ATI Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4850 Price Cuts This Week

[malware]

With the release of ATI's next generation Radeon HD 4890 just a few weeks ahead, the company is going to cut the prices of its Radeon HD 4870 512 MB GDDR5 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB video cards and thus balance its graphics cards product line-up. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB will drop $50, from $199 down to $149 and fight with NVIDIA's rebranded GeForce GTS 250 1 GB. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB will drop to $129, and will become main competitor of NVIDIA's GTS 250 512 MB version. Resellers and distributors are expected to start selling with the new prices this week.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Frizz]

That is not good news for me, hopefully the IceQ's maintain their prices because I'm planning to sell next month.

 

[oli_ramsay]

Wow, that's an awesome price for a 4870. Such a shame that here in the UK we'll never ever see prices that good (150 U.S. dollars = 107.096958 British pounds). I think you can just about get a 4850 for that price ATM.

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

That is not good news for me, hopefully the IceQ's maintain their prices because I'm planning to sell next month.

I think you will still keep some value in Oz... from what I understand 1337 hardware is crazy expensive/rare.

 

[3870x2]

This has me very, very excited. 4890 FTW!!! go forth and stomp the GTX285!!!

 

[AltecV1]

This has me very, very excited. 4890 FTW!!! go forth and stomp the GTX285!!!

i dont think it will beat the GTX 285!GTX 260(216) YES!!

 

[ArmoredCavalry]

Hm, crossfire is suddenly getting tempting.

Don't think I could fit another 4870 in my case though, plus it would mean buying a new PSU.

 

[domy85]

Atleast the 1gb versions are still holding their value...for now...

 

[method526]

o snap. makes crossfire a lot more tempting but then i'd have to get an x38 or x48 mobo. upgrading also in the future maybe? we'll see what nvidia does.

 

[X-TeNDeR]

Competition is good

 

[PCpraiser100]

This is great! I might be a couple months away from getting a 4870 1GB. I bet they did this to further fit in the price gap for the HD 4750.

 

[WarhammerTX]

Well Im glade I held off getting a 4870 this weekend Ill be checking the egg everyday

 

[my_name_is_earl]

Lol heard that one b4. Nvidia stop rebranding your crap.

 

[RevengE]

WOW a $50.00 Dollar drop that is awesome for people looking to upgrade! YAY AMD!!

 

[GLD]

When I get my CA state IOU income tax return I can get a 4870.

 

[VanguardGX]

Oh WOW! HD 4870 for $149!!! Oh the temptation I may just get a 512 4870 to replace my 3870. I wasn't gonna upgrade til the HD 5800 series comes around.
GOTTA love competition!

 

[Esse]

Lol heard that one b4. Nvidia stop rebranding your crap.

Except its more than just a re-brand. Its a die shrink and overall improvement being sold cheaper then what the original was. If you don't like it don't buy it pretty much.

 

[Wile E]

I wonder what effect this will have on the 4870X2 prices? I hope not too much, I just bought one on Saturday.

 

[suraswami]

hmm, I was thinking of buying a cheap board may be just a CF board instead. Will my 600W Ultra X pro run it along with other hardware in the machine is my question.

 

[ShadowFold]

I need two 4870's all of a sudden lol

 

[Famous Hobo]

600w can run two 4870's

 

[wolf]

This has me very, very excited. 4890 FTW!!! go forth and stomp the GTX285!!!

it will never stomp a GTX285, if you clock it at 900 core 5ghz mem it will probably still be behind, maybe par, but that architecture will NEVER stomp GT200, it just wont happen and we know it. its only chance, as we know all to well, is paired up.

@my_name_is_earl, rebranding they may be, but the products being "crap" is totally bogus.

good to see the 4870 get another price drop, but this now pushes it further from the 1Gb model, thus deepening the sense in buying a cheaper GTX260.

to buy a 512mb card NOW for mid/high end gaming, ie 1680x1050+ with maybe some AA is silly imo.

wether or not we use 512 mb NOW, we will very very soon, dont cripple yourselves ppl, or at best force the next upgrade sooner.

 

[Gzero]

wether or not we use 512 mb NOW, we will very very soon, dont cripple yourselves ppl, or at best force the next upgrade sooner.

Sorry Wolf, have to disagree with you there. Lots of head room on the ram? Ah but if you want to talk about future proofing why buy a Nvidia card when it doesn't fully support Dx10.1?
See?

There is only so much you can do, but eventually one way or another this industry will require you to upgrade if you want silky high resolution graphics. That's how it has always been, they have just replaced the 'Ultra' tag and copied ATI's XTX naming conventions.

512mb works fine at 1920x1080 with 4AA in RA3, same goes for TF2, Burnout and CoD:WaW. It's only crysis: warhead that gives absurdly low framerates (x64 euthusiast settings with edgeAA and vsync60 at a res of 1280x1024 on average 21~25fps at the outdoor busy locations) for me. and it isn't a gpu memory issue.

I don't think we will see games that use over 512mb until way into next year (Crysis 2: Massive Memory Leak ).

 

[oli_ramsay]

The majority of games do just fine with 512MB of vram. It's only Crysis and GTA IV that I can think of the really benefit a lot from 1GB.

 

[D4S4]

whatever... here in croatia they cost twice that at least... :shadedshu and the price drop probably won't even get to us... so i'm thinking gainward 4850 golden sample at the best...