ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Video Cards Specs Leaked

[BumbRush]

oh btw, if you wana try and say that gflops and fill rate mean all

google "tomshardware a speedy tiler" and read it, its old but it shows that a cards theoretical numbers mean dick when compared to its acctual numbers, the kyro2 matched its numbers 100%, the cards from other makers fell far short due to memory bandiwth mostly

 

[Megasty]

3dmark=utterly useless for anything but comparing tweaks on the same system and as a stab test for overclocks, 3dmark is SYNTHETIC and is only tauted by people on forums to show how big their epeen is, find a real test like some REAL GAMES....

Besides, vantage will be out tomorrow. Maybe It'll get rid of the cpu dependence so we can really find out if the 4870 & X2 will be 2X faster than the 3800s w/o blowing them up with Crysis

 

[eidairaman1]

i hope 4800 is good

 

[Mussels]

I know this goes back to the off topic part of this discussion, but here is proof nvidia are more popular than ATI, thus explaining the more reported driver problems.

From 3dmarks page, about 2 minutes ago.

This is just my way of saying no matter how people HERE feel, look around - nvidia is certainly more popular in the world. Doesnt matter who is better, who is faster - what matters here is that Nvidia is more popular, especially in the DX10 arena.

 

[eidairaman1]

just defacto, they are not the standard, just like Creative labs, they are popular- doesnt mean they are better.

 

[Mussels]

just defacto, they are not the standard, just like Creative labs, they are popular- doesnt mean they are better.

yes, exactly.

The argument that got out of hand was because people are saying Nv sucks due to more driver issues.

The response was that there are more Nvidias out there, therefore Nv is not as bad as it appears - this does not mean Nvidia do not have problems, it merely means its exxagerated.

I'm worried about these next gen cards, ATI and nvidia because of these problems. Nv have ditched older cards (i have a geforce 3 and GF4 that no modern drivers work with, they all get stuck in 8 bit color in XP, 7900GT/GX2 have severe driver issues) ATI have fecked up the entire AGP series...

I hope that these new cards coming out, dont mean that yet another old series gets dropped, or the current cards with poor support (AGP ones for ATI) dont get entirely ditched in the process.

 

[eidairaman1]

Mussels, look at the Machine I am on, its a AGP 1950 and im running Hotfix Cat 8.1 Drivers, I found out the 8.1 hotfix are full blow driver so you dont have to install ontop of the Non Hotfix 8.1s The Hotfix is up to 8.4 but im moving to 8.5 after getting specs.

yes, exactly, Runs COD 4 good.

The argument that got out of hand was because people are saying Nv sucks due to more driver issues.

The response was that there are more Nvidias out there, therefore Nv is not as bad as it appears - this does not mean Nvidia do not have problems, it merely means its exxagerated.

I'm worried about these next gen cards, ATI and nvidia because of these problems. Nv have ditched older cards (i have a geforce 3 and GF4 that no modern drivers work with, they all get stuck in 8 bit color in XP, 7900GT/GX2 have severe driver issues) ATI have fecked up the entire AGP series...

I hope that these new cards coming out, dont mean that yet another old series gets dropped, or the current cards with poor support (AGP ones for ATI) dont get entirely ditched in the process.

 

[DarkMatter]

yes, exactly.

The argument that got out of hand was because people are saying Nv sucks due to more driver issues.

The response was that there are more Nvidias out there, therefore Nv is not as bad as it appears - this does not mean Nvidia do not have problems, it merely means its exxagerated.

I'm worried about these next gen cards, ATI and nvidia because of these problems. Nv have ditched older cards (i have a geforce 3 and GF4 that no modern drivers work with, they all get stuck in 8 bit color in XP, 7900GT/GX2 have severe driver issues) ATI have fecked up the entire AGP series...

I hope that these new cards coming out, dont mean that yet another old series gets dropped, or the current cards with poor support (AGP ones for ATI) dont get entirely ditched in the process.

Wow. People really is obseseed with drivers here. If it works don't fix it. You don't need new drivers for that cards. I have a GF4 in our 4th machine and I haven't updated it's drivers since 2004. I don't have to. Newer drivers don't increase performance and they don't offer new features for this card. Usually newer drivers only improve performance for newer games, games that these cards can't play. There's no point in changing it.
Seriously I don't know why people is so crazy about this, for example having to use 4 months old drivers like 169.21 if you want to stay WHQL. And what? They work.

