For those of you who have not heard - the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is going to be ATI's flagship graphics card.

It is rumoured to be released on August 12th.

For the Nvidia fans that are wondering - no, this is not a response to the 9800GTX+ or the GTX260 or GTX280, ATI have been planning to release the 4870 X2 two months after the release of the 4870, and they're right on target (actually, they'll be early if they make the 12th of August).

The 4870 X2 features 2 RV770 processing cores, the same one used in the 4870. It also has 2GB of GDDR5, four times the amount of one 4870.

I have created a roundup of all of the previews of this amazing graphics card.

As you will be able to see from the benchmarks, the 4870 X2 outperforms the GTX280 in all of the benchmarks, but when you put two of them together in a CrossfireX configuration, the performance is not so great - this is due to the drivers that are still under development, and the fact that these are not final cards, they are engineering samples.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd ... 2-preview/
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h ... VzaWFzdA==
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=590
http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/vid ... t0-p1.html
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1317
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/745/1/
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 444,00.asp

Currently, the only game the card fails with is Crysis. Crysis is notoriously difficult to program around, so this is expected to be fixed in the final driver.

It's ATIs equivalent to the GTX280, even if it isn't a response.

Fantastic looking card though. Should be a new level of insane benchmarks.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 8&Itemid=1

This card will be priced at around €430, which is less than £350.
I believe that when this card comes out in the UK it will be priced at £350.

... Which means that I might be able to afford 2 of them in my system at the same time!

Twice as much as a normal 4870 - sounds about right!

Looks like it's starting to be released in Germany, or at least the German e-tailers are listing this graphics card now...

I reckon it will be one more week before we get anything happening like this in the UK, with a couple of days after waiting for availability. So I would say, 14th and 15th of this month could be 4870X2 day.

In price order...

http://www.ba-computer.at/product_info. ... s_id=99140 (€394.86!)
http://nostra.online-reseller.at/eshop. ... d=geizhals
http://mec.online-reseller.de/eshop.php ... id=1421680
http://www.haym.info/SHOP/index.php?artikelnr=8A30167
http://www.diskontcomputer.com/Sapphire ... 38564.html (€433.20)

Oh man, I keep looking at things like this...



And to think, I'll have two of these things...

could 4870 have 1gb vram?

that is possible, yes.

Those stats are looking really impressive. This is going to be one hell of a card!

how much would it cost tho?

The release date is now officially set to 12th August. I really hope the etailers (OCUK) have stock of this on the day of release.

There is a 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5 already, but it's on pre-order only on OCUK right now:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-091-PC

Hmm, I really want to know the cost of the X2s, it should be interesting.

People are guessing £350, but I reckon it's going to be £370. It's not going to stop me though.

Hmm, just a bit more than 2 4870s, I would have imagined it being cheaper, personally.

Fudzilla are just reinforcing that the final specification is just as in the preview hardware. It's basically two 4870's strapped together with four times the memory.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 7&Itemid=1

Update: I have a feeling that OCUK will have these on their product pages early so I can preorder my entire system...

My feelings were correct!

They've just this minute added the new category...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productli ... subid=1235

No products yet though!



Update: This was posted here before any of the OCUK forums members did... suckas...

Refresaholic? lol

I'm just glad now that I wasn't refreshing all night long. They're still not there, but I reckon that since that category has been created, it won't stay empty for long. The category appeared about quarter past 5 last night, so it was probably somebody's overtime for creating it.

Update: It also looks like CrossfireX with 2x 4870X2's is worth it!



For 2x 4870X2's...

3DMark Vantage High: 35.5% better
3DMark Vantage Extreme: 58.7% better

Call of Juarez 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF: 80.2% better
Call of Juarez 2560x1600 4xAA 8xAF: 83% better

Devil May Cry 4 1920x1200 8xAA 16xAF: 90.3% better
Devil May Cry 4 2560x1600 8xAA 16xAF: 104.2% better

FEAR 1920X1200 8xAA 16xAF: 69.7% better
FEAR 2560x1600 8xAA 16xAF: 70.2% better

Seems like really good scaling to me!

That is some impressive scaling there. I don't know how DMC4 managed to over scale, though

And if you do a product code search of 21137-00-40R on Google Product search...

21137-00-40R is the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2...

It's between £300 - £350 including tax!

That's a brilliant price for the performance, it pretty much scales from the 4870, I think.

It's about the same price as the GTX280's really. If it really is going to be released at this price, Nvidia will have a really hard time...

Although there are always going to be some people who will never use an ATI product regardless of if they have the performance crown or not.

And those people shall wallow in fail, lol.

Damn, they still not on Overclockers...

Oh, hai there!

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-094-PC
HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-101-HT
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-183-SP
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/pimg/GX-183-SP_400.jpg

Heh, you really are watching this too much.

Yes I am. I feel like I can't afford to miss out on any new information as it develops.
I can't wait to have two of these. Probably the HIS ones because they are stickerless and I really don't like stickers.