Twin-gun AMD R700 aims to blow NVIDIA out of the water

[HEXUS]

Radeon HD 4870 X2 punches with 2.4TFLOPS of compute power. Good enough to dethrone the NVIDIA GTX 280? - we tell you.

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[Nemz0r]

Nice, looking good - but where's that 15% improvement I heard about over xfire 4870s? Oh well, good for me, my investment into two was well spent then. Especially for £350, probably cheaper than what these'll come for initially!

Oh and how come there are reviews for this card so early before release? I would've thought it'd still be under NDA!

[Jmatt110]

Are there 2 versions of this card? I've read 3 previews so far, of which 2 have stated this card only has 1gb RAM total. The other one I read states 2gb total, and there is larger gap between an X2 and CF. Note: of the 3 I've read so far, they all seem to have similar specs.

Link to 2gb review: http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews....d=588&pageid=1

[brad]

Off topic perhaps but I notice that articles keep quoting the 9800gtx as now selling for ~£130. I'd like to know where this price is seen (other than NVidia press releases).

Places like dabs & ebuyer don't get anywhere near this price....more like £180.

[sleepyhead]

Hi Brad,

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=787790

9800 GTX for £117.48

Back on topic, well done AMD/ATi for bring the fight back into the high end GPU market This really should give Nvidia the kick up the backside they so needed.

Competition is good.

[Tarinder]

Originally Posted by brad

Off topic perhaps but I notice that articles keep quoting the 9800gtx as now selling for ~£130. I'd like to know where this price is seen (other than NVidia press releases).

Places like dabs & ebuyer don't get anywhere near this price....more like £180.

Brad,

That was the price the card was supposed to go down to, in-stock, at most etailers.

However, my annoyance stems from the fact that very few, if any, do have stock, and I'll be criticising NVIDIA for this in the review of the GTX+, which is out soon.

[brad]

Originally Posted by Tarinder

Brad,

That was the price the card was supposed to go down to, in-stock, at most etailers.

However, my annoyance stems from the fact that very few, if any, do have stock, and I'll be criticising NVIDIA for this in the review of the GTX+, which is out soon.

Ah so basically a paper launch at that price with no stock to back it up. I often wonder how good an idea that sort of tactic is. Ok, you'll always have the fanboys onside but people with a more balanced view are going to get annoyed at this sort of thing. IMHO.

PS Sleepyhead, thanks for the url.

[sawyen]

Well, to be completely fair to Nvidia.. this R700 article also sort of feels like a paper launch..

Yes i know its a preview and all.. but ATI have been more notorious for paper (previously) launches than Nvidia..

Anyone remember the X800XT-phantom edition?

Its like Jessica Alba showing off her panties on tele then the tv goes knackered for 4 months before that useless tele technician across the road manage to fix ur tele.. but then you're all disinterested only to find she's wearing something different then...

Ok.. bad analogy..

And no im no ATI or Nvidia fan boy.. just an old man wanting to play games..

[AdamAnubis]

It's nice on paper, but again against a GTX 280 it puts up a good fight, but doesn't blow it out of the water like i had expected. The GTX280 is a single card, just imagine a GTX280x2 Wait and see until the actually product is out, it will most likely perform better in games and better drivers etc.

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by Nemz0r

Nice, looking good - but where's that 15% improvement I heard about over xfire 4870s?

Here :

From http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354&p=7

But yeah, nice preview (aside from choice of game benchmarks again) - look forward to more information when the NDA is lifted proper.. but I wonder if AMD are doing things the wrong way around: They sneak cards out for restricted previews and let people talk about performance (which might change) but not architecture. I'd rather have a preview of the architecture (which won't change) and save performance for the actual retail cards so more accurate.

This bit is very interesting though:

Originally Posted by hexus

Dear Lord! The idle load of the AMD R700 engineering sample is higher than a Radeon HD 4870 running at full chat

My understanding was that these board did not have the idle power enabled, thus AMD had asked people not to test idle power draw. Does Hexus know something different?

[Tidus]

Nice preview, I'll be waiting for the official release. Card benchmarks are starting to vary by quite a bit on some sites, so I'll be comparing the card on 3 or 4 sites this time.

Crysis benchmarks should be dropped the power required to run that game is way over the top, 36.43 fps at 1680x1050 on a GTX280! (a card that costs more than a PS3 and was released months after the game still can't run it properly!). It still amazes me how much praze this game gets.

[Azza]

Bloomfield + X58 + 4 x 4870 X2s =

[Jmatt110]

In answer to my own question,

From Tech Report's preview:
We do know, however, that the two GPUs on the card don't share memory. The board has eight Hynix GDDR5 memory chips per graphics processor, four on the front and another four around back. Those chips are 1Gb each, so each GPU has a total of one gigabyte of memory to call its own. Cumulatively, 4870 X2's effective memory size is still 1GB, since data must be replicated into each GPU's memory space.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15105

Also, with all of these R700 previews, in some sites state a R700 beats a 4870 CF, however other sites say vice versa. Any ideas?

[SiM]

9800gtx in SLi is looking great value too
With the price at £117 its the cheapest highend bang for buck solution... (until the GX2 falls to ~£220, which is almost happening!)

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by SiM

9800gtx in SLi is looking great value too
With the price at £117 its the cheapest highend bang for buck solution... (until the GX2 falls to ~£220, which is almost happening!)

Aren't you tired of polishing that nVidia badge SiM?

I think HD4850 in CF is probably a better 'cheap' highend solution than 9800gtx in SLI, in the majority of games, though as usual it'll depend on the type of game. But no-one will really be using CF or SLI as a cheap solution.

[SiM]

Originally Posted by kalniel

Aren't you tired of polishing that nVidia badge SiM?

I think HD4850 in CF is probably a better 'cheap' highend solution than 9800gtx in SLI, in the majority of games, though as usual it'll depend on the type of game. But no-one will really be using CF or SLI as a cheap solution.

Never

AFAIK for most games, 9800gtx sli > HD4850 cf (even though HD4850 > 9800gtx)