Thursday, April 24th 2008

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Video Cards Specs Leaked

Apr 24th, 2008 07:49 Discuss (278 Comments)

Thanks to TG Daily we can now talk about the very soon to be released ATI HD 4800 series of graphics cards with more details. One week ahead of its presumable release date, general specifications of the new cards have been revealed. All Radeon 4800 graphics will use the 55nm TSMC produced RV770 GPU, that include over 800 million transistors, 480 stream processors or shader units (96+384), 32 texture units, 16 ROPs, a 256-bit memory controller (512-bit for the Radeon 4870 X2) and native GDDR3/4/5 support as reported before. At first, AMD's graphics division will launch three new cards - Radeon HD 4850, 4870 and 4870 X2:

ATI Radeon HD 4850 - 650MHz/850MHz/1140MHz core/shader/memory clock speeds, 20.8 GTexel/s (32 TMU x 0.65 GHz) fill-rate, available in 256MB/512MB of GDDR3 memory or 512MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.73GHz
ATI Radeon HD 4870 - 850MHz/1050MHz/1940MHz core/shader/memory clock speeds, 27.2 GTexel/s (32 TMU x 0.85 GHz) fill-rate, available in 1GB GDDR5 version only
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - unknown core/shader clock speeds, available with 2048MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1730MHz

The 4850 256MB GDDR3 version will arrive as the successor of the 3850 256MB with a price in the sub-$200 range. The 4850 512MB GDDR3 should retail for $229, while the 4850 512MB GDDR5 will set you back about $249-269. The 1GB GDDR5 powered 4870 will retail between $329-349. The flagship Radeon HD 4870 X2 will ship later this year for $499.

Source: TG Daily

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278 Comments on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Video Cards Specs Leaked

choppy

sic, i hope this owns a 9600gt which i was going to buy in a couple weeks!

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

So the core is now split to geometry and shader domains with their own clock-gens. Good. close to 4 GHz memory on the HD4870? What for?

choppy

btarunrSo the core is now split to geometry and shader domains with their own clock-gens. Good. close to 4 GHz memory on the HD4870? What for?

what do you mean what for?! speed..performance...

HTC

It seams that the GDDR5 memory, power usage wise, is FAR better :)

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

choppywhat do you mean what for?! speed..performance...

Yeah and all that bandwidth is going to be put to use. :rolleyes:

It's more of a marketing feature than something that will credit performance genuinely. GDDR5 ZOMG!

choppy

btarunrYeah and all that bandwidth is going to be put to use. :rolleyes:

It's more of a marketing feature than something that will credit performance genuinely. GDDR5 ZOMG!

games are getting bigger and demanding much more from gfx cards, within the next year you will understand why!

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

choppygames are getting bigger and demanding much more from gfx cards, within the next year you will understand why!

How much has GDDR4 contributed to the performance leadership of current ATI GPU's over its competition using supposedly slower GDDR3 ? Not much. While I agree that since the memory bus is narrow (256bit for both RV670 and G92), faster memory standards help. But you need a GPU that requires lot of memory bandwidth and that can utilize all that bandwidth. If it doesn't, it remains more of a marketing feature. Watch how the HD3870 X2 uses GDDR3 memory but performs on-par/better than 2x HD3870 which has the faster memory.

sinner33

Wonder how much faster these 4870's are compared to 3870's? :confused:

HTC

btarunrHow much has GDDR4 contributed to the performance leadership of current ATI GPU's over its competition using supposedly slower GDDR3 ? Not much. While I agree that since the memory bus is narrow (256bit for both RV670 and G92), faster memory standards help. But you need a GPU that requires lot of memory bandwidth and that can utilize all that bandwidth. If it doesn't, it remains more of a marketing feature. Watch how the HD3870 X2 uses GDDR3 memory but performs on-par/better than 2x HD3870 which has the faster memory.

That could be because of this:

The graphics processor itself will integrate more texture memory units (TMUs), which is the Achilles' heel of the R6xx generation: 32 TMUs in the RV770 will challenge the 56/64 units of Nvidia’s G92/G92b.