 

[Mussels]

Wow. People really is obseseed with drivers here. If it works don't fix it. You don't need new drivers for that cards. I have a GF4 in our 4th machine and I haven't updated it's drivers since 2004. I don't have to. Newer drivers don't increase performance and they don't offer new features for this card. Usually newer drivers only improve performance for newer games, games that these cards can't play. There's no point in changing it.
Seriously I don't know why people is so crazy about this, for example having to use 4 months old drivers like 169.21 if you want to stay WHQL. And what? They work.

for the older cards, i cant find any that actually work. For example my Geforce 4 and below cannot run TV out and VGA at the same time - all dual display features do not work in XPS2/SP3. They either run microsoft drivers, or are stuck in 8 bit color. i am running driver 30.82 to get a single display even working properly, and that needed modyfing saying no Nvidia card detected.

To the AGP people: yes, but you really shouldnt need a hotfix. seriously, its worrying that they cant sort that out. why not release it seperately as an AGP driver, instead of this fussing about.

 

[DarkMatter]

oh btw, if you wana try and say that gflops and fill rate mean all

google "tomshardware a speedy tiler" and read it, its old but it shows that a cards theoretical numbers mean dick when compared to its acctual numbers, the kyro2 matched its numbers 100%, the cards from other makers fell far short due to memory bandiwth mostly

True, in that same sense G92 is a lot more efficient than RV670. But you are talking about different architectures and when pixel/vertex shaders were independent (this is important, because it's an extra layer of complexity). Within the same architecture the efficiency is the same and higher theoretical numbers translate to better performance. There gflops and fill-rate (both) mean all, indeed. Again, if the chip is well balanced and all units have their improvement, as is the case.
An example of this is 9800 GTX/8800 GTS and 8800 GT, with the exception that G92 IS indeed BOTTLENECKED by pixel-fillrate at highest resolutions and AA levels. Any improvement to the SP/TMU in this architecture requires an increase in ROPs. That may or may not be the case with HD4000. Since AA is done on the SPs instead of in ROPs there's a lot of room compared to G92, common sense, it's not going to be a bottleneck, increasing everything except that and let it be a bottleneck is stupid and won't happen.

 

[jbunch07]

Whether or not it will be clocked @ 1 GHz isn't what's important: to me, it would be EXTREMELY significant IF 1 single 4850 could match a 3870x2 in performance. Don't know if it can, though.

i thought the 4870 was supossed to match the 3870 X2...or at least come close

 

[DarkMatter]

for the older cards, i cant find any that actually work. For example my Geforce 4 and below cannot run TV out and VGA at the same time - all dual display features do not work in XPS2/SP3. They either run microsoft drivers, or are stuck in 8 bit color. i am running driver 30.82 to get a single display even working properly, and that needed modyfing saying no Nvidia card detected.

To the AGP people: yes, but you really shouldnt need a hotfix. seriously, its worrying that they cant sort that out. why not release it seperately as an AGP driver, instead of this fussing about.

Mine (GF4800) can do everything. Don't know which drivers are installed. I can't look for them neither because we are remodeling the room where the PC was installed, and frankly I am not going to unpack everything and install it just to see which drivers we are running. But they work, they worked back then when we installed them and they work now. We play old games there and they play well. OK my dad plays there, I usually don't lol. My brother a few times. But I gave a try to Severance: Blade of Darkness last month (to remember how it was) and ran really smooth and stable (incredible graphics BTW, I was shocked by them: the lighting, shadows and shaders had nothing to envy of Doom3, except the resolution of them of course). Even Doom3 and CS:Source (1024x768 0xAA) run stable, not fast, but no crashes.

 

[Mussels]

Mine (GF4800) can do everything. Don't know which drivers are installed. I can't look for them neither because we are remodeling the room where the PC was installed, and frankly I am not going to unpack everything and install it just to see which drivers we are running. But they work, they worked back then when we installed them and they work now. We play old games there and they play well. OK my dad plays there, I usually don't lol. My brother a few times. But I gave a try to Severance: Blade of Darkness last month (to remember how it was) and ran really smooth and stable (incredible graphics BTW, I was shocked by them: the lighting, shadows and shaders had nothing to envy of Doom3, except the resolution of them of course). Even Doom3 and CS:Source (1024x768 0xAA) run stable, not fast, but no crashes.

mines a geforce 4 MX card, not a Ti. I'm not able to get all features working anymore, which is making me annoyed as i gave it to someone to run dual screen with the secondary as a TV. Doesnt matter much man, i'm just saying that i'm having issues in that regard with older cards, and up to date XP.

 

[DarkMatter]

mines a geforce 4 MX card, not a Ti. I'm not able to get all features working anymore, which is making me annoyed as i gave it to someone to run dual screen with the secondary as a TV. Doesnt matter much man, i'm just saying that i'm having issues in that regard with older cards, and up to date XP.

