ATi 4870 X2 (R700) thread

[lopri]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...=3124024&postcount=348

Unfortunately he didin't disclose how much memory was on-board.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Originally posted by: lopri
http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...=3124024&postcount=348

Unfortunately he didin't disclose how much memory was on-board.

If you look at the next page

Strange, mine sample is more just 15% faster than 4870 CF. Sampsa, share with me you driver, 'cause i think there is something wrong.

So apparently it IS 15% faster than 4870 CF, and theres something wrong with Sampsa's card/drivers

The scaling must be closing in on 100% in most games for such a big improvement... Reading Guru3D 4870 CF review, it already has huge CF scaling, seems like they scored on every level with this card

 

[taltamir]

does vsynch still not work on multi GPU? Or has that been fixed (by either or both companies?)

 

[Qbah]

Let's just hope the X2 has some sick cooling... My 4870 arrived today and it's running at 80C idle... Two chips will probabaly melt the PCB in under a minute

But who cares, it's lightning fast The X2 should poulverize everything If the shared memory and hardware level GPU communication rumors are true...

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: dasracht
Has there been any new word or rumor on the release date? Tom's and digitimes seem to predict a July release, others an August release.

Edit: Also, does anyone know if there is an NDA, and if so, when it expires?

I hear july 14th performance NDA, july 15th release, end-july wide availability, 15% or greater performance over 2x HD4870 Gddr5 in crossfire.

That makes it like 1.8 times as fast as a Geforce GTX 280 in certain scenarios. Also, 2GB versions will be available later on, perhaps august...

R700 will rock. Hopefully no video game titles will have zero % crossfire scaling... but still, even then in a worse case scenario you will get HD4870 Performance.... I don't see 1gb vs. 2gb making a huge difference...

 

[dasracht]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
Also, 2GB versions will be available later on, perhaps august...

So the first versions won't have 2gb?

Can someone else confirm this? This is the first time I've heard anything like this.

 

[BroadbandGamer]

Originally posted by: taltamir
does vsynch still not work on multi GPU? Or has that been fixed (by either or both companies?)

I wasn't aware of any vsync issues. Please explain.

Does anyone know anymore about this? Screen tearing is one of those things I just can't live with.

 

[Tempered81]

Source:
http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7900.html


"The PLX chip between the GPUs now supports PCIe 2.0, but the exact nature of the remaining changes are yet to be unveiled. The card has two 512MB GDDR5 memory buffers, most likely the same 3.6GHz chips found with Radeon HD 4870. We suspect these won't be shared as so many were hoping."

 

[dasracht]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
Source:
http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7900.html

That article is dated June 29, before it was widely known (known at all?) that the card would be 2gb. Are there any current articles or rumors which state the card will only have 1gb at launch?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: SteelSix
I'm like messing with cooling solutions so I'm checking out the 4870 X2 cooler...

Having separate heatsinks for each GPU has one drawback in that the one farthest from the fan tends to run hotter due to hot air from the first heatsink being pushed through its fins. The solution, a one-piece heatsink, or a heatpipe connecting the two.

We've seen this pic of the 4870 X2 cooler

Check this one out, note the large heatpipe

Not sure which cooler we'll see with the finished product; but a heatpipe certainly makes sense. Cooling this card has required quite a bit of attention to the cooler I imagine.

I'm guessing it will be the one without the heatpipe exposed. The reason I say this is because the heatpipe on that card will most likely get hot enough to fry an egg, and having a hot branding iron exposed on a consumer product is probably not the best liability.

...I also say that because the cooler with the heatpipe exposed looks less like a finished product that the other one.

 

[Hauk]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: SteelSix
I'm like messing with cooling solutions so I'm checking out the 4870 X2 cooler...

Having separate heatsinks for each GPU has one drawback in that the one farthest from the fan tends to run hotter due to hot air from the first heatsink being pushed through its fins. The solution, a one-piece heatsink, or a heatpipe connecting the two.

We've seen this pic of the 4870 X2 cooler

Check this one out, note the large heatpipe

Not sure which cooler we'll see with the finished product; but a heatpipe certainly makes sense. Cooling this card has required quite a bit of attention to the cooler I imagine.

I'm guessing it will be the one without the heatpipe exposed. The reason I say this is because the heatpipe on that card will most likely get hot enough to fry an egg, and having a hot branding iron exposed on a consumer product is probably not the best liability.

...I also say that because the cooler with the heatpipe exposed looks less like a finished product that the other one.

Yea I bet you're right Nitro. Can't wait to see how stock cooling performs, especially if cores are clocked to 4870 single speeds. Wow..

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hopefully powerplay is fixed on these cards or else idle power consumption would be through the roof.
RV770 are hot cores (something many didn't expect), so i wonder just how the stock cooler will fare against it.

 

[Hauk]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Hopefully powerplay is fixed on these cards or else idle power consumption would be through the roof.
RV770 are hot cores (something many didn't expect), so i wonder just how the stock cooler will fare against it.

I bet fanspeed will need to be 80% or better under load. Agreed, will be nice to see Powerplay working.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: BroadbandGamer

Originally posted by: taltamir
does vsynch still not work on multi GPU? Or has that been fixed (by either or both companies?)

I wasn't aware of any vsync issues. Please explain.

Does anyone know anymore about this? Screen tearing is one of those things I just can't live with.

i heard that you can't use vysnc with mutli gpu of either company. Just like you couldn't use multi monitors (AMD solved that, supposedly nvidia still hasn't). Or is it multi monitors on seperate cards? (aka, using 4 monitors on two cards). Supposedly you can use 4 monitors on 2 cards with AMDs cards.

