Radeon HD 4870 X2 coverage round-up

Posted at: Tuesday 12th August 2008

Everything you need to know about ATI's brand new dual-GPU graphics card

The wait for a Radeon that owns the title 'fastest graphics card in the world' is over - with its 


This article is intended to be a one-stop piece rounding up all the coverage you need.

* Here's our review of the Radeon HD 4870 X2.
* If you just want the numbers, go straight to our performance benchmarks (opens in a new window).
* If you want to buy one of these new cards, we've listed a selection of the best prices available on the web.


We've also rounded up the best of the reviews from the rest of the web - and we'll add to these as more reviews go up:

* Tech Report: 'You know all of the caveats that go along with a multi-GPU graphics card like the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Without proper support in the game or a profile in the video driver, you may only see about half of the performance potential of your video card. There's no getting around that. But in the case of this particular card, even if the worst happens, you're falling back on the performance of one of the fastest GPUs around in the Radeon HD 4870... It's easily the quickest "single" video card you can buy, and it almost feels like a good deal at $549.' (No score given)

* PC Perspective: 'Just like we concluded in our preview last month, the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB graphics card is incredibly impressive and easily takes the performance lead for a single graphics away from NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280. The power consumption is pretty high, on par with a pair of GTX 260s and we were let down by the performance of CrossFireX but neither of these factors over-shadow the power the card provided for high-resolution and high quality gaming.  If you need an enthusiast-class graphics card for your next gaming system then AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB is your ticket to gaming nirvana.' (Gold award)

* Anandtech: 'I keep getting the impression that multi-GPU is great for marketing but not particularly important when it comes to actually investing R&D dollars into design. With every generation, especially from AMD, I expect to see a much more seamless use of multiple GPUs, but instead we're given the same old solution - we rely on software profiles to ensure that multiple GPUs work well in a system rather than having a hardware solution where two GPUs truly appear, behave and act as one to the software. Maybe it's not in the consumer's best interest for the people making the GPUs to be the same people making the chipsets, it's too easy to try and use multi-GPU setups to sell more chipsets when the focus should really be on making multiple GPUs more attractive across the board, and just...work. But I digress. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is good, it continues to be the world's fastest single card solution, provided that you're running a game with CrossFire support.' (No score given)