Mountain House (CA) – Unlike the ATI that we knew before, it appears that AMD’s graphics division is running perfectly these days – and ahead of deadlines. Even though the graphics unit has posted an $8 million loss in the first quarter of this year – in an effort to improve market share rather than average selling prices -  the graphics business is making progress: We hear the company has struck gold with the RV770 and will be bring the chip to market earlier than expected.

AMD’s next graphics cards are being prepared for launch: During the Q1 earnings call, president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer stated that the company will roll out a significant number of products in May and our sources now confirmed that the introductions will include desktop and mobile (M88) graphics parts.

RV770 will launch as Radeon 4800 and will make its way into the FireStream stream processor and FireGL workstation cards. Both GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory will be supported by the chip, but ATI itself will only be offering GDDR5 cards. The Radeon 4850 version is set to come to market with an 800+ MHz core (the final clock has not been specified yet and will not be available until the final qualification is completed), while the 4870 will be the first mass-production GPU with a clock speed higher than 1 GHz. Prototype RV770 boards were clocked at about 1.05 GHz.

The graphics processor itself will integrate more texture memory units (TMUs), which is the Achilles' heel of the R6xx generation: 32 TMUs in the RV770 will challenge the 56/64 units of Nvidia’s G92/G92b.

The new graphics card generation is expected to become available to system integrators and OEMs in GDDR3/GDDR5 variants with 256/512/1024 MB buffers. 256 MB GDDR3 cards are exclusively targeted at OEMs (as well as ODMs, Sis) and are unlikely to shop up in retail. Expect to see mainly 512 MB GDDR5 cards in retail for both the 4850 and 4870. Just like the GPU, the memory clock isn't set in stone either, but we were told that the GDDR5 memory is currently running at a physical clock of 1.8 - 2.2 GHz.

With a 256-bit memory controller, we're talking about 115 to 141 GB/s of bandwidth. This number equals the memory bandwidth record set by the 2900XT 1GB GDDR4 (512-bit interface with GDDR4 at 1.1 GHz DDR).

While we expect the desktop boards to be announced soon, RV770-based FireGL boards will not be introduced until Siggraph 2008, which will open its doors on August 11.

Do I sense a change in the wind?

Apr 21, 2008 02:33     

The seas are ruff these days and while some has come out of it better than they were before others have truly had to fight for survival. But do I sense a change in the winds? Is that an Ati ship I see coming in to dock?
Anosh report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

Bout time 'that' company had some good news...

Apr 21, 2008 05:31     

Bout time 'that' company had some good news
Timboj report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

big up da ati massive

Apr 21, 2008 08:13     

rofl but I love ati, I'm so glad to see some good news for them. Ati all the way, always gave me best value for money.
Adam report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Merger

Apr 21, 2008 08:22     

The processor and GPU market is so fast paced that the merger really killed thier current product line time schedule. Hopefully its a sign they are back on track.
Ray report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Take you pick!

Apr 21, 2008 08:51     

from the picture on the home page.... HDMI, Digiport, DVI....nice! It will integrate well with Vista.
Diode report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Server cards?

Apr 21, 2008 09:41     

So are these cards designed for server usage or home usage? Anytime I see FireGL, it's usually worthless to me for gaming.
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re: Server cards?

Apr 21, 2008 10:13     

It'll start out in the typical way, as a gaming card, and be converted to the FireGL afterwards.
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re: Server cards?

Apr 21, 2008 10:56     

FireGL cards are designed and have their drivers optimised for the workstation CAD users and are by no mean meant for gaming.
Zomby report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

*gasp* pulling the GT200 out of the vault?

Apr 21, 2008 11:17     

Go ATI. Force the green team to bring out the real successor to the 8800 gtx. About time, and welcome back ATI :) (i refuse to call them amd)
wmcgritt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +7

Finaly ....

Apr 21, 2008 14:11     

Do I sense a change in the wind? Apr 21, 2008 02:33 The seas are ruff these days and while some has come out of it better than they were before others have truly had to fight for survival. But do I sense a change in the winds? Is that an Ati ship I see coming in to dock? Well said brother. I have allways been a big AMD / ATI fan, I was so excited to see my two favorite firms merge into one. The last year was painfull to watch how AMD and ATI suffered against nvidiafags and intelsux. And i keep telling all the nvdia and intel fans not to count AMD/ATI out yet, they have a knack for rising from the dead and jumping out of nowhere to steal the top spot unexpectedly, theyv'e done it in the past numbrous times and here ATI seems on the path to do it again. and news of AMD's 12 core CPU is circulating as well. I really hope they stick it to both nvidia and intel this round. i would love to laugh in all my friends faces for a change .... Either way this plays out, AMD/ATI has allways been better product for the buck no matter how poorly they were doing....

