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AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Preview

We have an exclusive early look at AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 to be launched later this summer. We will take a look at the 4870 X2 in a CrossFireX configuration as well, and evaluate gameplay in Crysis and Age of Conan with several apples-to-apples tests. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see 8X AA playable at 2560x1600 and 24X CFAA playable at 1920x1200.

Introduction

Please keep in mind that this is a PREVIEW of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, a.k.a. “R700.” The video cards we have for evaluation today come straight from AMD as engineering samples, the final retail version of this video card will have a newer BIOS than what we are using here today. Also, there will be a newer driver set ready when these video cards officially launch later this summer. That said, we think you will still be very pleasantly surprised by the performance evaluated today in this early hardware and software stage of the Radeon HD 4870 X2.

So what is the Radeon HD 4870 X2, or better known internally as R700? The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is AMD’s single video card solution for the high-end gaming enthusiast crowd. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is poised to compete directly with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 280 at a competitive price. Final pricing and specifications will be finalized at launch later this summer. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is simply a video card with two Radeon HD 4870 GPUs on a single board. Therefore each GPU is operating in a “CrossFire” type of configuration, but hard wired on the board itself with a bridge chip.

The new Radeon HD 4870 X2 uses a newer bridge chip that supports PCIe 2.0 and AMD has also improved the bandwidth between the GPUs. The bandwidth between both GPUs has been bumped from 6GB/sec, as found on the Radeon HD 3870 X2, to 20GB/sec on the Radeon HD 4870 X2. AMD has also beefed up the RAM on the Radeon HD 4870 X2; our samples have 1GB of GDDR5 accessible to each GPU (so 2GB total on the board.) Now, this memory is still not completely shared, the framebuffer is still duplicated and the memory is not combined. However, due to some inherent evolutionary upgrades present in GDDR5 memory modules there is actually a method in place to share some data between modules using that 20GB/sec bus. All of these improvements are evolutionary, through the memory, and the bridge chip, and should help improve performance and consistency with the Radeon HD 4870 X2 since it is a dual-GPU solution.

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and CrossFireX

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 uses a very large copper heatsink atop both GPUs. Air is pulled in from the fan and exhausted out the back of the video card. The HD 4870 X2 is also quite heavy, much heavier than a GTX 280.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 requires one 6-pin power connector and one 8-pin as well for proper operation. CrossFireX is supported via the single CrossFire bridge connector atop the video card. Comparing sizes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 280 are exactly the same length at 10.5 inches.

We have two Radeon HD 4870 X2 samples so we can also give you a preview of Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX performance as well. Setting up CrossFireX was quite easy for us with these video cards. We simply installed both into the appropriate slots, installed the bridge connector and power connectors, display and then installed the driver. Upon rebooting after installing the driver CrossFireX was enabled by default, we did not have to manually enable it. It was literally that simple to get setup, as soon as it rebooted we were off gaming!