magibegWhen i see the benchmarks and the prices in stores then i will decide if it's a good deal or not.

Me too I cannot afford nor do I want to be a tester. I will to wait and see how the gaming community dismantles them and deciphers every little component. Then when the final verdict is out I might buy one. I want a new card but it sure is good reading see ATI going after Nvidia it helps us all get better deals.

Any way you look at it this will be good for us because nvdia will do their "refresh on their" 9X cards to the GTS and GT series and their prices will drop forcing ATI to drop their prices and then this card will come out and ATI will probably drop the 4870 prices, at least I hope.

I wonder if these will hit the 1K mark when overclocked, they might even hit good enough 1.2K with a volt mod and if I do im gonna sell my GTX260 sooo fast.

KainXSany way you look at it this will be good for us because nvdia will do their "refresh on their" 9X cards to the GTS and GT series and their prices will drop forcing ATI to drop their prices and then this card will come out and ATI will probably drop the 4870 prices, at least I hope.

I wonder if these will hit the 1K mark when overclocked

I think the dropping in prices is mostly influenced by AMD/ATI , no hope Nvidia does this , they are just to greedy to ever consider this as a strategy , they never had the consumer interest in their mind adn never will , neighter AMD/ATI (look at the forums concerning drivers , it's like talking to a wall ) but at least they drive prices lower.

$199....OYAYAYAYAYO.

If they really price this thing at $200 and compete with GTX 285, thats a killer, but I'm kinda sceptical, last time the HD4870 was stated to be faster than a GTX280, ended up at GTX 260 level

i shall wait for the x2 version of these with 4 gigz of ddr5...*struts off*

Eighter way we have exceptional hardware capable of extraordinary graphics but the lack of games makes these releases worthelles.
Think about consoles with those x1900's and 7800's and they have hundreds of games and the PC get's a hardware change every 6 months for a game that barelly reaches the graphics on consoles or they are just a bit better ( GTA4 ).
For this reason alone a dual GPU computer is overkill for the few games we have on the PC worth playing , it's more for the bragging and bench numbers.

The consoles are more in-line with the 'ol X850s and 7800/7600s. Remember, in addition to being retro GPU hardware compared to anything on PC from the past 2-3 years (yes even X1900), they have piddly ~500MHz 128-bit buses and only 8 ROPs (appropriate for a 128-bit bus with the RAM they use). They fortunately only have to deal with 1280x720 (or less).

I have to agree with you Leonard that the games selection is just getting a little bit old. Everything seems to be a new MMO or a retread shooter. I'm running a 8800GTX from early '07 yet, a 3850 and a 4670. I just got the 4670 because I need something sorta fast but small for some GPGPU stuff.

There are few titles and everyone tries to copy someone to make a buck on the PC , the trend with MMO was copyed from WOW or other succefull game and they copy the trend to work on all computers too so no great graphics there , probably a 4870x2 or GTX295 would run a MMO at extreme quality settings and still have over 100 fps on huge resolutions.
So bottom line we don't really need a new fast GPU that will revolutionize ?????? 3dmark scores ? because gaming not really , a tech demo ?
I'm really considering buying a console , i was PC has strategy games , but not many good ones latetly and starcraft 2 and diablo 3 will run on my 4850 with all details high and probably an obscene AA setting.
So no need to upgrade guys , stick with what you have , wait for a game that actually needs all that power , don't tell me about crysis , we all finished the game so playing it again on a faster card doesn't make the game more intresting , i know how will end so ...

techjunkieso i got my 4870 running at 850 and 975 to see how the 4890 would perform. It didn't improve the frames much in FC2 (gain was about 2-3 fps) but it sure made the whole game smoother. There was little or no dips in fps.

Is this a viable representation of how the 4890 would perform ?

It very well could be. While it would be a 13% increase in TMU/ROPs, it's very possible that they could better utilize the FLOP power ATi has. The price tag combined with name seems telling not to expect TOO much.

Shaders really are not important at this juncture, as ATi can already match Nvidia's GTX285 in computational power with the 4850. (1TF). While that's great for GPGPU, not so much the case for gaming when not matched correctly with TMUs/ROPs. That leaves TMUs and ROPs as the possible detriment. When we see the match up between the 280/285 and 4870, VERY often we see that the GTX leads by the percentage it leads in ROP OR TMU power, meaning it is the bottleneck in almost every case, rather than FLoating point OPerationS (with a couple notable exceptions). Since this product, irregardless of if there are added shader arrays, will probably have 16 ROPs, it will come down to a core speed increase. To furthermore compact this theory, 4850 is proportionally slower than 4870 with it's core clock speed, not memory bandwidth. The performance you're paying for is the 750+ mhz from the extra voltage fed to the core of those parts, more-so than the extra bandwidth from the gddr5. Thank your local TPU for those bios mods... ;)

For reference:

4850: 625mhz @ ~1.1v
4870: 750mhz @ ~1.2v
4890: 850mhz @ ~1.3v

See how that works?

