Sunday, June 29 2008
Diamond Multimedia (diamondmm.com), a leading manufacturer of PC graphics cards, sound cards and communications products, launched today along with boutique system builder Smoothcreations, and Water cooling mavens, Danger Den the ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 XOC Black Edition graphics card. This card offers exquisite gaming capabilities combined with state of the art efficiency.

The HD 4870 is a smoking gun dual slot card, PCIE 2.0, with 512MB of DDR5 memory and a clock speed of 800 MHz. The memory speed is 1100 MHz and is designed with 800 stream processors. The HD 4870 provides plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX™ upgradeability with up to quad-GPU support. Continuing with ATI’s Power Play and 55nm processing technology, this card is the fastest and efficient. “The Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition was clocked to kick some ass”. We didn’t just want a fast card out in the market, we wanted the fastest card that could kick the living daylights and bust some performance records, say Mario Gastelum, Director of Product Development & Engineering. “we wanted a card that kicked the competitions teeth into the curb”, and that’s exactly what our engineers accomplished”. “The firmware was custom designed to enable end users to go beyond the normal over clocked speeds and allow them to push their cards for higher performance via the catalyst control center.” The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950 MHz and Memory of up 1200 MHz.

Update: Diamond has decided to make "these cards available in ecommerce in the next few days".
Diamond Teamed up with Premier Boutique system builder, SmoothCreations, to offer these powerful graphics cards to Smoothcreations legendary beauty and performance pc system platforms. “We wanted to complement beauty, artisan craftsmanship, and performance power to a gaming system, and Diamond helped us accomplish that”, says Jim Saling, CEO of SmoothCreations. In collaboration with Danger Den, Smoothcreations will be offering a water cooled edition as well.

All Diamond video cards carry the Diamond guarantee of quality assurance. Unlike many cards that are simply first to market, Diamond carefully tests and retests every new model for its ratio of performance to reliability. Diamond is legendary in the PC video card business for its less than 1 percent return rate. Diamond cards use superior connectors, cables and components, as well as undergo more thorough testing for heat susceptibility and durability.

Availability
Diamond Multimedia’s ATI Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition will be available for purchase starting July 01, 2008 and will be available Exclusively at Premier Boutique System Builder Smoothcreations.
posted by W1zzard - 4:27 PM |  Related News

User comments
1 to 26 of 47 | Go to Page 1 2    Previous | Next
by Cold Storm (June 29th - 4:35 PM) - Reply
Wow, That's all I can say... Wow...
by Lillebror (June 29th - 4:40 PM) - Reply
Sounds like my new gfx card! :D
by panchoman (June 29th - 4:40 PM) - Reply
wow thats gonna be sweet! cant wait to see pics!
by holy_ (June 29th - 4:42 PM) - Reply
Hope to see temp below 50 C for this Diamond HD4870 with water cooling :)
by btarunr (June 29th - 5:11 PM) - Reply
So these parts won't be available with the public distribution system...as in ordinary hardware stores?
by erocker (June 29th - 5:30 PM) - Reply
According to the article, it will be available exclusively at Smoothcreations.
by btarunr (June 29th - 5:33 PM) - Reply
Bad. This will negatively impact Diamond in the market when the HD4800 series is the "hot new thing" which has even some NVIDIA partners interested, and possibly several partners coming up with custom (PCB+cooler) models, all of when when ATI has a golden opportunity to grow, and with it, its partners grow.
by DEFEATEST (June 29th - 5:36 PM) - Reply
These cards sound pretty sick.
by largon (June 29th - 5:55 PM) - Reply
by: btarunr
Bad. This will negatively impact Diamond (...)
Come again?
:confused:
by PrudentPrincess (June 29th - 6:08 PM) - Reply
by: largon
Come again?
:confused:
Hes referring to it only being available at Smoothcreation's website. (If that's true)
by substance90 (June 29th - 6:39 PM) - Reply
That`s one fast son of a bitch! I can`t wait for the 512bit/1Gig version.
by W1zzard (June 29th - 6:57 PM) - Reply
by: substance90
That`s one fast son of a bitch! I can`t wait for the 512bit/1Gig version.
there wont be a 512-bit version of any rv770 single gpu card
by WarEagleAU (June 29th - 6:58 PM) - Reply
Simply amazing. I hope if its through them, you can buy it as a standalone and not part of their systems.
by btarunr (June 29th - 7:00 PM) - Reply
by: largon
Come again?
:confused:


