Radeon HD 4860 in the Works?

[mdm-adph]

You are missing the point, when nVidia rebrands the G92, it has always been to bring it into line with the current naming scheme. It is not to just release another SKU because they can.

ATi is simply releasing as many overlapping SKUs as possible to flood the market with cards. There is no reason that we need a card between HD4850 and HD4870, the gap is too small.

There has never been a flood of G92 SKUs, at most there were only 5 active at any given time. We have how many RV790/RV770 SKUs right now? 7 this one making 8? And that is even giving ATi the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are actually going to discontinue the HD4830...which is only a rumor AFAIK, and hasn't been officially announced. Otherwise it would be 9.

I really don't see how nVidia's practices are any better -- I don't care what their reason for rebranding is. They rebrand, ATI rebrands, they're all the same.

You can justify it all you want to because you're obviously a fan of nVidia, but it doesn't make it true.

 

[newtekie1]

you forgot the GTX280, the GTX 260 216 65nm, the GTX 260 192, the 8800gt, the 9800gtx+, the 9800gt .... need I go on?


that said there is definitely a place for this card - its shorter, hopefully lower power, and faster with more overclocking potential. Given that the 4770 is essentially non-existent atm it makes sense.

BTW all of these 4830/4860 type cards are meant to sell the lower bin of the rv770 and the rv790 - the ones that dont make the cut of being an 4870/4890

Discontinued, discontinued, discontineud, discontinued, discontineud, and discondinuted...need I go on?

I really don't see how nVidia's practices are any better -- I don't care what their reason for rebranding is. They rebrand, ATI rebrands, they're all the same.

You can justify it all you want to because you're obviously a fan of nVidia, but it doesn't make it true.

NVidia's practices are better because it is done to eliminate confusion, the bring currently produced configuration in line with the naming/numbering scheme. So customers don't have to wonder if a 9800GTX is better or worse than a GTX260, they can just look at tell instantly.

ATi's practice is done to confuse the customer, to get so many ATi options out and available that the customer just gives up and picks one... If you have more shelf presence, customers are more likely to buy your products over the competition.

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

wait the 9800gtx+ is discontinued? silly me I forgot the gts 250 is THE SAME CARD

and the 8800gt and 9800gt is discontinued? silly me again I forgot the GTS 240 is the SAME CARD.

who is trying to deceive the consumer again?

so answer me this what is more confusing:
the same card with a different sticker to give the illusion of better performance or slightly different cards with slightly different numbers ranked high# to low# for high perf to low perf?

 

[jessicafae]

Ok this is a bit of speculation, but this board looks quite a bit like the DX11/Evergreen board that was shown at Computex. It is very possible there will be Dx11/Evergeen chips that are pin compatible with RV790 and ATI is getting this board design out using the RV790 chip since the DX11 variants are probably coming in 7weeks.
From the BSN article, ATI will have a full DX11 line up starting with a $50 card and going up in price from there. Not all ATI DX11 cards are going to be expensive. I am guessing there will be a DX11/Evergeeen 4890/275 performance class card in the $150-160 range with 1x 6pin power adapter using this board design.

 

[newtekie1]

wait the 9800gtx+ is discontinued? silly me I forgot the gts 250 is THE SAME CARD

and the 8800gt and 9800gt is discontinued? silly me again I forgot the GTS 240 is the SAME CARD.

who is trying to deceive the consumer again?

so answer me this what is more confusing:
the same card with a different sticker to give the illusion of better performance or slightly different cards with slightly different numbers ranked high# to low# for high perf to low perf?

No one tried to give the illusion of better performance by changing the name. The GTS250 and GTS240 fit the performance of the cards perfectly. It brings the currently produced cards into line with the naming scheme to make it less confusing for the customer. The customers that rely on the name alone to pick the cards benefit from this, and the ones that actually do research won't be affected as they are doing research and know that the GTS250 isn't going to perform any better than the 9800GTX.

And as much as you want to believe it, ATi's number scheme doesn't rank the cards in terms of performance. If it did, the HD4790 and HD4770 wouldn't outperform the HD4850 and HD4830.

