An Early Peek At AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2

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."

Quoting from TFA

[unity100]

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.

Heat

[Dracker]

As my present location has poor ventilation, I'm quite keen on how my computer influences temperature. I've noticed a somewhat disturbing trend in both CPUs and GPUs in requiring more and more power and really firing up the heat. It looks like this monstrous card will definitely be a room heater. With the exception of laptops, are there any graphics cards available that won't make my room an inferno when I'm gaming?

Re:Driver Support

[WiglyWorm]

A huge fight. This is being tested with beta drivers and it already far outclasses nvidia in every game I've seen reviewed except crysis, and it's neck and neck in crysis. Nvidia is going to get trounced, that's all there is to it.

Re:radeonhd driver?

[Evangelion]

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.