Why not sell it in the open market? Negative impact = Under-utilizing current market, building a "that's a niche market product, not for us" sentiment. So there are a lot of people with the buying power who will miss out on this product just because they don't sell it in the open market, forcing such people to seek alternatives and developing an "anti-" sentiment.
by Cold Storm (June 29th - 7:03 PM) - Reply
That is true.. I mean, if you look at the site, then you see that you have to buy a SYSTEM in order for it to even happen.. Lowest end is even 2 grand just to work it... It would be better to make these parts available for everyone, then to have it to the HIGHEST payed person...
by cdawall (June 29th - 7:42 PM) - Reply
i like the name its the black edition VGA now thats cool :D
by newtekie1 (June 29th - 8:05 PM) - Reply
Unlocked BIOS? So ATi is locking their cards to prevent good overclocks? That is BS to the highest degree.
by cdawall (June 29th - 8:06 PM) - Reply
by: newtekie1
Unlocked BIOS? So ATi is locking their cards to prevent good overclocks? That is BS to the highest degree.
no they are locking CCC thats what they are unlocking the limit to 950 in CCC
by InnocentCriminal (June 29th - 8:08 PM) - Reply
I wouldn't be surprised if we see other manufacturers starting to follow suite in a very similar way. For example, Sapphire could rehash the Toxic, sorry Atomic and release the same thing. They'd need it considering the such poor performance the original Atomic X2 gave.
by Ragheed (June 29th - 8:08 PM) - Reply
At what point does 512MB become a hindrance? I know the 4870 can beat the GTX 260 with 896MB, but will performance continue to scale with speed increases absent a corresponding increase in frame buffer?
by newtekie1 (June 29th - 8:57 PM) - Reply
by: cdawall
no they are locking CCC thats what they are unlocking the limit to 950 in CCC
They what are they talking about when they say "The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked..."? Sounds like a locked BIOS to me.:confused:
by Nitro-Max (June 29th - 9:27 PM) - Reply
i hope they do a black edition X2
by cdawall (June 29th - 10:28 PM) - Reply
by: newtekie1
They what are they talking about when they say "The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked..."? Sounds like a locked BIOS to me.:confused:
simply that they unlocked CCC so it maxes out higher when you oc through CCC than the standard 4870
by newtekie1 (June 29th - 10:40 PM) - Reply
by: cdawall
simply that they unlocked CCC so it maxes out higher when you oc through CCC than the standard 4870
I have three problems with that:

1.) They said firmware. CCC is not firmware, it is software. I still think they are talking about an unlocked BIOS, not just a modified CCC. To me Firmware means the cards BIOS.
2.) If it is just a modified CCC, what is the big deal? You can use another overclocking program to overclock the card beyond what CCC lets you anyway, and what is so special about this card then?
3.) If it is CCC, does that mean I have to rely on Diamond every time I want to update my drivers and CCC? I don't like having to wait on the manufacturer to release special drivers for the card. I want to be able to go to ATi.com and get the latest drivers the day they come out.
by Para_Franck (June 30th - 1:48 AM) - Reply
The way I get it: CCC gets some information from the firmware, and allows a certain range of overclockability. THis is why ccc allows my HIS 3850 Ice3Q Turbo much higher overclocks than it allows my parents Pallit 3850. Same CCC version, same video card (3850) yet different overclocking ranges. Note that with the pallit I can put everything to the highest and the card runs just fine. With my HIS I reach the maximum stable setting way before the allowed CCC limit, and a lot higher than the Pallit limit.

These are only guesses, but it makes sense, I think.
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