ATI Delivers World’s Fastest Graphics Card
ATI Technologies [now AMD] has put aside a few years of living in nVidia’s performance shadow by launching what is widely being called the world’s fastest graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. The traditional ‘mine is bigger than yours’ contest played out between nVidia and ATI might bore some but, for many gamers, every extra bit of performance counts. The new ATI offering seemingly thrashes the fastest nVidia cards - the GTX 200 series - which we covered here in June. With the new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, ATI/AMD has come screaming out of the wilderness to the top of the heap, at least according to early reviews. Here’s what the experts are saying:”Make no mistake, the new Radeon HD 4870 X2 marks ATI’s return to the top of the 3D graphics food chain. It took a few years, but through steady improvements in multi-GPU software support, and a new strategy regarding the design and manufacture of high-end graphics cards that utilizes two mid-sized chips in lieu of a single monolithic one, AMD was able to produce a graphics card capable of outpacing the best NVIDIA currently has to offer.” Marco Chiappetta, HotHardware “Our gameplay experiences with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 were phenomenal, especially once we raised the antialiasing setting to high levels… Who would have thought we’d ever be seeing Oblivion at 2560×1600 with 24X AA? This means you can load up old games and set crazy high AA settings. AMD deserves huge kudos for really kicking AA up a notch.” Brent Justice, HardOCP “The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is looking like it beat [the GTX280] as it spanked even the overclocked GeForce GTX 280 in our testing. AMD has pulled off another one with the Radeon HD 4870 X2.” Nathan Kirsch, Legit Reviews “The Radeon HD 4870 X2 undeniably is the fastest performing product on the market right now. But next to the sheer gaming power do not forget the additional features like DirectX 10.1, the UVD 2.0 engine to decode the hottest Blu-ray 1080P movies, full HDMI compatibility with support for 7.1 channel sound.-Hilbert Hagedoorn, Guru3D I guess the downside is that for this kind of pants-wetting performance, you’ll need the readies. It’s selling now for $549 in the US (around £275), but it’s expected to cost - wait for it - around £400 here. Thankfully, AMD has also announced the HD 4850 X2 graphics card, which is also blisteringly fast but will cost around £50-75 less. Theoretically, that is.-Martin Lynch [AMD] games PC news
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Original post by nafiz