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4890x2

Rroff said:
You'll still be outputting the same amount of heat :P just more efficent transfer from the core to the environment.
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I thought that at first too, but I'm pretty sure he was just responding to the second part of the post: "Hope they fit real coolers on them instead of the dysons they have on the 4890 single cards".

It does look amusing at first however :)
 
remember that memory uses power to run and is always on so you'd expect an extra 2gb's to up the wattage somewhat which could account for the need for extra connectors. But thats also why you shouldn't buy the 4gb version, as it will mean more heat and more power used in idle aswell as the 99.99999999999999% of games that don't need 4GB of memory(if any). if you look at some reviews going into power consumption, the largest drop in power usage at idle is from underclocking the memory rather than both underclocking AND undervolting the core. So that extra 2gb of memory will bump up those idle numbers pretty badly.

But you'd also expect them to bin the cores or infinately more likely, simply send the central cores on the waifer out for use in the 4980x2's as they almost always use less juice and work that little bit more efficiently.

4GB is simply overkill and you'd be hard pushed to find a game that needs it.

I mean frankly the only reason anyone thinks we need more than 1gb is because GTA4 told us we did. The fact it runs fairly poorly if you are over or under the "limit" without any actual proof the number shown in game is accurate, doesn't really convince me at least. Though with their main rival card the 4870 512mb while their 260 sports more memory, being an Nvidia owned game I can't possibly see a reason for one of the most highly anticipated games of the year to try to convince you you'd need more than 512mb.

As for cooling, lets be honest its not really going to use that much more power than the existing X2 which for all intents and purposes can be silenced with a £5 zalman fan strapped on with the shroud off, that won't change. The blower fan with shroud inplace as its supplied though will be loud, but frankly no louded than the 4870x2 gets if you turn the fan up.

For the majority, the interesting thing with a new card will most likely be the drop in the current X2's prices. Hell the 4850x2 2gb version might end up very very good value.
 
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i doubt the extra memory will increase the power usage much as it will be the same amount of chips, just half the memory per chip
 
Wilderbeast said:
It would be relly nice if we didnt have to water cool them though, but looking at the power requirements I'm thinking the stock coolers wont be anything like quiet.
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That thing will need heat pipes and a couple of fans on it, maybe the shroud / shell casing will be different this time.
 
I wonder if two of these in quad crossfire will beat 3 285's? Considering the 4890 is about equal in tests to the 275, and the 275 comes close to the 285, perhaps quad 4890's will beat trisli 285's. Depending on how well scaling for 4 GPU's works out.
 
alexhull24 said:
The comment still stands true then. GTA4 is a poor example anyway.
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Indeed.

I don't want a game to need All the ram as then the cards future could be cut short due to needing ram & not GPU power which would be silly. Some people have been caught out already with 512MB cards that they have bought & wanting to use 1920x1200 with levels of AA that puts the strain on.

Its not all about right now,but about tomorrow as well.

People buy hard drives way bigger than what they need at the time.
People don't wait until they are crashing to put on the seatbelt. :)
 
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