douubt .. would cost more to put a socket on the gpu ... if it were on teh mobo now

Well, if they find a way to do a die-shrink and have a larger yield on the chips, then the actual cores would be cheaper. So you would buy the card, and it would come with some core and ram, and you could change it and upgrade it with bigger and better stuff.
Cheaper cores + more expensive cards = roughly equally priced cards.

erockerI can't wait for a 4870x2!! Goodbye 3870's in crossfire.:D

+1, Ill be doing the same thing!

hell yeah!! 4870x2 for me baby yeah!

this is definately worth the wait, glad i didn't upgrade :D

"While we expect the desktop boards to be announced soon, RV770-based FireGL boards will not be introduced until Siggraph 2008, which will open its doors on August 11."

FireGL August... retail 4870 some months later... ie. they are announcing now... to prop up the share price... but launch is still Q3 into retail channels.

lemonadesoda"While we expect the desktop boards to be announced soon, RV770-based FireGL boards will not be introduced until Siggraph 2008, which will open its doors on August 11."

FireGL August... retail 4870 some months later... ie. they are announcing now... to prop up the share price... but launch is still Q3 into retail channels.

Where are you getting that the 4870 will come out after FireGL?

"RV770 will launch as Radeon 4800 and will make its way into the FireStream stream processor and FireGL workstation cards." should suggest otherwise... likewise with this line "We hear the company has struck gold with the RV770 and will be bring the chip to market earlier than expected."

The new desktop cards from what I remember were always slated for June/July.. lately there's been rumors about it being ready ahead of time and this just backs that up further so you suggesting that it won't come out till even after August doesn't make much sense unless you're just trying to stir up poop.

Grammatically the sentence is open to interpretation. I could be wrong. I could be right. Given recent profits situation, loss of staff, loss of market share, etc. they need to get a few "product launch" sound bites into the market. Otherwise that share price will tank. That seems to me to be the rationale of the "timely" press release. If consumer 4850/70 is in the retail channel in Q2 (ie BEFORE END JUNE) then I will be impressed, and I take back my cynicism. But I doubt it. I think this will be Q3 before you are running these things at home.

Awesome that will give nvidia a kick in the balls, but it sucks that i just bought an x1950pro
could have make use of all those 3xxx goin for sale

lemonadesoda"While we expect the desktop boards to be announced soon, RV770-based FireGL boards will not be introduced until Siggraph 2008, which will open its doors on August 11."

FireGL August... retail 4870 some months later... ie. they are announcing now... to prop up the share price... but launch is still Q3 into retail channels.

last i check the firegl models of the rv670 came out after the 3870...second these 4870 desktop cards are slated for a quarter 2 release...so i would think that the latest is june as it ends the second quarter...these cards have been touted as being more than twice as fast as the rv670 also articles floating around the web have these cards slated @ 300...way less than Nvidias next iteration the 9900s which is suppose to be twice as much ($600). Ati is playing it smart by planning to release earlier probably catching Nvidia off guard...unlike the whole 3870 fiasco..in which nvidia got wind of the 3800series and rushed the 8800gt.

One word: Sweet!!!

snuif09Awesome that will give nvidia a kick in the balls, but it sucks that i just bought an x1950pro
could have make use of all those 3xxx goin for sale

how long since you bought that 1950 pro...because you prolly' could return it...not sayin it is ethical but at the same time we wouldn't be given the opportunity to return if it wasn't now would we.

springs113how long since you bought that 1950 pro...because you prolly' could return it...not sayin it is ethical but at the same time we wouldn't be given the opportunity to return if it wasn't now would we.

i bought it second hand so i cant return it

Still, if we're comparing the 4870 specs to 3870 specs, we should expect AT LEAST a 50% boost, that doesn't sound too bad at all. If GDDR5 can also boost its performance noticeably, ATI might be able to hold the performance crown once again.

Im waiting for the x2 aint gonna bother with its first offerings

asb2106+1, Ill be doing the same thing!

Thats if they make the X2 , it may not be vialble with this new setup, only time will tell I guess , I hope they are going to make these pcie 3.0 complient,.

REVHEADThats if they make the X2 , it may not be vialble with this new setup, only time will tell I guess , I hope they are going to make these pcie 3.0 complient,.

This is true. Ill prob flip for 2 4870's. Im gonna scope it out first and see how they perform. I just spent quite some time volt moddin my 3870s to hit 1000core speed(which they do!!)

So if the performance is not that much greater than what Im getting, Ill just wait for them to go cheap like the 3870s are now :)

lemonadesodaCore clock of over 1Ghz means ZILCH without other statistics. It's like saying there's a new P4 Netburst Extra Extreme Edition P4EEE with 5Ghz. It's a worthless power-consuming hog. We need architecture changes, fab shrinks and multiparallelism.

If they said 500Mhz clock but with 512 memory bus and 1024 universal shader units, and 75W total consumption, then I'd be much more impressed.

well we can dream can't we?

The trouble though with those kind of posts is that it makes it seem like nothing is good enough for you, nvidia's at 128 shaders, why should ati have to be at 1024?

the 4870 should have 480stream processors through 96shaders. making the x2 a beast with 960sp's and 192 shaders. combine that with 32tmu's per core and gddr5 and it starts to look really nice. while again that is on paper we can only hope that this thing actually delivers.

