Headlines - PowerColor's overclocked Radeon HD 4870 packing 1GiB of GDDR5

[HEXUS]

The folks at PowerColor are at it again, and this time they're suping up a Radeon HD 4870 with 1GiB of GDDR5 memory and a core clock of 800MHz.

Read more.

[CK_1985]

Forget the bizarre 2Gb 4850, THIS is a card to get interested in...

Benches please!

[kalniel]

Can anyone say 'engineering sample'? The cooler looks like it's just been slapped on there

[Hicks12]

Originally Posted by kalniel

Can anyone say 'engineering sample'? The cooler looks like it's just been slapped on there

i thought that to lol. Im probably wrong saying this but surely the results seen from this card will be a minimal improvement unless they changed the bus to 512 or 376, higher than the 256 currently? that would bottleneck it or am i just wrong where its negligable.

[DeSean]

Originally Posted by Hicks12

i thought that to lol. Im probably wrong saying this but surely the results seen from this card will be a minimal improvement unless they changed the bus to 512 or 376, higher than the 256 currently? that would bottleneck it or am i just wrong where its negligable.

The insane speed of GDDR5 makes up for the comparatively low memory bus (compared to GTX280). So, the 1GB version would be able to compete more effectively at very high resolutions or in games with very large textures etc, as I understand it. Also, I think Crossfire can benefit from both cards having more than 512MB of memory.

[badass]

the one reason to go for a Geforce GTX 260 over a Radeon HD4870 has just been removed.
I was concerned the 512MB whilst fine for current games would be to little too quickly obsoleted.

[Brewster0101]

Its crazy to have any cooler on a 4000 series card that does not take the heat straight out the Pc as the heat generated is hot....

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by Brewster0101

as the heat generated is hot....

[Betty_Swallocks]

I wonder if their overclocking effort on this is any better than the "overclocked" Powercolor 3870 I bought. It's RAM is at standard speed and if you try to raise the speed anywhere near the level they advertise it artefacts immediately. I'm not the only one it happens to either. There are plenty of reports on the web of people with the same problem.

I won't be trusting Powercolors pre clocked cards again.

[stevie lee]

anyone with more money than sense willing to do an itty bitty experiment?

4 of these cards in crossfireX + 32bit windows = see what happens..

we all know about the 4gb resource limit on 32bit windows, but what happens to windows when the 4gb is taken up purely by the graphics?
______

awaits answer.... also awaits 2gb 4870X2 + drivers to run 4 of them = idea for next experiment - what happens when running 4 x 2gb 4870X2's on a 32bit windows..

[kalniel]

As the memory for each card should be holding the same thing crossfire should only take up one card's worth of virtual address space. Don't know if that happens in practise.

[SiM]

Originally Posted by stevie lee

also awaits 2gb 4870X2 + drivers to run 4 of them = idea for next experiment - what happens when running 4 x 2gb 4870X2's on a 32bit windows..

I don't think your NF2 board supports crossfire (or even pcie )

[joe pineapples]

I'm hoping these 4870 1gig cards will be the sweet spot when gaming @1920x1200. I was looking at a 4870x2, but it looks more and more likey i would need a new PSU for that, adding another £80-£100 on top :-(.

Pretty suprised there hasent been any 'early' benchmarks for these, since the x2's were done a while back, and this card looks to be arriving a couple of weeks before those.

joe

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by joe pineapples

Pretty suprised there hasent been any 'early' benchmarks for these, since the x2's were done a while back, and this card looks to be arriving a couple of weeks before those.

joe

Companies want to pally up with AMD at the moment - they know they're in for the money this generation so the last thing they want to do is find themselves short on cards because they've broken NDA agreements.

[joe pineapples]

Originally Posted by kalniel

Companies want to pally up with AMD at the moment - they know they're in for the money this generation so the last thing they want to do is find themselves short on cards because they've broken NDA agreements.

I understand what you;re saying, but as a LOT of benchmarks were already released on different websites for the 4870x2's, i assumed that must have been given the green light by AMD/ATI. From this i drew the conclusion that maybe they had finally started to slacken off the NDA stuff (about time imo), and that the same would have followed with these 4870 1gig cards. And thats where i was confused. I guess only AMD know the method to their madness (so to speak).

[kalniel]

AMD had given reviews permission to conduct 4 benchmarks (only), and people were asked not to talk about idle power draw (PP not implemented yet) or go into architectural details.

So it was more of a technology preview/demonstration, and direct from AMD themselves. A partner breaking NDA with their own version of products would be another matter (as far as relationship with AMD goes).