PCIe bus boosts speed of new high-end, dual-GPU ATI card
Monday, AMD unveiled its latest and most powerful graphics card to date, the Radeon HD 4870 X2. It achieves its specs by running two RV770 GPUs in tandem that communicate efficiently instead of relying on a single, faster chip.
The GPU architecture differs from other dual-processor models in that will utilize a 5 GB/sec sideport to offload some bandwidth from the PCI Express bridge when hard at work. This new pathway, however, will not be opened until AMD releases a software update for the card in the coming months.
AMD promises 2.4 teraflops of shading power, 1600 stream processors and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory at a cost of $549.
The "little brother" model to the 4870, the 4850 X2 is expected to be released in September with slightly diminished specs for $399.
In the ongoing graphics price war, AMD actually delayed the premiere of its 4800 series of graphics cards so it wouldn't fall on the same day as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 200 GPU series. Nvidia has reduced its prices in hopes of bolstering sales, but with this latest unit AMD seeks to provide power above all else. The 4870 will enter the market at the top end of the company's repertoire.