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AMD To Launch RV770 On June 18th

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because it requires 2 x 6 pin connectors doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to draw all that power all the time; it'll only draw what it needs. IIRC the thinking behind the 2 power connectors is to give overclockers extra power if they need it.

Plus there's PowerPlay which means it'll run quite efficiently when it's idle, unlike nVidia's offerings; unless you decide to crank down the clocks significantly with something like RivaTuner in 2D mode.
 
Plus there's PowerPlay which means it'll run quite efficiently when it's idle, unlike nVidia's offerings; unless you decide to crank down the clocks significantly with something like RivaTuner in 2D mode.

Actually, while it's still a rumour, the GTX280 is supposed to run with very low power consumption when idle, and crank up when it's running full pelt. That, I feel, is too little too late considering Vista's Aero interface uses hardware 3D, so it'll be running with some load all the time in Vista.
 
So which PSU's are we going to need to run 2 of these cards in crossfire?

I found out my enermax liberty doesn't cut the mustard with only 2 x PCI-e power supply plugs :(
 
omfg the answer as to why the 4800's were so underhyped at first has just hit me like a slippery fish.

'Trojan' - the 4870's code name. How could I be so blind?

The 4800 were not underhyped. Even if the specs have changed from 480sp with high clocks to 800 with low clocks the expected performance has always been the same- 4850~=9800gtx with the 4870 been 30% faster.
For me the R700 is the most interesting card, even if it is the 4850 that i intent to buy. If they get the shared memory to work, or at least sort out some of the problems with Xfire, it could really change how both ATI and Nvidia move forward.
 
Actaully, what I was referring to were the benchmarks that put it much closer to the speed of SLi 8800 GT's. It could, and by all means feel free to mock me if I'm wrong and I'd like to emphasise how this is complete speculation with rather unfirm grounds, be that AMD have indeed (like NordicHardware said) been spreading rumours based on RV770's performance by stating that it would only be the speed of the 9800 GTX (which, remember, was considered very disappointing at release), and then having a very PR-happy launch.

Remember, speculation! That's what this thread is for! :p

Edit: Oh, and right, actually, the 800 shaders rumour gives both the 4850 and 4870 200 GFLOPS each over the 1050MHz shader domain + 480 shader rumour.
 
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The 4800 were not underhyped. Even if the specs have changed from 480sp with high clocks to 800 with low clocks the expected performance has always been the same- 4850~=9800gtx with the 4870 been 30% faster.
For me the R700 is the most interesting card, even if it is the 4850 that i intent to buy. If they get the shared memory to work, or at least sort out some of the problems with Xfire, it could really change how both ATI and Nvidia move forward.

Not ture. Always touted to be 4850 vs 8800GT and 4870 vs 9800GTX.

Hell there would have been uproar if ATI had originally said their £130 4850 was set to beat a £220 9800GTX.
 
Actually, while it's still a rumour, the GTX280 is supposed to run with very low power consumption when idle, and crank up when it's running full pelt. That, I feel, is too little too late considering Vista's Aero interface uses hardware 3D, so it'll be running with some load all the time in Vista.

Well Aero uses a piffling amount of hardware power compared to any game so it depends whether the GTX can modulate the amount of power used or whether it's all or nothing.
 
Yeah, but wouldn't it be awesome. :)

~Slash

Yeah but loads of people would have said they would never pull it off etc. This way I have a feeling we are going to be pleasantly shocked.

Specs of 4850 and 4870 better than expected and performance better than expected.

It's looking likely that a 4870 will be cheaper than a GTX260 and be somewhere between a GTX260 and GTX280 in performance and maybe even beat a GTX280 in some games but, and this is the biggy, the 4870 is looking like been £200 cheaper than a GTX280.

On that basis two 4870 in crossfire on an Intel board is going to kill a GTX280 and when they get a 4870x2 out later, ATI will have the crown for the fastest card as well as having the best bang for bucks cards in both a 4850 and 4870 (Unless Nvidia slash prices across the board?)

I think this round is going to go ATI's way IMO
 
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Yeah but loads of people would have said they would never pull it off etc. This way I have a feeling we are going to be pleasantly shocked.

Specs of 4850 and 4870 better than expected and performance better than expected.

It's looking likely that a 4870 will be cheaper than a GTX260 and be somewhere between a GTX260 and GTX280 in performance and maybe even beat a GTX280 in some games but, and this is the biggy, the 4870 is looking like been £200 cheaper than a GTX280.

On that basis two 4870 in crossfire on an Intel board is going to kill a GTX280 and when they get a 4870x2 out later, ATI will have the crown for the fastest card as well as having the best bang for bucks cards in both a 4850 and 4870 (Unless Nvidia slash prices across the board?)

I think this round is going to go ATI's way IMO

Great news, one thing is crossfire like the same performance wise as nvidias counterpart sli, because many people slate SLI, is the same said about crossfire because if the 4850 is gonna be good, ill probs but a x38 board and one 4850 and once got more cash probably buy another 4850.

~Slash
 
Crossfire is better/superior than SLI IMO. It's just until ATI got the drivers up to scrtach for their current boards and cause the performance of their boards was nowhere near Nvidias, there has seemed little point in Crossfire until now.

Two 4850's or 4870's if gaming at high res are going to be mightly appealing now.
 
awaits the crys of not at that price :p

hoping the 4850 isnt more than 130.00 but i always add 30 quid onto what ill want to pay and normally its no far off.

Well it should hopefully reach the £130 mark because it would appear NVidia are restructuring their prices slightly from what can be seen around the web at the moment! Most 8800GTS's (G92) are coming in around the £140 mark with the 9800GTX ranging from anything from £140 to around £200! It is now on average about £160 for one of those so i feel ATi really cant be more expensive than £140 for the 4850! The early noises seem to show that the 4850/70 will easily compete with the 8800GTS and the 9800GTX respectively so that is good news as they should also allow for some decent overclocking headroom also.
 
will it be a complete waste to cross fire these 4850 or 4870's in anything other than 2 x16 slots.

what will the downside be of doing a crossfire on a P45 based board at 2 x 8

in real world terms, not theretical assumptions

Just another topic to keep us going till next week.

Bowza
 
Not if they want people to buy the cards from here...

True. I always prefer to buy from OCUK, but if the prices are higher than their competition I will for the first time in a long time buy from a competitor.

The more I am reading the more it seems like the ati series of cards is the right one for me. I will probably end up with the 1GB 4870 though, because of my 24" monitor.
 
Well according to the early/leaked reviews there is no performance hit from running two 4850's in crossfire on 8x slots.

Don't forget that the p45 boards are pci-e 2 slots not 1.0 or 1.1.

8 x pci-e 2 = 16 x pci-e 1 in bandwidth so your question is as good as asking "is there any point running one 4850 or 4870 in my 16x pci-e 1.1 slot?"
 
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