Radeon HD 4860 in the Works?

[erocker]

atleast u r only starting to get confused, my head is spinning and my left and right eyes have interchanged places

4860 will have less performance than 4850 or more?

4890
4860 ??<---
4870
4860 ??<---
4850
4860 ??<---
4770
4830

I put this list together to make sense of things and came out making no sense at all!

 

[From_Nowhere]

HD 4870>HD 4860>HD 4850>HD 4770. The 4860 has 32 less Stream Processors (EDIT: forgot the correct term for what they disable) than the 4850, but a lot more bandwith b/c of the GDDR5. Similar to the 9600GS0 48sp vs 96sp.

EDIT:

Similar to the 9600GSO 96SP vs. 9600GT 64SP. One has more memory bandwith, the other more shading power.

 

[AltecV1]

yea the 4860 sits between 4850 and 4870 numbers dont lie

 

[$ReaPeR$]

it should be a deacent card..

 

[yogurt_21]

hmm more 48XX variants and no 58XX in site. such a pity. by the time they release the 58XX series I'll have no money to buy it with.

 

[Apocolypse007]

I'm still happy with my 4890. It should last me for a good while, but really, any card in the 4700 or 4800 series should play any game on the market well. Now is a great time to buy because I'm sure the DX11 cards wont be cheap at all when released.

 

[happita]

With what cards everyone has now, most gtx200 series and most hd4k series owners will not make the switch including at least half from the previous generation. So dx11's sales I predict will be slow along with Windows 7, unless it has something really great to offer that only dx11 cards are capable of(future updates of Win7). But this will all change with a few games being made dx11 compatible coming out at the beginning of 2010 I hope

 

[AltecV1]

why do you think that win 7 sales are gonna go slow

 

[niko084]

Who knows, ATi's flooding the market with useless variations on the same cards...Even I'm starting to get confused...

Welcome to the Nvidia world....

G92/G92/G92/G92/G92/G92....... It gets old...

Again, exactly why I still have my 4850.

 

[happita]

Because it is always the case with new operating systems. People are reluctant to switch to the "unknown". And the majority do NOT try out the release candidate versions of Win 7. Hell, the only time people actually test something out is when it comes out in beta. And even after people try it, there are always bugs and things that could have been improved further so they wait for a service pack before even purchasing the said operating system. This is not to say that this is how the majority of the consumer market does things, but with all things taken into consideration, some people don't even care to even try new O/S's and are just content until their computer has reached its end-of-life until they build another system with a new operating system (and even thats a maybe, they may just be comfortable and continue to use the same O/S that they are familiar with).

 

[KainXS]

HD 4870>HD 4860>HD 4850>HD 4770. The 4860 has 32 less Stream Processors than the 4850, but a lot more bandwith b/c of the GDDR5. Similar to the 9600GS0 48sp vs 96sp.

the 9600gso 48sp is actually a very bad card, I had it, its barely faster than a 8600GTS

now spec wise this card is going to be slower than the 4770, 16 rops and 640 sp just like this card but has a lower clocked core and memory, . . . . .

I don't understand why ati would do this, making a card thats slower than the 4770 but naming it higher, . . . sounds kinda like nvidia infected them to me.

 

[tastegw]

the 9600gso 48sp is actually a very bad card, I had it, its barely faster than a 8600GTS

now spec wise this card is going to be slower than the 4770, 16 rops and 640 sp just like this card but has a lower clocked core and memory, . . . . .

I don't understand why ati would do this, making a card thats slower than the 4770 but naming it higher, . . . sounds kinda like nvidia infected them to me.

it will be faster than the 4770 due to bus size, 128 vs 256. but not by much

 

[MadClown]

I want my HD 5870 plox =D

 

[KainXS]

ahhhh 256bit, but even with that, still I am worried about that low core clock, and this late in the game when the 5XXX cards are just around the corner, I can only wonder why, and from the looks, with that 256bit it will only be barely barely faster than a stock HD4850 and they say these will cost 150 bucks while the HD4850's run for like 100 bucks now, and the prices are going to drop when this is released.

 

[newtekie1]

Welcome to the Nvidia world....

G92/G92/G92/G92/G92/G92....... It gets old...

Again, exactly why I still have my 4850.

At least nVidia gets rid of the old when they release the new, ATi just keeps releasing new...

 

[Kantastic]

It's like Nvidia releasing their GTS 240. ^_^

 

[swaaye]

I don't think that age ever existed in modern times. Even going back to the 9800/X800 days you had SE/PRO/XT/XT PE/GT/GTO/GTS/GTX and any number of variants, only the number preceding it didn't change but two or three times.

So, pre 9800 isn't modern times? That was this decade lol!

GeForce 4 had about 4 variants in the end. Ti4200, 4400, 4600, 4800. Some extras that were almost unknown too though.

Radeon 8500 had, well, Radeon 8500 and 8500 LE.

GeForce 3 had itself and the Ti200, Ti500.

Etc.

They just want to make more and more money, probably for a few reasons. 1) All companies relentlessly want to make more money. 2) GPUs are insanely more complex than they were 9 years ago or so (that's why there is so little competition now). 3) Because the graphics card market's style of competition has evolved.

 

[swaaye]

At least nVidia gets rid of the old when they release the new, ATi just keeps releasing new...

