R680 (HD 3870 X2) will launch January 28th 2008.

Posted By: Steve McBarnes - 03:12:25 Fri, December 14, 2007

There are many sites that are reporting on the R680, RV620 and RV635 today. What I understand is this sentence from DailyTech's story:

"Representatives from AMD would not confirm that the R680 is essentially two RV670 GPU cores on the same board, though the company did confirm that each core has the same specifications of an RV670 processor."

I have underlined the important parts of that sentence. So the R680 is not essentially two RV670 cores yet each core is a RV670. That sounds like there is more than one RV670 core on there, and there are not two of them. That makes me think there are more than two RV670 cores on the R680. What do you guys think about this sentence?

Guru3D's article tells us that the RV620 and RV635 are "nearly identical" to their RV610 and RV630 brothers. The XT Review article (try to read around the stoopid ads) actually give us release dates for these new parts. January 28th for the R680 and January 23rd for the RV620 and RV635.

26 Comments

Friday, December 14, 2007 3:44:50 PM

anonymousD
n00b

well theyre coming out with 3core cpus so 3 core'd graphic cards wouldnt surprise me much at this point...power envelope will be very interesting, to say the least...

Friday, December 14, 2007 4:40:59 PM

smartass
guest

this gpu is so powerful, it ripped a hole in space-time and released itself a year ago!

:)

Friday, December 14, 2007 5:13:41 PM

Steve
The Progenitor

@smartass Looking at your IP address I see that you have never posted a comment on the site before. So my clever plan to get you to post a comment by making that obvious mistake worked!!

Friday, December 14, 2007 6:09:40 PM

Sunny
guest

Man so much good stuff I don't know what to choose!!! I wanted two of these cards when they come out but now there is 3-Way SLI AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!! My brain is now distorted!!! X(

Friday, December 14, 2007 6:26:26 PM

anonymousD
n00b

3 way sli is too heavy on the psu requirements, id stick with the next gen WHEN it comes out..now if u want to brag thats another thang :D

Friday, December 14, 2007 6:58:28 PM

Mike
GPUReview Founder

I'm more interested to see what nVidia responds with...you know they've got something up their sleeve and they'll pounce as soon as ATi releases this thing. A dual G92 board should have no trouble smacking R680 around, so I'm guessing that's what they'll go with.

Friday, December 14, 2007 9:14:08 PM

anonymous
guest

Man...imagine 3 GPUs on one card, then hooking that up in Cross-fire... 6 GPUs. Anyway, the picture right there says dual-gpu single board design... so maybe they'll have a 2 gpu version and a 3? But I think 3 gpus on one board is a stretch. Where would all the memory go? Unless they're just 3x256megs

Saturday, December 15, 2007 3:23:19 AM

Sunny
guest

Hmmmm? I wonder what the R680 is going to be priced at? A 3-way Sli will be pretty pricey.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 3:51:46 AM

anonymous
guest

well, I remember that the cores of the radeon hd's are very like cpu's, with the caches & how it's done, etc. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to pull off a dual gpu on a single die but I guess we'll find out when someone removes that heatsink/fan off of it & takes pics

Saturday, December 15, 2007 9:26:51 AM

Radiator
Senior Member

This card is so damn big... it wont fit in most cases , I suppose . But then again , I could be mistaken.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 1:50:28 PM

If their Quad-CF drivers will not be better than nVidia's at the time of the 7950GX2, then this will fail.

@Mike: nVidia doesn't have to launch a Dual-G92 card, if they have the 9-series coming up. AMD doesn't have the money to make a real X3K series card.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 3:05:06 PM

anonymous
guest

All that power and no good games to play.........sigh..........

Saturday, December 15, 2007 5:31:01 PM

anonymousD
n00b

well they did dual gpu on a die before and teh cards were very tall...long too...id still prefer that to a dual pcb solution..its like amd with native dual/quad core vs intel with slapped togetehr stuff...id put my mula into intel tough cuz its cheaper,faster :D

Saturday, December 15, 2007 10:55:12 PM

Anony
guest

This will be ATi's flagship card for a long while. ATi doesn't plan on releasing a new GPU architecture in 2008. Now, the question is - is this the end of ATi?

Sunday, December 16, 2007 12:00:15 AM

wyz135
Senior Member

I thought it should be the R700 core instead of the R680??

Sunday, December 16, 2007 6:13:39 AM

Dincon
guest

You know what ATI needs,

such a chip the Nvidia is going to use for "free AA", if they have that there cards would rule!!

Sunday, December 16, 2007 12:11:12 PM

@Anony: You hit the nail on the head.

Sunday, December 16, 2007 3:34:20 PM

z
guest

@ anonymous
What do u mean no good games to play? Crysis, Bioshock, Cod4:MW, and the list goes on
And about this card, I think this idea wont work unless its a two-chip-on-die kinda thing. The two independent chip thing has failed numerous times before.

Sunday, December 16, 2007 4:03:24 PM

anonymousD
n00b

probably its not ready..end of ati? if they can strike out successfull midrange units..who cares? thats where most of the cash lies, i hear

Sunday, December 16, 2007 8:15:35 PM

anonymous
guest

Just how long is this card? If it ends up being longer than the 8800 Ultra this card will essentially be screwed from the start due to size constraints of peoples cases.

Monday, December 17, 2007 3:48:11 AM

Dincon
guest

End of ATI= Monopoly for Nvidia= Nvidia raises prices= sad gamerz.

Monday, December 17, 2007 4:56:03 AM

anonymousG
guest

Maybe AMD is trying to pull the same stunt as in the CPU business. Intel placed two single core CPU's on the same die, AMD made a new design and claimed it had a 'true' dual-core, and now 'true' quad-core design. So this is basically just PR blabber. Considerring the multi-processing nature of GPUs however, I may be way off though :-)

Monday, December 17, 2007 4:57:52 PM

anonymous
guest

Z all those games pretty much suck you play them once....HoHumm and your done. No replay value at all. It's all been done before. I have been playing video games for over 35 years been there done that. It is easy to impress you youngins buy making fancy graphics and stuff.....no ingmae content just shoot and kill.

Monday, December 17, 2007 5:51:57 PM

anonymousD
n00b

true, a lot of games today do focus largely on the eye candy, without wich it wouldnt sell..much :)

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 8:12:15 AM

Dincon
guest

your point is??

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:10:38 AM

Sunny
guest

@Anonymous so you never replay games period? What about on different difficulty settings? Do you use multiplayer? Would you rather buy the same game with less graphics?

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