A couple of days ago ATI secretly released a hotfix for the 4850 and 4870 series. They had claimed the the hotfix would improve overall performance and stability.
Tweaktownhas reviewed four of the 4850 running in crossifreX to determine if the hotfix actually worked or just decreases performance.
The only real performance gain is in 3DMark Vantage and Unreal Tournament 3 and all of the other benchmarks have decreased like Crysis.
I found this on the Internet and it says that there is some 4850 in stock for only $189.99. I just about peed myself because ATI said it was going to be a sub $300 card! Check it out for yourself and maybe buy at:
http://fxvideocards.com/Sapphire-HD-Radeon-4850-p-16386.html
The card has been tested and is preforming on par or beating the 9800GTX. Here is the test system:
E8400 @ 4Ghz
ASUS P5E X38
4Gb Gskill 8000
PQ HD4850 Default
Windows Vista 64 bit + SP1
Catalyst 8.5 (CD)
If you would like to see the performance numbers go to
Now lets see what the 4870 and the 4870X2 has to offer!!
The 4850 will launch on June 25th and is expected to beat out the 9800GTX and the ultra. It by all means beats them both with this translated version from French:
This is great new for a card that is going to be sub $300 and in crossfire mode it beats the GTX 280 :).
The GTX 280 has been announced and is ready to hit shelves tomorrow. I don't know if anybody is going to buy them because they are around $650 for the non overclocked one and around $880 for the water cooled version.
If you are looking to spend that much money go ahead. My suggestion would be to wait for the ATI 4800's to see the performance numbers because ATI said that they will not release anything more than $500. If you do not want to wait then here are all of the reviews for the GTX 280 and 260:
The GTX 280 has been on all of our minds for the past couple of days. Now today VR-Zone has released some power consumption tests. First a single GTX 280 at peak consumes 292.2W of power and two GTX 280's consume over 500W of power. That is rediclious! Even worse they had some 3DMark Vantage scores with a single vs SLI cards. The single card with a QX9650 and a 790I SLI scored P10324 and in SLI it scored P15813. I would say that the drivers still have to be matured and especially the SLI drivers because that is pretty bad scaling.
This is a picture of the first official review of the GTX 280. THe two resolutions are 1600X1200 and 2560X1200, but only four games were tested. The games are Crysis, Half Life 2, Company of Hero's, and World in Conflict. Overall it beats the 9800GX2 in all of the games except for Company of Hero's which it lost by one.
The guys over at
Vr-zone have got their hands on three GTX 280's and they decided to run Vantage with Tri-SLI. This was tested with the QX9650 @4.0ghz. The overall score is very good, but i don't know what two of these can do and how good the scaling is. You guys can post your own 3dmark Vantage scores to compare these against and the 4850 crossfire scores.
The 4850 has been tested in crossfire with 3dMark Vantage. According to the score of P11918 with a
QX9650 @4.0ghz this beats one GTX 280 running the same specs. This is great news for the people who like ATI and running Crossfire. We have still yet to see a 4870 and 4870X2 run these sort of benchmarks, but I am still waiting.
As a result of the 4800's being so well priced Nvidia is now scared. The have announced that they will lower the GTX's to start off at $399 while the 4870 will still be $349. This is great because now we can start to see some price pressure against the two company's. I am also really hoping that we will not see anymore $500-$600 dollar cards, no-one can afford the except for
Maxishine.
Finally we have official word straight from ATI that they have benchmarked the 4870 against the 9800GTX with AA and AF. This is a beat down of the 9800GTX by the 4870, but it is still not the GTX 280 or 260. This is really good for ATI considering that the 9800GTX was only released a couple of months ago and they beat it with their new technology.
The 4850 also has a considerable margin of victory over the 8800GT, which is still a great preforming card. What I am interested in is the margin between the Crysis. As I recall the 3870X2 was beat by the 8800GT with Crysis. This is outstanding benchmark by the 4850, but I want to see a benchmark where they show the FPS and not 1.4X better.
The GTX 280 system requirements have been released. They do not require a lot of power to run but still some good hardware.
The GTX 280 and the GTX 260 have been benchmarked against the 3870X2 and the Ultra. It seems like Nvidia has a ways to go to get their drivers better because that performance is not what I expected. All of the cards were used in the benchmark were using Vista SP1, 790I, and a
QX9650@3.0ghz. Come on ATI blow the new GTX's out of the water :).
The new card from ATI, 4870X2, prototype is out and according to sources it is faster than the GTX 280 in 3DMark Vantage! The 4870X2 card is made up of two RV770 cores put on one card with 2X256 bit memory and wither GDDR3 or GDDR5 memory. Sources say that the 4870X2 is scoring X5500 while the GTX 280 is scoring X4800 in Vantage. This is exceptionally good performance for a prototype card and I can not wait to see ATI get back in the Graphics card business.
Today I found these pictures of the soon to be released RV770XT. This is the card that will be the first one to have GDDR5 bit memory along with a 512 mb of memory.
This picture was over at Vr-Zone and it is comparing ATI top of the line card right now to the up and coming Nvidia GTX's
I found these pictures on the
Internet, but I don't know if the are real or what. If they are real is seems like the 4870 is going to kick some serious ass. It is not even the 4870X2, I guess we will have to wait to see those benchmarks.
