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4850's are now shipping
- Thread starter Scougar
- Start date
Will give you time to play with some other cards 
A little more expensive at first (£10-ish by the looks of it) but the price'll drop. It should certainly be faster than the 8800 GT otherwise somebody at AMD isn't doing their job properly.
Definately, the good news is that the FSAA has also been fixed, its not done through the shaders on these like on the R600's, so when you slap the AA on, the performance shouldn't tank.
Bugger, just realised the 4870's aint coming till July, oh dear.
But long before that date we would get Benchies and Performance reviews right?!?!?!?!
I believe the NDA lifts at the same time as the one on the 4850s.
The cards look good, but waiting for benchmarks, got a budget of about £175 for the graphics card in my new build, so either ATI or Nvidia will have to bring something out at the price point that will equal or beat 8800GTS/9800GTX. And is it just me or does that copper heatsink on the 4850 look pretty bad? I thought rows of thin copper plates would do a better job (and look better) then the cylindrical heatsinks. Though someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
There's a good chance they'll keep the lid on the 4870's NDA so that they don't get accused of having a paper launch, because, y'know, the media and 12 yeard olds everywhere would criticise them for that.
They'll want to make the first GDDR5 card launch look successful with plentiful stock I reckon, they don't really want to make the card look like a rare novelty.
They'll want to make the first GDDR5 card launch look successful with plentiful stock I reckon, they don't really want to make the card look like a rare novelty.
Soldato
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- 17 Oct 2005
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It's just the naked bit that has cylindrical spikes by the looks of it (the bit covering the power regulators). The rest seems fairly routine for a reference heatsink - it's a bit smaller than I expected too, but I doubt it's ATI going back to the old days of them strapping on a small but fast (read: loud) fan.
Still seems plenty of scope for ramping up the clocks if they wanted to, just like the HD38x0s.
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Lower process (than Nvidia) is on the ATI card so that would make it more plausible that it's not going to be a nightmare to cool it. The 2900Pro and XT cooler was pretty beefy but when the 3850/70 got launched the cooler got cut in half did it not?, so that would mean that heat output of the 4850/70 cards might not be much more than of the 3850/70. There might be a little difference in the coolers to make up for this extra power but it seems as ATI's great efficiency innovations continue.
If it's as cool running as RV670 with near to the same power draw and gives out a decent performance upgrade with AA then I think ATI could be onto a beauty of a card here (speculation).
Soldato
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- 4 Nov 2004
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Lightnix said:
That it does, but i do hate cards that don't properly vent the hot air directly out of the case *sigh*
We've had 512MB cards for years, time to move on up to 1GB goodness
You need the res to match!
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Oct 2005
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- North of Watford Gap
So you hate all single-slot coolers?
I'm sure some OEMs will stick a dual-slot on there - HIS for one.
I don't really see the issue to be honest. Firstly, if it's a single slot card it shouldn't be putting out too much heat anyway. Secondly, if you have half decent airflow in your system it shouldn't be a problem at all. Well... Unless you have a small form factor case then it must be frustrating.