The first consumer marketed card to feature 2GB of RAM, let alone 2GB of GDDR5.

Wow, can't wait to see what Nvidia puts out next.

What a beauty...

It's so big, it'd be such a tight squeeze in my case. It'd get so hot in there and I...

Should probably stop typing now. Even though the previews we're seeing now are on prerelease drivers, the R700 card looks nothing short of impressive, a few benchmarks on AAT show almost 100% performance scaling per core (and often seems to soundly trounce the GTX280), awesome stuff from the red team.

HOLY SHIZA!! 230GB/Sec!! Jesus H Christ! Well, if this card is'nt a flop liek the 3870 x2, this might give me a reason to upgrade.

Well fellas, I'm actually an Nvidia Fanboy, and been using Nvidia since the 6xxx series. but sadly nvidia is throwing in the white towl for this year, since they also want to go DDR5 since DDR5 uses up less than DDR3's. the potientional of DDR5 is quite astonishing. looks like Nvidia wont impress us till early 2010. Checked it out at forums on slizone.com not sure where the link is, And might actually just be a rumor. But I believe Nvidia wont do much till late 09 earliest, Since they have to re design their entire line of VGA cards. the 09's are actually still based of the GTX200s with DDR3's. and Just upgrading to DDR5 on those might cause problems or something, so they want to redo and make sure its stable. but then again! might be false. some guy claming to work for one of the 3rd parties said so. I guess I'm going back to ATi till then. and also BTW ATI 4870x2 being 2gb is still un=official i believe, but the 4850 has been official since july 14th , Ill post link once i find these info.

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/NewsInfo.asp?id=248


for the 2GB 4850 with PC S Cooling(Not stock)

and for the nvidia throwing in the white towl im still looking :(

MSI / GIG / Asus Is also coming out with 1gb 4850's

@ Eeek, nvidia is doing pretty good yet, i was impressed by the 280 gtx, but anyway the 2gb of ram is such a waste, and 1gb proubly is a waste two for gddr3, but 1gb for gddr5 will proubly be better

Ok, I'm sorry the 4870x2 is 2GB, and official price is going $549, mean while Just found out they might make another x2 which is 4850x2 and unlike the new coming 2gb 4850 DDR3, the 4850x2 will be 1gb of DDR5? price isnt official yet but looks some where around $399.00. Google 4870x2 Official price and the link comes out. I am hoping the 4870's will drop to $250. It's already $254 on Newegg (Asus) after MR.

If this card cost LESS than the GTX 280, I would still not buy it, for one VERY important reason - it absolutely FAILS in Crysis, and Crysis is not only the only game that no card can run well, but is a prime example of how Scalar is much more efficiant than Super Scalar, and thus the future of gaming performance is with nVidia.

Its ok but yea im waiting for the price to drop to, but I want to see a 4870 1GB review

Yeah... this card wont cost less than GTX280 4870x2 official price is 549.00 USD

and for you Nvidia Fanboys, Nvidia isnt putting up much of a fight, matter of fact. They are teaming up with ATI this year. I expect great things from A
MD's next CPU processors.

2GB is alot, over kill but for future use its not a bad idea. not only that. Alot of people use dual monitors now and days. and i believe smalliest monitor my friends use is 22" i havnt seen 19" in 3 years or so.
So that extra GB would help out a bit.

@ Eeek, lets not forget Nvidia still has the single most powerful die in the world. If they can get it a little smaller, a GX280 would beat the snot out of the HD4870X2, they just need to shrink it. a 55nm GT200 will give the HD4870X2 a good run for its money, and a (300W :S) GX280 would crush the HD4870X2. On the other hand, a 40nm RV770 (code named RV870? est 960 SPs?) will take down the 55nm GTX280 just like the current RV770 takes down the GTX280. a dual GT200 solution against a dual RV870 solution will be quite a fight... Good day for consumers. @Jess; thanks for the example of Nvidiotism demonstraighted by Nvidia fanboys. and in terms of costs to ATI, the HD4870X2 is cheaper than the GTX280, and as such I suspect it will begin to undercut it soon.

First of all , this card has 1 GB ( 2x1GB , but 1 GB is in use ) . They didn't make it so two GPUs share the memory .
@MrWizard6600 - even a 55nm GTX280 wont come that close to the HD 4870 X2 . A dual GT200 solution... that would eat 400W at the very least .
But 350W on the HD 4870 X2 ? Are you sure ?
@Jess - you don't know how the superscalar architecture works , don't you ? Dependant on the situation it has 160-800 ( 320-1600 on the X2 ) shader processors (at 2/3 the clock speed of the GTX280's shaders) , while nVidia's GTX280 has 240 in any situation .
As for Crysis... its not optimized very well... and since they were working with nVidia in the first place , it will work better on nVidia's cards... especially when crossfire is involved . On a single card it wont matter that much , but when you try to get any scaling on CF in Crysis , you're screwed . Then again the HD 4870 X2 has an internal PCI-e bridge , so it shouldn't count as a CF card .

From the preliminary reviews the GTX 280 and 4870X2 traded blows. Neither really won totally or completely. With driver updates on both cards in the future it is possible one will win out. So by that logic a 55nm GT200 with higher clocks should *theoretically* beat the 4870X2 by a slim margin. That is of course discounting CF AA for the time being as it is difficult to tell what the *real gameplay* equivalent image quality is between the two cards. For example in some tests I see that 12x CF AA looks to be about 8xMSAA, in others we see that 12x CF AA is image equivalent to transparency AA.

