2008-06-18 08:02:00 In reply to GriftGFX (2008-06-18 07:45:47)

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Wii60!

"We've said that Gears of War was graphically the best game have ever been made, well it looks like Pong compared to Crysis and some of the DX10 titles."

-Gary Whitta (Venting on the NG podcast after Coming back from the Games for Windows)

2008-06-18 08:05:23

I really wish that..

1) Puma's CPU's weren't shit compared to the C2D. They can't even match its clock speed, and per clock cycle they're not as fast to begin with!

2) The mobile version of the 48XX series would ship this summer.

If they would let vendors like Sager make C2D notebooks w/ 4800M cards, and XGP support it would be fucking awesome. But they won't. Plus the first generation of XGP products are all single chip 3850's and 3870's.

Boo.

2008-06-18 08:12:13

Anywho, Some more 4850 Crossfire numbers:

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Wii60!

"We've said that Gears of War was graphically the best game have ever been made, well it looks like Pong compared to Crysis and some of the DX10 titles."

-Gary Whitta (Venting on the NG podcast after Coming back from the Games for Windows)

2008-06-18 08:23:56

Not a single test w/ AA that doesn't bottom out under 30fps, and all high (rather than very high) and DX9. Not particularly thrilling. By the time you can play this game on very high in high resolution without skipping a beat, I'll have already played both it and its stand alone expansion. Bummer.

2008-06-19 06:05:05

The 8400 can be OC to 3.8? is that still safe? or its too much?
Asking cos i have the 8400... LOL

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GoW, War3, Halo, MYST, Civilazation

2008-06-19 07:17:08 In reply to Schmooboo (2008-06-19 06:05:05)

2008-06-22 11:33:38

Okay, I'm totally impressed by the Radeon 4800 series, and I haven't even seen 4870 tests. CrossfireX doesn't scale as well as I had hoped, but it's still pretty impressive. What's really mind blowing, is that this card has (4850) has been spotted for as low as $150, which makes Crossfire achievable for ~$300--less than a single 9800GTX+. Nvidia has already dropped the price of the original 9800GTX significantly in response!

Bring on the 4870 and 4870 X2, and welcome back to the party ATI.

2008-06-22 16:07:19

The interesting thing is the ATI chips are much better positions for the mobile market with better power/heat characteristics and it won't hurt that they have a checkbox advantage in features.

Back and forth they go... NV's PhysX/Ageia was a crucial catch though as ATI was (was...) far ahead in GPU physics and now ATI is left cold with both Havok and Ageia off the market. Yeah, they will "work" with Havok, but don't bet on Intel being too excited about really pushing to support ATI when they want to consolidate the CPU and Larabee position.

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My Blog: http://www.NextGenThinkTank.com

2008-06-24 01:24:31

Strange.. when you add more than two 4850's in Crossfire, Crysis actually takes a huge performance hit:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1475/8/page_8_be...

WTF? I wonder if this issue would effect two 4870 X2's in Crossfire?

Ace: nvidia's control over physics would be the only thing keeping me away from the R700 if I were in the market right this second.. and I think I'd probably chose GPU performance for the time being anyway. I'm happy to see that there are actually worthy Radeons back on the market. Competition is good for everyone. I've only ever owned one ATI board (9800 Pro) but I'm glad to see that they're a real contender again.

2008-06-24 14:11:47 In reply to GriftGFX (2008-06-24 01:24:31)

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Marumaro for the WIN !!

2008-06-25 19:30:14

Hey guys, xtreme tech, which i find are probably the best tech reviews, just IMO...
has the 4850 in review.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2320904...

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GoW, War3, Halo, MYST, Civilazation

2008-06-25 20:36:46 In reply to Schmooboo (2008-06-25 19:30:14)

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Mods, stop changing my SIG! I'm going to end up banning you!

2008-06-25 22:49:49

nVidia just released a card. The GTX 260 is the next thing in the pipes and, I dunno, I'm seriously doubting it's going to catch ATI in the value department. You're talking at least six months before nvidia catches up imo.

2008-06-27 02:45:56

2008-06-27 03:38:00 In reply to GriftGFX (2008-06-27 02:45:56)

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Mods, stop changing my SIG! I'm going to end up banning you!

2008-06-27 03:55:55

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341

...and on! (4870 benchmarked)

2008-06-27 09:43:49

Guess ill be getting one of those then :P

Looks like bringing DDR5 to the table was a win for ATI, NV will follow suit shortly I'm sure.

Only problem I have is that it says the HD4870 will support 8 ch PCM through HDMI yet I don't see a HDMI interface, only DVI :S

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Marumaro for the WIN !!

