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An Early Peek At AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 14, 2008 01:02 PM
from the soon-we'll-be-back-to-external-video-cards dept.
from the soon-we'll-be-back-to-external-video-cards dept.
Dr. Damage writes "AMD has quite a hit in the Radeon HD 4000 series. Coming up next is a product code-named R700, a high-end graphics card based on two 4870s paired together. TechReport has a preliminary look at how the card — to be called the Radeon HD 4870 X2 — performs. Nvidia could have one heck of a fight on its hands."
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Technology: NVIDIA GTX 295 Brings the Pain and Performance 238 comments
Vigile writes "Dual-GPU graphics cards are all the rage and it was a pair of RV770 cores that AMD had to use in order to best the likes of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280. This time NVIDIA has the goal of taking back the performance crown and the GeForce GTX 295 essentially takes two of the GT200 GPUs used on the GTX 280, shrinks them from 65nm to 55nm, and puts them on a single card. The results are pretty impressive and the GTX 295 dominates in the benchmarks with a price tag of $499."
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91+ degrees (Score:3, Funny)
Now that's a nice heater for the winter
Heat (Score:2, Interesting)
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I de
excuse me (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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With the exception of laptops, are there any graphics cards available that won't make my room an inferno when I'm gaming?/I.
GeForce 2 was pretty good, or maybe a Radeon 8500?
Nice and toasty (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Crysis benchmarks are very good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crysis benchmarks are very good (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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dont think so (Score:2)
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Quoting from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
However, playing with this early sample of 4870 X2 is a vivid reminder that we don't make these choices in a vacuum. The reality is that a single Radeon HD 4870 GPU is nearly fast enough to keep pace with the GeForce GTX 280. Even if you're running a game that lacks a driver profile or simply doesn't scale well with more than one GPU, the 4870 X2 ought to perform awfully well. And when it does get both GPUs going, as our results show, it's by far the fastest single video card we've ever tested. If this is how AMD rolls, it's hard to complain.
thats good news for gamers' wallets.
holy @$#^#^%&# FSM! (Score:3, Funny)
FTFA:
That's, erm, considerableâ"beyond the obvious graphics applications, that's the sort of computing power that may one day enable men to figure out what women want.
If you are a guy and are looking at video cards to figure out what women want... errr, you're doing it wrong!
Even if you are referring to CPU cycles, they've tried this once, almost unanimously across the galaxy, 42 is not what women want.
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It's funny you should say that.
On several occasions, a high end, overpowered video card is exactly what my wife has been looking for.
TFA discusses what women want? (Score:5, Funny)
... the X2's 1600 total stream processors have a peak computational rate of 2.4 teraflops. That's, erm, considerable--beyond the obvious graphics applications, that's the sort of computing power that may one day enable men to figure out what women want.
Allow me to note that the very idea of plugging a woman's desires into a matrix processing unit is precisely what women do not want. It simply won't work.
To effectively compute female emotions, you'd need something like a quantum computer where you get all possible results at once (and I do mean simultaneously), usually with lots of yelling, doors slamming, and things being thrown.
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It's noble of you to suggest, but I don't have what it takes to risk my life for science.
Re:TFA discusses what women want? (Score:5, Funny)
To effectively compute female emotions, you'd need something like a quantum computer where you get all possible results at once (and I do mean simultaneously), usually with lots of yelling, doors slamming, and things being thrown.
Sorry, it's not that easy, though you're right - it's a quantum effect. Womanly wants operate according to the uncertainty principle. It is possible to figure out what a woman wants, but as soon as you do, it's no longer true. If you think you're about to figure out what she's going to want, and you may very well be right, then you can't know what she wants right now, so you're still wrong.
Parent
htpc usage - audio out (Score:2, Informative)
One bonus about these ati HD series cards is they support audio out through dvi. With a dvi to hdmi dongle it will also output 5.1 / 7.1 digital sound. Great for people who are using their pc as a home theatre hub.
4800 running too hot? (Score:5, Informative)
Make a profile in the Catalyst Control Center, make sure ATI OverDrive is enabled and check marked. Now find the profile files in:
C:/Documents and Settings/{user name}/Local Settings/Application Data/ATI/ACE
Open the profile you just created in notepad and change these lines:
My 4870 still idles at 58C or so, but anything over 30% is just too loud for me to have running all the time. Swapping the thermal paste on the GPU has also produced some good results for people.
Why do you think it is too hot? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a misconception about what temperatures should be. They should be whatever the manufacturer rates the part at. Not all parts have problems with high temperatures. My 8800 runs at about 90C and has done so for a long time, still works great.
