ATI Radeon 4800 series launch details revealed

NVIDIA had already heard enough about AMD's ATI Radeon 4800 series to bump up the launch date for its GeForce 9900 series cards, but TG Daily has now apparently turned up some more launch details for the mid-to-high-end cards, the first of which is reportedly now on track for a release in mid-June. That first card will be the Radeon 4850, codenamed "Makedon," which will boast 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, single-slot cooling, CrossFireX support, and a price tag between $189-$219. That'll be followed in July by a pair of Radeon 4870 cards (dubbed "Trojan"), with one boasting 512MB of GDDR5 memory and the other boasting a full 1024MB, the latter of which will come with a dual-slot cooler. Look for those to cost between costing between $249 and $279. The whole lot of them will also pack "game physics processing capability," along with 7.1 channel audio via HDMI support, DirectX 10.1 support, and, as you might have guessed, some pretty heavy power requirements, with a 450 watt power supply needed for a single card and 550 watts needed for a CrossFire setup.

[Timothy Sottek @ May 15th 2008 1:34PM]

1024 MB on a single card between $249 and $279?

Touche, ATI.

[helloUser @ May 15th 2008 1:36PM]

Good deal indeed! Nvidia might have a tough time keeping up with ATI giving such great value at that price.

[GenBanks @ May 15th 2008 2:03PM]

Sadly though if the card isn't fast it won't make much of a difference if it has lots of ram. Hopefully it'll be as heavy hitting as the nvidia 8800's and 9800's, but with extra memory headroom to make them worthwhile cards. Although I'm sceptical at this point :(

[tyecies @ May 15th 2008 2:39PM]

And GDDR5 at that. I thought most GPU's were still on GDDR3, with the rare high end GPU hitting GDDR4. Anyone hear about the % performance increase going from GDDR4 to 5?

[slarity @ May 15th 2008 2:41PM]

I wonder if there is ANY % performance from GDDR4 to GDDR5, wouldnt 5 just have even higher latencies?

[qazeqaz @ May 15th 2008 7:20PM]

this sounds sweet

[iofthestorm @ May 15th 2008 7:37PM]

@GenBanks: If you've read anything about them, the 4870 is supposed to be 1.5x as fast as the 3870 which is pretty damn good, and I've read that it's as fast as a 3870x2 as well, but that's partially due to the inefficiencies of multi-GPU cards.

[FT @ May 15th 2008 1:35PM]

Nice....now AMD is naming Graphic Cards based on condoms.....

[w00t @ May 15th 2008 1:37PM]

Yes I'm certain it was the condom manufacturer that inspired the codename...

[helloUser @ May 15th 2008 1:37PM]

for some reason, i have a feeling you think of sex FAR too often. either getting laid not at all, or not enough.

trojan does not only mean condom, but if your a brandwhore, i can see why u thought of that more so.

[Kiwi616 @ May 15th 2008 1:39PM]

Yeah....and at least at those prices you won't need any lube to pay for it :)

[telepheedian @ May 15th 2008 1:43PM]

Yeah, when I saw the title, I was thinking that the driver would come bundled with some nasties ;).

[Decoy @ May 15th 2008 4:00PM]

The next card will be called Adware

[Draaaainage! @ May 15th 2008 1:38PM]

The article at TGdaily states that a single 4870 should perform as well as a 3870 X2. If that's true, and the 4870 comes in under $300, I will being going ATI this round, it seems.

That is if I read that correctly.

[Kurian @ May 15th 2008 1:51PM]

I don't think the 4870 could outperform the 3870x2 in every game. It just might be somewhat close.
Plus at 279$ that makes it even more doubtful.
The 4870x2 will be the card to buy.

[iofthestorm @ May 15th 2008 7:39PM]

Multi-GPU solutions don't scale completely well, so it's actually quite possible for the 4870 to rival the 3870x2 in performance. Of course if you need raw performance you're going to want the most expensive card, but most rational gamers are going to jump for the 4850 or 4870. I'm considering a 4850 myself, because they'll probably overclock fairly well, hopefully enough to come close to a 4870 in performance.

[loosely_coupled @ May 22nd 2008 2:19AM]

"going ATI this round"

How would you know what you are going to do without even seeing ANY performance numbers? You have no idea what nVidia is going to pull out of it's hat.

[notaburger @ May 15th 2008 1:43PM]

...all of this is worth nothing if ATI doesn't improve their Vista support...

[helloUser @ May 15th 2008 1:45PM]

What? I thought everyone was switching back to XP?

[KyleK @ May 15th 2008 1:48PM]

What's wrong with ATIs Vista support? I have a HD3870 single-slot and no problems whatsoever in Vista 32-bit.

[Shinigami @ May 15th 2008 1:51PM]

Umm...

Guys...

Did you read it?

ATI: our new 4000 series products will have 30% more power than older products....
nVidia: our new flagship will have 100% more power than our last flagship...

I can't argue - before you buy anything, wait for testing results of both, 9900GTX and 4870 (possibly X2 version).

[Draaaainage! @ May 15th 2008 1:56PM]

That's fine, but not all of us can drop 400 - 600 bones on a flahship NVIDIA card, while the flagship ATI card is set to be a lot less coin.

Performance is great, but will undoubtedly provide a very good gaming experience without asking me to take out a second mortgage.

Bottom line; NVIDIA flagship cards are outrageously expensive and I'm not going to pay what I did for my PS3 just for a single component of my computer.

[Draaaainage! @ May 15th 2008 1:57PM]

Argh, left out some words up top.

