The 4870x2 is a true monster

damn...lets hope its true

Thats true, I hate bungholios too. But this is a new aproach with ATI, so those 2900 numbers and using Vantage make this a whole new ballgame. It could have flipflopped like the 1xxx series vs the 7xxx series too. Anyways, more is better ATP.

I think the main reason that ATI seems to usually come out on top in the 3DMark scores and yet fall behind against tests in gaming is that most game makers seem to favor Nvidia (or used to at least).

Might be just me, but I've seen a lot of 'The way it's meant to be played.' stickers on PC game boxes and the same thing in the pre-start-menu ads (or whatever you call those) when you boot up a game. And these appear more (in my experience) than similar stickers/ads for running best on ATI cards.

So I guess to me it seems like 3DMark and some choice games are GPU independent when it comes to the GPU maker, but a lot of developers are (or used to) favor the green team and so they usually came out on top.

The way I see it is this. 3DMark 06 showed the cards capabilities. Those capabilities dont necesarily translate into great game performance if the card isnt optimized, or balanced. What we might see is that ATI has finally brought that balance, and ability out in these new cards. We will see if thats true soon

I cant wait anymore I am going INSANE. I have been waiting for 2 months to buy my computer, but I keep telling my self just wait until these cards come out. This upcoming weeks are gonna be killer..really wish they would just come out already.

True enough, but you could always put two 4870X2's in crossfire and that would murder two GTX280's in SLI for about the same price and reportedly consume less power as well.

nVidias had plenty of time to improve current situations too. If this turns out that the 4870x2 is as fast to the 280sli as the 3870x2 is to the 9800gtx sli, then nVidia has been sitting on their thumbs. And if these specs and pricing holds up, then this will be a huge catchup in price performance for ATI

So far, ATI shows a 15% increase on their gap with nVidia, and then you have the pricing figures to boot. Real good for us this year

Like I said, 3Dmark counts for nothing for me lol.

I wanna see REAL gaming scores

Not knocking on your post, I"m happy I saw that

The people that have these cards are itching to tell, but of course they cant. Its like this. The easy slips of info goes first. Ones that in no way violates NDA. Then they get itchy and come up with ways to give glimpses without breaking the NDA. Im betting someones going to slip up, and soon

Hey, Im looking east as well

Dune that look nice

Yes, it surely does support their newest 3way-SLI technology.

And great physics stuff

All we need is an independant cold fusion for our tri SLI system and we'll be set

And theyll be cheaper as well

Vantage is unfortunately not a whole new ball game. A same specced system comparing a 9800GTX with a card like my 8800GTS 640 can score over twice as high. Twice.

The performance level in real terms however is nowhere near as high.

It would be easy to fall back upon "more is better" however we only need to look back to the 2900 to see why this is not correct...

However, always the optimist, I am hopeful.

Always funny to hear such stupid fanboys

It doesnt matter dude, you get more for less money.
Its like laughing to Core2duo because its 2 glued dual cores to make quad but it works and it beats AMD so who cares.
I like AMD more but I am not some stupid fanboy that burns money for no reason.

I have had Intel and AMD, Nvidia and ATI, hell I even have 8800GT at the moment but I like the new Radeons and cant say they are not good if all the info is true

Go buy yourself a Porsche with hyunday engine in it just to show off

its metaphor

the reason ATI are faster than nVidia on 3dMarks but slower on games is because most of the games work with nVidia and optimize their games for them, while ati must optimise its drivers manually for every game

but 3dMarks just shows the architecture potencial, and what the best case scenario is for the card.

Lets hope ATI work on their drivers more this time and release a really stable good performing cards

That is Definitely not true, take a look at Half life 2, which was specially optimized for ATI cards. Nvidia still dominated.

And if its driver related, I think they would've fixed it by now on the 3870 X2 or the 3870 or the other series.
I don't think their bad cards, but you can't find excuses for low performance.

Even ATI admitted that they fell behind when interviewed by MaximumPC. Although it is a false statement that people are saying they are only aiming for Mid-range. They are trying to aim for High end.

I'm not as Scared for AMD's Video cards, but I am for their CPUS. They fell behind horribly, they just announced their first 45 nm CPUs later this year, while Intel has the 45 nms already completed and are already announcing a newer stronger chip.

RawSteel has it right.

WhatI was told by an industry insider is that Nvidia pays developers to develop games using nvidia cards and therefore the "the way it is meant to be played" tagline comes up. ATI must then tweak their drivers to play better after the fact. This gives Nvidia an automatic heads up advantage because why would bite the hand that feeds you. In my humble opinion then the synthetics are actually comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. There is no bias, simply the strength of the hardware itself and the raw proficiency of the drivers.

In a perfect world then we would all be flocking to ATI's door. Unfortunately the world is not. I have a 7900GT and a X1900xtx. I WILL be getting a 4870 X2 as they offer more features than just frame rate . Since I am not a run-N-gun game player. (I like RTS games, and tactical shooters) my requirements call for something a little different.

Also just to let you know, There is a HIGH development price to be paid just to eke out another 5% of performance. While you may get the performance crown and bragging rights,
1.the major market is NOT found there
2. you can not see the difference in the performance gains.

I played Crysis on my 1900xtx (med-high)and anticipate ramping things up with the 4870 x2

Yessssss,

Video quality was one of the qualities I was talking about concerning ATI.

2.Folding is another
3.Video rendering (special effects)for film/video work
4.Speed of encoding of video files to different video formats

And yeah I run my ATI cards on Intel platforms, not AMD


Also falling behind does not negate the fact that Nvidia subsidizes game developers. With the company that owns ATI being in a financial straight jacket wouldn't they have "fallen behind" in being able to subsidize game developers also? That has not been a large part of their business model. It is sort of like buying votes. Since we are in a strong political atmosphere this year I will make that analogy.

late July or sometimes in Q3... or something like that, not for a while thats for sure

Ahh thanks for the information. QQ though, I can't wait that long! Looks like the GT280 will make a few bucks before the ATI stuff comes out.