Don't know how this would fare with a 4870

[ethan]

but it sounds like some impressive tech to me albeit non graphical:

http://www.physorg.com/news132845817.html

 

[MinDBlanK]

I think the $2000 price tag would make me go for two 4870's for a tad less LOL

 

[MDPlatts]

I think its actually (dons flame suit) the same hardware - slight tweaks here/therte for interface/power/memory-size/speed -but its the same as the 4870 in all major respects - just tuned for non-graphics applications.

 

[Lightnix]

I think its actually (dons flame suit) the same hardware - slight tweaks here/therte for interface/power/memory-size/speed -but its the same as the 4870 in all major respects - just tuned for non-graphics applications.

Kind of. Both the 4850 and 4870 are supposed to break the 1TF barrier in single-precision FP performance (1TFLOPS and 1.2TFLOPS respectively). A stock GTX280 is around 933GFLOPS or something. The real advantage of the firestream is its double precision floating point power I believe.

 

[ethan]

I think the $2000 price tag would make me go for two 4870's for a tad less LOL

Or two 280's if there is still a 1 to 2$ ratio concerning the pound