AMD on Tuesday announced dual-GPU versions of the HD Radeon 4850 and 4870, pushing graphics performance – and prices – into the upper high end of the market.
The ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is currently shipping for $399, while the 4870 X2 is available for a whopping $599, more than the price of some low-end PCs.
But according to Neal Robison, director of global ISV relations for AMD, both chips will capture the “super high end” of the market, where price is much less important than performance. AMD claims the HD 4870 X2 is roughly 80 percent of the performance of the single HD 4870, allowing for some overhead lost in duplicating the effort of a single chip.
For now, AMD claims the HD 4870 X2 is the fastest graphics card in the world, recording a score of 17743 in 3DMark06, the highest ever…
