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Incorporating The Micron, Intelligible, and PC Independent News
HD 4870X2 on sale
THERE WAS A TIME when jumping the gun was something partners actually feared, but now it’s become something all ATI partners and retailers do. It’s like a ritual now, and everyone gets to do it at least once. It also generates some buzz, we’re sure (gosh, we’re talking about it, aren’t we?).
This time it’s the HD4870X2 that’s on pre-sale at Geizhals.at, the Austrian pricing search engine. Its launch price is listed at just under €400, which officially translates to $600. We get shortchanged in €uroland, so it’s unofficially $550 in the US or sumfink.
This isn’t a very attractive price, but with the HD 4870’s reputation, enthusiasts will be gobbling these up in no time – even if the price does reach GTX 280 levels before the end of the month.
The official launch date is August 12th 2008, but you can get it right now from Austrian and German e-tailers. The card is specced like this (exactly like an HD 4870, only two of everything):
Core Clock: 2x750MHz
Memory: 2x1024MB GDDR5
Memory clock: 900MHz
Memory interface: 2x256-bit
2x800 stream processors
Fab process: 55nm
Reference: Sapphire 21137-00-40R
L’Inq
Geizhals.at
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It's not funny anymore. The article is written rather neutral but as soon someone drops a word about NVIDIA or ATI the war between fan boys rages...

...don't you get it: there are situations for every card. I owned lot's of NVIDIA cards and never touched ATI again after the Mach 64 on my 486 due to problems. Last year I have tried a X1950 and I loved it - the only reason I switched back to NVIDIA was because the driver wasn't working properly in Linux - 2 months later a proper driver was available.

Now I own a 8800GTS/640 - the flawed card with the buffer problems and games crashing in windows with out of memory errors. Recently I have tried NEW drivers for this card for Linux and suddenly the drivers are no good anymore (black screen, bad performance).

The time is changing and if NVIDIA is too layed back and arrogant they will loose big time. I don't care if the chip is from AMD/ATI, NVIDIA or Intel. All I want is a decent card for a good price and right now the AMD/ATI seems more attractive to me (in my case the 4870 single).

BTW - has anybody tried to find the card on geizhals.at yet - you would be disappointed...
...so probably the price tag wasn't right either.
Dear Adobe, can we please have a 64-bit Flash player?
Here unfortuneates cry for help. Never expecting 64 bit to Lack Such Fundumental support in Media. Of course ATI X2 card is Best, as you really Get X2 Performance, yet how can that expand into 64 bit with such NON Existant Flash 64 Browser Support?
Dear Adobe, can we please have a 64-bit Flash player?nspluginwrapperWorks like a champ. It does the mapping between the 64-bit calls from Firefox and other compatible clients and the library's native 32-bit API.RE: Dear Adobe, can we please have a 64-bit Flash player?That update must have 

....If Abode cann't support 64 bit Flash Industry NEEDS New Standard that will.
drashek
but the memory, AFAIK 4870 ships with 512MB standard, so 1GB per core is twice as much.
Where's Charlie's comments about AMD's card being a complete ripoff?

GTX280 looks pretty good now at $399 (newegg, palit card...or take BFG for $430 and lifetime warranty). There are not many cases where this card is worth 50% more money. This card will be $600 for another 2 months and then maybe get a $20-30 haircut. By then Nvidia will have shrunk GTX280/260, and maybe make a dual gpu card...If they had sold this for $500 or less it would have been a good deal.

Toss in supply of GDDR5 being really slim and I expect this card to go up shortly...ROFL. So toss out my previous statement :)

Charlie, where are you? You have to be running 2560x1920 to get your money's worth out of this card (only 30inchers need apply). Still, good job AMD, hope you find a way to fix your cpus and finally make a profit. While I'm complaining about Charlie here, I'm not suggesting AMD drop prices on this. Heck, they should probably charge more. It's #1 currently and they are losing 4Bil in the last year. Better make hay while Nvidia sucks, it won't last long. They're a month away from speeding (GTX280/260) it up with a die shrink and forcing your price down. Take the money while you can before your stock price hits $1.
I think your GTX prices are a few weeks old...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130365

I wonder how the 4870x2 benches next to a single GTX280...

Ahh

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/253116-33-crysis-gtx280-4870x2

Not sure if that's mostly speculation, but there are some benches later on for crysis.

Yeah, a single 4870x2 is *about* on par with a SINGLE GTX280.

The GTX is ~$200 cheaper.

What happened to all the ATI fanboy raving about how much better and CHEAPER the new ATI cards were going to be?

I guess hard evidence is more revealing than the ranting and ravings of fanboys...

/shrug
So we can assume it will cost around £400 in the UK, I'm starting to get chills up my spine, cringing with a feeling I know all to well, I know I live in a Rip-Off Britain, I wonder how long it will be, before we see reasonably priced products.

Probably won't happen, but I can dream, can't I?
To ostar:

Perhaps you should take a look at something other than the rather broken and comically performing Crysis.

The preview by Anadtech gives a more balanced view of things: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354&p=4

Yes the GTX wins the Crysis benchmark by a nice amount, but then it gets completely battered into the ground in AoC and GRID.
If you think pre-sale pricing at Geizhals.at and a couple of hand picked benchmarks with beta drivers are "hard evidence", someone needs to set you straight.

Go upstairs and ask your mom to give you an example of hard evidence. I bet if you tell her Mike from VA sent you, she'd giggle and turn red.
get your pants back on. Go to anand. Crysis is a pro-nvidia game. Nvidia cards always rule with that game, even if they suck everywhere else. If you take crysis out of the picture the 4870X2 rules pretty much.
The 280gtx wins in crysis? 
ok,if your talkinf about the revie at anandtech,the 280gtx is sli wins in crysis against the 4870x2 "not a single 280gtx".
The 4870x2 beats the 280gtx in SLI in all the other games cod4,HL2,Age of conan,grid,UT3,assasins creed where the 280gtx in sli gets 30% less fps than the a single 280gtx,........
Check at techreport and anandteck.
BTW,talking like an idiot and posting fake facts is not welcome here
"the 280gtx in sli gets 30% less fps than the a single 280gtx"

What?

Uh, no.
in italy you can get the 4870x2 for 295 euro online in a week it's about 480 $. the gtx280 it's 400 euros here so can you guess what i'm going to buy???? yes babyyyyyy the 4870X2
a die shrink of 280/260 is very unlikely THIS late into the cycle, they're busy probably prepping 380/360's for the next round considering that AMD has caught up. It would be wiser decision to cut their losses and run with their next revision/architecture.