AMD HD 4000 floodgates about to burst
IT WAS PROBABLY Ryan over at PC Per that first gave Daamit the willies. Having found AMD Radeon HD 4000-series cards on sale he figured his NDA null and void and started posting up stuff about them like there's no tomorrow. In the NDA world there is no tomorrow. Not until the day after.
Others have begun following suit, some with more balls than others. Hexus stuck up some pics but is cojones short of doing the full do.
According to an (unsigned) NDA document we have here, "The announcements on the RV770 will lift at 12.01am EST (05.01am BST/06.01am CET) on Wednesday 25 June, 2008."
That's out the window now it seems. The whisper we hear is that it now expires at 3pm this afternoon.
Whatever the latest press-manipulating story is, we can tell you that the 4850 will be stuffed 800 unified stream processors, support DX10.1 and SM 4.1. The GPU is clocked at 625MHz and the 512MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 1GHz.
The 4870 is similar but comes with 512MB of GDDR5 instead.
Some benchmarks Daamit is bandying about show the 4870 trouncing Nvidia's 9800 in all 3D Mark benchmarks and in Crysis.
On a Foxconn Blackops mobo, with an Intel Quad Q6600 and 2GB of Kingston memory, Daamit claims a score of 12492 in 3DMark 06; 8981 in 3DMark Extreme; 7718 in 3DMark Vantage; 30.79 fps in Crysis (1920x1200) with AA off and 26.88 at 8X AA.
The 4850 is also claimed to beat the NV 9800 in all these tests except 3DMark 06.
Whether this benchmarketing holds any water will be revealed later when we have a fiddle with a beastie or two of our own.
This French outlet is flogging a Sapphire Radeon HD4850 for under 150 euros. µ
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Already bursted...cards are selling in Europe. A few benchmarks are up as well. Looks like these cards handle FSAA very well.
so would going for crossfire 4870's be better than a single GTX 280 performance wise?

For a start the GTX 280 is insanely overpriced at average £430 while two 4870's will probably be around 320 quid.
Heres Help. GPU has Long Surpassed CPU Bandwidth & there seems bunch up at that #, about 20gb/s or 20 mb/s final bandwidth. 

CPU have had various types of memory over d'years, at present 6 transistor per byte are used. Intel has Newer idea with only 2 transistors per byte & greatly expanding memory useage with CPU. Wala: 200 Gb/S CPU Coming to Garden outletnear You.

Heres Point: Todays GPU Cards Should do more, yet how can they, with such slow processors. Intel got Kentsfield 4 core 4up x 2 threads ea that so calm it uses NO CPU Fan, Maybe seperate Power Supply Unit is in Order. Well thats leads to todays Newbies "waking Up", yet tomorrows Memory Plus CPU Gonna Be Dinger. Whopper of All Whoppers. King God with numbers going 10X & All little stuff watch entirely NEW Race Start.Finally TriQuad CrossHyX SLI Will Do Something BIG.'9
Drashek
What is a 3Dmark Extreme? Is this some un-released benchmarketing software? WHERE CAN I FIND THIS 1337 NEW BENCHMARKETING?

Really guys, what is it?
WOW....ATIs new Single-GPU-Flagship can beat a refresh from a card which is about 2 years old (9800 GTX is more like a small update of the 8800 GTX). This is impressive. I wonder why the AMD-Fanboys at INQ did not mention how this one performs in comparison to the GTX260 or GTX280.

Greetings to AMD and welcome in the year 2006. Maybe you can start keeping up now.

They better have that X2 card out very fast without the hick-ups, with a very low idle power usage and it better be very quiet in idle mode and pretty quiet during games like Crysis. Otherwise AMD contact Nintendo and ask if they use the slow chips in a new DS.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3923757&Sku=V261-4850

$US 199.99

Says ships tomorrow (20 JUN 2008)
PC Village has started to carry a Sapphire and PowerColor 4850 card. The Sapphire card is actually in stock (I called).

The Sapphire is going for $229 while the PowerColor for $223. That's 114 and 111 respectively, in Blighty Pounds for you "blokes" at the Inq. :P

http://www.pcvonline.com/productDetails.aspx?id=7244

http://www.pcvonline.com/productDetails.aspx?id=7287
Violating the holy sacred DAAMIT NDA??? How dare you!!! You sure will burn in corporate hell!!! the INQ and all its DAAMIT acquired moolah'ses will assure you!

What will the ever so honorable mr.DAAMIT salesman Charlie Demerjgrgghhh say at you!!!???
Two 4870's in crossfire will absolutly destroy any nvidia card including the $700 paperweight 280 GTX. It will run cooler, cost less, take less energy and will run on a intel chipset. Like who wants to use a NV chipset?
Will someone make a rating out of 10 for gaming benchmark and have this as a sticker?

There must be a way for us to have a "this card is ranked 7/10 for gaming in June 2008".

The tomshardware.com graphics card chart is great, the one that lists a spreadsheet type layout of the highest performing cards at the top, and then each "generation-level of performance" underneath.

If your card is only 1-2 levels below one you are thinking of buying then it's probably not worth it. But if it's 4+ then you will notice a big difference.

Have you seen that chart?
It would be unfair to compare the two cards, as the new nvidia gtx280's cost liek £400 where these cards will probably retail alot closer if not below the £200 mark (the 4850 is sub £200, some varients of the 4870 may be priced above £200).

Just to make things clearer, I could spend £8000 on a brand new car, but no one would compare it to a £16000 car, would they?

Anyone know when the unleash one tera site goes live? (25/06/08 ?)
@ K. Wenge

Of course AMD/ATI isn't comparing the 4870 to the GTX range - how are they going to have a card to compare them with, eh? It's not like Nvidia is going to give them one.
selling in UK now

http://www.awd-it.co.uk/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=4379&gclid=CM-g_cvQgZQCFQ-mQwodV2ISWg