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Sapphire Radeon 4870 X2

Will Smith — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:20:37 -0600

For a long time, we’ve considered videocards that sport two GPUs second-class citizens. They have all the problems of multi-card solutions—namely application incompatibilities and no multi-monitor support—but fail to perform as well as dual-card solutions, since multi-GPU cards usually use slower midrange GPUs. That’s finally changed with the new RV770-powered Radeon 4870 X2, which mounts two of ATI’s fastest GPUs on a single card, without sacrificing power-user features like multi-mon support.

The 4870 X2 is essentially two Radeon 4870 HD cards running in CrossFire mode packed onto a single board: The X2 has the same GPUs, the same 800 shader cores running at the same 750MHz core clock, and the same GDDR5 memory running at 900MHz. But, there is one difference. The single-GPU 4870 includes 512MB of memory, while the X2 has a whopping 2GB. However, the memory is duplicated between the two GPUs, so the effective frame buffer for the card is just 1GB. The X2 also features a high-speed PCI Express interconnect between the two GPUs, which should, theoretically, boost the efficiency of the shared GPUs. However, in our tests, we didn’t see an appreciable performance difference between a traditional CrossFire solution and the X2.

The 4870 X2 outperformed the previous single-card performance champ in most of our benchmarks, delivering playable frame rates at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 in nearly every game we tested. Naturally, the exception remains Crysis, which, at its highest quality settings, punishes nearly every system we’ve tested. We’re slightly concerned about the accuracy of our Crysis benchmarks; the ATI card seemed to render far-off textures at a higher resolution than the Nvidia card. We’ll test further and report back next month.

As always with high-end cards, if you’re running a low-resolution display—pretty much anything below 1920x1200—you won’t be able to harness the full power of this card. At lower resolutions, the 4870 X2 performs exactly the same as the single-GPU 4870. For anyone running a high-res panel, the X2 truly kicks ass.
This card is a significant upgrade if your GPU doesn’t support DirectX 10—and is much better than some last-gen cards that do. If you’ve been waiting to make the jump to DX10, now’s the time to shell out the bucks—you won’t see a better performer for quite a while.

Super RV770 in Diamond's Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition

Chris Moody — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:19:36 -0500

The buzz is flying about AMD’s “Super R770” and the possibility that it will snatch the GPU crown from Nvidia’s GeForce GTX series. As Editor-in Chief, Will Smith reported at the end of June, “ATI eschewed the huge, hot monolithic GPU for a more compact, but modular core. With twin goals of decreased power consumption and more efficiency per die area, ATI looks poised to dethrone Nvidia” and later said, “The Radeon 4870 runs nearly as fast as a GTX 280 in most benchmarks for about 60% of the cost.”

The "Super RV770" will arrive with water-cooling pre-installed and an unlocked BIOS, which enables the GPU to be pushed all the way to 950 MHz and the memory to 4.8 GT/s According to some sources, you may be able to push the GPU beyond 1 GHz, using TEC elements, and keep the temperature of GPU low. Don’t look for this unit in retail; it is an AIB/OEM-only product.

So how long do you have to wait? Diamond already has one ready to come out, the Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition. According to TechPowerUp.com Smoothcreations will be offering a water cooled edition soon in it’s systems. Check this out from Diamond's press release:

The HD 4870 is a smoking gun dual slot card, PCIE 2.0, with 512MB of DDR5 memory and a clock speed of 800 MHz. The memory speed is 1100 MHz and is designed with 800 stream processors. The HD 4870 provides plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX™ upgradeability with up to quad-GPU support. Continuing with ATI’s Power Play and 55nm processing technology, this card is the fastest and efficient. “The Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition was clocked to kick some ass”. We didn’t just want a fast card out in the market, we wanted the fastest card that could kick the living daylights and bust some performance records, say Mario Gastelum, Director of Product Development & Engineering. “we wanted a card that kicked the competitions teeth into the curb”, and that’s exactly what our engineers accomplished”. “The firmware was custom designed to enable end users to go beyond the normal over clocked speeds and allow them to push their cards for higher performance via the catalyst control center.” The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950 Mhz and Memory of up 1200 Mhz.

We’ll be the judge of whether it “kicks some ass” or not, thank you very much. I certainly like what I am hearing about it, and I can’t wait to see how it compares to Nvidia’s GTX 280. ATI Fanbois may have something to crow about at last.

New Rumor Hints at Interoperability Between Current and Next Generation AMD Videocards

Paul Lilly — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:52:13 -0500

AMD surprised the gaming community by releasing its HD 4850 a full week ahead of schedule, and with the HD 4870 only days away from an official debut, it's already too late for an encore. That's okay because AMD might have another trick up its sleeve, this one more surprising than the last.

According to reports, you may be able to mix and match Radeon 4xxx
videocards with the 3000 series. "Since they're both DirectX 10.1
parts, there is no reason why those two should not work together. We
will not qualify this interoperability, but who stops you from trying?," an un-named source close to AMD was quoted as saying, according to Theo Valich at TG Daily.

If true, upgraders won't have to sell, give away, or otherwise retire
their old GPUs, and instead use them together in a CrossFire
configuration. Whether or not pairing a previous generation videocard
with a next generation one ultimately yields a worthwhile performance
boost remains to be seen, and one we'll be sure to update as more
details emerge.

Image Credit: AMD