A Look at ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2

ATi recently released the R700 based Radeon HD 4850 X2 and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 which are all set to kick nVIDIA’s ass in the graphics card market. According to reports the Radeon HD 4870 X2 beats the Nvidia GTX 280 SLI by a huge margin. The Nvidia 9800 GX 2 and 9800 GTX+ SLI have been slaughtered by the Radeon HD 4850 X2, its smaller sibling. These are the best and most powerful cards humankind has ever seen. Both of these feature two GPUs on a single PCB. The ATi Readeon HD 4870 X2 is priced at $549 while the HD 4850 X2 is priced at $399, which are considerably lower than nVIDIA’s top of the line offering, the GTX 280 / 260 SLI, and the 9800 GTX+ SLI, offering much more bang for the buck.
Ati Radeon HD 4870 X2 Specifications:

• Chipset: ATI Radeon HD (R700)
• Core clock: 750MHz
• Stream Processors: 1600 (800 x 2) Stream Processing Units
• Memory Clock: 1800MHz
• Frame Buffer: 1 GB x 2
• DirectX: DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1
• OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
• Transistors: 956 M x 2
• Fabrication: 55 nm
• Price: $549

The ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a beast powered by 1600 stream processors and 2 GB of GDDR5 graphic memory. It has support for Crossfire - ATi’s answer to nVIDIA’s SLI and PCIE 2.0. The GPU clock is set at 750 MHZ while the effective memory clock is set at 3600 MHZ. To further boost perfomance, you can connect two Radeon HD 4870 X2’s in Crossfire to obtain a 4870 X4. That would offer the best graphics performance to date. There are some bugs with Crossfire but those will be ironed out fast with driver updates. The R700 is essentially two RV 770 connected with a PCI express switch, which provides huge bandwidth between the two cards. There is an additional feature called Sideport to connect the two cards but that has been disabled by default. The ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 however delivers just about the same performance as two HD 4870’s and consumes less power.

This release is especially rewarding for gamers, as it has forced nVidia to lower the prices of the GTX 260 / 280 and the 9800 GTX cards. The ATi HD 4870 / 4850 X2 are the best option for budget conscious gamers. It beats the GTX 280 SLI in almost all of the tested games, MAss Effect, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, GRAW 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, F.E.A.R, Devil may Cry and more. It also beats them hands down in most of the bench mark tests - 3D Mark, . It is very efficient in terms of power as well. However most performance gains in case of the HD 4870 X2 can be seen only at higher resolutions like 2560 x 1600. At lower resolutions, there isn’t much improvement from the existing GPUs. Also ATi doesnt support any form of PHYSX support yet.

Concluding, the ATi has a clear winner on its hands this time, it has snagged the Crown and is now officially the reigning King of Graphic cards. It offers the best performance to price ratio than any other piece of hardware out there. It has rised the bar for performance comparisions and can be called the first GPU to completely nail down Crysis. Moreever it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. We would definitely recommend this card to all those wanting the best performance at a decent price. It should stay at the top for quite some time until NVIDIA comes up with something much better.

Our Rating: 4.5 / 5

For detailed reviews and testing, you may want to check out these links -

1. ATi HD Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Official Page

2. Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Crossfire review - Guru3D

3. AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Bit Tech

4. ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Review - Extreme Tech

5. ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - AMD Back On Top - Hot Hardware