Of course I wouldn't mind if ati increased the rop's to 32 and reduced the amount of simple shaders while increasing the amount of complex (something like a 4x4 setup would be sweet) I think the 4870 will be a decent performer.

cant wait :) i hope we can pay it specialy end this year :D

Still 16 ROP's? Pathetic. Even if these cards sport 1GHz core clocks, that would still translate into relatively poor raw pixel pushing power (2008-wise) and since there are no major architectural changes from the 29xx lineup, inclusion of a 256bit memory interface will only exacerbate filtering and/or AA issues AMD's GPU's suffer from.

(Note: AMD has more or less admitted that the 512bit memory interface on the 29xx lineup was really there to cover up for poor filtering/AA performance and architectural flaws than anything else.)

It seems everyone is "budgeting" their GPU's nowadays. Nvidia with cut-down G92 and its various offspring and ATI with their "tweaked" and "cooler" 38xx lineup. Both of which are nearly identical to their predecessors aside from being manufactured on smaller fabrication technology which allowed for somewhat higher core clocks.

I think the days of monster GPU's are long gone. Massive performance jumps and architectural improvements from one generation to another seem to be a thing of the past. Anyone who's expecting a monster GPU from AMD this summer, and then a monster GPU from nVidia in retaliation, is fooling themselves. AMD simply can't afford to make one and nVidia simply has no reason to make one if their competition can't do it to begin with.

Anytime a GPU developer pushes the the power-draw of their latest generation GPU as the foremost feature, you know for certain that performance has either suffered or hasn't improved much or at all vs. the previous generation.

ATi has been under so much pressure lately, I bet this thing will roxorz nvidia's soxorz
hey addsub ROPs are outdated everyone uses shader units now

lemonadesodaGrammatically the sentence is open to interpretation. I could be wrong. I could be right. Given recent profits situation, loss of staff, loss of market share, etc. they need to get a few "product launch" sound bites into the market. Otherwise that share price will tank. That seems to me to be the rationale of the "timely" press release. If consumer 4850/70 is in the retail channel in Q2 (ie BEFORE END JUNE) then I will be impressed, and I take back my cynicism. But I doubt it. I think this will be Q3 before you are running these things at home.

I doubt it -- what you're saying seems to be based in bias more than rationale. There really seems to be absolutely no reason to think that it would come after the Radeon cards. Like someone mentioned above, even if you want to argue how the quotes can be interpreted recent history should point to the idea the the workstation cards would come after the fact.

Some of the other things you mention are also sounding a little off. While AMD is not in the green yet the last article I read on their profit situation pointed out that while it dropped from Q4 2007 it is up vs. where they were this time last year. Given the effects of holiday spending and the release of the 3000 series it probably should be expected for it to drop from Q4 last year by virtue of Q4 just being a particulary strong quarter.. the increase from this quarter last year should probably suggest that things are picking up for them (or if you prefer something that retains more pessimism, they're only in the shit up to the knees this year where they might have been up to their waists last year). Likewise, last I read they actually gained marketshare (from an article on VR-zone a couple of weeks back) with their 3000 series.

The AA problems from the 2xxx and 3xxx cards are supposed to be fix on these cards. So the major drops should be a thing of the past. Also, I personally think adding the extra TMU's will boost ATI's performace quite noticeably has well. 50% sounds nice. Cept in Crysis. 25 avg on a my 3850 to 40? But thats Crysis's fault. Although I have found that the 8.3/4 drivers have made it play nicer.

Still only 256bit ring bus though. I wreckon the 512 on the HD 2900 XT didnt go like they though or was over kill? for a card this caliber you would think they would up it. Also, one thing that bothers me, the quote about them failing miserably with their graphics section. I dont think that is true, taken from the fact that the x1900 on up has sold extremely well and even the uber ocers are taking ATI cards and reaching them high scores :D

damn - I've been holding off for a 3870x2, I guess I'll continue to wait until the 4870x2 is out!


Asides, though, I'm a little concerned by AMD saying they're going to be releasing stuff ahead of schedule - that could be either good or bad, depending on how "ready" the product is.

Little bummed about the 256-bit MEM BUS, but, IMO, GDDR5 partnered with a 1GHz GPU? I think she'll still be game. Although, 256b might be pushing it if a card gets packed with 1GB of GDDR5. I think that 1GB claim will prob be for the GDDR3 - on that note, why 3?! Why not use 4 instead? If a whole series was stouting GDDR4 and GDDR5, they'd be ahead of the curve over nVidia on a technological level.

GDDR4 must still be uber expensive, ATM.

brian.cawhat you're saying seems to be based in bias...
I read on their profit situation pointed out that while it dropped from Q4 2007 it is up vs. where they were this time last year.

1./ What bias? LOL, I'm an ATI fanboi... and ONLY got ATi Radeons and FireGLs. LOL

2./ You cant really compare the unaudited Q1 vs Q1 figures for 2007 and 2008. In both situations there is a significant loss. In 2007 there were significant costs associated with the Ati aquisition. To say profit is improved and everything is OK is falling into the apples vs. oranges trap. There are so many significant adjustments to the window-dressed accounts. Only last week the AMD board had a showdown with investment analysts and they were NOT convinced that the AMD board was delivering... (google for the transcript). AMD *must* do some +ve PR work at this time. If not, not only will the share price sink further... but there will be pressure to replace board members.

I'm NOT arguing about dates of which model gets released first, firegl or consumer. Thats not the issue. The point is the "release being brought forward"... " we are ready to release"... "revenues coming soon"... "promise"... is all *necessary* PR to keep the (investor)market happy.