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re: Take you(r) pick!

Apr 21, 2008 16:40     

The picture for this article is not a RV770 board. It appears to be a Gainward 9800 GTX or GX2. If you right click on the picture and select "Save Image As.." it says "gainward_displayport.jpg." Gainward rebrands nVidia products not AMD/ATI. The picture is a little deceiving.
Biggins report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

AMD/ATI focus change

Apr 21, 2008 18:15     

It is just another step by AMD/ATI in its change to providing a complete platform solution rather than just a CPU or just a graphics adapter. It was always the plan when they acquired ATI. Just some mis-steps made it all look a mess. The graphics division and the chipset division are doing their part now. Last cog in wheel is the move to 45nm CPUs. Good luck AMD/ATI.
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Actually....

Apr 21, 2008 18:21     

Hi Biggins, well, I just landed in Europe and saw that the story has Gainward image. The story is about upcoming graphics card, so graphics ed just used our regular template. We do not have RV770 image we can publish. Given the witch hunt that is currently going in AMD over this story, we would feel at unease if we ran the story with an image of RV770 card. There are watermarks everywhere... We'll do better next time, though ;) All the best, Theo

Theo Valich report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +10

re: Actually....

Apr 22, 2008 08:45     

Thanks Theo. I thought it was a picture of a RV770 card when I first saw the article. After doing a little research I determined it was not. There is not a single picture of a RV770 on the Internet (not even Fudzilla). Maybe you should have a big red arrow pointing to the Gainward card saying "NOT RV770!!!" ... just joking. Keep up the good work.
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ati & opengl

Apr 22, 2008 16:35     

I like ATI. I always find their ingame HQ to be a hair better than Nvidia. Only problem is it seems as if they don't care much about opengl anymore. All opengl games seem to just do "okay" vs. amazing on the nvidia cards. I wonder if they'll ever address this issue.
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RE: Biggins - Actually...

Apr 22, 2008 17:01     

... actually, there are couple of leaked pictures floating around, especially on ChipHell even on our sister site in UK: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...-revealed Some specs, and one of leaked pictures... hope it helps. It did not change drastically from RV670, seems that ATI found optimal PCB design, even though I think main "guilty party" for that is the fact that they have years of experience in routing 256-bit from the chip... and it is not a b*tch to have high yield on FC-BGA substrate, while in case of 512-bit memory, main problem is how to connect all the pins. Tons of dead chips (not cards), issues with traces on the PCB... 256-bit is the optimal call. Personally, I consider that 512-bit that Nvidia is going with, is a mistake if it does not use GDDR5 memory. I was one of fans of Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB. The reason was simple: 1GB of GDDR4 memory used 50% less power than 512MB GDDR3 memory. GDDR5 is even better, thus I saw some single-slot RV770 designs. We'll see ;)

Theo Valich report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

Change in the wind? No...

Apr 22, 2008 20:48     

I've always preferred stability over performance. ATI has always been more stable than nVidia overall. And, especially more stable in Vista and 64-bit computing. As long as the 4800 continues this trend, ATI/AMD will be a better choice.
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PCI-E 2.0 x16?

Apr 23, 2008 12:34     

hey guys will this card support the normal PCI-E 2.0 x16 bus? So no need for new Mainboards? I look forward to the card-release. Keep going!
jack report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Uh

Apr 25, 2008 12:35     

Do you think nVidia was twiddling their thumbs and just waiting around for ATi to catch up while the 8800 cards dominated the market for so long? Or do you think that, while ATi was struggling to even match the performance of 8800 cards, they might have been developing new technology that will no doubt beat the hell out of ATi's new line up? Let's see how long it takes nVidia to knock ATi back down. =) And as for AMD vs. Intel, please... Intel is king and AMD doesn't stand a chance of taking back the crown. Ever. But I do appreciate ATi no doubt accelerating the arrival of nVidia's new monster. Can't wait!

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