Force3D, Asustek, GeCube roll out Radeon HD 4850, 4870 series cards

AMD has already gotten its official business with its new Radeon HD 4850 series out the way, and it now looks like the flood of various iterations is in full swing, with at least three manufacturers already pushing cards out the door. Among the first out of the gate is relative upstart Force3D, which has not only let loose a Radeon HD 4850 card, but a Radeon HD 4870 as well, the latter of which AMD still seems to be staying mum about. As HEXUS.net reports, however, this particular version will boast a core frequency of 750MHz, along with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and an effective clock speed of 3,600MHz. According to DigiTimes, Asustek also has a pair of similar Radeon HD 4870 cards set for release, along with a pair of HD 4850 cards packing 1GB and 512MB of DDR3 memory, while GeCube seems to be content to launch just a single 4850 with 512MB of DDR3 memory. Hit up the links below for the full rundown of specs, which unfortunately doens't include prices just yet.

Read - HEXUS.net, "Force3D jumps the gun, launches its Radeon HD 4870"
Read - DigiTimes, "Asustek and GeCube launch ATI Radeon HD 4850-based graphics cards"

[Via TG Daily, thanks Kris120890]

[GadgetTamer @ Jun 24th 2008 3:36PM]

WOW!!!! 512 Gig of GDDR3? I wonder what the beanchmarks will be like?

Anyway, these card look pretty nice. I wonder what the price is...

[ShadowKain @ Jun 24th 2008 3:51PM]

Radeon HD 4870? Because most places have been quiet about the 4870, I sure hope benchmarks come out soon for it. Could it possibly be a 4850 upgrade, a la Nvidia 9800 GTX+ ? Hmm... I have been watching AMD for quite some time, they seem to be gaining more popularity, evident in mags such as CPU with their phenom processors. Me? Im still an Intel guy, for now.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:01PM]

> Because most places have been quiet about the 4870

That's because not everybody finished toying around with 3870 and X2.

Thanks to ATI/AMD, the last half of year in GPU market was quite entertaining.

[ShadowKain @ Jun 24th 2008 3:53PM]

Hahahaha, great catch Tamer, you get a gold star for that one :D... 512 GB?????!?!!? That deserves some "ZOMG ZOMG 1!1!000!00!110101!!!!" 's....

[Lowest Ranked @ Jun 24th 2008 5:41PM]

Please enjoy being reduced to low ranks along with him and myself.

[Rynth @ Jul 3rd 2008 4:18AM]

Lowest ranked is not lowest ranked!

Thats a conundrum or something.

[Some Kid @ Jun 24th 2008 3:56PM]

it sais GDDR5-not GDDR3
what is the difference between GDDR5 and DDR3 anyways.....?
i hope HEXUS.net is right.....
and if anyone sais "will this play crysis though?", i will personally come over to their house and shoot them
and im pretty sure it will

[ShadowKain @ Jun 24th 2008 3:58PM]

GDDR5 is the next step, dont ask me how they skipped GDDR4, not sure till I research that. GDDR5 is what AMD is pushing hard right now...

[ShadowKain @ Jun 24th 2008 4:02PM]

GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate, version 5) is a type of graphics card memory. It will be the successor to GDDR4. Unlike its predecessors, GDDR5 has two parallel DQ links that provide doubled I/O throughput compared to GDDR3 and GDDR4. GDDR5 is currently in its design state, and products should be available as early as the first half of 2008.[1]

[Krush @ Jun 24th 2008 5:43PM]

"Crysis" .... come kiss my baggy blue a$$

[ShadowKain @ Jun 24th 2008 3:57PM]

This is a badly edited post as well, sorry to harp, title reads, "Force3D, Asustek, GeCube roll out Radeon HD 4850, 4870 series cards" YET later in article states, "while GeCube seems to be content to launch just a single 4850 with 512GB of DDR3 memory" ( I know the GB part lol)....

O.o

Title sugest that GECUBE rolls out both when force 3d and asusteck is the one who has both...nice

[Some Kid @ Jun 24th 2008 3:58PM]

it sais GDDR5-not GDDR3
what is the difference between GDDR5 and DDR3 anyways.....?
i hope HEXUS.net is right.....
and if anyone sais "will this play crysis though?", i will personally come over to their house and shoot them
and im pretty sure it will

[Phil Perman @ Jun 24th 2008 3:59PM]

For anyone interested, Anandtech is reporting that the NDA on the 4870 lifts tomorrow morning, so all the reviews and pricing details should appear then

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:13PM]

When last time ATI had a such relaxed launched?...

They definitely feel an edge over nVidia right now.

Anyway, I like ATI's approach to scaling processing power - similar to CPU cores - better than nVidia's monolithic design. With nVidia, unless you have x8xx card you always feel somehow inferior.

[Darth Abe @ Jun 24th 2008 4:03PM]

Huh
looks like the 4870 kicks the crap out of the 4850
I'd like to know how it compares to the Nvidia offerings
...and what the nvidia offerings are
there are too goddamn many

[Helmore @ Jun 24th 2008 4:07PM]

The 4870 trades some serious blows with the GTX260 and prevails over it in most games.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:17PM]

> The 4870 trades some serious blows with the GTX260 and prevails over it in most games.

Most interesting to me was that 4850 was in many games on par with gtx260. Overall it was slower, yet sometime it beat gtx260. And that's $200 vs $450 we speaking here.