I would like to know more about the exact list of limitations of multi GPU.

 

[CP5670]

Vsync together with triple buffering is apparently not compatible with AFR, although it may work in some cases. It hardly worked in anything when I tried SLI a few years ago, although I'm not sure what the situation is like right now. There are cases where it appears to work, but SLI is seemingly no longer in use as performance drops to a single card's level. I'm guessing CF is similar.

Vsync by itself should usually work, but there are still a few games where that has issues. Someone here was complaining about it a few months ago.

 

[taltamir]

mmm.... I hate tearing with a passion. If the 4870x2 does not resolve the lack of vsync then it would be a deal breaker for me. I'll either keep my 4850, or get a 4870 instead (or maybe a GTX260 if I see another 260 for 260$ deal).

If AMD does fix vysnc with AFR then it will give them a huge benefit over nvidia's SLI.

 

[dadach]

Originally posted by: taltamir
mmm.... I hate tearing with a passion. If the 4870x2 does not resolve the lack of vsync then it would be a deal breaker for me. I'll either keep my 4850, or get a 4870 instead (or maybe a GTX260 if I see another 260 for 260$ deal).

If AMD does fix vysnc with AFR then it will give them a huge benefit over nvidia's SLI.

what are you talking about?...i was able to do vsync@60 FPS in both single and double 3870x2 configurations...what needs to be fixed there?

 

[taltamir]

then it DOES work after all?... that is good, I have been hearing conflicting stories on this one.
If you personally got it working then it is good enough for me.

This brings back a lot of excitement about this part for me... arrg, such a tough decision.. 4870 or 4870x2...

 

[JPB]

R700 is also Radeon 4850 X2 2GB

Two RV770PRO

We got confirmation that two RV770PRO based R700 will end up branded as Radeon HD 4850 X2. The partners can do their own designs and this will mean that there will be at least two variations of the upcoming R700 card.

The top of the line, called Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB will have 2GB of GDDR5, the runner up is the Radeon HD 4850 X2 with 2GB of GDDR3.

There will certainly be the price difference between GDDR5 and GDDR3 version of the card and it looks that GDDR3 based Radeon 4850 X2 comes a month later.

 

[lavaheadache]

Originally posted by: taltamir
then it DOES work after all?... that is good, I have been hearing conflicting stories on this one.
If you personally got it working then it is good enough for me.

This brings back a lot of excitement about this part for me... arrg, such a tough decision.. 4870 or 4870x2...

I have been using v-sync with sli for atleast a year now... I am allergic to tearing and would have got rid of sli immediately if I couldn't use v-sync

 

[dasracht]

Originally posted by: JPB
The top of the line, called Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB will have 2GB of GDDR5, the runner up is the Radeon HD 4850 X2 with 2GB of GDDR3.

So can this put to rest the notion that the 4870x2 won't have 2gb at launch?

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: lavaheadache

Originally posted by: taltamir
then it DOES work after all?... that is good, I have been hearing conflicting stories on this one.
If you personally got it working then it is good enough for me.

This brings back a lot of excitement about this part for me... arrg, such a tough decision.. 4870 or 4870x2...

I have been using v-sync with sli for atleast a year now... I am allergic to tearing and would have got rid of sli immediately if I couldn't use v-sync

Are you using triple buffering, and is there any performance hit over having everything turned off?

Aside from microstutter, this was the main beef I had with SLI back then. I find vsync by itself to be fairly useless due to the performance hit.

 

[lavaheadache]

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: lavaheadache

Originally posted by: taltamir
then it DOES work after all?... that is good, I have been hearing conflicting stories on this one.
If you personally got it working then it is good enough for me.

This brings back a lot of excitement about this part for me... arrg, such a tough decision.. 4870 or 4870x2...

I have been using v-sync with sli for atleast a year now... I am allergic to tearing and would have got rid of sli immediately if I couldn't use v-sync

Are you using triple buffering, and is there any performance hit over having everything turned off?

Aside from microstutter, this was the main beef I had with SLI back then. I find vsync by itself to be fairly useless due to the performance hit.

Triple buffering for me causes too much input lag. As far as a performance hit using vsync, I disagree. If by performance hit you mean you average fps is lower, well sure. Your maximum fps is 60 or whatever your refresh rate is. I don't think my minimums got lower by any noticeable difference, but the image quality greatly improves. I definately feel that using sli increases image tearing when not being synced

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: lavaheadache
Triple buffering for me causes too much input lag. As far as a performance hit using vsync, I disagree. If by performance hit you mean you average fps is lower, well sure. Your maximum fps is 60 or whatever your refresh rate is. I don't think my minimums got lower by any noticeable difference, but the image quality greatly improves. I definately feel that using sli increases image tearing when not being synced

No, I am talking about the fact that the framerate has to be a divisor of the refresh rate with vsync alone. (for example, if your framerate is between 55-70fps with a 60hz refresh rate, anything below 60 will suddenly drop down to 30 due to vsync, so it will keep fluctuating between 30 and 60 and those drops will be much more noticeable than without vsync)

I find tearing unacceptable too, but in most situations I prefer the input lag of TB over the big framerate swings without it. The only games I play without TB are older ones where I can maintain 85fps or more at all times.

 

[lopri]

GDDR5 is what makes RV770 really fly, from what it looks like. I mean, the only difference between HD 4870 and HD 4850 is the memory (and yes, some core overclocking).