AMD Claims New Dual-GPU Card is Fastest Ever

AMD on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 announced dual-GPU versions of the HD Radeon 4850 and 4870, pushing graphics performance – and prices – into the upper high end of the market. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is currently shipping for $399, while the 4870 X2 is available for a whopping $599, more than the price of some low-end PCs. But according to Neal Robison, director of global ISV relations for AMD, both chips will capture the "super high end" of the market, where price is much less important than performance.

Driving the ultra-enthusiast experience
The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series provides support for ATI CrossFireX™, enabling incredibly fast gaming PCs with unmatched performance at ultra-high settings. Enthusiast gamers can now run the most demanding games smoothly in at the highest settings, enabling modes that were not playable before.⁶ With the efficient use of all four GPUs in a dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration, gamers will enjoy more than 3 times the performance of a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 card in many games.⁷

“AMD has regained the graphics performance crown with this launch,” said Patrick Cooper, Director of Product Planning, Alienware. “The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is what gamers have been waiting for—blistering performance in DirectX 10.1 games backed by stable drivers for great scaling in ATI CrossFireX mode.”

“Gamers that buy Falcon Northwest PCs demand nothing but the best possible performance, and today the one that delivers the best gaming experience, is a quad ATI CrossFireX rig using two ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards, like those found in our Mach V,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest. “We’re committed to bringing the world the ultimate gaming PCs featuring the leading technology. With support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games, only ATI Radeon graphics let us do that.”

“As a premier provider of high-performance PCs, the stellar performance and leading technologies of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series makes it a perfect match for Velocity Micro,” said Randy Copeland, President and CEO, Velocity Micro. “AMD once again has the fastest card around, and with support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games, it makes it a natural choice for gamers wanting the latest and greatest technology in their Velocity Micro system.”

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2: The world’s fastest graphics card
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 delivers unsurpassed graphics horsepower, setting a new performance bar for visual computing with 2.4 teraFLOPS of processing power on a single card. It is also the world’s first graphics card to include 2GB of ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 memory. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 features two GPUs based on a second generation 55nm technology and clocked at 750 MHz, with a combined 1600 stream processors.