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ATI's Nvidia GeForce GTX 280-Killer Is Water-Cooled, Super-Powered
Posted by Matt Buchanan at 8:00 AM on July 2, 2008
ATI's probably pretty mad Nvidia stole some of the excellent mid-range Radeon HD 4850's thunder by dropping the GeForce 9800 GTX+ for a mere US$30 more. So they're hitting back with a special Radeon HD 4800 card designed solely for the crushing of Nvidia's top-of-the-line GTX 280 graphics card in pure performance.
Code-named "Super RV770," it has pre-installed water-cooling and an unlocked BIOS so you can push the core speed to 950MHz (maybe beyond 1GHz) with a memory bandwidth of 150GBps, even more than the GTX 280.
Diamond's Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition (which launched today for Smooth Creations' build-to-order gaming PCs) is actually the first "Super RV770" card, though it's not clocked quite as high as AMD's super spec. TG Daily expects announcements from other ATI partners like Asus and Sapphire to be coming up shortly. Of course, this is all talk 'til we see some benches. [TG Daily]
Tags: ati | graphics | graphics cards | hardware | radeon
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Alex
Posted July 8, 2008 2:57 AM
the memory bandwidth of the 4870 is already higher than the 280, 115:111
bobide
Posted 8:44 AM 2/7/08
I don't see these climbing over $600. I imagine ATI will try to aim at the $500 range to make the blow that much more painful.
bobide
Lodlaiden_
Posted 8:25 AM 2/7/08
@drewls: You think you have enough stuff going on for 4 monitors?
Lodlaiden_
TerryinSt.Paul
Posted 8:25 AM 2/7/08
@toockz21:
If you had to ask, you probably cant afford it. $1000 is chump change compared to these:[www.tigerdirect.com]
TerryinSt.Paul
drewls
Posted 8:16 AM 2/7/08
Meh. If I could run 4 monitors off it, then it might be worth it.
drewls
Lodlaiden_
Posted 8:13 AM 2/7/08
@dmenafro: Then it's time for a quad core motherboard, and instead of water, i'm filling that hose with liquid nitrogen.
Impractical you say, then fine, that fluild that comes out of my can of air, cause that's pretty cold too.
Lodlaiden_
dmenafro
Posted 8:11 AM 2/7/08
I like the idea of water cooling...just not the idea of what happens when something goes wrong. I can imagine an excited nerd pushes the card with too much force into the case which dislodges the water hose within the card. Powers up the box and watches as his components lose a water gun fight.
dmenafro
aec007
Posted 8:10 AM 2/7/08
@toockz21:
Why not?
Our Quadro FX graphic cards easily top over $1200 on our workstations...
aec007
jkr2
Posted 8:07 AM 2/7/08
I wish it had more outputs.
jkr2
toockz21
Posted 8:03 AM 2/7/08
gasp...how much is this puppy going to cose though. i mean the 9800 gx2 was like 500. how much can you possible charge for a graphics card......1000?
toockz21
PingMaster
Posted 9:38 AM 2/7/08
I love the look of ATI cards on paper and benchmarks, but whenever I put them in my computer it always asplodes. Shockingly there is a company with worse drivers than Nvidia, and its ATI.
It's always like oh kick ass! This card is so fast, but no shaders for bioshock.
Or, hey this card has 55 more giga-flip-flops than the Nvidia one, but the game bug list is longer than the EULA.
PingMaster
duffyanneal
Posted 9:25 AM 2/7/08
Yeah, but will it play Super Monkey Ball?
duffyanneal
DisposableInterloper
Posted 9:17 AM 2/7/08
ATI's quality has increased dramatically ever since AMD bought them out. Hell, even Linux support has moved forward by leaps and bounds. All that was left was to catch up to nVidia. Now, if only AMD could catch up to Intel in terms of performance and power consumption at any given price point, that would be great.
Competition is always a good thing for the consumer in the end, and I'm frankly getting tired of hearing about a hodge-podge mid-range Intel/nVidia setup dominating the best AMD has to offer while Intel sells their high-end chips for a small village's worth of vital organs.
DisposableInterloper
MrBlahBlah
Posted 9:04 AM 2/7/08
the absurdity of the video card wars is unfathomable.
MrBlahBlah
Kanti_V2
Posted 9:02 AM 2/7/08
In the end who cares, all this posturing for the top place is silly when even Nvidia's top of the line 280 is trumped for a couple of 8800 GT's running in SLI, and they're only $150 each. Throw in a moderate overclock of the cards, and they'll crush this too. They've done such a good job of finally making having multiple cards sensible and affordable, that they've defeated the purpose of their high end cards.
Kanti_V2
HonusWScruggs
Posted 10:12 AM 2/7/08
@Kanti_V2: But Kanti! What if you get TWO of these?!!?!!?
HonusWScruggs
drewls
Posted 10:02 AM 2/7/08
@Lodlaiden_:
Can't hurt to try. :D
Seriously though, I've been wanting a 3rd one, so 4 isn't that far off.
drewls
Kanti_V2
Posted 10:28 AM 2/7/08
Then i would default on my mortgage, my wife would leave me, and I'd die penniless and alone...but Crysis would look awesome! (until my power was shut off for not paying the bill)
Kanti_V2
dagamer34
Posted 1:33 PM 2/7/08
Sniff, sniff...
Is the ATI we all knew and loved making a comeback? =p
dagamer34
John Prado
Posted 3:37 PM 2/7/08
ATI strikes back?!?!?!??
Well, maybe the AMD team made good for them!
John Prado
Hvedhrungr
Posted 7:46 PM 2/7/08
@Kanti_V2: But you would save a lot on heating...
Hvedhrungr
Avrithor
Posted 12:32 PM 2/7/08
@PingMaster: I love the look of ATI cards on paper and benchmarks, but whenever I put them in my computer it always asplodes. Shockingly there is a company with worse drivers than Nvidia, and its ATI.
I don't think it's the drivers.
the game bug list is longer than the EULA.
I'm sorry but this is simply untrue. If the driver & game support were as dire as you suggest there would be widespread reports of it by now, and there are not. Looking at the actual release notes for the latest ATI drivers reveals a list of fixed and resolved issues that is no longer than that of many of nVidia's past driver releases.
I'm sorry your ATI card didn't seem to work as well as you hoped but yours far from represents the typical user experience. Either there was something actually wrong with it and you should have RMAed it, it was user error and you don't realize it/won't admit it, or there weren't actually that many issues and you're blowing it out of proportion. In any case can we please keep the FUD out of this? And I'm telling you this as a 6-year nVidia user, running an 8800GTX currently, lest anyone try to smear me as an "ATI fanboy".
Personally I think it's fantastic that ATI is truly stepping up again, healthy competition benefits everyone regardless of whether they buy Red or Green.
Avrithor
strider_mt2k
Posted 3:07 AM 3/7/08
Jet-powered monkey-navigated...
It goes on like this.
strider_mt2k
fastm3driver
Posted 6:52 AM 3/7/08
Back in the day(1995) I had a SGI worstation with a $60,000 video card. I think it had 512 megs of ram. The machine it self was $30,000.
Note: I left off exclamation points because at the time I thought it was really fast and worth the money. Mostly because I wasn't paying for it.
fastm3driver