"...but [ATI] will undoubtedly provide a very good gaming experience "without asking me to take out a second mortgage."

[iofthestorm @ May 15th 2008 7:41PM]

And you believe everything their marketing says? I haven't seen any benches of 9900 yet but I've seen some rumored 4870 benches and they are pretty damn fast, more like 50% faster (I don't know where you got 30%, they've got essentially 50% more processing power with 480 stream processors vs 320 in the R600 series).

[belial20xx @ May 15th 2008 1:51PM]

I hope it romps on nvidia...they lost their innovation.

[Cal @ May 15th 2008 4:09PM]

Innovation? I thought graphics cards were about pure power...

[digitallysick @ May 15th 2008 1:51PM]

To be honest, i have had more trouble out of nvidia cards than i have any ati card. My ati xt1950 is still alive and well, works fine under linux/windows/osx86

[Blaine Oliver @ May 15th 2008 2:23PM]

You know that the 450w power supply is baised on cheapo ones that can deliver much less, just like the HD 3850 requires a 450w, but two crossfire on my 500w alright.

[Sporkinum @ May 15th 2008 4:40PM]

Good for you.. I'v never been able to get my 1950 pro to work properly under linux. Works fine with a vesa driver though.. except you can't run full screen videos without it running choppy. No 3d support of course.

[Blaine Oliver @ May 15th 2008 5:01PM]

My 1950 pro was a bit of trouble under linux, but it ran ok. I am betting strongly that my new HD 3850 will not work under it at all, let alone any 3d.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ May 15th 2008 5:36PM]

@Blaine Oliver,

I love ATi and ATi makes great products for Windows, however Linux users have known for a long time that you must use nVIDIA for your display to function properly. This may change in the future, since AMD has made ATi Linux drivers an open source commodity.

[Pedroion @ May 21st 2008 4:47PM]

My 9600Series (128MB/128bits, yay!) runs pretty well on Ubuntu. I just love Compiz Fusion, and that's something Microsoft need to learn. Make it pretty, but make it fast.

[Mic2000 @ May 15th 2008 1:59PM]

WTF 450 watt, thats really a lot. Common Ati, be a little bit more efficient ;)

[Ken @ May 15th 2008 2:23PM]

The GPU itself does not require 450 watts. It is the recommended power supply for the system silly.

[Mic2000 @ May 15th 2008 2:39PM]

offcourse, stupid me :P, thnx!

[iofthestorm @ May 15th 2008 7:43PM]

Also, that's an estimate based on crappy power supplies. My 2900 Pro says 550W minimum and it runs fine on a 500W Antec PSU. Other PSUs by crappy brands won't be as good, hence the reason they overestimate. I'm pretty excited for these cards since I'll be getting a hefty performance benefit AND a nice power consumption reduction at the same time. A 100W recommended PSU difference is pretty huge.

[Justin @ May 15th 2008 2:12PM]

Ladies and Gentlemen, please
would you bring your attention to me
for a feast for your eyes to see
an explosion of possibility

hold tight, for this show is not over
no, still come closer
your eyes an ears will be filled with wonder
at the marvels you shall behold here

Do you want it? Do you need it? Do you love it?

Hell yeah ATI!

[David @ May 15th 2008 11:12PM]

you sit while you pee dont you.

[SimbaDogg @ May 21st 2008 5:21PM]

yeah, i seriously have no idea what you're talking about...i bought a lowly hd 2600 series a while back, because i didn't want to go w/ the power hungry 2900...but their are new drivers released about every 30-50 days or so. i'm guessing you didn't see that graphic released from MS which showed the top reasons for windows crashes on vista, if you didn't nvidia was by far and away #1

[SimbaDogg @ May 21st 2008 5:25PM]

oops, my above comment was suuposed to be a reply to notabuger, the lowest ranked a couple posts up

@ David
that is seriously one of the funnniest replies i've seen on engadget. i was def laughing out loud on that one.

[octoberasian @ May 15th 2008 2:21PM]

I have to give a big round of applauds for ATI.

Single slot cooling for both the 4850 and 4870? Compared to Nvidia's offering, that's just amazing.

And, 450 W for 4850/4870 and 550 W for Crossfire? That's hell a lot better than what Nvidia's asking for SLI on their higher end cards.

Geez, and I have a 3870 in my current system, this is all the more tempting to get.

[Alex @ May 15th 2008 2:57PM]

cost between costing between?

[FTY @ May 15th 2008 2:57PM]

Cards drain pretty much less as they recommend, only to sell you Crossfier and SLi certified products in this case PSUs... marketing at it's finest.

[phobic99 @ May 15th 2008 3:00PM]

Good thing I just bought a 3870 last week. *sigh*

[Podaman @ May 15th 2008 5:16PM]

Give him the stick, DON'T GIVE HIM THE STICK!

[Fozzie @ May 15th 2008 3:01PM]

And just WHERE does my Voodoo2 Banshee fit into all of this?

[notaburger @ May 15th 2008 4:01PM]

@Fozzie
it fits right next to your cyrix processor

[Adam Zey @ May 15th 2008 4:18PM]

Codenamed "Makedon"? The guy in charge of ATI's driver development used to be named Terry Makedon, but he disappeared from the scene over the years. Did he die or something?

[Terry Makedon @ May 15th 2008 4:56PM]

Well since I am typing this your speculation on my death may be premature. Didnt realize I disappeared from the scene in the least bit. Still doing the same job and still involved in the scene.

TM

[Podaman @ May 15th 2008 5:17PM]

It's cool when this happens.