I mean, really, your argument about the rebranding trying to trick people doesn't really hold up. So they took the high end card from the previous generation, and made it the mid-range of the current. How many people upgrading from the high end of the previous generation to the mid-range of the current really get an upgrade? Did people upgrading from HD3850s to HD4670s really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. Did people upgrading from HD2900XTs to HD3690s really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. Did people upgrading from a X1900XTX to a HD2600XT really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. So really, people upgrading from a 9800GTX+ to an GTS250 should consider themselve lucky that they are getting the same performance, they should be expecting worse performance. Upgrading from high-end to mid-range isn't usually an upgrade, and is more often than not a downgrade.

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

what is this 4790 you speak of?

and the 4770 comes close to the 4850 but doesnt actually outperform it until overclocked

EDIT: I have literally heard the words "I run a 9800gtx but I just ordered a gts250 to upgrade" more than ONCE from gamers I know. General consumers are completely conned by the change in name of the same card.

 

[DrGreenThumb]

I just got a GTS 250 very happy with it, there was two shiny red boxes beside it also....the 4850 and 4770 all priced around the same,all i had to read was HYPER MEMORY on the box and i was turned off LOL

 

[newtekie1]

what is this 4790 you speak of?

and the 4770 comes close to the 4850 but doesnt actually outperform it until overclocked

EDIT: I have literally heard the words "I run a 9800gtx but I just ordered a gts250 to upgrade" more than ONCE from gamers I know. General consumers are completely conned by the change in name of the same card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/96859/AMD_Readying_Radeon_HD_4790_Based_on_RV790.html

Yep, if it's not on newegg, it must not exist...

The HD4790 outperforms the HD4850, the HD4770 outperforms the HD4830, I should have put the word respectively in my post...sorry.

And I didn't say consumers weren't idiots, I've heard people say "I run a HD3870 but I just ordered a HD4670 to upgrade". Again, these consumers should consider themselve lucky that they are getting the same performance when doing an upgrade like that.

And really, if nVidia had used the GT200 as a base for a new core for mid-range cards, what would it look like? 240 Shaders cut in half is 120. 512-bit bus cut in half is 256. 80 TUs cut in half is 40. 32 ROPs cut in half is 16.

| GT200 Based | G92
Shaders | 120 | 128
Memory Bus | 256-bit | 256-bit
TUs | 40 | 64
ROPs | 16 | 16

Seems to me using G92 produced better cards than if they had cut down a GT200, I'm certainly happy about that, and I'm sure it saved nVidia a pretty penny to not have to tape out a new GPU that is almost identical to, actually slightly worse than, one already in existance. I bet all those people upgrading from a 9800GTX+ to a GTS250 would have been really happy if they use a GT200 derivitive instead of G92 though. Yep, it would have been really benefitial to the consumer...:shadedshu

 

[mdm-adph]

NVidia's practices are better because it is done to eliminate confusion, the bring currently produced configuration in line with the naming/numbering scheme. So customers don't have to wonder if a 9800GTX is better or worse than a GTX260, they can just look at tell instantly.

Sure -- I'm sure the average Newegg buyer (who usually doesn't even know that his new PII 920 is running at only 1.4GHz because of Cool'n'Quiet, and not because "Neweg solds me teh wrongz part") really understands that the GTX260 is better than the 9800GTX.

Give me a farkin' break.

nVidia is not different -- they seek to confuse, as well. The least you could do is admit it and not let your bias get in the way.

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

I have one thing to add: Who the heck cares whether Nvidia saves money or not ?! who cares whether anyone saves money except for themselves?

unless you are an investor in a company you shouldn't be caring one iota about how much money anyone saves except for yourself.

 

[tastegw]

ati and nvidia do not seek to confuse the customer, just for the record.

the naming schemes may not be the best for either company, but they are doing what they can with what they have. if you dont like it, dont buy from either company....oh wait, what does that leave you with?

 

[mdm-adph]

ati and nvidia do not seek to confuse the customer, just for the record.

the naming schemes may not be the best for either company, but they are doing what they can with what they have. if you dont like it, dont buy from either company....oh wait, what does that leave you with?

The, uh, Matrox Mystique G170?

 

[PCpraiser100]

Oh, not again.....

 

[swaaye]

R300, R420, R520, R600, R700, and in a few months, R800. No, I do not think the R200 is anywhere near modern, at least in the context of GPU technology.