Haha sorry then, mate. I was just saying that some working drivers exist, they work for us. But maybe they don't work on MX cards. It's a shame. But I guess that support for 5+ years old low-end cards are not in their priorities. It would be better if they supported them, but I can't blame them for not doing so. I know it's not on my wish list. If the card doesn't work eventually I will move to the 9600 pro or buy a cheapo one. We are using that because we have it with passive cooling and the pro does too much noise. I think it's broken or is it that old cards were louder and I am accustomed? I do buy quiet components now, but still...

 

[Mussels]

Haha sorry then, mate. I was just saying that some working drivers exist, they work for us. But maybe they don't work on MX cards. It's a shame. But I guess that support for 5+ years old low-end cards are not in their priorities. It would be better if they supported them, but I can't blame them for not doing so. I know it's not on my wish list. If the card doesn't work eventually I will move to the 9600 pro or buy a cheapo one. We are using that because we have it with passive cooling and the pro does too much noise. I think it's broken or is it that old cards were louder and I am accustomed? I do buy quiet components now, but still...

since SP3 is out, it'd be nice for them to release one final driver. one driver that works for all cards from say the GF FX series back to say, the TnT2. Then they can say rest in piece to that hardware, and we wont care.

 

[DarkMatter]

since SP3 is out, it'd be nice for them to release one final driver. one driver that works for all cards from say the GF FX series back to say, the TnT2. Then they can say rest in piece to that hardware, and we wont care.

But SP3 isn't really out for the mainstream yet, only OEM and those won't have old cards. Maybe they release one when they finally release SP3 to the masses (tomorrow isn't it?). j/k won't happen but it's a beautiful dream guesstimate.

 

[Mussels]

But SP3 isn't really out for the mainstream yet, only OEM and those won't have old cards. Maybe they release one when they finally release SP3 to the masses (tomorrow isn't it?). j/k won't happen but it's a beautiful dream guesstimate.

i've got it, i'm running it. its out for download on a few sites already, just not microsoft.com or windows update. and i dont just mean illegal sites either.

 

[BumbRush]

True, in that same sense G92 is a lot more efficient than RV670. But you are talking about different architectures and when pixel/vertex shaders were independent (this is important, because it's an extra layer of complexity). Within the same architecture the efficiency is the same and higher theoretical numbers translate to better performance. There gflops and fill-rate (both) mean all, indeed. Again, if the chip is well balanced and all units have their improvement, as is the case.
An example of this is 9800 GTX/8800 GTS and 8800 GT, with the exception that G92 IS indeed BOTTLENECKED by pixel-fillrate at highest resolutions and AA levels. Any improvement to the SP/TMU in this architecture requires an increase in ROPs. That may or may not be the case with HD4000. Since AA is done on the SPs instead of in ROPs there's a lot of room compared to G92, common sense, it's not going to be a bottleneck, increasing everything except that and let it be a bottleneck is stupid and won't happen.

but theoretical rates and acctual rates from ati and intel ALWASE are higher then the acctualy fill rates, its just how things are, powerVR didnt lie, their fillrate was what the card could acctualy do, and dispite having "worse hardware" it kicked my gf2gts allovertheplace i would bet you the numbers both companys publish are NOT acctual per but purely theoretical because they need to keep up appearances and such.

not saying this will ever change, remmber its marketing, if they show acctual numbers for one company and the theo numbers for the other and the diffrance is drastic then people will be more then willing to belive that the one with higher numbers is better.

example of "higher number means better"

was a best buy a some time back, i had a guy from geeksquad try and sell me a 2600xt they had on sale, because "2600xt has got to be better then 1900xtx" after i explained to him that the 2600xt in xfire wasnt even close to as powerfull as my x1900xtx(that was under RMA) he had to go check the net because he ASSumed that higher number=better.

then i went in to bestbuy again, and somebody was asking the diffrance between 8800gt and 9600gt, diffrent geeksquad rep was telling him the 9600 was better because it was newer and had a higher model number.

i had to walk over and explain that the 9600 is a mid range card hence the 6, and that the 8800gt was the better card( due to a sale they where same price after in store rebates and a free gift card) i got unbelving looks, again we went to a net terminal and they checked, the guy bought the 8800gt and thanked me.
oh and to explain, bb here was offering a deal for 3 days, some products you got a nice instant disscont on + depending on price u got XX on a gift card to spend later, basickly its a way to insure you come back, in the end it was a good buy for him since he was replacing a dieing x1950xtx and needed to have a good card told him to rma the x1950xtx and resell it OR just keep it as a backup, then told him he could give it to me (i would have rma'd it happly!!!)

