Not much good has happened for either party since AMD purchased ATI. New chips from both sides of the fence have been late, run hot, and underperformed compared to the competition. Meanwhile, the combined company has posted staggering financial losses, causing many folks to wonder whether AMD could continue to hold up its end of the bargain as junior partner in the PC market's twin duopolies, for CPU's and graphics chips. AMD certainly has its fair share of well wishers, as underdogs often do. And yes, a great many of them have been waiting with anticipation for their Radeon HD 4800 series. The buzz has been building for weeks now, but today again we see some light. - TechReport

AMD Radeon HD 4870 512MB Graphics Board Review

For the first time in quite a while, AMD would seem to have an unequivocal winner on its hands in this new GPU. Work on the chip codenamed RV770 began two and a half years ago. AMD's design teams were, unusually, dispersed across six offices around the globe. Their common goal was to take the core elements of the underperforming R600 graphics processor and turn them into a much more efficient GPU. To make that happen, the engineers worked carefully on reducing the size of the various logic blocks on the chip without cutting out functionality. More efficient use of chip area allowed them to pack in more.

Initially, the Radeon HD 4800 series will come in two forms, powder and rock. We mean, Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870. By now, you may already be familiar with the Radeon HD 4850, which has been selling online for a number of days. And then we have the big daddy, the Radeon HD 4870. This card's much beefier cooler takes up two slots and sends hot exhaust air out of the back of the case. Cards like this one from VisionTek should start selling online today at around $299. And the Radeon HD 4870's core clock is 750MHz, and even more importantly, it's paired up with 512MB of GDDR5 memory.

The RV770 GPU looks to be an unequivocal success on almost every front. In its most affordable form, the Radeon HD 4850 delivers higher performance overall than the GeForce 9800 GTX and redefines GPU value at the ever popular $199 price point. Meanwhile, the RV770's most potent form is even more impressive, in my view. Onboard the Radeon HD 4870, this GPU sets a new standard for architectural efficiency due to two things. The broad reaching rearchitecting and optimization the of R600 graphics core and the astounding amount of bandwidth GDDR5 memory can transfer over a 256-bit interface.

At the same time, NVIDIA is trying to press its advantage on the GPU compute front by investing loads of marketing time and effort into its CUDA platform, with particular emphasis on the potential value of its GPU accelerated PhysX API to gamers. We can see the vision there, but look hardware accelerated physics has been just around the corner for longer than we care to remember, but it's never really happened. Perhaps NVIDIA will succeed where AGEIA alone didn't, but we wouldn't base our GPU buying decision on it. If PhysX based games really do arrive someday, we doubt they'll make much of an impact during the lifespan.

On top of that, AMD has made its own considerable investment in the realm of heterogeneous computing like, for instance, buying ATI, a little transaction you may have heard about, along with some intriguing code names like Fusion and Torrenza. And in fact, AMD was first by a mile with a client for Folding@Home. NVIDIA may have more to invest in marketing and building a software ecosystem around CUDA, but cross-GPU standards are what will allow GPU computing to succeed. When that happens, AMD will surely be there, too.