I think you'd be surprised what 'ol Radeon 8500 can still do. It will run some modern games ok. It's a programmable architecture just like the current stuff and it can do most of the effects a modern GPU can do. The past 8 years have been rather glacial in 3D progress compared to the really early times of Voodoo1 and friends.

And remember that you can combine some of what you listed above. They aren't that different. In fact one could go as far as saying R300 = R580 (DX9 non-unified) and R600 = RV770 (DX10 unified shader). All the interim refreshes weren't very different in the end regardless of how exciting they were at the time and how many magic marketing bullets were tweaked. Hell, practically we're still getting DX9 games and DX9 is from '02!

 

[jessicafae]

huh... Apparently the 4860 chip was released back in March2009 since it is a mobile chip. If this PCI-e card does surface, maybe it is just a way to move remaining stock of some of the 4860 mobility chips that did not get into laptops. It really is not a new SKU, just a PCI-e card version of the chip. According to the press release and the product spec page the 4860 is a 40nm chip, 826 million transistors, and 640 shaders.

 

[Meizuman]

huh... Apparently the 4860 chip was released back in March2009 since it is a mobile chip. If this PCI-e card does surface, maybe it is just a way to move remaining stock of some of the 4860 mobility chips that did not get into laptops. It really is not a new SKU, just a PCI-e card version of the chip. According to the press release and the product spec page the 4860 is a 40nm chip, 826 million transistors, and 640 shaders.

Couldn't get those links to work

HD 4860

If the chip really is 40nm (as stated for the mobility version) , it should overclock like mad.... don't you think?

 

[newtekie1]

Sure -- I'm sure the average Newegg buyer (who usually doesn't even know that his new PII 920 is running at only 1.4GHz because of Cool'n'Quiet, and not because "Neweg solds me teh wrongz part") really understands that the GTX260 is better than the 9800GTX.

Give me a farkin' break.

nVidia is not different -- they seek to confuse, as well. The least you could do is admit it and not let your bias get in the way.

You seem to have a comprehension problem, try reading my post again. You seem to have made my point for me.

The average idiot consumer will likely NOT know the GTX260 is better than the 9800GTX simply by looking at the name. 9800>260, so the 9800 must be better to the common idiot. Just like 4670 is bigger than 3870, so the 4670 must be better. That is the whole point of the renaming. The idiotic consumer can look and tell that a GTS250 is worse than GTX260 simply by number, 250<260. I don't see how you could consider that adding confusion. Yes, they used the same core, big fucking deal, the renamed it so the name fits the performance level. And as I've already explained, the people that you claim they try to confuse are probably better off in the end.

NVidia seeks to eliminate confusion, but you will never see that because you are just an ATi fan...

I have one thing to add: Who the heck cares whether Nvidia saves money or not ?! who cares whether anyone saves money except for themselves?

unless you are an investor in a company you shouldn't be caring one iota about how much money anyone saves except for yourself.

As a consumer nVidia saving money is a good thing for me, for several reasons:

1.) If they had to spend extra money to tape out a new GPU, then the new GPU would likely have a higher price to the consumer. They have to recover that extra cost somehow. As a consumer I don't like higher prices.

2.) If they have to sell the GTS250/240 for a higher price, then ATi would be selling the HD4850/HD4830 for higher prices also, becuase if nVidia isn't able to compete price wise, ATi wouldn't have to lower their price as much. This door swings both ways of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say ATi is bad because they would charge more money if they could, every company is like this. Heck, even I would charge my customers more if I knew they wouldn't just run off to my competition...

ati and nvidia do not seek to confuse the customer, just for the record.

Just for the record, I don't think ATi seeks to confuse the customer, I think they are trying to flood the market with every variation on the RV770/790 possible.

I only talk about their naming scheme because it was brought up and I was responding to it. Their naming scheme simply doesn't directly relate to performance, I don't think they are trying to confuse customers with this, they are just bad at naming cards(nvidia is definitely quilty of this also, but I've already posted a number of times how I think their naming scheme should have gone).