Not sure, though.

#10

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

Interesting. Good to know ATI is addressing all issues that held back its previous generations. I'm very optimistic about the RV770 because of a much stronger shader domain of the GPU.

#11

Exceededgoku

Why not more TMUs??? Why do they always have to be conservative in the parts that matter? I'll probably still get one though lol.

#12

magibeg

Well it could be cost related for why they don't add more TMU's or maybe, just maybe ati cards are not exactly like nvidia cards and are held back by different things :-O

#13

mdm-adph

Hooray for independent shader speeds. :toast:

#14

newtekie1

Semi-Retired Folder

malwareATI Radeon HD 4870 - 850MHz/1050MHz/1940MHz core/shader/memory clock speeds, 27.2 GTexel/s (32 TMU x 0.85 GHz) fill-rate, available in 1GB GDDR5 version only

What happened to "the 4870 will be the first mass-production GPU with a clock speed higher than 1GHz"?

#15

mdm-adph

newtekie1What happened to "the 4870 will be the first mass-production GPU with a clock speed higher than 1GHz"?

I think it got lost in the same dimension as 100% efficient SLI. :p

#16

Odin Eidolon

Nasty! ;););)

#17

newtekie1

Semi-Retired Folder

mdm-adphI think it got lost in the same dimension as 100% efficient SLI. :p

Can you show me an article actually claiming SLI will be 100% efficient?

#18

mdm-adph

newtekie1Can you show me an article actually claiming SLI will be 100% efficient?

Nope, cause it's impossible. OOOHH BURNSAUCE.

#19

newtekie1

Semi-Retired Folder

mdm-adphNope, cause it's impossible. OOOHH BURNSAUCE.

It is impossible because the claim was never made. However, the 1GHz claim actually WAS made. It is just more marketing BS put out by the graphics cards companies to trap the fanboys.

#20

MrMilli

RV770 vs RV670:
MEM: 123GB/s vs 72GB/s --> +70%
TEX: 27200 vs 12400 --> +120%
GFLOP: 1008 vs 497 --> +102%

My guess is that it will be faster than 3870X2 since that's 2xRV670 at around 70% efficiency. I guess close to or matching 9800GX2. But for sure much faster than 8800GTX, like some suggest.
(based on these results: www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_asus_radeon_hd_3850_x2/20/#abschnitt_performancerating_qualitaet )

Other things to keep in mind is the transistor count and die size advantage ATI will have and already has. RV670 is already smaller than G94 and almost half of G92.
This advantage will only grow with RV770 vs GT200. That's around 800M vs almost 1.1B transistors. I know GT200 will be faster but at what cost?

#21

mdm-adph

newtekie1It is impossible because the claim was never made. However, the 1GHz claim actually WAS made. It is just more marketing BS put out by the graphics cards companies to trap the fanboys.

Oh, I agree about the general nature of marketing BS, but how do you know that the 4870 X2 isn't going to be clocked at 1 GHz?

#22

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

Maybe because the shader domain of the GPU's have a 1.00+ GHz clock, it would have eluded speculators to thinking the GPU itself was 1+ GHz clocked. Maybe they didn't know the RV770 was split into geometry and shader domains with their own clocks.

#23

HTC

mdm-adphOh, I agree about the general nature of marketing BS, but how do you know that the 4870 X2 isn't going to be clocked at 1 GHz?

Whether or not it will be clocked @ 1 GHz isn't what's important: to me, it would be EXTREMELY significant IF 1 single 4850 could match a 3870x2 in performance. Don't know if it can, though.

#24

mdm-adph

HTCWhether or not it will be clocked @ 1 GHz isn't what's important: to me, it would be EXTREMELY significant IF 1 single 4850 could match a 3870x2 in performance. Don't know if it can, though.

That'd be cool, but there's no way -- a 3870x2 can sure throw out some pixels.

#25

magibeg

So should i just sell my 3870 now and pick up one of these bad boys when they come out. Waiting will only make the value of my card decrease most likely :(

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ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Video Cards Specs Leaked

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