@MrWizard6600: Thank you for a prime example of unjustified condescension from someone so inferior that they resort to insults because they are not capable of understanding the matter at hand. I am not one of those nVidia fanboys who rave on senselessly about nVidia's dominance, which you try to needlessly to appease yourself by thrashing. The R700 FAILS because it stinks in Crysis. Use the brain cells you do have and with the force of the red side behind you, I'm sure you can fathom the unspeakable of logic of Crysis = Important; AMD = stinks at Crysis; AMD = Fails.
@Radiator: Everything that I know about Scalar and Superscalar, I have learned from Micheal. Any doubts you have of my knowledge or accuracy as to my claims, you can take up with him. And yes, you explained it well enough. The Superscalar architecture is incredibly inefficient, compared to the Scalar achitecture. That, is why it fails in Crysis, not because of ATI-fan-boy related made up stories about it being "the games's own fault". When you need 1600 to take down 240, you know you've done something wrong, and don't worry - they know.

@Jess: bye.

thanks Mike, I was just about to get on yesterday and tell him to stop being an a$$hole, anyway this card does have amazing AA

@Track - is Crysis the only game out there ? The fact that they left the options that were never meant for the past or current hardware now makes people think nothing can run Crysis at very high... even though very high should not even be available as of now .
I swear... that Jess/Track fella doesn't have much of a brain .

ok i gotta give it to ati but 460 gigs of mem bandwith is 4 times as high as the 4870 so something is wrong cus lats time i saw it it had 230 gigs of bandwith

I see it, but i just can't belive it.
460.8 GB/sec Memory Bandwidth?!

It most definitely is 230 GB/s .

Wow, failure troll is failure Jess.

Anyway, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that this is currently the top card out there.

Unfortunately for it, ATI cards can't handle certain functions in a lot of applications, (Milkdrop is MY primary concern) so I'm staying away. I believe that if they could get their shit straightened out they could take NV this time around.

Must have been a bug,or mistake, saw it as 460.8 last time, and multi-gpu was not pressed...
Anyway, this GPU is still going to kick the gtx 280 butt. But they should lower the price if they want to win this battle, the gtx 280 price is now less than 450$.

I need help guys, I'm thinking of puchasing this but is it worth it? I have a 22" monitor max display is 1680xetc .. so would I notice a huge difference between this vs 4870 ?I'm hearing how great it is @ res higher than 19xx but Im not sure if my monitor can go over 19xxx so I think i'm stuck at 1680xetc. I'm not planning on xfire or anything till later on down the road. way later.

and @ everyone, I do consider my self a fan boy I guess... O.o??!? But a fanboy of both ! I love Nvidia's edge cutting graphics and I also love ATI's . Although In the past few years ATI hasn't been all that impressive. went back and forth from nvidia to ati. I just go for what seems great on the market at the time.

and AS for crysis. Crysis was made Basically for Nvidia cards. Nvidia helped them on alot of things for it. There will be no card that dominates another card on Every game. ATI has its weak points and so does Nvidia on certain games. But What I look at is future potiental. Something I can buy and be satisfied with without wanting to upgrade for atleast over an year.

So I looked into the 4870x2. But I'm not sure if it'll make a huge difference vs a 4870 on my Monitor.

I got sweet deals on both cant figure which I want to buy.

$540 Shipped = 4870x2
$245 Shipped = 4870

I'm from CA so neweggs price is expensive to me since tax is there.

And yes Currently 4870x2 is the top card . Regardless of how much I think GTX280 is amazing. But Nvision 08 is around the corner and nvidia is announcing a surprise for ATI.

ATi had learnt his lesson from the Radeon HD2k series and I believe there will be a great improvement on AA and architecture efficiency.

@FirsToStrike
You are not dreaming. I had the card as 512bit and not 256bit, which is correct.

The max power draw is wrong its 270W not 350W

@StockHolder
Do you have a link to prove this?

Will Santa get me on? :O noo.... how lucky can some1 be? :( ah well... 100 fps doesnt matter :PPP I still have a Nokia 447Za monitor so... its ok

Hi, im wondering what this card would be like in a PCI-E 1.1/X16 slot, as i read that this card uses far more bandwidth than any other card available on the market today.

if it does work how much is effected(decrease in performance, bottleneck etc.)

PCIe connector: 75 watts max
6-pin connector: 75 watts max
8-pin connector: 150 watts max

350 > 300 (75 75 150)

The board draw cannot draw 350 watts unless they violate the specs.

@rammunition , it shouldn't limit the card .
@BonsaiScott , a PCIe 2.0 one gives 150W as far as I know . It CAN draw a lot of power , but logically it shouldn't .
Well , the catalyst 8.9 drivers give a great boost in performance ( yes , I'm talking about the beta ones ) so anyone who owns a HD 4870 X2 or a HD 4870/4850 should acquire those drivers ASAP .

looking forward to getting this card one day, currently have its little brother the 4870. I might just wait for ATI's next best card, possibly ATI HD 5000 series?.

I would love one of these cards, but my 3870's (x2 in CF) aren't performing bad enough yet that the woman will allow me to get one. Ah well, guess I'll wait to see what larrabee has to offer.

i registred in this web just to say wooooow it's so crazy 230.4 GB/sec now i have a strong feeling to burn my pc

ok this card is crazy does it need a special motherboard or processur ?

No , it doesn't .
However it does need a good PSU ( a good Fortron 600W would probably work but I'd get a better one ) .