Benchmarks of 4870 should be definitely very very interesting. Even if it would be marginally slower than gtx280, it's still win for ATI.

[Jim @ Jun 24th 2008 4:55PM]

Well, you are unlikely to be able to cook things as quickly on your nVidia card, at least if the reported 200 + Degree F (100 + Celsius) temperature reports are correct for the 4870.

[kal326 @ Jun 24th 2008 4:10PM]

3600Mhz GDDR5 only pushing 115.2GB/s of memory bandwidth because of 256bit bus. It seems rather odd to go about things that way instead of using a 512bit bus and lower spec'd memory like Nvidia. The 9800GTX+ was reported to have 70.4GB/s using 2200Mhz GDDR3 (256bit bus?) and the GTX280 having 142GB/s using 512bit bus 2200Mhz GDDR3.

I wonder if this will lead to shortages because of the use of newer and possibly lesser yielding GDDR5 memory? GDDR3 is a lot more mature and I could see why Nvidia would stick with that for now, even if did require a more complicated and wider bus.

[Helmore @ Jun 24th 2008 4:19PM]

AMD went that route because it was more befitting of their needs. They don't need more bandwidth on that card, it's also not meant to compete with the GTX280, and it gives them a price advantage. They also plan to make an "X2" version with 2 of these chips on 1 board, this would be impossible with a 512-bit chip (unless you don't mind a board the size of a football field), this however can be done with two chips with each a 256-bit bus. Then one more thing, a chip with a 512-bit bus will be larger than the same chip but with a 256-bit bus and the price of a chip increases exponentially with increase in size.

[papu @ Jun 24th 2008 4:15PM]

IT WILL PLAY CRYSIS!! at a decent 40 fps... very high

[papu @ Jun 24th 2008 4:16PM]

sry erm proof

http://www.expreview.com/img/topic/hd4800/crysis_01.png

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:18PM]

> http://www.expreview.com/img/topic/hd4800/crysis_01.png

Cool. 4870 does 3870 X2. That's all I wanted to know ;)

I wonder how 4870 X2 would pare.

[erenba @ Jun 24th 2008 4:17PM]

Is the 4870 better than the gtx280? And which one need more power?

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:22PM]

This are results for 4850:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=5

As for 4870 - I guess we need to sit tight waiting for benchmarks tomorrow.

Due to faster/more memory (as compared to 4850) it is hard to predict how 4870 would appear in power efficiency department.

[Neeko @ Jun 24th 2008 4:18PM]

ok im upgrading my rig for mainly watching HD movies NOT gaming (xbox360) for that..

Considering getting the 2600xt or a HD3850, but now these cards are out im wondering how much bttr these are for HD material.

Do these newer radeon HD cards mostly sell for gaming? Or does anyone buy them for the HD stuff?

[papu @ Jun 24th 2008 4:24PM]

if your just watching hd stuff a ATI HD3450 will do fine , if you fid one with a HDMI output you can putout sound and video through the HDMI and ati's onboard Sound that their cards have , it also has better image quality than Nvidia cards and full Hd acceleration. try getting a passivly cooled one also , so you dont have to listen to the annoying fan :D

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 24th 2008 4:31PM]

If nVidia x600 cards play HD w/o problems, I think 4850 would be more than sufficient.

Frankly, I'd expect any non-budget card made in last two years to perform well in HD playback.

P.S. Apple iMac 24" (1920x1200) and has ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO which retails right now for literally nothing. And the iMacs are sold in part for HD playback. http://www.apple.com/imac/features/ - and think that ATI Windows drivers are better than Apple's ones.

[Fara @ Jun 24th 2008 4:37PM]

You'll be fine with one of the cheaper cards. Hell, you'd been fine with a decent CPU.

[Bill @ Jun 24th 2008 10:56PM]

An ATI 2600 XT is just fine for HD material. I have one and my PC typically experiences a 5% CPU when I'm watching HD content. This is because the ATI 2600 XT is doing all of the processing.

[Ninjakamster (PS360 FTW!) @ Jun 24th 2008 4:20PM]

I'm very interested in getting a 4850 but hear these cards right now are running very hot, that the current cards are single slot but should be actually designed for double slot with extra cooling?

[Joseph Stevens @ Jun 24th 2008 4:35PM]

on your post for the GeCube you show it as 512GB instead of 512 MB. Thought you might want to know.

[Neeko @ Jun 24th 2008 4:42PM]

Thnx guys. i think ill stick with the lower end cards. Either the 2600xt or HD3xxx cards.

Basically all i need is good HD playback and audio over DVI-HDMI.

[Krush @ Jun 24th 2008 5:48PM]

3450 ftw - low green (~$40) and go green (you can run it off a 350W psu)

[kccboy2004 @ Jun 24th 2008 4:59PM]

I am thinking about getting one of these for my Mac.

Do you think that it will give me a better refresh rate when I am surfing the net and reading my mail and that sort of stuff that I do on my Mac ?

[phanbouy @ Jun 24th 2008 5:15PM]

wow.. it's definitely cuter and more acceptable when a windows fanboy trolls than when a mac fanboy trolls

[André @ Jun 24th 2008 7:27PM]

Until it comes with an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) compatible ROM you are out of luck, unless you mean Windows.

[Col. Newman @ Jun 24th 2008 8:09PM]

It's GDDR3 not DDR3, They are NOT the same thing.

[Andy @ Jun 25th 2008 12:05AM]

What garbage, let me summarize this for the consumers who do get their hands on one, ITS STILL ATI.