Mountain House (CA) – If everything goes according to plan, we will see AMD’s new Radeon GPU launch this week. But there is more news to this announcement and we are thinking about one special item you are unlikely to hear about: During AMD's Cinema 2.0 schmoozapalooza in The Americano restaurant in San Francisco we learned that your  Radeon 3850, 3870 or 3870 X2 graphics card will hold extra value: Don’t get rid of your old card just yet.

A source close to AMD told us that there will be “inter-generation compatibility” between the Radeon 3800 and 4850: “Since they're both DirectX 10.1 parts, there is no reason why those two should not work together. (…) We will probably not qualify this interoperability, but who stops you from trying?"

It appears that ATI did not integrate a driver lock or something else that would stop you from combining a 3870 card with a 4850 or with a 4870 model. Just keep in mind that these two cards need to include the same amount of memory. If you mix and match a 3850 with 256 MB of memory with a 4850 512 MB, the 4850 card will default to 256 MB. If you wonder whether you will be able to combine a 3870 X2 card with a 4850 board, our sources indicated that this scenario should work as well.

There is nothing not to like about this interoperability. I personally believe this is a big win for the consumer: How often do you have to throw you old card away when a new generation is introduced? Usually, always (well, at least, if you are among those who try to always have the latest and greatest.)  

Awesome!

Jun 23, 2008 00:58     

Great! I hope the kick hurts a lot of Nvidia buts. I mean competition and release of something else, new, and hopefully better. Nvidia should learn from AMD here. And, why not apply the same concept on CPUs? Sure, it will take a lot of hardware engineering, but will give probably a lot in return.
Virtualban report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +9

ya, WAY awesome!

Jun 23, 2008 03:21     

Big win for consumers and AMD indeed. People can start to finally eat their words that the AMD never did anything great with ATI. But look what AMD have finally done (again). Innovation and performance values. Mixing two different generation of cards is unheard of since the birth of SLI and Crossfire. My next card will NOT be the green team.
VILLAIN_xx report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +10

Killer

Jun 23, 2008 08:29     

This is a great win-win for consumer.. Now I can couple my 500$ 3870x2 with a new gen 4xxx series card and improve my graphics power when the need arises
Sateesh report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

grr

Jun 23, 2008 09:31     

Shoulda got the crossfire capable motherboard and not this SLI motherboard..
DK report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Cool

Jun 23, 2008 09:32     

I've been an Nvidia guy for the last 8 years. But I am so happy that AMD is coming up with innovative and clever ways to keep the pressure on.
wmcgritt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Great idea!

Jun 23, 2008 09:33     

I hate throwing out/selling for less money/donating my old gfx cards when I want to upgrade. Maybe it's time to switch over to ATi once this proves possible. I bet nVidia doesn't do this for a long time, if at all.
nobody report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

Im getting this card for sure!...

Jun 23, 2008 09:34     

Im getting this card for sure!
Starboykb report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

What the hell is this?

Jun 23, 2008 09:45     

Totally pointless, when NVIDIA comes out with mix and match for GT200 9 series 8 series SLi, amd/ati will be bite to dust
Anarion report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -32

not so fast...

Jun 23, 2008 11:26     

According to Fudo this is not possible. Check out fudzilla.com
dan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Is that true?

Jun 23, 2008 11:33     

http://www.fudzilla.com/index....5&Itemid=1 "Despite previous reports on the internet that old Radeon 38x0 and new Radeon 48x0 cards will work in Crossfire together, unfortunately this won't happen.", says Fuad Abazovic on Fudzilla.
Kurt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

physics processing

Jun 23, 2008 12:58     

What ever happened to ati's physics initiative where one could use a totally separate card for physics processing? It's still visible one ati's website and was a joint venture with havok mentioned some time ago. Was the 4850's physics processing also a result of that?
Advakit report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Even if it did..

Jun 23, 2008 17:00     

Even if it did work, think about performances. The 4800 series card would always be waiting on the 3000 series card, so what would be the point? Perharps AMD tried doing it then realised that it was pointless due to low performance issues.
Mathieu report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Question.....

Jun 23, 2008 17:33     

Was just wondering, if having 2 x 512 is the same as having 1 x 1028 of memory for 1920/1080 res displays. This is a serious question, and I will not probably get any answers unless I get off my lazy ass and go look on Tom's Hardware.
Sorbitol report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Reply to that question

Jun 23, 2008 18:33     

Nope, as each card uses its own 512MB. 512MB of Memory, especially with two cards, should be enough for any games at that resolution though.
Mathieu report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Re: Mathieu

Jun 24, 2008 13:16     

I'll just get the 4870 x2, and if I desire to get a samsung 30" display, then I'll just double that.
Sorbitol report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

This is NOT true.

Jun 25, 2008 16:33     

I have had a 3870 visontek for awhile. Just picked up the 4850 at the store. Installed the 4850. Installed the 3870. No crossfire. Both drivers are same and installed, windows recognizes both cards, both bridges are used. I called visontek and they told me two 4850's would work, but not the 4850/3870 combo.
tyler report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3