Main Menu
- Welcome to SayIT.
- Log in
UPDATE: As certain as it seemed AMD was that no 560 SP 4830 boards had made it into the retail channel, it appears that they were, in fact, wrong. Fewer than 400 HIS Radeon HD 4830 boards made it into the channel. Here is the statement we recieved from AMD's Jay Marsden today:
AMD has identified that, in addition to reference samples of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 boards sent to media with a pre-production BIOS potentially impacting the card’s performance, a very limited number of ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 boards were released to market with the same pre-production BIOS. This is in no way hardware related, and an updated BIOS fully resolves the performance limitation.
Through consultations with AMD board partners, it has been determined with a high degree of certainty that fewer than 400 ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 boards from one AMD board partner, HIS, have reached the market with the pre-production BIOS incorrectly provided by AMD. As only a small number of HIS-branded ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 cards are impacted, we ask any customers that purchased an HIS-branded ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 to test the board using the GPU-Z utility (available at http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz). If the GPU-Z utility reports fewer than 640 shaders, please visit the HIS website for information on how to update the card BIOS via a downloadable install utility.
We had thought that retail parts would be fused to a certain number of active SIMDs to avoid soft mods and that review samples were probably based on test/engineering hardware AMD was using when developing the final specs for the Radeon HD 4830. It seems that theory is out the window, but we will continue to provide updates as we learn more.
Thursday, AMD launched their newest RV7xx variant completing their line up in time for the holiday season. As is usual with a new graphics card launch, we published a review. The hardware looked good and offers gamers that really want to play games with good quality but don't need high resolution performance a solid money saving option.
But a number of curious things happened throughout the course of the day yesterday. We first noticed an interesting article from the makers of GPU-z. Techpowerup.com posted a story on the fact that their reference sample from AMD only enabled 560 SPs rather than the full 640 we were all promised.
We were certainly intrigued by this, so we picked up the updated GPU-z and it told us we also only had 560 SPs. Now, this isn't a common occurrence at all, and multiple other issues could have been at work. We wanted to hold off on commenting until we could learn what was really goning on and bring you the whole story. It took us a while to sort everything out, and with this issue out there it's understandable why AMD needed some time to track down the causes and potential effects of this problem.
All the details we have point to the missing SP problem being limited to review samples only. AMD's partners should not have this issue pop up in the wild. This is good news for consumers, and good news for AMD as well. We saw that the 4830 wasn't a bad part, but because our tests were run with 87.5% of the full compliment of SIMDs our numbers don't reflect the full performance potential the hardware has.
AMD got us an updated BIOS for the card and we have new numbers showing the performance improvement. We have updated our tests from the other day to better reflect the relative performance end users can expect.
It is also worth noting that AMD has supplied all their partners with an updated BIOS as well to cover the just-in-case scenario. They believe they know why this happened and so believe that there is no cause for concern over retail parts exhibiting this problem. But giving their partners a new BIOS is a good idea anyway as it covers all the bases.
Read more...
<p><font size="2">Since the launch of the RV7xx GPU, AMD has been steadily filling out a top to bottom Radeon HD 4000 series lineup. The first markets addressed were gamer centric with the 4850 and 4870. Next in line was the hardcore enthusiast class with the dual-GPU 4870 X2. Since then we've seen the 4670, the 4550 and the 4350 filling out the bottom end value and mainstream segments. But there was a bit of a performance and price gap between the 4670 and the 4850. This gap has now been filled.<br />
<br />
Today we see the introduction of the Radeon HD 4830 which is to be priced at or below $130. This part is poised to split the difference between the 4670 and 4850, and filling in this market segment should finish rounding out AMD's line up of RV7xx based cards for now. At least we hope.<br />
<br />
In the past both ATI and NVIDIA have flooded the market with way too many different models that overlap in price and performance in ways that just confuse their customers. While AMD has been releasing cards at a fairly steady pace, all these parts have been well positioned and have served to disseminate their new architecture. We have been really happy to see how quickly AMD has gotten their new GPU out into the world.<br />
<br />
By now, we've covered the architecture and other versions of the hardware quite a bit. The really interesting bit about this launch is the price and the prices of competitive hardware.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3437">Read more...</a></font></p>
<p><font size="2"><!-- google_ad_section_end --></font></p>
New dual-chip ATI Radeon HD X2 graphics card family proved that AMD graphics division deserves to be a technology leader. Today we are going to talk about HIS HD 4870 X2 HDMI 2GB GDDR5 graphics card and will find out if overclocking helps this flagship solution to increase its performance even more.
