An Early Peek At AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2

Dr. Damage writes "AMD has quite a hit in the Radeon HD 4000 series. Coming up next is a product code-named R700, a high-end graphics card based on two 4870s paired together. TechReport has a preliminary look at how the card — to be called the Radeon HD 4870 X2 — performs. Nvidia could have one heck of a fight on its hands."

Comments

Re:1gb mem

[grasshoppa]

1Gb != 1GB

Re:Driver Support

[hr.wien]

It's time to drop this old complaint. In my experience this hasn't been the case since around the time the Radeon 9700 was king (in Windows). In fact, with the problems Nvidia has been having on Vista I'd say the opposite is closer to the truth. Driver stability just isn't a problem for ATI/AMD any more.

Re:Crysis benchmarks are very good

[jandrese]

Unless you were buying it today, since only one of those boards can be bought by mere mortals at this point. You are correct however that the G280 is really looking like a Spruce Goose for nVidia right now. I guess the 8800GTX really was a hard act to follow.

Re:radeonhd driver?

[MostAwesomeDude]

By the time they ship, we might have released working 3D drivers for these, through xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd. Can't guarantee anything, though, since we don't even have the documentation, but I do know that there's been some NDA work going on already.

And yes, I AM a Mesa dev. :3

4800 running too hot?

[Xelios]

ATI's release drivers this time around were actually really good, minus one small problem. Default fan speed on all the 4800's was set way too low (20% I think) and the automatic fan speed control isn't working. As a result all the 4800's show some really high temperatures (75C+ idle). There's a work around for this until ATI releases a driver update to fix it (or at least let you set fan speed algorithms in the control center):

Make a profile in the Catalyst Control Center, make sure ATI OverDrive is enabled and check marked. Now find the profile files in:

C:/Documents and Settings/{user name}/Local Settings/Application Data/ATI/ACE

Open the profile you just created in notepad and change these lines:

<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Automatic" /> <--- Change to "Manual"
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="30" /> <--- 30 is quiet, 45+ for gaming
</Feature>

My 4870 still idles at 58C or so, but anything over 30% is just too loud for me to have running all the time. Swapping the thermal paste on the GPU has also produced some good results for people.

Re:4800 running too hot?

[schnipschnap]

In fact, the article addresses this issue, see this page

All of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards we've tested have produced some relatively high GPU temperatures, and this early X2 card is no exception. When we asked AMD about this issue in relation to the 4850 and 4870 cards now shipping, they told us the products are qualified at even higher temperatures (over 100 [degrees] C) and tuned for low noise levels. In other words, these temperatures are more or less by design and not necessarily a problem.

excuse me

[unity100]

thats one generation behind. 3870 is its counterpart, and beats it in terms of noise level and energy consumption (hence heat). this is 4870.