ATI's new HD48xx range

Things are looking good for ATI

Published on June 22, 2008 By Phazon88 In Personal Computing

ATI has been hard at work on their next series of graphic cards. After the excellent HD38xx release, things are looking better for ATI since the release of the HD2xxx series which didn't go down too well at the time.

The HD48xx series of cards are armed with ATI's new RV770 chipset, built using 55nm production. The card also sports 512MB of GDDR3 memory. It is extremely powerful for its size (with the stock HD4850 being a single-slot product), price (launch price for HD4850 is only $200 USD) and power usage (with the card only using 269 watts when under a load).

Just check out some of the benchmarks over at the Guru3d article I linked to see this little beauty in action. Its got a little more grunt than Nvidia's 9800 GTX in most titles, with ATI's card retailing cheaper to boot (and sporting a better feature set).

In a few more weeks the HD4870 will be unleashed (with more agressive clock speeds and sporting GDDR5 memory) that'll pack even more bang. A little while after that we will see the HD4870X2 which is 2 GPUs stacked onto one board.

Needless to say its exciting times for both ATI fans and even Nvidia fans alike, because this newfound competition will drive down prices in every direction and lead to even more innovation in graphic solutions.

Comments (Page 1)

Bebi Bulma

on Jun 22, 2008

I have an HD 2600xt.

Phazon88

on Jun 22, 2008

Bebi Bulma

comment 1

I have an HD 2600xt.

Which is a better design than what the HD2900XT was at the time.

hydrocarbn

on Jun 22, 2008

Everything launched past the 9600GT has been crap as far as price/performance. A 512 8800GTS is still $150 in the States.

PurrBall

on Jun 22, 2008

Awesome, too bad Nvidia already has their new series ready soon

Kodiak888

on Jun 22, 2008

The new Nvidia cards are slightly, and I mean only slightly better, but cost almost 2x. And 2 ATI's > 1 Nvidia

rattletrap

on Jun 22, 2008

Everything launched past the 9600GT has been crap as far as price/performance. A 512 8800GTS is still $150 in the States.

I agree 100%. I'm still using my 8800gtx 768mb card and I have no plans on upgrading anytime soon. I just don't see it worth buying any of the 9 series cards or the new 280 series. To little performance boost for way to much money.

Of course I've used Nvidia cards all my life and I can't see myself using anything but Nvidia. We'll see /shrug.

Phazon88

on Jun 22, 2008

I personally am not a fan of how Nvidia treats their driver releases (and the quality of their driver releases in general).

I much prefer ATI's substantial driver updates which while not as frequent as Nvidia's, are of higher quality and contain more important fixes and performance improvements.

This coupled with the fact ATI seems to be first on the bandwagon when it comes to new features lately (DX10.1 / Pixel Shader 4.1 support, using the latest memory standards such as GDDR5) and their superior price to performance ratio with the HD38xx releases onwards means ATI are exactly what I'm after in a producer of graphics cards for a gamer.

MadDeez

on Jun 22, 2008

i'm pretty fond of my 3870. it's been a good card thus far.

Astyanax

on Jun 22, 2008

Not to mention the driver development is much better than nVidia's at the moment.

Phazon88

on Jun 23, 2008

Snidely Whiplash

comment 8

i'm pretty fond of my 3870. it's been a good card thus far.

I've got a HD3850 myself and its a great little card for what I paid for it. I'm looking to upgrade to a HD4870 when they come out in the next few weeks (GDDR5 memory ftw).

Kaltes

on Jun 23, 2008

I only have a X1800, but it has never let me down. Only my 2.8GHz single core CPU is holding me back at the moment. Besides the HD2 series are not as good as the last of the line X1 sereis they just render HD stuff and its not that impresive to me.

MINE777

on Jun 23, 2008

I will never buy another ATI product again.

Period.

Its too much money to play dice with.

Astyanax

on Jun 23, 2008

I will never buy another ATI product again.

Period.

Its too much money to play dice with.

One bad experience shouldn't label it as crap. ATi doesn't even make their own cards anymore, so if you have an issue with an HIS card for instance then just stay away from HIS.

hydrocarbn

on Jun 23, 2008

Yeah, but those "new features" are largely insignificant, and ATI makes really terrible decisions like pairing those high-bandwidth memory modules with crappy memory buses, or putting crappy bridge chips in the 3870X2 giving it very little performance over a regular 3870. I still think ATI's going to at least win this round, but I wish they would focus on the thing that matters: price/performance.

Astyanax

on Jun 23, 2008

Yeah, but those "new features" are largely insignificant

GDDR5 isnt largely insignificant, higher clock speeds while requiring less power is generally something thats fairly significant don't you think?

but I wish they would focus on the thing that matters: price/performance.

Have you seen the price of the HD 4850? It's $200 at Best Buy with a $50 dollar rebate. How is that not a good deal considering it's on par with a 9800GTX and the drivers at the moment are far from being anywhere near the cards full potential.

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