Read more...
Read more...
<font size="2">The logics of the graphics card market and simplistic design should have sooner or later born unique Radeon HD 4800 modifications that would stand out among the numerous ATI reference solutions. One of solutions like that will be discussed today. It is the new Sapphire Toxic HD 4850 512MB GDDR3.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/sapphire-toxic-hd4850.html">Read more...</a></font>
As a rule, sub-$100 graphics adapters are hardly of any interest to gamers, especially taking into account how demanding some of the contemporary gaming titles are. New budget graphics cards from ATI promise to break this rule.
Read more...
Read more...
<div class="topText"><span class="content"><font size="2"> Oooh, new GPUs from AMD - however these ones aren't going to be breaking any performance records, they are both priced below $60. </font>
<p><font size="2">The Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 are slotted in between integrated graphics and the set of hardware we took a look at recently in our Radeon 4670 review. The Radeon HD 4550 will run you around $45 - $55, while the Radeon HD 4350 will be priced at $39. Generally speaking, if you're a gamer you're not spending any less than $150 for a graphics card - so these GPUs are mostly for enabling hardware Blu-ray acceleration or providing a boost in performance over games running on integrated graphics.<br />
<br />
While the Radeon HD 4670 was quite impressive with 320 stream processors, the same number that was in last year's Radeon HD 3870, the 4350 and 4550 only have 80 SPs. That's twice the number of SPs in AMD's 780G, the current highest performing IGP solution on the market. In our Radeon HD 4670 review we found that the GPU was fast enough for pretty much all current generation games at resolutions up to 1280 x 1024, but with only 1/4 the shader power of its $75 brother we don't have high gaming expectations from these cards.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Both the 4550 and 4350 are mated with a 64-bit memory interface and either a DDR2 or DDR3 frame buffer. With very little memory bandwidth, and very little processing power you need to have good expectations for these cards.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">The competition from NVIDIA is a little blurrier; while the GeForce 9400 GT is priced more in line with where we expect these cards to end up, NVIDIA does have one trick up its sleeve. The GeForce 9500 GT, paired with 256MB of DDR2 memory (the same type you'd get on your desktop) is priced at around $65 - $70 but is currently available with a $15 - $20 mail in rebate, bringing it down to the about same pricepoint as the Radeon HD 4550. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3420">Read more...</a></font></p>
<p><font size="2"><!-- google_ad_section_end --></font></p>
</span></div>
With the launch of the Radeon HD 4870, AMD showed us that they are not only still in the game, but they are back. Their hardware either out performed or was on par with NVIDIA hardware priced significantly higher. As a result, NVIDIA was forced to significantly adjust their prices downward to remain competitive. And, currently, they are competitive in terms of pricing and performance.
But in this business competitive isn't always good enough. AMD came out of the gate swinging for a knock out. And they did a good job of winning a significant amount of mindshare. They built a good product and priced it very aggressively at launch. While our concern is the current state of things, and our recommendation will be for the part that gives our reader the best value, that's not how every graphics card enthusiast sees it. The things companies do (like initially selling their hardware at way too high a price) can significantly affect the position of some enthusiasts.
That might be one reason NVIDIA went down the core 216 path with the GTX 260. A name more like GTX 265 would have been nice, and we already talked about how much we don't need dozens of parts all with slight tweaks and price differences cluttering up the market. But, the core 216 did help make NVIDIA's hardware more competitive (even if it didn't put it over the top). And more competitive is a good thing. Better competition does nothing but benefit the consumer, and we love to see it. If NVIDIA took that step because they want to win back some mindshare then that's fine with us. All we care about is what performs best in a price class, because that is what benefits our readers.
