14 DAY TRIAL // AMD is reportedly making the final adjustments to its RV770-powered Radeon 4800-series of graphics cards. The chip manufacturer will introduce next month a new generation of graphics products, including the 4850, 4870 and 4870 X2 versions.
Initially slated for later release, AMD pushed the dates forward in an attempt at returning to a healthy, 6-month refresh cycle. The cards have been in production since March, and early reports claim that they are flawlessly working at peak specifications. Talking about the technical specifications, strap yourself to the chair, as AMD's achievements with the 4800-series are quite impressive.
For instance, the Radeon 4800 series GPUs come with 480 shader units, 32 texture units and a 256-bit memory controller. Moreover, the new GPU can natively support GDDR3, GDDR4 and GDDR5 memory, although GDDR4 is highly unlikely to be present in any flavor of the chip.
The number of transistor on the silicon has also been dramatically improved over the previous 666 million in the RV670 to more than 800 million, which means extra computing horsepower across the entire 4800 family. This was mostly possible thanks to the 55-nanometer manufacturing process carried out at TSMC's fabrication units in Taiwan.
AMD decided to split the clock of the GPU and shaders, following Nvidia's approach in the GeForce 8800 series. While the 4850 GPU is expected to come with a core clock of around 650 MHz and a shader clock of 850 MHz, the higher-end 4870 will come with an 850 MHz core and a 1050 MHz shader clock.
This move is not geared to squeeze extra performance from the GPU, but rather to optimize the card's power requirements, given the fact that such chips are true powerhogs, and the Radeon 2900XT proved this point.
GDDR5 is also a welcome addition, thanks to its extended overclocking capabilities. Enthusiast users can easily break the default 2.0 GHz memory clock up to a whooping 4 GHz, although such moves will bend the 150-watt thermal envelope of the card and is likely to have you void the warranty.
AMD plans to ship its 4850 256MB GDDR3 at a sub-$250 price tag, while the Radeon 4870 version with 1 GB of GDDR3 will retail for about $349. The 4870 X2 big daddy will arrive later and is likely to sell for about $499, although AMD might experience some issues in stuffing two GPUs on a single board.