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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."
Now that's a nice heater for the winter
So good that there is no reason to choose the 30 cm long humongous and expensive 280 over cheaper 4870x2. what do you think ?
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1Gb != 1GB
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
However, playing with this early sample of 4870 X2 is a vivid reminder that we don't make these choices in a vacuum. The reality is that a single Radeon HD 4870 GPU is nearly fast enough to keep pace with the GeForce GTX 280. Even if you're running a game that lacks a driver profile or simply doesn't scale well with more than one GPU, the 4870 X2 ought to perform awfully well. And when it does get both GPUs going, as our results show, it's by far the fastest single video card we've ever tested. If this is how AMD rolls, it's hard to complain.
thats good news for gamers' wallets.
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1GB == 8Gb
I read the internet for the articles.
I'd say not working on Vista was a feature.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
While I had no problems running XP or Vista using ATI drivers, I certainly have issues running X on Linux with ATI drivers. X keeps crashing at the weirdest times, whereas I have no problem with NVidia drivers.
FTFA:
That's, erm, considerableâ"beyond the obvious graphics applications, that's the sort of computing power that may one day enable men to figure out what women want.
If you are a guy and are looking at video cards to figure out what women want... errr, you're doing it wrong!
Even if you are referring to CPU cycles, they've tried this once, almost unanimously across the galaxy, 42 is not what women want.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
As my present location has poor ventilation, I'm quite keen on how my computer influences temperature. I've noticed a somewhat disturbing trend in both CPUs and GPUs in requiring more and more power and really firing up the heat. It looks like this monstrous card will definitely be a room heater. With the exception of laptops, are there any graphics cards available that won't make my room an inferno when I'm gaming?
... the X2's 1600 total stream processors have a peak computational rate of 2.4 teraflops. That's, erm, considerable--beyond the obvious graphics applications, that's the sort of computing power that may one day enable men to figure out what women want.
Allow me to note that the very idea of plugging a woman's desires into a matrix processing unit is precisely what women do not want. It simply won't work.
To effectively compute female emotions, you'd need something like a quantum computer where you get all possible results at once (and I do mean simultaneously), usually with lots of yelling, doors slamming, and things being thrown.
One bonus about these ati HD series cards is they support audio out through dvi. With a dvi to hdmi dongle it will also output 5.1 / 7.1 digital sound. Great for people who are using their pc as a home theatre hub.
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
~ C.
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:
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.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
A huge fight. This is being tested with beta drivers and it already far outclasses nvidia in every game I've seen reviewed except crysis, and it's neck and neck in crysis. Nvidia is going to get trounced, that's all there is to it.
You have a misconception about what temperatures should be. They should be whatever the manufacturer rates the part at. Not all parts have problems with high temperatures. My 8800 runs at about 90C and has done so for a long time, still works great.
Have some faith in the companies to test this. They have it run hot because it can run hot without ill effects.
Calling people stupid for buying a 1500$ Mac is okay but calling people stupid for buying a 400$ videocard is troll.
Typical slashdot.
Is there a place that has the current state of the Radeon support in the various drivers lined up that's possible for someone who isn't a developer to make sense of?
When I was putting together my current box last week, trying to figure out which card was better to get was a pain when it came to the AMD hardware. I ended up getting the GTX 260, because it was the best performing card that fit into my budget and I knew it would work fine under Linux.
I couldn't make any sense of the state of the drivers for Radeon hardware. I gathered that the radeonhd driver was the actively developed one, but RV7XX hardware wasn't listed as supported. The latest catalyst drivers didn't list support for the 4850/4870 either, so hearing that both drivers have working 3D support for a card not yet released is... not really odd, but the contradictions are symptomatic.
thats one generation behind. 3870 is its counterpart, and beats it in terms of noise level and energy consumption (hence heat). this is 4870.
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Ray Adams is continuing that project. it works great for auto fan speeds. you can even totally ditch catalyst control center and just use ati tray tools.
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very low power consumption, low price, and disproportionally high power. you can even x2 them and get a very decent gpu power.
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They need to get the memory bus width straightened out. The 4870 GPU does 1.2 tfps(Teraflops), the nvidia 280GX something like 933Gfps, but the 280GX beats it handily in framerates.
This is largely because 280 can get the textures from memory to GPU hella faster (115Gbps vs 141Gbps, 256 bit bus vs 512 bit on the 280) for compositing. As well the 280 has 1GB video memory.
Given equal memory subsystems the 4870 would smoke it. The memory subsystem on the 4870 is a huge handicap.
Unless the upcoming dual GPU doubles the memory bandwidth, it's no contest, the 280 GX wins. I'm hoping they do since I just bought a 790FX crossfire chipset motherboard. I'd be happy with a pair of 512 bit 1GB 4870s. I just hope they make them.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Apparently families used to gather around the fireplace in the winter. My family? We have a LAN party.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Changed my password, some fucker was using my account. Sorry for the crap he/she wrote.
Me too!
Man, my impersonator was a real jerk. Nothing but lucid, excellent posts from now on.
The whole point is that these AMD cards cost from 140 to 200 euro, and still manage to eat nvidia's 500 euro cards. RTFA.