview of the R700 technology, but I simply get away without saying that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB was staggeringly fast. At our top testing resolutions the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB card was just outclassed by the new AMD card. Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 and Crysis all saw significant playability increases with the R700 compared to the GTX 280 at 2560x1600 and in a couple of cases at 2048 or 1900 resolutions as well.

Pricing and Availability

Since this is a preview of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB card, AMD didn't want us to talk about pricing, availability or anything relating to their business strategy for the card. However, in some slides that they had already released to us during the RV770 launch we learned that the R700 should be coming in mid-Q3 and will have a ">$500" price point. That puts the card to be on shelves by the end of August with a price over $500 - considering the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB cards just dropped to $499 literally weeks after their release, NVIDIA is aware of the performance of the card as well.

Initial Thoughts

While it is hard to get a complete outlook of AMD's new Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB card with three games and some 3DMark Vantage numbers, our initial outlook for it is very, very good. If those idle power numbers can be improved upon with the updated PowerPlay BIOS as AMD claims, it will be very difficult to find weaknesses in AMD's new flagship product. The only exception might be the scalability concerns we mentioned above - that's up to AMD's software team to keep up with the PC titles as they arrive. Of course final pricing and availability are the real keys to a successful launch but as it stands now, if the Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB were selling for ~$500 today it would have our full recommendation. Full story at PCPer.....

Albatron unveils GeForce 8-series graphics cards for PCI slots

Albatron Technology has unveiled three new Nvidia GeForce 8-series graphics cards that use the practically outdated PCI slot. While the appeal of the PCI8600GT-256X, the PCI8500GT-256X and the PCI8400GS-256 may not be obvious for anyone who has a PCI Express or even AGP slot on their motherboard, there are still quite a few systems (particularly small form factor or HTPC ones) where expansion options are limited, creating an niche market for these cards.

The graphics cards are all low profile designs allowing them to fit in smaller cases such as HTPC design that try to match the form factor of tradition consumer electronics devices.

Of the three versions, the PCI8600GT and PCI8500GT models adopt faster DDR3 memory and also feature HDMI connectors for higher quality output, highlighted the Albatron.

Albatron PCI port-based GeForce 8-series graphics card
Photo: Company

Summer 2008 Graphics Performance Roundup

Well, after countless community requests and some arm twisting, but mostly because it started raining and we decided to stop playing Zombie Fluxx, come inside, and crack on with the benchmarks. Yes, it’s finally here (deep breath), the bit-tech Summer 2008 Graphics Card Performance Group Test! However, we’re confident that it’s been more than worth the wait, as we’ve performed one of the most in-depth and extensive hardware group tests to ever grace bit-tech in order to finally answer the pressing questions of modern graphics card performance: which card now sits atop the performance pile? Which holds the mid range performance crown? And most importantly, which should you spend your hard earned cash on?Needless to say that the last two months have been a hugely frantic time within the graphics industry, with both AMD and Nvidia launching impressive new graphics architectures and winding up the PR machines to spin out their latest GPUs.We’ve already looked at Nvidia’s GT200 architecture in some serious detail, and coverage of AMD/ATI’s R770 is on the way soon (we promise), but for this article the focus is on the boards these architectures have spawned and their performance where you, the consumer, will see the most difference – modern, graphically intensive games.For this purpose, we’ve gathered together the usual suspects of recent graphics cards, as well as the four new arrivals – Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280 and 260 and ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850, and tested them in some of the most popular and graphically demanding games currently available, at varied high quality settings and resolutions. However, before we plough into the bevvy of benchmark scores (over 450 of them in fact), let’s look into current UK graphics card pricing, and see how much these slabs of silicon will cost.

You thought the GeForce 9800 GTX was fast? You ain’t seen nothing yet

Review Nvidia has spent the past year waiting for AMD to give it a fight in the graphics sector. The G92 chip used in GeForce 8800 GT was little more than a die-shrink of the G80 that debuted in the original GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX.The GeForce 9800 GTX used the same G92 chip and supported DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0 - just like the GeForce 8000 series - so it was hard to see why Nvidia felt the need to move from 8000 to 9000 numbering. More to the point, Nvidia decided to ignore Shader Model 4.1 and DirectX 10.1, which is part of Windows Vista SP1, so it really milked the G80/G92 architecture for all it was worth.

Well, the time has come for a change: the launch of the new GT200 chip, which is used in this Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP! Edition as well as cheaper GeForce GTX 260 models. The GT200 is an awesome piece of silicon that packs in 240 Stream Processors - Nvidia's unified shaders - compared to the 128 in the G92 .That change has raised the transistor count from 754m to 1.4bn, and as Nvidia has stuck with a 65nm fabrication process, the size of the GT200 has increased to an enormous 24mm² which is four times the size of a 65nm Intel Core 2 die.Internally, the GT200 is divided up into ten clusters of 24 shaders and eight clusters of four ROPs with the core running at 602MHz, the Stream Processors at 1296MHz and the 1GB of GDDR 3 memory at a true speed of 1107MHz to give an effective speed of 2214MHz. More at Register....

A New GeForce GTX 200 -Graphics Beyond Gaming

Think what will happen if the imagination becomes a reality, NVIDIA, the leader in visual computing technologies has introduces a new kin of GeForce GTX 200 graphics processors which includes the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 GPUs .GPU is the one of the most powerful processors in the PC. Many normal tasks will be benefit from the graphics plus encoding and playing high definition videos, editing photos, reaching dynamic directions off the internet or running a new operating system. By identify the value of GPU transcends gaming, a number of applications are written that use the GPU for straight, non graphical computational tasks. Read more at ITvoir....

Zotac GeForce GTX 260 'Amp' Edition

Today we have the GTX 280's smaller sibling with us, the GTX 260 from Zotac. This card comes from their 'Amp Edition' line up, which are factory overclocked. The XFX GTX 280 that we reviewed earlier, performed well, particularly in games like Crysis with high AA. On the flip side it costs a bomb, so wasn't a very feasible solution for your HD gaming needs. Since the GTX 260 and the GTX 280 have the same GT200 core, I expect it to perform similar to the GTX 280, while costing a lot less. There's only one way to find out, so let's start by checking out the specs of the card. Read more.....