 

[inferKNOX]

No one tried to give the illusion of better performance by changing the name. The GTS250 and GTS240 fit the performance of the cards perfectly. It brings the currently produced cards into line with the naming scheme to make it less confusing for the customer. The customers that rely on the name alone to pick the cards benefit from this, and the ones that actually do research won't be affected as they are doing research and know that the GTS250 isn't going to perform any better than the 9800GTX.

And as much as you want to believe it, ATi's number scheme doesn't rank the cards in terms of performance. If it did, the HD4790 and HD4770 wouldn't outperform the HD4850 and HD4830.

I mean, really, your argument about the rebranding trying to trick people doesn't really hold up. So they took the high end card from the previous generation, and made it the mid-range of the current. How many people upgrading from the high end of the previous generation to the mid-range of the current really get an upgrade? Did people upgrading from HD3850s to HD4670s really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. Did people upgrading from HD2900XTs to HD3690s really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. Did people upgrading from a X1900XTX to a HD2600XT really get better performance? No, they got worse performance. So really, people upgrading from a 9800GTX+ to an GTS250 should consider themselve lucky that they are getting the same performance, they should be expecting worse performance. Upgrading from high-end to mid-range isn't usually an upgrade, and is more often than not a downgrade.

Oh come on, consider themselves lucky? When ATi releases one card over another, it's because revisions (power/architecture/etc) have been done, whether more powerful or not.
nVidia is renaming the same card! Which average consumer on earth do you think will not understand it as a new card?
I think you're starting to defend nV beyond reason, and you know what everyone calls that....
Although ATi's naming scheme is very awkward and confusing too, they are not passing off previous generation cards a new-gen. If people are confused, they ask a more knowledgeable person to do their thinking. nVidia is just trying to give the illusion of releasing new cards in the face of ATi's blanketing release. LOL, there are 3 ways to win the market, flood, cheapen and lead; right now ATi's winning on 2 fronts while even nVidia's lead is made null by the incredulous 285 & 295 prices. BTW, I'm getting performance similar to 285 off my 4890, so yes, 285 is overpriced IMO.

ati and nvidia do not seek to confuse the customer, just for the record.

the naming schemes may not be the best for either company, but they are doing what they can with what they have. if you dont like it, dont buy from either company....oh wait, what does that leave you with?

VIA/S3G!! PMSL

 

[Duncan1]

Some more pics, and benchies (the source remains the same):

This HD4860 comes from UNIKA (chinese company).

The card can only be correctly identified by AMD Gpu Clock Tool:

And a small comparison test with a Radeon HD4850 under 3DMark Vantage:

HD4850:

HD4860:

http://publish.it168.com/2009/0730/20090730028001.shtml

 

[newtekie1]

Oh come on, consider themselves lucky? When ATi releases one card over another, it's because revisions (power/architecture/etc) have been done, whether more powerful or not.
nVidia is renaming the same card! Which average consumer on earth do you think will not understand it as a new card?
I think you're starting to defend nV beyond reason, and you know what everyone calls that....
Although ATi's naming scheme is very awkward and confusing too, they are not passing off previous generation cards a new-gen. If people are confused, they ask a more knowledgeable person to do their thinking. nVidia is just trying to give the illusion of releasing new cards in the face of ATi's blanketing release. LOL, there are 3 ways to win the market, flood, cheapen and lead; right now ATi's winning on 2 fronts while even nVidia's lead is made null by the incredulous 285 & 295 prices. BTW, I'm getting performance similar to 285 off my 4890, so yes, 285 is overpriced IMO.

Yes, I've already explained why they should consider themselve lucky, I'm not going over it again. You are more than welcome to read my posts again, and make a valid argument against it. Lateral upgrades from high end to mid-range usually yeild worse performance, in this case it would yeild the same performance, they should consider themselves lucky. It doesn't matter one bit that it is the same configuration or different.

And what new features did GT200 bring to make it next gen? None. It is just a beefed up G92. So again, what benefit to the consumer would releasing a GT200 derivitive have had? So the consumers that you say are being tricked, the ones that don't even know the new card they are about to get is the same G92 core with the same specs, would get the satisfaction of knowing that they really did get a new core on their card? Granted, the new core would be almost identical to G92...and they wouldn't know it anyway, because if they are too idiotic to check specs and what core is on the card in the first place, they won't know if the new card has a new core or not... But they certainly would have that satisfaction...

