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Today is all about the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the same card we previewed last month but AMD is quietly announcing a few other products alongside it. The 4870 X2, internally referred to as R700, is a pair of RV770 GPUs on a single card - effectively a single-card, Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire (hence the X2 moniker). Like previous X2 cards, the 4870 X2 appears to the user and the driver as a single card and all of the CrossFire magic happens behind the scenes.
The benefit of single-card CrossFire is of course that you can use this single card on any platform, not just ones that explicitly support CF. Since CrossFire is supported on both Intel chipsets and AMD chipsets, it's a bit more flexible than SLI and the need for single-card CF isn't nearly as great as the need for single-card SLI.

Unlike most single-card multi-GPU solutions, the 4870 X2 is literally two Radeon HD 4870s on a single card. The clock speeds, both core and memory, are identical and this thing should perform like a pair of 4870s (which is pretty quick if you have forgotten). The only difference here is that while the standard Radeon HD 4870 ships with 512MB of GDDR5 memory, each RV770 on a X2 gets a full 1GB of GDDR5 for a total of 2GB per card.

...which leads us nicely into some of AMD's other products that will be coming out in the next month or so. There will be 1GB versions of both the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4850.

Then at $399 we'll see a Radeon HD 4850 X2, which as you can probably guess is a pair of Radeon HD 4850 GPUs on a single card, but with 2GB of GDDR3 and not GDDR5 like the 4870 X2. As interesting as all of these cards are, we only have the 4870 X2 for you today, the rest will have to wait for another time. But it is worth noting that if you are interested in buying a Radeon HD 4870/4850 and keeping it for a while, you may want to wait for the 1GB versions as they should give you a bit more longevity.

Today Sapphire finally released their HD 4850 X2 card. The original product had been announced since August by AMD. Both the HD 4850 X2 and HD 4870 X2 were announced at the same time but partners were very slow to adapt the product into their lineup.

Sapphire as one of the biggest AMD add in board partners is the first to actually deliver a HD 4850 X2. Actually based on the information we got so far, Sapphire is the only board partner who will have a HD 4850 X2. The card is based on the same dual GPU principle as the HD 4870 X2 but comes with GDDR3 instead of GDDR5. Sapphire has chosen to use their own cooler design with two independent fans over the AMD reference cooler.

With a price point of $419, the Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is a direct competitor of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280.

Water-cooled and overclocked

Sapphire is preparing the fastest card in its Atomic series, the Atomic HD 4870 X2. The new Atomic card will be water-cooled and comes with integrated system that will cool both graphics card and the CPU.

Due to water-cooling, the new Atomic HD 4870 X2 will be factory overclocked to 800MHz for the cores and 1000MHz for 2GB of GDDR5 memory, 1GB for each GPU. The cooling system looks like, and probably is, Asetek's LCLC water-cooling solution and it cools the graphics card as well as the CPU. The radiator includes a 120mm, 7-blade, blue LED fan that gives up to 60CFM of airflow at full speed.

As all Atomic cards, this one will also be packed in an aluminum suitcase and will be bundled with a lot of accessories, including an HDMI adapter, HDMI cable, CCL UV lamp and Sapphire USB memory sticks.

According to our info, this card should be available soon with a price tag of US $649.

dmdilks wrote:I broke down got a new video card today and this card is really big. I got the SAPPHIRE 100260SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 512-bit (2 x 256-bit) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card. So far everything is great and been playing some game and the temp has not even gone up much. The card at idle is about 43c and playing the games it got up to 51c.

dmdilks wrote:What I really like about the card is you have xfire and only have one card. That is really nice and my PSU had the plugs for this card. I have been reading that the fan noise is loud. The fans are not any louded than my other cards. I don't understand what people are looking for. I run the antec 900 gamer cases and had the room for the card. I just got a antec 300 at the computer show and I'm going to play around with that to see how that one is.