well hope that explains what i ment, long story but posted numbers dont alwase tell the real story

 

[DarkMatter]

but theoretical rates and acctual rates from ati and intel ALWASE are higher then the acctualy fill rates, its just how things are, powerVR didnt lie, their fillrate was what the card could acctualy do, and dispite having "worse hardware" it kicked my gf2gts allovertheplace i would bet you the numbers both companys publish are NOT acctual per but purely theoretical because they need to keep up appearances and such.

not saying this will ever change, remmber its marketing, if they show acctual numbers for one company and the theo numbers for the other and the diffrance is drastic then people will be more then willing to belive that the one with higher numbers is better.

example of "higher number means better"

was a best buy a some time back, i had a guy from geeksquad try and sell me a 2600xt they had on sale, because "2600xt has got to be better then 1900xtx" after i explained to him that the 2600xt in xfire wasnt even close to as powerfull as my x1900xtx(that was under RMA) he had to go check the net because he ASSumed that higher number=better.

then i went in to bestbuy again, and somebody was asking the diffrance between 8800gt and 9600gt, diffrent geeksquad rep was telling him the 9600 was better because it was newer and had a higher model number.

i had to walk over and explain that the 9600 is a mid range card hence the 6, and that the 8800gt was the better card( due to a sale they where same price after in store rebates and a free gift card) i got unbelving looks, again we went to a net terminal and they checked, the guy bought the 8800gt and thanked me.
oh and to explain, bb here was offering a deal for 3 days, some products you got a nice instant disscont on + depending on price u got XX on a gift card to spend later, basickly its a way to insure you come back, in the end it was a good buy for him since he was replacing a dieing x1950xtx and needed to have a good card told him to rma the x1950xtx and resell it OR just keep it as a backup, then told him he could give it to me (i would have rma'd it happly!!!)

well hope that explains what i ment, long story but posted numbers dont alwase tell the real story

Cards (any device really) never reach their announced maximum numbers. That's true and as I explained it's because every machine has a different efficiency factor, and this is never 100%. But advertised fill-rates are not marketing inventions, they are ROP/TMU/SP amount multiplied by clock speed. Unless the clock or pipe numbers are not the ones advertised, the actual fill-rate is the one advertised always.
Another thing is the fill-rate that the cards will achieve in some benchmark. In fact, the benchmark itself has associated its own efficiency factor. In the end it doesn't matter because within the same architecture the efficiency will be the same or very close. If HD 3870 has a performance hit of X, you will have the same on HD3850 and the same in HD4000 cards because it's the same architecture. If HD4000 is double as fast in paper, it will be double as fast in applications once that driver and platform bottlenecks are fixed.

 

[Morgoth]

Nice, very nice. Now I know I'm gonna have to eat it

eat it

 

[eidairaman1]

thats a Leapfrog for ATI with the Non Dual GPU board, i wouldnt be surprised if ATI already has something to combat the 9900 line.

 

[WhiteLotus]

thats a Leapfrog for ATI with the Non Dual GPU board, i wouldnt be surprised if ATI already has something to combat the 9900 line.

so these things are single GPUs? wow these things can fly imagine two of them!

cor PLEASE be true - PLEASE!!!!

 

[GSG-9]

eat it

Those are some very nice numbers there.

 

[Haytch]

One thing is certain. Untill the card is officially released and benchmarked by the very few that actually know whats going on, everyone is just guessing. Nothing wrong with assumption beyond it being the mother of all F* ups!

I still dont get why they bother with SP Crysis. Has the hype really grasped the masses ?
I thought that whole piracy being the cause for low sales was a load of crap. MP was a total disaster, and it almost seems as though the games only use is for benchmarking. <--< See, even i assume!

Its only a matter of time before the gpu technology reaches cpu efficiency and power, with multiple cores. The technology already exists, the knowledge is there! Just a matter of time and OUR money

 

[HAL7000]

It sounds incredible. I am in the process of specing out new builds for 3 systems, My wife and daughter(790GX when released) with whatever hybrid card they support ,,,,but me this 4870 and X2 later on will be in my personal build.

As far as power conservation,,,,,hell with it for me, I don't care about saving energy with my computer for what little it amounts to. Give me more power at any cost. AMD needs to get back into the elite club in every aspect. The past year they have let me down and delayed my upgrades....b*st*rds. This new 4870 (X2) sounds real promising.......they better come through!!!