First Look: ATI 4870 X2

Posted by: albert on Monday, July 21st, 2008

The past 3 weeks we have seen both ATI and Nvidia, releasing their latest video cards at a feverish pitch. The competition for the overall top spot as well as the best buy has been fierce. First, ATI released the 4850, which was quickly rebuttled by Nvidia with the release of the Geforce 9800+, Nvidia’s first 55nm GPU. Those releases were quickly followed by Nvidia’s release of the GTX 260 and GTX 280, and subsequently by ATI’s 4870.

These cards setup a classic clash of the Titans with ATI providing the best performance for the money, and Nvidia having the most potent card overall. It seemed pretty straighforward at first, ATI if your on a budget and Nvidia if you want to go all out. But then came the slew of independent tests provided by all the hardware review websites, which indicated that the ATI cards ciould be more powerful for less money then the Nvidia cards. This in-turn forced compulsory price cuts by nVidia.

As it stands at the moment of this Article, the GTX 280 remains the fastest single card on the market. But as always, things are always shifting in the world of computer hardware and come August we will be seeing the pinnacle of gaming performance and value moving from the Nvidia camp to ATI with the release of the 4870 X2. Easily the most anticipated graphics card since the 8800GT, the hype behind the 4870 X2 has been put to the test in its first public preview of benchmarks. Without further adieu, the ATI 4870 X2.