The last time a GPU milestone this significant was passed, it was June of 2007, and we remember it well. We were kicked back, soaking in the rays from Wall Street and firmly believing that nothing could ever go awry -- anywhere, to anyone -- due to a certain graphics card receiving
1GB of onboard RAM. Fast forward a few dozen months, and now we've got AMD dishing out the planet's first factory-clocked card to hit the 1GHz mark. Granted, overclockers have been running their cards well above that point for awhile now, but hey, at least this bugger comes with a warranty. The device doing the honors is the
ATI Radeon HD 4890, and it's doing it with air cooling alone and just a wee bit of factory overclocking. Take a bow,
AMD -- today's turning out to be
quite a good one for you.
posted May 13th 2009 11:17AM
Radeon is great card for gaming. Sad, that its GPGPU capabilities are limitied in Folding@Home application. Until now Nvidia GTX295 is unrivalled there. More of superfolding: http://estoniadonates.wordpress.com/
Ya that's nice.
RELEASE THE 5000 SERIES ALREADY!
I'M NOT GOING TO BUY ANOTHER 4000 SERIES CARD - no one would knowing that the 5000 series is already overdue.
The 4890 is great for folding@home. I upgraded from a 3087 to a diamond xoc 4089 overclocled to 925mhz and this thing flys on folding. It has gotten my past the 200th place in team dl.tv Sure its not as fast as the GTX 295 but its a great card for the money.
If the 5000 isn't ready why rush it? Look at Nvidia's GTS/X line. Pointless to just release cards that are a different "series" with little to differentiate them. Also, it's not like there are any games that need a new line of cards anyway.
I'm not sure about the specific folding@home situation, but the MAJOR trump card AMD has with the 48xx architecture is that it is WAY FASTER than Nvidia's GT200 when doing double-precision / 64-bit floating point calculations.
Although some situations don't always require double precision, it is essential for much of the technical science running on supercomputers. Having fast DP processing opens up a lot more science to be able to take advantage of GPGPU.
Now, this might all change with Nvidia's next-gen chipset which is supposedly a radical new MIMD architecture, but for now AMD is in the lead on that front. and when OpenCL levels the playing field, Nvidia won't have the CUDA software advantage anymore.
I don't have a spare air conditioner for the room in which the computer in which this card would be.
Time to start computing nude?
What do you mean "start"?
Where i live its fucking freezing, this would be well recieved.
wait wait, you or the computer?
@ Stereohype: I miss the days of "Highest Ranked." You completely and totally deserve it.
I wish you were joking. My 8800GTS(G92) is like a small space heater, but it doesn't put out nearly as much heat as many of these newer cards.
@Farris:
Then click here http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/13/amd-busts-out-worlds-first-air-cooled-1ghz-gpu/comments/18808040/
haha my first first. No but seriously, pretty cool... i remember aweing at 1 gb graphics cards when they first came out since you could never "overclock" you memory size as you can with gpu speed. There's basically more speed in that graphics card then some older laptops which is pretty crazy if you think about it
Don't you mean your first fail?
If you look purely from the point of view of frequency then yes. Though if you look at floating point, graphics cards have long dominated over computers in that area.
typed a little much to make it to first ...
I'm just waiting for sapphire to release a version of this with a better heatsink and fan on it.
Someone explain why you cannot use or adapt CPUs and DRAM in a graphics card in maximum of 5 easy to understand points.
Winner gets a biscuit, fedexed from Oxford to wherever the hell you live
www.google.com ?
I don't think 5 points will be enough because there is almost nothing related between CPU and GPU at their core.
CPUs can be used to display graphics, but they are not designed for it, so are not as good at it.
GPUs are highly speciallized (highly parallelized) to take advantage of the way an image is represented by data.
An image can be taken apart, and the pieces can be processed at the same time.
DRAM from the board can be used (shared) by both the CPU and and onboard GPU.
DRAM is also mounted on a stand alone graphics card to be used by the GPU of the card.
Because GPU's use linear commands and functions, whereas CPU's are able to perform many more function. As a result, it takes longer for a CPU to find and use a command, as it has to search the entire library. This is fine, as CPU's are designed with general purpose in mind, but GPU's are designed for, well, just that. Graphics. They only need a few set commands to use, and such, can be much more efficient in what they do. CUDA (afaik), converts strings of GPU commands into something similar to CPU commands, and this is why CUDA can enhance some applications where a GPU would normally be no use.
As for DRAM, no idea. I assumed GPU's used DRAM chips in just the same way as RAM sticks.
lol I googled and found this http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvision08_gpu_v_cpu.html
Not very... scientific but good :D
Haha awesome, what type of biscuits do you like?
Give us better architecture, not bigger numbers.
I just want to play Crysis Wars at 2560x1600 on max detail settings. How many more GPU generations do I have to wait? :(
High resolution gaming is a cruel mistress - one day I'll find (read bring my self to buying) something better to drive this SyncMaster 305 than a crappy 8800 GT.
i do enjoy a good tech milestone, congratuwelldone
Good... I'm upgrading by this Fall, when Modern Warfare 2 and Pro Evo Soccer 2010 hit..... all I need in addition to that is a serious modern-time RTS title, but nobody seems to be developing that.
While your waiting, Command and Conquer Generals is a decent modern-time RTS...
no its not... it sucked
D-uh. I've already been milking Generals Zero Hour, along with all its mods (must try the Last Stand v6) for 4 years now. I want a new game, with new next-gen visuals.
Starcraft 2... I joke I joke...
If you actually played games, then you would know about
Dawn of war 2
SupCom + FA
SoSE - Sins of a Solar Empire
Macbeth, which part of "modern-time RTS title" did you fail to understand?
Firstly, the 2900XT sucked in spite of having 1gb of VRAM. Secondly, the vast majority overclockers (probably 99.9%) have not been able to run their GPU's at over 1ghz... It really wasn't until the HD4890 that 1ghz was easily attained.
Will this allow me to play minesweeper at full res?
Oh ho, is funny because minesweeper does not need graphics power, oh ho!
/end vague family guy reference
@Blacksheep:
And that, my friend, is sarcasm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKgiC1IOdg4
Sigh, just a spin, it is easy to overclock with nothing but air cooling any of the top end GPU these days.
damn... 2 lessons from Engadget in under 2 days! Didn't know ATI is owned by or related to AMD!
And yeah, now that it hits 1Ghz, when can it get cheap enough to be owned by peasants?
You... didnt know AMD and ATI were related...
Oh, ok. I see how this is, you have a life outsides of this stuff do you?
@Oli D
I hope you have a life outside engadget commenting
yeah i do, laptop repair, building SFF PCs and programming...
It might be 1GHz, but it doesn't have a half naked, female cyborg ninja on it... so i'll wait for another release.
I'd be interested to hear how much like a hairdryer it sounds like.
(waiting for a passively cooled 4770 equivalent)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFZ39nQ_k90
If it's "factory overclocked," but the factory determines the chip's bin speed then isn't it's not really overclocked, is it? Intel could bin their processors lower then send them out "overclocked," bad-a-bing bad-a-bang, instant marketing!
But they already got a lesson taught by the EU, so I doubt they would want to do that.
cool
I will care more when they make this in a 45nm version that doesn't boil water.
i might tout that as a feature actually...
"Does it boil?"