Have some faith in the companies to test this. They have it run hot because it can run hot without ill effects.
Parent
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*Doing this mod disables active fan control on your card. The fan will run at the set percentage of its full speed all the time. Setting that number too low can result in overheating and permanent damage to you card. Mod at your own risk.
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Is it actually a problem? These things are designed to cope with very high temperatures. My 8800GTS 512 idles at 68c, I can't say I'm too worried about it; by the time it dies, it's going to be getting sand kicked in its face by £30 passively cooled cards.
Re:4800 running too hot? (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, the article addresses this issue, see this page [techreport.com]
All of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards we've tested have produced some relatively high GPU temperatures, and this early X2 card is no exception. When we asked AMD about this issue in relation to the 4850 and 4870 cards now shipping, they told us the products are qualified at even higher temperatures (over 100 [degrees] C) and tuned for low noise levels. In other words, these temperatures are more or less by design and not necessarily a problem.
Parent
Get ATI Tray Tools (Score:3, Informative)
~50 watt video card (Score:2)
Are there any decent video cards that run without adding another casefan and a 1000W PSU to my system?
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Re:1gb mem (Score:5, Informative)
1Gb != 1GB
Parent
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Ill choose the 8Gb not the 1 GB
But they are the same!
No 8Gb is more then 1GB as 8 is a larger number then 1.
It is to bad that people just don't want to type out GigaByte and GigaBit. Heck I would like to see GigiByte and GigiBit as well. so you really can tell the difference.
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16 chips actually. You missed the eight chips per processor part in your calculations.
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Read the first sentence again: "The board has eight Hynix GDDR5 memory chips per graphics processor".
Eight x 1Gib per GPU = 1GiB per GPU.
Re:Driver Support (Score:5, Informative)
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While I had no problems running XP or Vista using ATI drivers, I certainly have issues running X on Linux with ATI drivers. X keeps crashing at the weirdest times, whereas I have no problem with NVidia drivers.
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Re:radeonhd driver? (Score:5, Informative)
By the time they ship, we might have released working 3D drivers for these, through xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd. Can't guarantee anything, though, since we don't even have the documentation, but I do know that there's been some NDA work going on already.
And yes, I AM a Mesa dev. :3
Parent
Re:radeonhd driver? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a place that has the current state of the Radeon support in the various drivers lined up that's possible for someone who isn't a developer to make sense of?
When I was putting together my current box last week, trying to figure out which card was better to get was a pain when it came to the AMD hardware. I ended up getting the GTX 260, because it was the best performing card that fit into my budget and I knew it would work fine under Linux.
I couldn't make any sense of the state of the drivers for Radeon hardware. I gathered that the radeonhd driver was the actively developed one, but RV7XX hardware wasn't listed as supported [x.org]. The latest catalyst drivers [ati.com] didn't list support for the 4850/4870 either, so hearing that both drivers have working 3D support for a card not yet released is... not really odd, but the contradictions are symptomatic.
Parent
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Or does nVidia still lack competition on the Linux front?
They still have Intel to deal with though. Granted, Intel's graphics cards are usually lower end than nVidia and ATI's cards, but even with nVidia you still have to configure things, with Intel its simply install it and it works.
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It makes me laugh that people keep saying that Macs are too expensive, then they turn around and say stupid things like "400$ is a good price for a video card". 400$ is 2/3 of the price of a Mac mini.
What a stupid argument. If you want that video card you want to play games. If you want a Mac that will play games, it will cost damn near twice as much as a comparable PC that will do so. If all I want is a web browser I can pick one of those up for a couple of hundred dollars.
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Please name one person who has said both of these things.
Re:Video card prices vs Mac prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Calling people stupid for buying a 1500$ Mac is okay but calling people stupid for buying a 400$ videocard is troll.
Typical slashdot.
Parent
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Changed my password, some fucker was using my account. Sorry for the crap he/she wrote.
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Changed my password, some fucker was using my account. Sorry for the crap he/she wrote.
Me too!
Man, my impersonator was a real jerk. Nothing but lucid, excellent posts from now on.
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All Macs have a GPU. Some have intel, some have ATI, some have nVidia. I don't see how GPUs are a Windows/Linux-only topic.
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Competition = good news for the consumer.
Not really. If you look at the Linux support for both nVidia and ATI you will find that they are both lacking. And Intel isn't much of competition for them because, even though they are commonly used, they aren't as high-end as nVidia or ATI's offerings.
4850 (Score:3, Informative)