Wait for 4870 1GB or go with the 512MB ??

That's what I really need to know. Because I don't know how much longer I can wait. We originally heard the 4870 was going to be a 1GB card but it appears that's been cut back due to the shortage of DDR5.

Do I wait ? Will the performance increase by that much with 1GB compared to 512MB ? Any thoughts on how much this will impact price as well ? 'cos if it does then there's always two 512MB card in crossfire for £400.

Any feedback would be appreciated. I was really hoping to get a 1GB card but just don't know how much longer I can wait to get my hands on a 4870 !!!

I really don't think 1gb is going to make much of a difference unless you like to game at 2560x1600, or 1920x1200 with AA and AF cranked up. Even so, the resolution is so high you barely need to crank the filtering to get decent image quality.

Right now the difference between 1GB and 512MB is next to nothing. If you upgrade your card next year anyway, i wouldn't wait. If the 1GB card is offered at a reasonable price (ie. only maybe 20 or 30$ more) then i would buy it.

Sorry, should have mentioned I'm using a 24inch monitor at 1900x1200 res.

And yes, I see oc uk has the Powercolor 4870 512MB listed at 199.74 incl. vat. Not immediately available mind you but they say 27 June. ETA.

Well there you go then. Man, that's some great power for just £358

Which only confuses me more. I guess a lot comes down to how much extra the 1GB is going to cost.

In this case you'll benefit from 2 cards in cross fire
but carefull, does your motherboard has 2 slots X16 or 1X16 and the other X8
And second thing I never heard of this brand " Power Color"
Hope somebody who has tried this brand can feed back

Well as the guy above mentioned, you can get a Sapphire 4870 for even cheaper. £179 !

I'm on a Maximus Formula so both slots are X16. PCI 2.0 if I'm not mistaken. These cards are the reason I went for the X38 when I upgraded my set up a few months back. I wasn't sure it was going to be the right choice but it seems like a good one now.

T-minus ~60 days, haven't you seen the unofficial 'Unleash Two Tera' countdown

http://www.madpixelz.net/amdnews/2 [...] 700_count/

Ah ok.

IMO, it depends on your timeframe as well as your resolution/settings.

For a short-term buy 512MB is fine, liekly won't get pushed too hard by toom many apps unless you use larger terxture and highest settings at high resolution with some AA. But even a game like COD4 or Oblivion with texture mods can easily go over 512MB, and on older titles using 8X AA would be a nice bonus if it didn't hurt performance greatly.

Now longer-term there are going to be tougher titles out there as well as different uses for the GPU as both co-processors for things like physics and also for non-gaming applications like video encoding. Those will benefit from more local memory access.

Anywhoo, just like before, many if not most people won't benefit from 1GB over 512MB, however there is definitely a use for it now, and more of one in the future too IMO.

I'm wondering the same thing. my 24" is 19X12 native res so I'm not sure if I'll be hurt by a 512 card.

The real question is, how long till the 1gb's come out....

Speculating: 4870 with 1gb of memory won't be a monumental increase over the 4870 with 512 mem

However, the 4870x2 with 1gb should be - cause it should have the power to utilize that.

The 4870 with 1gb might be worth it if you plan to crossfire - but I think that a single 4870 1gb is probably not anything to go crazy over

From what I understand, the ASUS 1GB version of the 4870 will feature a new Glacier Heatsink which is supposed to lower temps by 7°C.

"Every ASUS EAH4800 Series graphics card will also soon be equipped with the Glaciator Fansink* – a uniquely designed cooling solution that will keep GPU temperatures up to 7ºC cooler than reference designed boards" - http://www.tweaktown.com/pressrele [...] index.html

What I'd like to know is:

1) What is the difference between the EAH4870/HDMI/512M and the EAH4870 TOP, and
2) Is the EAH4870/HDMI/512M already equipped with the Glacier Heatsink?

X4? Damn Nvidia might be in trouble with something like that. Just imagine if it scaled as well as an X2, that thing would be able to play Crysis (I know, stupid Internet meme, but I couldn't resist).

So Crossfire 4870 for £344.66...

As it stands now, two 4850's in CF beat a GTX280.
GTX280 and 4870 are 1%-15% performance of each other.
The 4870 in CF is 10% to 11% faster than the GTX280 in SLI in 2560x1600
The anadtech review benches in Crysis, call of duty 4, ET quake wars, Assasains creed, the witcher, bioshock, and oblivion. Tallying up the total FPS results in each benchmarks results in this.

There is an overall performance difference of 4.6% between the GTX280 and the 4870 in 1920x1200 @ 4xAA with a $201-$371 price difference.

Doing the same against the 4850 and GTX260 there is a 6.4% overall performance difference at a cost of $141-$246.

In CF/SLI at 2560x1600 4xAA the gtx280 and 4870 have a performance difference of 12.8% at a price of $402-$742. ( Quake wars scales badly with the 4870's ommiting that bench, the performance difference drops to an overall 3%. As there are no drivers officially out for the 4800's, may be worth mentioning)

When i say overall performance difference, i mean nvidia is faster by those small margins aside big price margins.

As to memory amount, the GTX280 in crysis @ 1680x1050 with very high GFX settings dies 40.7fps, the 4870 does 35.6, the gtx260 does 33.6, and the 4850 does 29.6. At 1680x1050.....the $600 GTX280 has a whole 11fps with it's extra 512mb ram and faster clocks over the $200 4850. in CF/SLI the 4850 gets 36.4 at 1920x1200, the gtx280 51.5 for $800-1200 more you too can gain those giant performance leads...

GTX200= Fail, from a design, performance and cost standpoint.

Ehm, GTX200 GDDR3, HD4870 GDDR5
It makes a difference, although it has 256 bit memory bus.

Not really - the whole point of a 512 bit bus is to get higher bandwidth. ATI already did that, but with a 256 bit bus of GDDR5. Bus width doesn't matter: bandwidth does. For that matter, type of memory does not directly matter either. Both are just methods of increasing bandwidth. 1GB of GDDR5 with a 256 bit bus and a clock of around 4400MHz would be just as good as 1GB of GDDR3 on a 512 bit bus and 2100MHz clocks- same bandwidth, same amount.