It's been one of those long nights, the type where you don't really sleep but rather nap here and there. Normally such nights are brought on by things like Nehalem, or NVIDIA's GT200 launch, but last night was its own unique flavor of all-nighter.

On Monday, AMD had a big press event to talk about its next-generation graphics architecture. We knew that a launch was impending but we had no hardware nor did we have an embargo date when reviews would lift, we were at AMD's mercy.

You may already know about one of AMD's new cards: the Radeon HD 4850. It briefly appeared for sale on Amazon, complete with specs, before eventually getting pulled off the site. It turns out that other retailers in Europe not only listed the card early but started selling them early. In an effort to make its performance embargoes meaningful, AMD moved some dates around.

Here's the deal: AMD is launching its new RV770 GPU next week, and just as the RV670 that came before it, it will be available in two versions. The first version we can talk about today: that's the Radeon HD 4850. The second version, well, just forget that I even mentioned that - you'll have to wait until the embargo lifts for more information there.

But we can't really talk about the Radeon HD 4850, we can only tell you how it performs and we can only tell you things you would know from actually having the card. The RV770 architectural details remain under NDA until next week as well. What we can tell you is how fast AMD's new $199 part is, but we can't tell you why it performs the way it does.

We've got no complaints as we'd much rather stay up all night benchmarking then try to put together another GT200 piece in a handful of hours. It simply wouldn't be possible and we wouldn't be able to do AMD's new chips justice.

What we've got here is the polar opposite of what NVIDIA just launched on Monday. While the GT200 is a 1.4 billion transistor chip found in $400 and $650 graphics cards, AMD's Radeon HD 4850 is...oh wait, I can't tell you the transistor count quite yet. Let's just say it's high, but not as high as GT200 :)

Again, we're not allowed to go into the architectural details of the RV770, the basis for the Radeon HD 4800 series including today's 4850, but we are allowed to share whatever data one could obtain from having access to the card itself, so let's get started.

Running GPU-Z we see that the Radeon HD 4850 shows up as having 800 stream processors, up from 320 in the Radeon HD 3800 series. Remember that the Radeon HD 3800 was built on TSMC's 55nm process and there simply isn't a smaller process available for AMD to use, so the 4800 most likely uses the same manufacturing process. With 2.5x the stream processor count, the RV770 isn't going to be a small chip, while we can't reveal transistor count quite yet you can make a reasonable guess.

Clock speeds are also fair game as they are reported within GPU-Z and AMD's Catalyst control panel:

That's a 625MHz core clock and 993MHz GDDR3 memory clock (1986MHz data rate). We've got more stream processors than the Radeon HD 3870, but they are clocked a bit lower to make up for the fact that there are 2.5x as many on the same manufacturing process.

  ATI Radeon HD 4850 ATI Radeon HD 3870
Stream Processors 800 320
Texture Units I can't tell you 16
ROPs 16 16
Core Clock 625MHz 775MHz+
Memory Clock 993MHz (1986MHz data rate) 1125MHz (2250MHz data rate)
Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Frame Buffer 512MB 512MB
Transistor Count it's a secret 666 million
Manufacturing Process TSMC 55nm TSMC 55nm
Price Point $199 $199

 

The rest of the specs are pretty straightforward, it's got 512MB of GDDR3 connected to a 256-bit bus and the whole card will set you back $199. The Radeon HD 4850 will be available next week, and given that we've already received cards from 3 different manufacturers - we'd say that this thing is going to be available on time.
 

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  • Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    Crossfire two of that ;)

    (starts looking for a humongous PSU...)
  • rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    lol oohhh yeah.. I'll be looking for Anandtech to be reviewing PCP&Ps newest 2kW Power supply with 200amps on teh 12V rail :)
  • rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    PS. (to PCP&P) Switch to 120mm fans, imagine how loud a 2000watt psu will be with an 80mm fan cooling it :)
  • xsilver - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link

    the 80mm fan would require its own psu ;)
  • Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    There goes the carrot cutter :))
  • Devo2007 - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    I can walk into a local retailer and pick one up right now (yes, they are actually showing stock on three different cards).
  • Goty - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    Something is VERY wrong if a 1000W rated power supply can't boot a system that draws less than 500W at load. Most sites recommend a 500W-600W power supply to run a 4850 CF system, which should be PLENTY of power.
  • Creig - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link

    That's exactly what I was thinking when I read that part of the article. A 4850 supposedly only pulls 110w. So if I was conducting the review, I would have immediately suspected a defective power supply, not an inadequate one.
  • bob4432 - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link

    exactly what i was thinking....ocz quality????
  • JarredWalton - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link

    I believe the 1000W PSU having problems was specifically in regards to GeForce GTX 280 SLI - though Anand or Derek would have to confirm. The other factor that I don't know is whether the PSU is the problem or perhaps Derek just has really bad electricity in his house. I know I've had no difficulties with even 550W PSUs and 3870 CrossFire (with a Q6600 overclocked to 3.30GHz).

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