AMD Radeon HD 4850 512MB Video Card Preview – Sapphire

The AMD/ATI Presentation Slides Continued

AMD informed us at the Cinema 2.0 launch that the world’s first TeraFLOP computer was built back in 1996 and used 10,000 Intel Pentim Pro Processors running at 200MHz to reach the mark. The machine was called ASCI Red and consumed 500kW of power to run and needed 500kW of cooling just to keep the room temperature normal for a server floor.

With the launch of the Radeon HD 4850 each and everyone of us can have a TeraFLOP of processing power from a GPU that costs just $199 and consumes only 110W of power. This is impressive to say the least! NVIDIA really wanted to hit a TeraFLOP with their GT200 core, but was just shy.

We thought it was strange that ATI included this slide to use last night at midnight, but what the heck. It shows that the RV770 XT is the ATI Radeon HD 4870 and it will be launched on July 8th, 2008. The R700 doesn’t have a name yet (Radeon HD 4870 X2) and is roughly two months away from being completed. You can also see that the original launch date for the ATI Radeon HD 4850 that we have here today should have been June 25th, but since retailers want to sell cards before the drivers are done and the product is launched you get what we have here today – a mess for AMD.

This slide has an overview of the information that you just saw. Notice AMD says they are ready to take the performance crown… Wish we had some 64-bit drivers!

Here we see the RV770 compared to the GTX200 in order to compare some key features that AMD wants shown. That’s if for the dog and pony show with the power point presentation. We hate to bring you a power point presentation when we have cards sitting here, but we had no choice. The embargo was pushed forward by a week and we didn’t have anything in our hands till the very last minute.