Radeon HD 4860 in the Works?

[btarunr]

AMD released the industry's first 40 nm desktop GPU. The RV740 went on to make only one SKU, the Radeon HD 4770. The company filled its Radeon HD 4700 series almost overnight with two more SKUs positioned on either sides of the HD 4770, based on the 55 nm RV770/RV790 GPUs instead, due to stock shortages. These also impacted on the inventories of the HD 4770, which forced AMD to reposition the Radeon HD 4850 in the sub-$110 segment, creating a bit of a void between it and the roughly $150 HD 4870. If anyone of you is up for yet another ATI Radeon SKU, here's one coming your way: Radeon HD 4860.

The Radeon HD 4860 seems to have been already taped out, sampled, and pictured by sections of the Chinese media. At the heart of it is the RV790 GPU in a different configuration codenamed RV790GT. It has 640 stream processors instead of 800 on the HD 4850, except that it uses a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and effectively higher clock speeds. The core is clocked at 700 MHz, and the memory at 750 MHz (3000 MHz effective). The PCB pictured shows the card to powered by a single 6-pin power connector. It is expected to be positioned in at the $130 price point, and in theory, competitive with NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 250.



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[ShogoXT]

I guess the model number puts it in line with its actual performance.

 

[Paintface]

And where does that put the 4790 that was supposed to come out?

 

[newtekie1]

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

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

niiiice, one 6-pin is good

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Can't say I'm interested, they need to sort out what they have and get on with the 5K series, if that's the name of the upcoming RV8xx blah blah blah.

 

[Duncan1]

niiiice, one 6-pin is good

Yeah it's really good, but at the same time it's weird having a rv790-based vga with one pci-e connector.

 

[HossHuge]

It seems as if they are just trying to increase their market share by flooding the market.

 

[newtekie1]

Yeah it's really good, but at the same time it's weird having a rv790-based vga with one pci-e connector.

Once they start cutting it down, it is nothing more than an RV770 really...

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

It seems as if they are just trying to increase their market share by flooding the market.

It has nothing to do with flooding trying to gain market share (even though they are always trying for marketshare obviously), they are offering new cards at different performance points. rv770 is not being made anymore, so they introduce a card @ ~4850+ performance level based on rv790, the point being that they need to keep their lineup current to their manufactured product. This drives sales on 4850 by lowering the price yet again and eventually 4850's will be gone or close to gone which is the ultimate goal, sell all the GPU's you have made.

 

[devguy]

That is one short card. And only one pcie power connector? Good news.

I guess crossfiring this with a 4870 would be like crossfiring a 4830 with a 4850 (same family/mem type, but different core speed/stream processors). Should be interesting to see what AMD's partners do with these.

 

[Easo]

So, how much more powerful (if) this will be over 4850? Bandwidth rocks of course, but -160 stream procesors?
Btw, looks kinda "clean" (positioning of vrm's and other parts).

 

[inferKNOX]

Wow, ATI is really making a flood of cards! It will be nice if they gain on market share because that means more $ for R&D, which means great competition with nVidia = lower prices + higher performance & innovation! ATI needs to get some huge market share before PhysX takes hold or it will spell trouble for them.
What I'm looking to see is cards with same/more processing power, but lower power consumption, smaller PCBs and less heat, like a Radeon HD4850e, HD4860e, HD4870e & HD4890e, that would have 25% less wattage & PCB.

 

[AKlass]

So, how much more powerful (if) this will be over 4850? Bandwidth rocks of course, but -160 stream procesors?
Btw, looks kinda "clean" (positioning of vrm's and other parts).

Less SPs but higher bandwidth> 4850

 

[jamesrt2004]

I think we should expect this will be used in quite a few OEM's

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Actually AMD has gain market share in Q2.

 

[AltecV1]

well ati flooding the gpu market is a good thing and a bad thing(good beacause it will lower prizes and bad be cause it will be too confusing with all the new cards coming out) Atleast ati is not rebranding YET

 

[TheMailMan78]

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

newtekie1 and I agree. Scary.

 

[Nosada]

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the days where every gen had 3 cards: low cost, mainstream and high-end.

 

[mdm-adph]

newtekie1 and I agree. Scary.

Eh, it's no different than any other company.

All this means to me is that ATI has the time to waste -- if they're replicating the (shady) practices of nVidia's marketers, maybe it means their market share is equalizing.

That being said, I thought the 4850 already "competed" against the GTS 250/9800GTX?

 

[newtekie1]

It has nothing to do with flooding trying to gain market share (even though they are always trying for marketshare obviously), they are offering new cards at different performance points. rv770 is not being made anymore, so they introduce a card @ ~4850+ performance level based on rv790, the point being that they need to keep their lineup current to their manufactured product. This drives sales on 4850 by lowering the price yet again and eventually 4850's will be gone or close to gone which is the ultimate goal, sell all the GPU's you have made.

RV770 is still being made, ATi just announced the HD4730 based on RV770 a couple weeks ago. They are just reconfiguring RV770 and RV790 cores to flood the market with cards. HD4870 and HD4850 are also still being produced using the RV770.

well ati flooding the gpu market is a good thing and a bad thing(good beacause it will lower prizes and bad be cause it will be too confusing with all the new cards coming out) Atleast ati is not rebranding YET

I think it is only a bad thing, I don't think it will lower prices at all, they are just filling the price gaps. The problem is that they are filling the gaps with cards that are way to similar to cards that already exist.

Eh, it's no different than any other company.

All this means to me is that ATI has the time to waste -- if they're replicating the (shady) practices of nVidia's marketers, maybe it means their market share is equalizing.

That being said, I thought the 4850 already "competed" against the GTS 250/9800GTX?

Actually, I think it means that ATi doesn't have anything better to come out with.

 

[AltecV1]

wow you are negative about everything

 

[aj28]

Once they start cutting it down, it is nothing more than an RV770 really...

...With the electrical benefits of the RV790. Also, as the 4830 showed us, the performance-per-watt of these chips increases tremendously when using only 640 stream processors, making it a desirable configuration for energy-efficient gaming rigs. Remember, these are the people jumping on the X3 710/720

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the days where every gen had 3 cards: low cost, mainstream and high-end.

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.

Where AMD messed up is trying to rank the cards by performance. Yeah, it kinda works, but with people interested in energy-efficiency, heat output, and size more than ever, plus the jumbled up pricing, it's not as easy a market to shop as they intended for it to be. What you really want is to have is to have your lineup tiered by the core they use, but with harvesting in full swing as the AMD camp scrambles to sell off old chips (a smart move, don't get me wrong), even that's a hard way to structure things. You could set them up by the number of stream processors (like it used to be with pixel pipelines in the old days), but like I noted towards the top of the post, a lot of the time a 640P screamer will be faster and more efficient than an 800P beast running a lower clock.

So yeah, I agree that this is a bit ridiculous, but looking back I can't honestly say that the end of any other generation was ever any less confusing. AMD is selling off old stock, and that's good. With the number of HD2/HD3 series cards still on the market, I can only imagine they've learned a lesson or two on this stuff from the past.

 

[erocker]

It seems as if they are just trying to increase their market share by flooding the market.

Yes they are.

Actually AMD has gain market share in Q2.

...and it's working!

 

[suraswami]

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

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?