[Dino-Man]

Like ive only been hearing about 156 or 212 ,but how did we jump to 800? and dont you only need so many if your playing at higher resolutions or it helps it? Lets say your playing at 22" will you use all 800?

[Farinorco]

Previous ATi HD series had up to 320 SPs. The jump in SPs has been proportional to other things as texture units (40 from 16), x2.5 (+150%)

Mostly, the SP (ALU really, or where the card does arithmetic and logic operations) utilization depends more in the complexity and kind of operations used in the shaders. Memory amount and memory bandwidth are more the kind of things to look for when using high resolutions and that use to be wasted if too high when using lower resolutions.

If you're concerned about this, I'd tell you that thanks to the removal of the previously typical texture bottleneck, the redisign of the units themselves, and making them more capables, the utilization percentage seems way higher than in the previous generation with the same games, even when the amount has been multiplied by 2.5

[jason4207]

Remember that ATI and nVidia count SP's differently, and that ATI SP != nVidia SP.

But, it is very impressive nonetheless. Especially when the early reports of their being 800 SP's instead of 480 were somewhat discounted as rumors.

Good work ATI!

[ALiEN2953]

yeah when i first heard 800 i thought it was a load of crap. but damn am i happy its not, i have an HD4870 on the way

[SAnusha]

heard good things about the 4870