Does anyone expect to see 4890 cards?
 
These are clearly my speculations but from all the pre-release speculations of specs of the new cards some turned out true some turned out false. However I am little surprised that the 4870 are clocked at only 750/1800. Isn't it suspicious
 
I have read a lot and there were many articles saying that the core will be 850 till the very end. I have also read articles RV770 hitting over 900MHz on air. Now of course these might all be fud, but I think it would be a VERY smart move from ATI to wait for nVidia, look how they perform, adjust the performance of the 4870 according the nVidia cards and keeping the price juicy,  
 
BUT
 
leaving a hidden card in their sleeves. If they can achieve 850 Mhz clocks and I am sure they can achieve 2200 Mhz memory, that will be enough for a new high end card which they can promote in 1-2 months after all the hype is gone. This will be smart move because by my opinion thats just what ATI need to beat the 280GTX. Currently 4870 is generally between 10-20% slower than the 280. If they release for example 875/2200 - 1GB card I am sure it will beat gtx 280 and they can price it at the top or at least $500. It will not be bad for them to make some money for once.
 
What do you guys think. Is there a room for a new high end card from ATI?

There is a room if the price is $300 for that card.

Ronka how can you be so sure?

 
 
Are you serious? I hope you were kidding.
 
The GTX 280 only performs 10% better than the HD 4870, and the HD 4870 costs nearly 55% less than the GTX 280. Theoretically at that price/performance ratio, ATI would have a card that nearly doubles the performance of the GTX 280 at $650.
 

How on earth could they expect to get to 850-900 clocks if people are already complaining about the heat/noise at their current clock levels? I've been reading posts of people reporting their temps... and man, if they're getting accurate measurements I just don't see how there is much room to go higher (with any sensible cooling solution)

why would ATI need to price it at $700-$800?
 
Do you imply that ATI hardware is second quality or something ?
 
Exactly the opposite. If their card is faster than 280 they CANT price it the same price or higher just because they are 2nd at the moment. People need reason to switch wagons. One good reason is always price.

you are right rodney , but
 
1. That was only speculation
 
2. There are reports of bad BIOS and fan/temperature control
 
3. The newer card could have some better cooling and also better fan control.  
 
4. The new card can be louder as GTX280 is near 70db at load and people still buy it
 
enough?

They already have beat the 280 in my eyes,a wee bit slower for way less money is a win to me.The only people that will buy a 280 over a 4870 are the "gotta have the best of the best crowd" and they are a minority.

I think nVidia hired ronka to be their official tom's hardware fanboi, maybe in exchange for a mail in rebate that lowers the 280's price to something that actually makes sense.

I'm just going to say this is really hopeful/dumb speculation.
 
ATI's card that they will use to beat the GTX280 with is the 4870X2.  ATI doesn't have the kind of money nVidia has to launch a new production line to beat the GTX280 with a single GPU.  That would also take upwards of a year.  By then, you're in your next generation of cards.
 
The 4870 is and will be ATI's highest end GPU.  The only faster cards you will see will be rebadged 4870's with better cooling/BIOS with slightly higher clocks.  They will still be 4870s and they still will not beat the GTX280.  But for half the price I'm sure most people wont be complaining.  Kind of like the x1950, x1950XT, x1950XTX.  Same GPU, different bios/cooling/memory/etc.
 
 
Long story short, the GT200 chip is more powerful than the RV770.  The drawback being the RV770 being much cheaper to manufacture.  It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to devlop a new chip and setup production for it, so these are the chips we're going to be dealing with for the rest of this year.
 
ATI has said they will do a 4870X2, nVidia has stated there will be no GTX 280X2.  My guess is that when launched, the 4870X2 will be king (though not by much, a la 3870X2 vs 8800GTX) and will be priced at about the same price that the GTX 280 is selling for at that time.
 
 
My 2 cents.

yes.... ronka thats because nvidia got a very good gfx card at that time... and before that lotsa jumped into the 1900Xt wagon and before that to the 6800 and before to the 800XT and before to the 9800 man.... this is a cicle, and TSMC and UMC are the ones that manufactures the chips, so quality is the same, I smell trolls...

People jumped on the 8800 bandwagon in the past because ATI's 2900 series flopped. This time around it is different. The 4800 series is meeting and exceeding expectations.  

The GTX 260 and 280 cards are very good cards, it just makes no sense to buy one when ATI is performing just a little bit less (yet great overall) and cost a lot less. The only reason I could see buying the GTX 280 is if money is no object.

These are all pretty obvious claims that are very well supported by the recent wave of benchmarks. Why are you being so obstinate about this?

 
He just said it was one reason. The performance from ATI at that time were not good at all so people went expensive because thats where the only performance was. Now the performance is much more present on ATI side at better price point so people might jump ship.

 
Sup Nvidia
 
Butthurt much?

There's plenty of room for more speed in the 4800 series.  
 
Remember, these are reference boards with lackluster cooling units running at 20% speed. A driver/bios fix would help here, let alone the better cooling solutions that will start appearing after a while. People have already gotten them down to 43C at load with a good after-market cooler. Remember also that nobody can really overclock these cards more than around 5% due to CCC limitations, and no Rivatuner updates.
 
Technically speaking, the 4850 has more raw processing power than the GTX280, at around 1 TFLOP. The 4870 has about 1.2 TFlops of juice under its hood, which is about 25% more power than Nvidia's flagship. They also have DirectX10.1 support, which will make rendering noticeably faster than it is now. ATI just really needs to push hard with driver optimizations to counter Nvidia's back room deals, and push hard for DX10.1 titles. If they do, what they have out now will crush the GTX280.  
 
Then they'll whip out the 4870X2, which will still be cheaper than the GTX280.

I think it's highly likely that there will be greatly overclocked 4870s with more efficient nonreference cooling... I doubt those cards will be named 4890 though.

I don't think we'll see a "4890", my guess will be that since ATI has allowed vendors to offer factory overclocked versions of the the 4850/4870, let alone any oc'd version of the 4870X2, any gpu's after the 48xx series will end up being a die shrink or new gpu altogether release under the 5xxx moniker. But hey who knows?! I just wish ATI all the luck with the 48xx series and am glad to see them putting out a top notch product again!
 

Sorry ronka, that is way off. ATI announced that they are not going to create a giant monolithic gpu to compete in the high end gpu market but they will be using two smaller gpus in tandem to fit into the high end gpu segment, henceforth, therefore, and hitherto a card to be release called the 4870X2.
 
And, if the 4850 is $200, and the 4870 is $300, then it stands to reason that the 4870X2 will list in the $400-500 range; which is still cheaper than the 280GTX.  
 
Also, if a single 4870 is only 10-20% slower than a single 280GTX, then the chances of the 4870X2 spanking the 280GTX are pretty darned good. Albeit the 4870X2 has two gpu's compared to the 280GTX's single gpu, they are both still just one video card inside your computer.
 
nVidia better hope the 55nm die shrink pays off or they'll really will have their hat handed to them.
 

 
Word. at the moment nVidia haven't got any "new" cards out for your average joe gamer. Remember, average Joe won't be spending upwards of £250 on his graphics card, he wants to spend around £150ish and ATI have just got that market nailed with the HD4850/4870. Unless nVidia can get some much cheaper cards out soon that perform about the same as ATI's cards then ATI have won this generation!