AMD 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 mutli-chip graphics cards launched. Looks good.

Posted on Aug 11, 08 11:50 PM PDT

AMD has launched its second round of cards based on its efficient R700 architecture. As their names indicate, the 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 are multi-chip versions of the 4850 and 4870 boards. The memory and GPU clocks are the same. The 4870 X2 seems like a great product: there's more bandwith, AMD has promised that their driver is better than ever and it's priced very competitively. Here's the data:

• 2GB of memory*
• 3x chip to chip communication speed
• 230GB/Sec of memory bandwidth
• Competitive pricing ($549)
• Quad-GPU possible by adding a second card

Before clicking on “buy” button, look at the real tests from benchmark sites (using final hardware and drivers). On the paper, multi-chip solutions *should* scale well, but in reality, this is a complex software problem and it is not uncommon to see titles that don't scale very well, especially if these games are not used as benchmarks. And the more GPUs you add, the more problematic it becomes. We hope that ATI has pulled it off, but we would be cautious until we see real world numbers. And, by the way, this is true for multi-GPU in general, including NVIDIA's SLI.

In the meantime, ATI is winning the benchmarks: 25% better on average, when compared to the GTX 280, and up to 51% in higher resolutions. Take a look at Anandtech too.

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