GDDR4 3870X2.

[dennilfloss]

Coming soon according to these fellows. A quick little refresh.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/8899/index.html

 

[taltamir]

mmm, it is based on a fudzilla report... we shall see

 

[hclarkjr]

i think it makes sense, i thought it should have been released in the first place with GDDR4 memory

 

[chizow]

I'd wait to see if it actually benefits from the additional bandwidth before spending more on it over a GDDR3 part. Keep in mind as a CrossFire part, each GPU is splitting the load with the other, effectively decreasing necessary bandwidth per frame. Adding $100 for faster RAM with little return in performance would quickly eat away any price to performance advantage the X2 enjoys over other solutions (see: 2900XT w/ GDDR4).

 

[angry hampster]

Originally posted by: chizow
Adding $100 for faster RAM with little return in performance would quickly eat away any price to performance advantage the X2 enjoys over other solutions (see: 2900XT w/ GDDR4).

Agreed. Right now it's almost at 8800Ultra performance for half the price. Costs are going to have to stay down to compete with Nvidias new cards in a couple of months. Then again, AMD will be bringing out new cards by summer IIRC.

 

[NinjaJedi]

Originally posted by: chizow
I'd wait to see if it actually benefits from the additional bandwidth before spending more on it over a GDDR3 part. Keep in mind as a CrossFire part, each GPU is splitting the load with the other, effectively decreasing necessary bandwidth per frame. Adding $100 for faster RAM with little return in performance would quickly eat away any price to performance advantage the X2 enjoys over other solutions (see: 2900XT w/ GDDR4).

I agree that it probably will not be that much of an increase in performance but where do you get $100 increase? The report said "a bit more expensive" and if the difference in the 3870 price from GDDR3 to GDDR4 is any indication it would cost between as little as $20 more and at most $60. At least as far as I can tell on Newegg.

Here is a good example of the cost difference between GDDR3 and GDDR4 for the same card. $22 difference
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102700
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102708

 

[dennilfloss]

Some people hint also that there might be a 3870X2 with 2x1GB of RAM in the works. That extra RAM would really help when playing heavily modded Oblivion. My texture hit for graphic RAM gets up to 970MB sometimes with Qarl's Texture Pack 3.

 

[angry hampster]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss
Some people hint also that there might be a 3870X2 with 2x1GB of RAM in the works. That extra RAM would really help when playing heavily modded Oblivion. My texture hit for graphic RAM gets up to 970MB sometimes with Qarl's Texture Pack 3.

This is mind boggling. VRAM quantity is catching up to system RAM.

 

[Giacomo]

I read in one review (sorry, can't remember if Anandtech or DriverHeaven or whatever, read too many of them in the last couple days) that GDDR3 was chosen exactly to keep costs lower.

If you think about the cost of today's DDR3 memories versus DDR2, you can at least figure out that it's not easy to tell how more expensive those cards would be with 1 GB GDDR4. Except if you work at AMD or TSMC, maybe. However, 20 Dollars seem rather optimistic to me, and as it's already been stated, it's easy to pull a VGA out of its price/performance sweet spot.

I personally like the 3870 X2 with its GDDR3 and at its price (Even if I find a bit odd that an ASUS costs 340 EUR and an identical HIS costs 380, around here... I'll personally go with a 360 EUR Sapphire just because I hate the ASUS brand for VGAs, but I'm still disappointed with this 20 EUR charge over the ASUS).

About the two gigs rumor, if true, it's surely another great way to ruin the price/performance ratio of this nice jewel. Look at some bench results: we are starting to see some benefit of having more than 512 megs when we hit 1920*1080, and then 2560*1600... And the more-than-512MB products usually come with a more-than-256b memory bus, which is almost for sure the greatest responsible of the good performance, I think.

So, at the very least, if we desire this card to be more expensive at all costs, we should start thinking of 512 bit for each GPU-mem interface (which would actually double the bandwidth, regardless of resolution) and ignore a ridicolous 2GB onboard.

