i somehow found this - ATi 4890

[necrokiller]

Yeah its not always all about the numbers

 

[gian84]

I agree its not always about the mhz. Thats why i was a little disappointed with the 4890 not having an SP increase which would have made it scale better than the 4870 when overclocked. The GTX275 will have more SP than a GTX260 c216 and it's set to compete with the 4890 (4870 OC basically)...

 

[Rich'[ard]]

are they just releasing an updated 4870? or are they going to update the 4850 as well, because i need something to push down prices so i can get another 4850

hmm...i'm thinking, when will it be that GPUs will be made in dual cores and quad cores, just like the cpu evolution. i know there's driver problems...heat problems...but it might happen
currently it's just high end models using dual GPU config, but what if ATi takes it even further and make even more Dual GPU models.

 

[vixro]

are they just releasing an updated 4870? or are they going to update the 4850 as well, because i need something to push down prices so i can get another 4850

hmm...i'm thinking, when will it be that GPUs will be made in dual cores and quad cores, just like the cpu evolution. i know there's driver problems...heat problems...but it might happen
currently it's just high end models using dual GPU config, but what if ATi takes it even further and make even more Dual GPU models.

4850, 4870, 4890 are all the same core. So an update to 1 is an update to all.

Same technology, different speeds.

 

[Farinorco]

4850, 4870, 4890 are all the same core. So an update to 1 is an update to all.

Same technology, different speeds.

No, they aren't. HD4850 and HD4870 are RV770 core. HD4890 is the first card with RV790. As I've previously shown, there are functional differences between the cores, and even they are different sizes, RV790 is slightly bigger than RV770 (~280mm2 vs ~255mm2).

What Rich'[ard] is asking is completely reasonable. We had 2 models with RV770 (HD4850/70). Obviously HD4890 takes the HD4870 position... what happens with HD4850?

I bet AMD/ATi want to target that market segment with HD4750/4770. The 40nm RV740 is really close to the old RV770 (only 8 cluster vs the 10 in RV770, but the ability to clock higher and consume less power/generate less heat), and even with a 128bit bus, the GDDR5 gives a memory bandwith comparable to a GDDR3 256bit bus. HD4770 should give near (or higher who knows) HD4850 performance, with a lower production cost and a reduced power consumption.

I'd say that until DX11 generation, the main ATi options are going to be those RV740 and RV790 videocards. And if you ask me, I can't see the ageing (though superb in its moment) NVIDIA's G92 chip fighting face to face with the RV740 as it's supposed to do, and even G200 is in trouble versus the new RV790... hard times to the green team, it seems...

 

[petteyg359]

Yeah, to counter the AMD/ATi. Because I don't think intel and nvidia will have a partnership any time soon I've read somewhere that intel is indeed developing or at least planning to develop their own gpu. And nvidia, with CUDA, can also make their cpu one day... Hmm things are going to look very interesting when DX11 comes i think... So there might be an intel, ati, and nvidia gpu fanclub, with their cpu counterpart.lol three's a crowd? no way. the more the merrier. Heck, SiS and S3 can even join the threesome for some gang-bangin.lol The forums are gonna be more lively then

Not unless nVidia can convince Microsoft to start selling multi-arch Windows again. You seem to be forgetting that producing x86 chips requires a license...

 

[Kuroimaho]

How hard those times will be really depend on the prices, and as with the 4870 price cut if the cards won't hit the shelves with the low prices AMD wants because the companies rather keep ATi prices up than see NV cut prices who knows.

ATI Graphics Partners Think Radeon 4870 is Too Good
Declining to follow the price cut plan

 

[Farinorco]

That's true to an extent. Of course final prices will make the products appear as more or less appealing to the final consumer, but it doesn't hide the fact that NVIDIA is competing performance and feature wise against lower cost parts from the competition, nor using 3 generations old chips to fill every market segment under the high end.

As an example, the final pricings of G200 products and RV770 products has made both sides more or less equally atractive to consumers, because you have similarly featured cards for a similar price tag. That's all a consumer needs to know to decide what videocard should buy.

But that doesn't mean all this wasn't a hard hit in the **** to NVIDIA. AMD graphics division (ATi) has had ~8% losses, while NVIDIA graphics division has had ~48% losses (or something similar, I read it but I don't remember where...).

I don't think that we're seeing a much better features : price product from ATi than from NVIDIA any time soon. Even if it implies price drops or whatever, NVIDIA is going to compete with a product of similar value in every market segment. Even if it implies to sacrifice revenues, they have to keep their marketshare.

The fact is that I don't see the arrival of the new ATi chips improving things for the green guys... I honestly hope that G300 and R800 architectures bring some balance to the battle, but until then, I suppose it's a hard time for NVIDIA...

******

EDIT: I think I didn't understand well what you're saying with my first read. Now I think that you mean that the negative to drop prices from ATi partners can save another price dropping from NVIDIA, specially if they price the HD4890 accordingly instead of against GTX260 (which seems to be the AMD intention), giving them a not so hard and stressing time. I fully agree with that.