More Details on AMD's Upcoming RV770 Graphic Cards

Details about the upcoming Radeon graphic cards are slowly emerging on the web. Technical specifications, as well as product photos are being made available on various technology websites. The new graphic cards, based on the RV770 graphic chip, are expected to provide their users with performance levels 20% higher than the ones currently available on NVIDIA's 8800GT and 9800GTX.

As we informed you last week, AMD is planning to release one of the two RV770-based graphic cards with GDDR5 memory. This card is obviously the one expected to improve the graphic quality of desktop computer systems, as compared to NVIDIA's 9800GTX. Besides the GDDR5 memory, courtesy of memory manufacturer Qimonda, the new 4800 series graphic cards will deal with a higher GPU clock speed. The mid-range 4850 will jump from 670MH (found on the current 3850) to 800MHz, while the high-performance 4870 will be the first graphic card to provide a GPU clocked at 1 GHz.

This should be great news for graphic card manufacturers using ATI's GPUs, as they have been working hard on trying to compete with NVIDIA's channel partners. The new graphic cards are not only expected to provide better technical numbers but even to be more efficient at the same clock speed as previous GPUs. The new Radeons will feature a 32 texture management units, offering both the 4800 graphic cards the power to handle more pixel and geometry effects at once. The memory clock speeds on these cards is expected to run between 1.8 GHz and 2.2GHz.

Both cards are expected to sport a 256-bit memory interface, PCI-E 2.0 support, CrossFireX, Unified Video Decoder (UVD) 2 and DirectX 10.1. The mid-range HD 4850 is expected to have a price tag between $229 and $249, while the high-performance model will be around the $329-349 price tag. The Radeon HD 4870 is expected to be available in July.