Radeon HD 4870X2 is the next high-end card from ATI (although we might regret saying that when you see the performance of Radeon HD 4870 alone). Like the high-end of the preceding family, ATI has bridged two chips on one PCB. The card is highly dependent on the drivers as it uses ATI’s multi-GPU solution CrossFireX for linking the performance of the two GPUs, and the drivers is suppose to be one of the bigger reasons AMD is holding off the launch until mid-Q3. The other reason is that AMD wants to make sure that it can pump out enough regular Radeon HD 4870 cards first without the GDDR5 supply becoming an issue. AMD believes that 4870 and 4850 are the cards that will hurt NVIDIA the most.
If the supply of GDDR5 chips is solid, or at least sufficient, and the drivers are adequate, AMD will present its new flagship in August at a price which is below that of NVIDIA’s flagship product GeForce GTX 280. Stories are going around that it could be anywhere between $450-550. Even though it uses two chips, it is suppose to be a Cool N’ Quiet card. We say that knowing that the cooler isn’t even finished yet, but we also know that AMD has no intention of launching a card that runs hot and makes a lot of noise, and that the previous generation cooler was a rather good one.
We’re also hearing that the GPU clock difference between Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 might be larger than we earlier reported. AMD wants the two cards to be further apart than they were with the previous generation. This is to clearly denote that one is high-end, and one is more of the mid-range kind.