2008-06-27 14:09:24

It is ping-pong. While ATI did some stupid stuff with their last few cards revisionist history has also set in (e.g. how "horrible" the R420 was... when it was pretty good). What ATI has done wrong since the 9600 GPUs was neglect the midrange as the X700 and X1600 were pretty crappy and the HD2600s were just not popping against the NV counterparts. Sure, they did some price moves on some GPUs (like the X1900 Pros) but the HD3850 and HD3870 were definately shots in the right direction. The HD4850 and HD4870 are showing ATI has gauged the sagging PC market and are making a play at realistic price points.

What I find most interesting about the new ATI chips is the chip-to-chip CF. I would like to see how it performs as, my guess is, that multi-chip solutions (from design cost, customization, and scalability goals as well as efficency in regards to energy and production) are going to be important in the next couple years. If ATI can get CF to do efficient load balancing between chips (90% or better) it could make for a great solution. Design 1 smallish chip and double, even quadrupal the dies to scale performance to the market section. The fact you are really only making 1 chip could have significant economies of scale and supply/demand benefits. And if you have 2 or 3 of these GPU cores it is easy to delegate one to another type of processing task... or even embed a small core like such onto a CPU for embedded markets, low end PCs (think of all PCs having decent 3D), or even as a beefy FP engine for media tasks (uber MMX/SSE).

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My Blog: http://www.NextGenThinkTank.com

2008-06-30 05:52:34

Me: Man upset at 3 month PC cycle, reads thread and goes to bed annoyed, news at 11.

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Hey, I'm just like you. I put my pants on one leg at a - dammit, I knew I forgot something today.

2008-06-30 14:19:58

I`m hopefully getting my new rig in a matter of days and it`s coming with the Radeon HD3850 which isn`t that far away from what the newer HD4850 is giving on specs imo (once I overclock it to death!). I`ll get roughly 710-720 mhz on the core and memory up to at least 1800mhz too which should out-perform my older 8800GTS with ease.

2008-06-30 14:24:16

HD 3850:

- ATI Radeon HD 3850 GPU @ 668MHz
- 512MB GDDR3 Memory @ 1655MHz
- 320 stream processing units
- 666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
- PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
- 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface
- Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
- Hardware processed 1080p video playback of Blu-ray™ and HD DVDs
- Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
- ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
- HDMI with 5.1 surround sound audio
- ATI PowerPlay™
- ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
- Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
- Shader Model 4.1
- 450Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended.
- For ATI CrossfireX: 550 watt power supply or greater with two 6-pin connectors.

HD 4850:

- ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPU @ 625MHz
- 512MB GDDR3 Memory @ 1986MHz
- 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
- PCI Express 2.0 support
- 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface
- ATI CrossFireX Multi-GPU Technology
- Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support
- Shader Model 4.1
- ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
- Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD) for Blu-ray and HD Video
- Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support
- On-chip HDCP

Standard 4850 625MHz my overclocked 3850 720MHz so I should only be losing out on memory.

Am I wrong ?, as both these two seem similar to me and the HD 4850 series is not as bigger upgrade than I thought it would`ve been.

As long as I can run WoW, Spore, Left 4 Dead and Diablo-3 in full @ 1920 x 1200 resolution then I`ll be fine (which it should do).

2008-06-30 15:47:45

The 4800 blows the 3800 away dude. You can't just look at specs on paper and expect it to get equal performance by hitting the same clock speed. The 4850 is a much better GPU than the 3850. You're not going to make up for it being a different architecture just by overclocking.

The 4850 has what, 800 stream processors and the 3850 has 320? Those millions and millions of extra transistors aren't just there for show. Just read Anand's most current previews, 3870's are included in the lineup, which are already significantly better than 3850's :P

I'm not trying to burst your bubble here, but when you see numbers like this:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341...

I wouldn't expect the 3850 to perform very well at that resolution in most modern games. The 3870 gets slaughtered by the 8800GT and ATI's cards do comparatively well in Call of Duty.

2008-06-30 19:39:55

4870 > 4850 >>>>> 3870 > 3850

The new Radeons blow away the old ones. The fix stuff, like AA, but also are beefed up in texturing and a boatload of shaders.

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My Blog: http://www.NextGenThinkTank.com

2008-07-02 22:17:57

well I(more like a friend did for me) picked up the VisionTek 4850 from work couple days ago, and boy does it run hotter than the sun :p

Awesome card, but I may take it back till they come out with one with better cooling. We'll see. I have to figure out how to get RT working for this thing.

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“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”-- Harvey Dent

2008-07-02 22:43:51 In reply to Acert93 (2008-06-30 19:39:55)