AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB review

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/28/2008 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

1 - That's a lot of RED

ATI Radeon 4870 1024MB review

ATI Radeon 4870 1024MB review The battle for your money among the graphics chipset manufacturers is fierce and harsh. None the less, it's competitive which brings prices down and makes technology evolve faster. We see new solutions and graphics card models much quicker than anticipated. So if company green releases a product, company red will release something to counteract. And vice versa of course.

As you guys know, last week NVIDIA released the Core 216 version of the GeForce GTX 260, a small update over the previous three month old GTX 260 product that allows it to compete with the Radeon HD 4870 slightly better yet at an attractive price.

Therefore it was no surprise to me that a few days after reviewing that product Outlook made that wicked yet sometimes irksome 'ploink' noise with an email from AMD - 'Hey Hilbert, we have a 1GB version of the Radeon HD 4870, check it out please'. Obviously ATI is releasing a 1GB model to compete with the new Core 216 version of that GeForce GTX 260.

Actually it's pretty clever when you think of it. The 4870 series really diggs that GDDR5 memory bandwidth, and what's the cheapest thing to do to gain some extra performance? Increase the framebuffer volume. Now that by itself is not going to work miracles, yet in memory limited situations (loads of high quality textures, filtering and AA modes) it will help you here and there. And a little bit of extra bite is all the product needs to get past that Core 216 card again.

So that's what we'll do today folks, we'll review the 1024 MB version Radeon HD 4870. Personally, I love it... but can it compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216? Well, let's find out...

ATI Radeon 4870 1024MB review

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AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB review
Today a test and review on the new AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB. Obviously ATI is releasing a 1GB model to compete with the new Core 216 version of that GeForce GTX 260. The 4870 series really diggs that GDDR5 memory bandwidth, and what's the cheapest thing to do to gain some extra performance ? Increase the framebuffer volume. Now that by itself is not going to work miracles, yet in memory limited situations (loads of high quality textures, filtering and AA modes) it will help you here and there. And a little bit of extra bite is all the product needs to get beat that Core 216 card again.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 4850 Crossfire
A review with Crossfire results as well, on the all new Radeon HD 4850 from Force3D and PowerColor. Definitely a review worth reading.

AMD ATI Radeon 3850 & 3870 review
Today AMD will launch the Radeon 3000 series products, in specifically the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. I'll give you a quick hint, these cards are roughly as fast a Radeon HD 2900 XT .. yet they are priced a very promising level; how does a price range of 149 to 249 USD sound ? See, performance wise a 149 USD Radeon HD 3850 will wipe the floor with the entire competitors GeForce 8500/8600 series easily and the 3870 will put up a great fight with the 8800 GTS. With new releases often also we can see a couple of new tricks. Today's announced products will see light of in the form of DirectX 10.1 support, the new UVD (video de/encoding) engine is now integrated opposed to the 2900 XT which didn't have it. Full PCI-Express 2.0 support, and a die-size based on 55nm to die for.