In few hours AMD will unveil the crown jewel of graphics cards - ATI Radeon 4870X2. Card which is based on R700 gpu core, will be clocked at 750Mhz core and 900 MHz GDDR5 memory. Card is dual slot design, with powerful, yet silent cooler. Due to 55nm process, AMD managed to get power usage and working temperature under control. 4870X2 is expected to beat anything in 3Dmark 06 and 3Dmark Vantage, and will take the top performer position away from Nvidia's 280 GTX. Even though NVIDIA has one last thing to unveil, AMD is feeling pretty confident right now.

AMD will announce two models sporting 1GB (512+512MB) and 2GB (1+1GB) GDDR5 memory, but partners will also introduce GDDR3 models that will be called Radeon HD 4850X2 with a varying amount of memory. The clock frequencies of the respective cards will be the same as the single-GPU card Radeon HD 4870, I.e. 750/3600MHz and 625/1000MHz. Also, the company said the card would allow higher over clocking rates than any Radeon HD 4870 board on the market. Cards use dual slot cooling, and look identical (FRONT and BACK) to 3870×2 but with black PCB.

AMD has put a lot of work into the newest Radeon HD 4870X2 graphics board in its attempt to make it the next true high-end card. At least, when it comes to the company's graphics product line, this card goes straight to the top. As showed before, Radeon HD 4870X2 pairs RV770 GPUs on the same PCB, and features high-speed GDDR5 memory for quick memory access. Since the card promises so much, other manufacturers have started making their own 4870X2 based cards, adding few more features to differentiate them from the stock.

We will also see over clocked editions of cards, already announced are XFX's and Diamond's versions - which will set core clock to 850MHz, while the memory will be 4000MHz. Not all cards will feature the usual Qimonda GDDR5 memory chips, as some manufacturers chose Hynix memory instead. It hasn't been determined yet which of these are faster, but time will tell. Also, this goes in line with AMD's story that partners are able to choose the memory type they like.

Technical Specifications for RV770

Core Clock: 2×750MHz
Memory: 2×1024MB GDDR5
Memory clock: 900MHz
Memory interface: 2×256-bit
2×800 stream processors
Fab process: 55nm

Preview

The testing results of the Radeon HD 4870X2 was expected to equal those that would be showed when testing two Radeons HD 4870 in CrossFire. But our first tests show, that AMD managed to optimize process and drivers beyond our belief. At direct comparison 3Dmark2006 and pair of 4870 in CrossFire managed to squeeze around 22.100 points, while 4870X2 in similar configuration blew past 25.000! is required. See screenshots (and forget 3Dmark score - just look at SM2 and SM3 subscores!)!

The extra difference in overclocking should arise from different memory as well, as it is already known that Qimonda ones can easily get to 4800MHz, while Hynix GDDR5 remains a mystery for now…