Tuesday, September 16th 2008
Radeon HD 4850 X2 Priced at $399, Claims to Outperform GTX 280
The battle for supremacy in the current generation of consumer graphics hasn't calmed down as yet. Just as reports came in of NVIDIA giving the GeForce GTX 260 a boost with its shader compute power by enabling 24 shader units, taking on the Radeon HD 4870, GeForce GTX 280 seems to be enjoying its $420~$440 price-tag. For sure it isn't the fastest graphics accelerator but its compelling price tag is what is drawing buyers away from the HD 4870 X2.
AMD had already announced in its press release for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 launch that it would release a HD 4850 X2 at a roughly $400 price range. That moment seems to be coming closer, when ATI has a graphics card for $399, that outperforms the GeForce GTX 280. Three slides from the company have surfaced. The first one lists out its vital specifications, including its maximum power draw, rated at 230W. The memory bandwidth of this card is 128 GB/s, and it ends up with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.
The second slide shows some company performance figures, which claim that the HD 4850 X2 could be up to 40% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in some games, with an overall lead across all tests mentioned. The third slide shows how ATI is stacked up against NVIDIA in Q3, however, the entry of the revised GTX 260 could disturb that chart.
Source:
Expreview
AMD had already announced in its press release for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 launch that it would release a HD 4850 X2 at a roughly $400 price range. That moment seems to be coming closer, when ATI has a graphics card for $399, that outperforms the GeForce GTX 280. Three slides from the company have surfaced. The first one lists out its vital specifications, including its maximum power draw, rated at 230W. The memory bandwidth of this card is 128 GB/s, and it ends up with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.
71 Comments on Radeon HD 4850 X2 Priced at $399, Claims to Outperform GTX 280
High filtering doesn't help unless you are using the resolution far higher than the resolution the game engine was built to fully accommodate.
Lets see how it OC's and how it compares to two GTX260's. Lets face it.... Nvidia will freak out and probably make a GTX 260 GX2 that will smoke it at a price that will murder your wallet and the 4870x2.
I got my GTX 280 for $320 so I am not really worried yet. But if they made the 4850x2 only $300, I would then feel like an upgrade to it.
This makes the price of the 4870x2 a little high doesn't it? I wonder what the performance difference will be.
Obviously the 4850X2 is the smarter choice.
#2) I agree -- the price of the 4850X2 needs to be at least $75-100 dollars cheaper. You can buy two 4850's for about $320, give or take. The 4870X2 is a much better deal, comparatively.
But we won't know for sure how it performs until many reviews are out. Remember early slides of the early phenoms made them look like a good deal and they were anything but that until price cuts. Nowadays when you are dealing with ATi you are actually dealing with AMD. This is the same way you look at stocks, estimates are taken with a grain of salt.
You would have to buy 2 x 4850 1Gb with dual slot coolers to rival the efficiency here.
This is my new card :rockout: ....... I only wish they would give some info on the ETA
If you have seen otherwise please link me to a review showing it because I am very interested in the card if it actually helps.
Also the 4870x2 is much closer to what 2 1Gb 4870s would cost.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133231
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500004
$140+ $140= $280 so thats giving the 8800gts 512mb the mail in rebates and ignoring its obvious shipping costs.
No waiting on rebates and free shipping makes the 9800gx2 look pretty good huh? (those were the cheapest of both on Newegg)
Since I only play @ 1680x1050 a 1Gb 4850x2 would be a better investment but they dont have one... so I'll buy this when it arrives.
I remember seeing those charts on 4870x2 more than a month ago