Introduction
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who makes the fastest graphics card of 'em
all?
In answering this question the evidence seems to suggest that it's
probably GeForce
GTX 280, the monolithic monster that was released
less than a month ago and can now be had for
around £349.
Some may argue that it's still the NVIDIA GeForce
9800 GX2, mustering dual-GPU rendering to claim top-dog
status.
ATI's decision to opt bring the also-new Radeon
HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 GPUs up with mid-range pricing
firmly in mind indicates that it won't be the red team, no matter how
efficient the architecture from a performance-per-mm perspective.
Hold your horses, Sandhu, because can't two Radeon HD 4870s be coupled
on one board, much like Radeon HD 3870 X2? Wouldn't the bewildering
power then come to pass and claim the single-card throne?
That's what the much-vaunted R700 is all about - slapping two
high-performing Radeon HD 4870 GPUs on to one board, CrossFiring them,
and launching a card whose specs have us grabbing for the tissue paper.
HEXUS has been testing an early engineering sample of AMD R700 with very much work-in-progress device drivers, so read on to find out at least how fast AMD R700 promises to be and, once launched, whether it's likely to provide a tenable solution for the hardcore enthusiast.
We cannot emphasise enough that the AMD R700,
which HEXUS has tested, is an early engineering sample.
AMD has not confirmed the final AMD R700 specification or disclosed
final pricing to HEXUS.