Personally, I think we're looking at overclocks in the ~900mhz range. Anything more than that, and I believe AMD would've capitalized on it for stock to take on the 280, as those mhz really could be the difference.

When you break down the ROP comparison you see this:

4850: 625x16: 10
4870: 750x16: 12
4890: 850x16: 13.6
gtx260: 28x576: 16.1
gtx280: 32x602: 19.2
gtx285: 32x648: 20.7

and TMUs:

4850: 40x625: 25
4870: 40x750: 30
4890: 40x850: 34 (if 4890 is still 800sp/40tmu...if 960/48 it would sit on top of the gtx260 216)
GTX260 (192): 64x576: 36.8
GTX260 (216): 72x576: 41.4
GTX280: 80x602: 48.1
GTX285: 80x648: 51.8


Really, what it comes down to is that Nvidia requires more flops (more/higher clocked shaders) and ATi needs more/higher clocked TMUs and ROPs...but mostly ROPs.

I have this theory that everyone will arrive in the center with 3200sp; nvidia with 32x5 multi-directional shaders per array (2 flops per shader) in 10 arrays with a 40nm 512-bit GT300, and ATi producing a Rv970 with it's normal routine, 10 arrays of 320 (4+1)x2 flops, or 2(160x10) with R800, using it's 256-bit bus. Of course then we'd be talking 160 TMUs, more ROPs, and for ATi, 28nm. You'd be seeing basically the GT300 28nm die shrink matching up with Rv970 with the difference being ati having 6400flops per clock, nvidia 3200, but nvidia with twice the shader clock.

swaayeThe consoles are more in-line with the 'ol X850s and 7800/7600s. Remember, in addition to being retro GPU hardware compared to anything on PC from the past 2-3 years (yes even X1900), they have piddly ~500MHz 128-bit buses and only 8 ROPs (appropriate for a 128-bit bus with the RAM they use). They fortunately only have to deal with 1280x720 (or less).

lol, the x360 has the xenos gpu, which is a unified shader architecture, with 48 shader pipelines, tesselator and 10mb eDram. It's a way better than the x850.

Good news, price is kick ass too!!!

TheMailMan78I wonder if one of these 4890s would be faster than 2 4850s in crossfire? Anyone got a theory?

can't be faster you talk about 2 GPU and that's mean
2xSP , 2XROP's , 2x texture units , 2x256 bit , and 2x 625 core speed
how can beat it

4890 VS Hd4850x2

well actually its possible indeed cuz the drivers arent in much favor to crossfire in most games so a single 4890 might be able to beat it pretty easy unless the catalyst drivers are perfected... till then my theory is tht a single 4890 can keep up to a 4850x2 or crossfire and might even beat it... as amd says that its not gonna be in the 49xx series rather its gonna be 48xx then i think they are gonna produce a 49xx graphic card too.. Thts wat i think. and as for te benchmarks the radeon 4890 gonna have better hardware so raising clocks on a 4870 dosent matter cuz its got old hardware. as for the prices they are gonna drop tillapril so a single 4890 for 199-249 is possible... AND THTS MY THEORY :p

buy rv770, overclock to rv790 speeds, done. there are no architectural changes in rv790. if amd is smart they scrapped the sideport's die area

Look foward to see it in action.

AliRazawell actually its possible indeed cuz the drivers arent in much favor to crossfire in most games so a single 4890 might be able to beat it pretty easy unless the catalyst drivers are perfected... till then my theory is tht a single 4890 can keep up to a 4850x2 or crossfire and might even beat it... as amd says that its not gonna be in the 49xx series rather its gonna be 48xx then i think they are gonna produce a 49xx graphic card too.. Thts wat i think. and as for te benchmarks the radeon 4890 gonna have better hardware so raising clocks on a 4870 dosent matter cuz its got old hardware. as for the prices they are gonna drop tillapril so a single 4890 for 199-249 is possible... AND THTS MY THEORY :p

I'm not so sure. The 4850 is not that different than the 4870 and the 4890 is just an OC version of the 4870. Its not the same as a 3870x2 vs the 4850. The architectural difference isn't that vast. My money is on two 4850s being faster than one 4890. I guess we will have to see.

Yh W'll see but i guess i saw sumwhere tht a new Rv740 sumthing has more transistors in it and more shaders so the new ones in april r gonna be abt 15 fps faster thn the current 4870... so thts wat i think