ATI HD 4000 series

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

It's about time. The good guys over at TweakTown managed to get early specs of the upcoming 55nm HD 4000 series by AMD (albeit from another source). The higher end cards (4870, 4870X2) will be sporting GDDR5 and significantly higher core clock speeds from the previous generation.

Release date:

HD 4850: OUT!

HD 4870: July 8

UNLEASH ONE TERA!

HD 3870: 496 GFLOPS

HD 3870X2: 1056 GFLOPS

HD 4870: 1008 GFLOPS

HD 4850 ~$200

HD 4870 ~$300

SOURCE - Tom's Hardware

Edited June 19, 2008 by Anaron

[HoochieMamma]

Daaaaammmmnnnnn, not bad at all. Get them out this year and they are back in business.

[+shift. MVC]

Any estimated release date?

[jamend]

It's nice to see someone trying to increase performance again. The Geforce 9800 and Radeon 38700 series are a bit disappointing. Keep in mind though that on paper, current ATI cards should be faster than nVidia cards.

[HyBry]

Any estimated release date?

According to Fudzilla they are already in production and are planned for June release.. Computex I believe.. ;)

[HyBry]

Some more interesting links regarding 4000 series

link1

link2

[Digitalx]

4850 looks like it will be a sweet card :)

[George P Global Moderator]

You're right, the 4850 is a little less but it's got room to OC if you want to. You could probably get close to or match the 4870 and save $50 or so.

Another good thing is the lower power usage numbers.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I will be very surprised if ATI manages to release the HD 4870X2, HD 4870 and HD 4850. Judging by the current specs, it should easily outperform NVIDIA's high end cards. I'm already eyeing the HD 4850 which looks amazing especially for a card which is supposed to be a "Pro" variant. I wonder if this will force NVIDIA to release the GT200 earlier than expected.

[HyBry]

I will be very surprised if ATI manages to release the HD 4870X2, HD 4870 and HD 4850. Judging by the current specs, it should easily outperform NVIDIA's high end cards. I'm already eyeing the HD 4850 which looks amazing especially for a card which is supposed to be a "Pro" variant. I wonder if this will force NVIDIA to release the GT200 earlier than expected.

I believe I read somewhere that Nvidia is gearing up for June/July release of next gen.. ;) and 9800GX2 is supposed to have only 3 month life cycle.. :D

[CY:G]

Aww, im looking for a 3870, now i dont know if i should wait. Is it realistic to say that the news ones will be out on June, thats way too fast, the 3870x2 was released on late January for Christ's sake!!!

[Prince Charming]

O naice, interestings. Time to upgrade to a motherboard with Crossfire support.

[Draconian Guppy]

Judging by the current specs, it should easily outperform NVIDIA's high end cards.

Well to be honest, I got all hyped about their previous release on the 2900 XT and well, we all know how that turned out, hopefully i'm wrong.

[Travesty]

If this is released within the next few months and ether outperforms what Nvidia has now or can at least can keep up with what Nvidia is going to release then this could really help get ATI out of the hole there in. :)

[NextGen_Gamer]

Aww, im looking for a 3870, now i dont know if i should wait. Is it realistic to say that the news ones will be out on June, thats way too fast, the 3870x2 was released on late January for Christ's sake!!!

Well, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is using the same RV670 cores found in the Radeon HD 3870 and Radeon HD 3850, which were released back in November 2007. And really, the RV670 core wasn't even new: ATI just took the R600 core, downgraded the memory interface to 256-bit, added their UVD processor, and built it on a 55-nm process. So, the last time ATI released a new architecture was back in May 2007 with the Radeon HD 2900 XT card. So a June 2008 release, roughly one year later, would make perfect sense for the fast-paced world of graphics cards. Even more encouraging is that RV770 isn't really a new architecture. If the leaked specs are correct, ATI just pumped up the TMUs and Stream Processors, increased the clockspeeds, and added GDDR5 support.

Well to be honest, I got all hyped about their previous release on the 2900 XT and well, we all know how that turned out, hopefully i'm wrong.

I know exactly what you mean. I remember reading the rumors and being so exicted - 320 Stream Processors, a crazy 512-bit memory interface, and a core clockspeed of 900MHz+ - NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX looked like dead-meat. But the reality of R600 turned out to be severly dissapointing. I can only hope that RV770 won't be a repeat of that fiasco.

[Minimoose]

The 4870x2 will mash any other card if it doesn't somehow flunk?

4850 is looking very nice for its price as well.

[Typhon]

I am so happy I did not spend $400 on a 3870X2, now I can spend that money on a 4850 if it runs good.

[+shift. MVC]

Well ATI cards always seemed to have better specs than nVidia cards, but the latter seems to perform better than what the specs indicate.

[Windows7even]

you guys forget that ati has always had the hardware there but lack in the area of descent drivers

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Aww, im looking for a 3870, now i dont know if i should wait. Is it realistic to say that the news ones will be out on June, thats way too fast, the 3870x2 was released on late January for Christ's sake!!!

You should wait. The HD 3870X2 was just two HD 3870 GPUs on one die. The HD 4000 series will introduce a faster GPU architecture.

I know exactly what you mean. I remember reading the rumors and being so exicted - 320 Stream Processors, a crazy 512-bit memory interface, and a core clockspeed of 900MHz+ - NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX looked like dead-meat. But the reality of R600 turned out to be severly dissapointing. I can only hope that RV770 won't be a repeat of that fiasco.

The specs on the HD 2900 XT were quite impressive and the card did well in synthetic benchmarks. It's quite sad that it lacked in real world gaming performance. I too hope the HD 4000 series isn't a repeat of the HD 2000 series.

you guys forget that ati has always had the hardware there but lack in the area of descent drivers

I've realized that too. ATI usually has the better specs (higher memory bandwidth, etc) but they never seem to take advantage of it. It could be the drivers but when it comes to driver stability, ATI comes out on top. Especially in Windows Vista.

EDIT: According to this, the RV770 is already in production. Could the speculated May/June release be true? :o

Edited April 10, 2008 by Anaron

[Travesty]

Now all they need to do is get a chip-set worth a darn out the door... Don't get me wrong I know the 780G is pretty nice but I know the y can do a lot better and really need to.

[NextGen_Gamer]

There is another story on Fudzilla.com that further points to a Computex 2008 launch for the RV770 core.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

There is another story on Fudzilla.com that further points to a Computex 2008 launch for the RV770 core.

Sweet. I think we can expect a June release. :p

[NextGen_Gamer]

Possible screenshot of the high-end RV770 (Radeon HD 4870) heatsink:

Also, there is a possible number floating around for the amount of transistors RV770 will contain: 830 million. Considering that RV670 contains 666 million, this number sounds pretty likely if the early specs are right. Doubling the TMU count, adding another 160 Stream Processors, and implementing GDDR5 support probably would add another ~166 million transistors to the design.

[AlmightyPeon]

Well, I hope they get power consumption right.