Giacomo

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: chizow
I'd wait to see if it actually benefits from the additional bandwidth before spending more on it over a GDDR3 part. Keep in mind as a CrossFire part, each GPU is splitting the load with the other, effectively decreasing necessary bandwidth per frame. Adding $100 for faster RAM with little return in performance would quickly eat away any price to performance advantage the X2 enjoys over other solutions (see: 2900XT w/ GDDR4).

I agree that it probably will not be that much of an increase in performance but where do you get $100 increase? The report said "a bit more expensive" and if the difference in the 3870 price from GDDR3 to GDDR4 is any indication it would cost between as little as $20 more and at most $60. At least as far as I can tell on Newegg.

Here is a good example of the cost difference between GDDR3 and GDDR4 for the same card. $22 difference
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102700
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102708

Right, that's a $22 difference for 256MB. The 3870X2 has 1GB (4x256MB) of RAM, so your example is a pretty good indication of how costs might go up. I was actually referring to some other price differences of past launch products like X1950XT vs XTX, 2900XT vs GDDR4 variants and 1GB GDDR4 variants. Historically GDDR4 has jacked up the prices for a much smaller, if any increase in performance. Besides the very real difference in price per module, board partners will charge premiums for the latest additional features, useful or not.

There's another thread that popped up though showing an Asus TOP variant with .8ns Hynix GDDR3 similar to the stuff found on the 8800Ultra. If it comes out before the GDDR4 variant it should give a good indication of whether or not the extra bandwidth matters.

 

[NinjaJedi]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: chizow
I'd wait to see if it actually benefits from the additional bandwidth before spending more on it over a GDDR3 part. Keep in mind as a CrossFire part, each GPU is splitting the load with the other, effectively decreasing necessary bandwidth per frame. Adding $100 for faster RAM with little return in performance would quickly eat away any price to performance advantage the X2 enjoys over other solutions (see: 2900XT w/ GDDR4).

I agree that it probably will not be that much of an increase in performance but where do you get $100 increase? The report said "a bit more expensive" and if the difference in the 3870 price from GDDR3 to GDDR4 is any indication it would cost between as little as $20 more and at most $60. At least as far as I can tell on Newegg.

Here is a good example of the cost difference between GDDR3 and GDDR4 for the same card. $22 difference
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102700
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102708

Right, that's a $22 difference for 256MB. The 3870X2 has 1GB (4x256MB) of RAM, so your example is a pretty good indication of how costs might go up. I was actually referring to some other price differences of past launch products like X1950XT vs XTX, 2900XT vs GDDR4 variants and 1GB GDDR4 variants. Historically GDDR4 has jacked up the prices for a much smaller, if any increase in performance. Besides the very real difference in price per module, board partners will charge premiums for the latest additional features, useful or not.

There's another thread that popped up though showing an Asus TOP variant with .8ns Hynix GDDR3 similar to the stuff found on the 8800Ultra. If it comes out before the GDDR4 variant it should give a good indication of whether or not the extra bandwidth matters.

I get the point about it only being 256mb. The reason I posted that as an example was cause it was the only one I could find that had 2 identical cards. (maker/cooler) Since the 3870 is stock GDDR4 I guess putting GDDR3 does not make the GDDR4 as much of a premuim.

 

[Bateluer]

Doesn't GDDR4 also consume less power than GDDR3?

 

[firewolfsm]

Putting GDDR4 for all 16 memory chips on that card should shave off a decent amount of power.

I think up to 20 watts.

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
Putting GDDR4 for all 16 memory chips on that card should shave off a decent amount of power.

I think up to 20 watts.

I remember from some of the 1GB 2900 vs 512mb 2900 reviews that the GDDR4 version used 50 watts less than the 512 GDDR3 version.

This is good stuff, however I'd like to see how GDDR4 vs 0.8ns GDDR3 works out, GDDR 3 should have much tighter latencies however this might be negated by the fact most of the GDDR4 are reaching speeds of 1300mhz+.