Of course, the core 216 might also have been anticipating the eventual availability of the Radeon 4870 1GB. In which case, the core 216 falls short.
Well, it isn't just that the GTX 260 falls a little short. The fact is that the extra RAM really does make a significant difference in many high quality high resolution situations when playing current games. We didn't expect the gains we see here, and combined with the original stellar performance of the Radeon HD 4870, we have to say that we are impressed.
The Radeon HD 4870 1GB has the same number of GDDR5 chips on board, but the devices on the 1GB model are double the density of the 512MB part.
The 512MB card we have uses Qimonda GDDR5, while the 1GB model we tested has Hynix devices. As GDDR5 is still pretty new, it is likely that the delay in getting out the 1GB model of the 4870 had to do with delays in getting a high enough supply of high density RAM.
Anyway, we mentioned that the GTX 260 core 216 doesn't quite keep up now that the 4870 has twice as much RAM. Let's take a look ath exactly how short it falls, first in terms of how much performance we gain over the original model and then in absolute terms.
Read more...
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card is the fastest solution in the market these days. However, it is pretty expensive and the card itself is so large that may not fit in some system cases. Today we decided to discuss the performance of two ATI Radeon HD 4870 solutions - from VisionTek and Club 3D - in order to determine if a CrossFire tandem like that could become an alternative to the top-of-the-line ATI Radeon solution.
Read more...
<font size="2">Nearly a year ago I wrote about something I called "sensible naming" with respect to GPUs. It was at the time of the Radeon HD 3800 series launch where AMD unveiled a much cleaner, simpler way of naming its cards.<br />
<br />
A family name, Radeon HD, followed by a four digit number. With the exception of the X2s, AMD has stuck to its naming system without fault. In fact, AMD has done such a good job with keeping the names clean that things are the way they should be: the internal codenames are more difficult to remember than the actual names of the cards (e.g. RV770 vs. Radeon HD 4870). <br />
<br />
NVIDIA however, just hasn't gotten the hint. The GT200 launch gave us two simply named cards: the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260, but it didn't take long for NVIDIA to confuse the marketplace with the launch of the GeForce 9800 GTX+. I hoped that the naming silliness was limited to the older GeForce 9 GPUs, but today it extended into the GTX lineup.<br />
<br />
It's called the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. <br />
<br />
The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216's name is actually quite descriptive, albeit absurdly long. The GeForce GTX 260 part we already know from the GT200 launch, the Core 216 suffix just indicates that the GPU has 216 "cores" (also playing on Intel's new Core i7 naming for Nehalem, due out later this year). Why NVIDIA didn't just call it a GeForce GTX 265 or 270 is beyond me. To make matters worse, we'll see companies adding their own suffixes to the already extended name. For example, EVGA sent us their Core 216 called the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition. Perhaps it's some conspiracy to increase the salary of writers who get paid by the word.<br />
<br />
If you remember the diagram from our GT200 review you'll see that a GeForce GTX 280 has ten clusters of 24 stream processors (the little blue blocks), for a total of 240 SPs or "cores". The GeForce GTX 260 has eight of those clusters (called Texture/Processor Clusters or TPCs), bringing its total up to 192 SPs. The Core 216, as you can guess, has nine clusters or 216 SPs. NVIDIA just enabled another TPC on the Core 216 (or alternatively, disabled a TPC on a GTX 280).<br />
</font>
<p><font size="2">The extra TPC also gives the Core 216 another 8 texture address and filtering units, but the rest of the chip's makeup remains the same, even down to the clock speeds. The Core 216 runs its core, shader and memory clocks at the same frequencies as the vanilla GTX 260.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Priced at $279, the Core 216 is a direct competitor to AMD's Radeon HD 4870 - selling at a similar price. The GTX 260 will continue to exist although selling at a cheaper price point and naturally with more processing power, the GTX 280 remains unaffected.</font></p>
<!-- google_ad_section_end --><font size="2"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408">Read more...</a></font><br />
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 showed what multi-processor graphics solutions are actually worth having taken the leadership away from Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 in no time. However can factory overclocking help G200 based graphics accelerators to take revenge? Read our review to answer this question!
Read more...
Read more...