These cards comprise the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series, combining two ATI Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs with a more advanced cross-GPU connection based on the PCIe 2.0 standard, plus two gigabytes of memory – the most in any currently available consumer graphics card. These technologies combine to make the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series perfectly suited for the most demanding games, able to deliver astonishing frame rates at extreme resolutions and image quality settings.
The capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series were on display yesterday in New York City, where leading experts from the game development community and Hollywood joined AMD to discuss and demonstrate eye-definition computing computing. Eye-definition computing is the art and science of achieving visual computing experiences that seem optically real. The tremendous computational 2.4 teraFLOPS horsepower of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series makes computing experiences that approach eye-definition computing possible. The first application of eye-definition computing computing, demonstrated by AMD in New York yesterday, is Cinema 2.0, the fusion of digital people, places and things, rendered with real-time interactivity. Cinema 2.0 shows the power to digitally create interactive environments and characters that seem optically real in either a video game or digital cinema context. With the help of leading content creators, AMD demonstrated the first “virtual” actor to be rendered in real-time in perfect, lifelike detail, via the incredible processing power found in the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series.
Based on an advanced 55nm design and leading DirectX® 10.1 support, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series delivers engineering elegance and the industry’s most compelling feature set. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is immediately available from e-tailers worldwide priced at USD $549 SRP, while the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is scheduled to be available in September at an estimated price of USD $399.3
“The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series is proof that our graphics strategy is working. The response from OEMs, system integrators, game developers, press, and most importantly, from gamers regarding the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products has been incredibly positive. Now, only a few short weeks after the launch of those products, AMD reclaims the ultimate performance crown and continues to deliver winning products to market in the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series continues AMD technology leadership with support for DirectX 10.1, tessellation, and now 2GB of frame buffer. The new products join a line-up of stellar offerings, all of which are designed to give gamers experiences that approach eye-definition computing.”
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 press and analyst reception
Initial product previews of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series highlight the superior performance and incredible image quality it delivers:
- “Our gameplay experiences with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 were phenomenal, especially once we raised the antialiasing setting to high levels... Who would have thought we’d ever be seeing Oblivion at 2560x1600 with 24X AA? This means you can load up old games and set crazy high AA settings. AMD deserves huge kudos for really kicking AA up a notch,” said Brent Justice, HardOCP.4
- “The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is looking like it beat [the GTX280] as it spanked even the overclocked GeForce GTX 280 in our testing. AMD has pulled off another one with the Radeon HD 4870 X2,” said Nathan Kirsch, Legit Reviews.5
- “The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 proves AMD’s ability to scale their architecture and offer high performance at normal prices, and still stay within comfortable power demand,” said Jon Peddie, president and founder of Jon Peddie Research.
Driving the ultra-enthusiast experience
The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series provides support for ATI CrossFireX™,
enabling incredibly fast gaming PCs with unmatched performance at
ultra-high settings. Enthusiast gamers can now run the most demanding
games smoothly in at the highest settings, enabling modes that were not
playable before.6 With the efficient use of
all four GPUs in a dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration,
gamers will enjoy more than 3 times the performance of a single ATI
Radeon HD 4870 card in many games. 7