AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Preview

Take a large PCB, slap two 4870 processors and a bridge-chip on there and call it a Radeon 4870 X2. Perhaps not the most elegant method of getting a graphics card in the high-end segment, although it is, as this preview shows, a very effective one:

Roughly half way through August AMD will release the 4800 series X2 products officially. What you see today is nothing final. Board-partners are free in their choices, you’ll see X2 based cards with 4850 configurations, 4870 configurations, gDDR3, gDDR5, 1 GB, 2GB maybe even 4 GB memory. So that is why I want to mark this article very clearly and specifically as a preview. We’ll show some early rough numbers based on this two-GPU configuration based product. But to understand the Radeon 48×0 X2 graphics card, you must learn a little more about the GPUs that are empowering the product; which you already know under the name Radeon HD 4850/4870, yet was developed under codename RV770. By launching the RV770 chip, AMD effective doubled up performance over the last-gen product especially for you at a very acceptable price level. Quite an achievement.

..My experiences with the card have been really good, the performance is flabbergasting. If priced right, this is the new king in the high-end arena of graphics cards. I’m impressed, really impressed.

Guru3D