 

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

LOL dude, you think that when nvidia saves money on ANYTHING they pass it onto the consumer? you need to get a clue about how business works. Let me give you the short of it :

Nvidia makes video cards, Ati makes video cards, the video cards are priced per their PERFORMANCE. Top end piece is roughly $600 the card with the most performance between ati/NV garners that price tag - all other cards are priced respectively lower within a brand based on their performance relative their superior sibling card. Cards are also priced relative to their performance equal from the other company.

Nvidia sees that it is making $150 on each card and says "oh man, we are really making our consumers pay us too much, we need to drop the price $20 so we can get less money and they can save a few bucks" NO IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY

when nvidia saves money nvidia makes money, when nvidia loses sales to ati they lower prices, they could give a flying f*** about saving their consumers money, and that goes for ALL companies.

 

[jessicafae]

Some more pics, and benchies (the source remains the same):
This HD4860 comes from UNIKA (chinese company).

i found another article about the UNIKA 4860 on expreview
http://en.expreview.com/2009/07/30/unika-radeon-hd-4860-taken-apart.html#more-4497

according to this article the UNIKA 4860 is only targeted at the Chinese market and it is an RV790 chip not the 40nm mobility HD4860 chip.

I guess this is all about clearing out stock chips (RV790) as much as possible before the DX11/evergreen boards appear (which will be very soon). And different markets (Japan, China,....) are all very different. For example we can get 4770 here in akihabara but they are 13500 yen boards ($135). And 1GB 4870s are still in the 20000yen ($200) range.

 

[jagd]

Any info about ROP numbers ? 8 (like 4730 ) or 16?

 

[newtekie1]

LOL dude, you think that when nvidia saves money on ANYTHING they pass it onto the consumer? you need to get a clue about how business works. Let me give you the short of it :

Nvidia makes video cards, Ati makes video cards, the video cards are priced per their PERFORMANCE. Top end piece is roughly $600 the card with the most performance between ati/NV garners that price tag - all other cards are priced respectively lower within a brand based on their performance relative their superior sibling card. Cards are also priced relative to their performance equal from the other company.

Nvidia sees that it is making $150 on each card and says "oh man, we are really making our consumers pay us too much, we need to drop the price $20 so we can get less money and they can save a few bucks" NO IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY

when nvidia saves money nvidia makes money, when nvidia loses sales to ati they lower prices, they could give a flying f*** about saving their consumers money, and that goes for ALL companies.

Let me tell you how it really works, because you haven't a clue:

ATi and nVidia are competing on several performance points. Currently the GTS250/9800GTX+ and HD4850 are competiting cards. Each company wants the consumer to buy their cards. So, when the 9800GTX+ was on the market, nvidia had it priced at about $300. Then the HD4850 came along to compete with it, and ATi priced it at $200. So nVidia countered by lower the price of the 9800GTX+ to $175, so ATi countered by lowring the price of the HD4850 to $150, so nVidia lowered the price of the 9800GTX+ to $125, so ATi lowered the price of the HD4850 to $100...and nVidia was stuck because they couldn't lower the price on the 9800GTX+ any more because the cost to make the card was too high.

Now, nVidia redesigns the card to make manufacturing cheaper, guess what they get to do? You guessed it, lower the price to best the HD4850, which will then force ATi to then lower their price on the HD4850, assuming they aren't as low as they can go.

I never said anything about nVidia lower the price for the consumer because they wanted to...you just made that up simply because you have no clue how compeition and product pricing work, and you wanted to try and make my argument look bad. In the end you just made yourself look uninformed.

 

[wolf]

I've gotta say I've been following this discussion newtekie1 and I tend to agree with you.

Their current moves do indeed seek to eliminate confusion, not to mention any nice store clerk could tell you that a 9800GTX+ and a GTS250 are the same card.

The problem is this same clerk is stumped when it comes to ATi's cards, with 4770 and 4790 besting 48xx series cards, it gets a whole lot more confusing.

don't get me wrong, this whole renaming dance doesn't please me in the slightest, but as for this particular discussion, newtekie1 ftw. In your very replies SNiiPE_DoGG, you have inadvertently proved his point.