14 DAY TRIAL // After rumors of AMD's dual-GPU Radeon HD 4870 X2 have filled hundreds of pages in the media, the Sunnyvale company has finally rolled out its latest flagship high-performance card. Furthermore, it looks like AMD is set on releasing a second dual-GPU card, based on the performance-range HD 4850 graphics processor, namely the HD 4850 X2.
It is generally said that computer enthusiasts don't care that much about the power consumption of their PC, and this is probably why both NVIDIA and AMD are confident in their recently released GTX 280 and HD 4870 X2, respectively. Both cards provide ridiculous power levels, with NVIDIA's GTX 280 featuring a 236-watt design, while ATI's dual-GPU graphics monster boasts a 270-watt one. However, power consumption levels this high are bound to also bring to users some impressive high-performance graphics cards.
While NVIDIA's GeForce GTX280 comes with 1.4 billion transistors, 1GB of GDDR3 memory with a bandwidth of 141 GB/s, and 240 processing cores set to work at 1296 MHz, AMD's brand new HD 4870 X2 delivers 2 x 956 million transistors, 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 230GB/s, and 1600 processors running at 750MHz. NVIDIA's card sells in the $500 range, while AMD's "Spartan" will go for $50 more.
According to AMD, their new X2 card will scale with an efficiency of about 60-90%, compared with the single GPU cards in typical benchmarks and current games. In fact, the company claims that its new card will be twice as fast as NVIDIA's GTX280 in some games, such as Call of Juarez. Also, the dual-GPU on a single PCB solution that AMD used on its HD 4870 X2 is said to be better than two HD 4870 CrossFire-enabled cards, offering 8 to 20% more speed.
With the new card, AMD has bridged towards a new market range, the Ultra Enthusiasts, who are ready to spend more than $400 for a single graphics card. However, if you don't find yourself in this category, then you might want to wait until the 4850 X2 makes its debut. This card will be priced lower than the "Spartan," but it will also come as a scaled down version of AMD's flagship card. With a clock speed of 625MHz, 2GB of GDDR3 memory, 2.0 TFlops floating point performance and a maximum power consumption of 230watts, the HD 4850 X2 is said to be the main competitor for NVIDIA's GTX 280.
Now that AMD's has finally unveiled a high-performance card to take NVIDIA's crown, the green company is expected to get back in the game with a 55nm GT200-based card, of which we might learn a few more things at this year's NVISION event.