Oh man you need to look at the mess NVIDIA has made of the mobile sector. all they do is rebrand G92 and friends. There are no chips from the GT200 family at all but they just keep on coming up with new ways to name the old stuff. "GeForce G"!! lol

 

[newtekie1]

Oh man you need to look at the mess NVIDIA has made of the mobile sector. all they do is rebrand G92 and friends. There are no chips from the GT200 family at all but they just keep on coming up with new ways to name the old stuff. "GeForce G"!! lol

Their mobile sector has been fucked for years....

Saddly, GT200 is way to power hungry to put into a mobile design, and ATi's massive underclocks on the RV770 based mobile chips means G92 is still able to compete. Both comanies need to focus on actual mobile GPUs instead of just putting desktop chips in mobile packages...

 

[aj28]

So, pre 9800 isn't modern times? That was this decade lol!

R300, R420, R520, R600, R700, and in a few months, R800. No, I do not think the R200 is anywhere near modern, at least in the context of GPU technology.

With that said, I think a lot of this multi-SKU business (Hah! Thinking like "MULTIBALL!!" in a pinball machine...) has more to do with a combination of management and manufacturing than it does with marketing. For one, we've got new management up top, and a dire financial situation, both of which have undoubtably been pushing this type of thing to increase the efficiency of their manufacturing. Speaking of which, manufacturing has changed! I would imagine the AMD of 2009 is much more capable of determining and disabling the exact defective components of a GPU die than the AMD (ATI) of 2001 when they were churning out the venerable R200 (a.k.a. Radeon 8500).

Given that, you can look at it one of two ways. One, AMD is scraping by with the slimmest margin possible by pricing expensive chips at relatively low prices. Two, AMD is reaping huge margins because the trash bin is the only other place these defects would otherwise be welcome. Which of the two is closer to reality depends largely on the agreement that AMD has with TSMC, but something tells me they're paying for the chips one way or another, so by salvaging, modifying, and selling them, they're able to keep the price of their "fully functional" products (4850/70/90) lower than would otherwise be possible.

But that's just the way I see it.

 

[btarunr]

Huh? What makes you think this is a rebrand? Which other ATI GPU has the config 640 SP, 700/750 MHz, 256-bit GDDR5?

 

[inferKNOX]

wow you are negative about everything

+1

atleast u r only starting to get confused, my head is spinning and my left and right eyes have interchanged places

4860 will have less performance than 4850 or more?

Logic dictates that since 4860 is between 4870 & 4850 in number, so it should be between in performance

hmm more 48XX variants and no 58XX in site. such a pity. by the time they release the 58XX series I'll have no money to buy it with.

5xxx's are set for Sept/Oct so they are well in sight. It's nVidia that's beyond the horizon.

I'm still happy with my 4890. It should last me for a good while, but really, any card in the 4700 or 4800 series should play any game on the market well. Now is a great time to buy because I'm sure the DX11 cards wont be cheap at all when released.

+1, unless I get a buyer for my 4890 at 5870/5890 price.

 

[mdm-adph]

At least nVidia gets rid of the old when they release the new, ATi just keeps releasing new...

You've got to be kidding me. Both companies do this.

How long has the G200 been out? And how long has nVidia still been rebranding the G92?

Huh? What makes you think this is a rebrand? Which other ATI GPU has the config 640 SP, 700/750 MHz, 256-bit GDDR5?

Well, not that you put it that way... True, as long as the performance puts it between a 4850 and a 4870, this card technically isn't a rebrand.

 

[newtekie1]

Logic dictates that since 4860 is between 4870 & 4850 in number, so it should be between in performance

Logic doesn't always apply. Look at the HD4770 outperforming the HD4830, and almost the HD4850. And the HD4790 does perform better than the HD4850... ATi might be facing the same issue nVidia had with the 9600GT and 8800GS/9600GSO, where the card with the lower memory bandwidth but more SPs(8800GS) ended up performing extremely close to the card with lower SPs by more bandwidth(9600GT), so close in fact that nVidia decided to reconfigure the 8800GS/9600GSO to stop it from hurting 9600GT sales.

You've got to be kidding me. Both companies do this.

How long has the G200 been out? And how long has nVidia still been rebranding the G92?

You are missing the point, when nVidia rebrands the G92, it has always been to bring it into line with the current naming scheme. It is not to just release another SKU because they can.

ATi is simply releasing as many overlapping SKUs as possible to flood the market with cards. There is no reason that we need a card between HD4850 and HD4870, the gap is too small.

There has never been a flood of G92 SKUs, at most there were only 5 active at any given time. We have how many RV790/RV770 SKUs right now? 7 this one making 8? And that is even giving ATi the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are actually going to discontinue the HD4830...which is only a rumor AFAIK, and hasn't been officially announced. Otherwise it would be 9.

I mean just look at the two lineups compared:

ATi | nVidia
HD4870x2 | GTX295
HD4850x2 | GTX285
HD4890 | GTX275
HD4870 | GTX260 55nm
HD4860 | GTS250
HD4850 | GTS240
HD4830 | 9600GT
HD4790 | 9600GSO
HD4770 | 9500GT
HD4730 | 9400GT
HD4670 |
HD4650 |
HD4550 |
HD4350 |

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

you forgot the GTX280, the GTX 260 216 65nm, the GTX 260 192, the 8800gt, the 9800gtx+, the 9800gt .... need I go on?


that said there is definitely a place for this card - its shorter, hopefully lower power, and faster with more overclocking potential. Given that the 4770 is essentially non-existent atm it makes sense.

BTW all of these 4830/4860 type cards are meant to sell the lower bin of the rv770 and the rv790 - the ones that dont make the cut of being an 4870/4890