Radeon HD 4000 series specifications surfaces
Written by Andreas G 15 February 2008 20:03

The ATI Radeon HD 4000 series is slated for late Q2. Information about the high-end RV770 has been leaking onto the web, from here and there, but the exact specifications has remained in the shadows. German hardware site Hartware.net has gotten their hands on what seems to be pretty authentic information. As far as we can tell, it looks believable and matches the rumors going around. We're still far away from the launch and the figures are subject to change. We also have some information on our own to share with you.

If you're into extreme single-core GPUs you may want to stop reading now. ATI's future is value-oriented and if you're longing for that 1 billion transistor megachip, you can stop doing it right now. ATI isn't into that. We should have told you this sooner. ATI is focusing on bang for the buck and if you want more performance you should get a second card, or get the card with two cores.

Considering the flexibility and scaling that CrossFireX offers, we're not exactly saddened by AMD's decision to steer ATI toward focusing more on the price/performance ratio than on raw performance. It is harder to write drivers for a multi-GPU, but when you make sure that you have a good foundation, such as CrossFireX, it might be worth the risk.

The information published elsewhere suggests that ATI will use GDDR5 to a great extent, which surprise us a little. On the other hand, ATI may know something about GDDR5 that we don't (we would be surprised otherwise). RV770 has GDDR5 support, but whether ATI will actually use it remains to be seen. GDDR4 with most of the high-end cards is a highly likely scenario. The frequencies suggested here are actually lower than what good GDDR4 chips are capable of.

Radeon HD	Shaders	Core(s)	VRAM	GFLOPS	Frequency (MHz)
4870X2	2x480	2xRV770	1GB GDDR5	2016	1050/1800
4870	480	RV770	1GB GDDR5	1008	1050/2200
4850	480	RV770	512MB GDDR5	816	850/1800
4670	240	RV740	512MB GDDR4	480	1000/1200
4650	240	RV740	256MB GDDR4	384	800/1000
4470	40	RV710	256MB GDDR3	-	900/800
4450	40	RV710	128MB GDDR2	-	700/500

RV770 will break 1TFLOPS, while the R700, with two RV770, should be capable of twice that, more than 2TFLOPS. This is higher than what he had expected, but then again the core frequencies are also higher than expected. All cores are made by TSMC and their 55nm process. We're still trying to hunt down more reliable information on the design of the "core".

On top of the information Hartware.net published we've completed the tables with some additional information, among others the target price points. AMD/ATI's goal is to keep the prices at a point where they are first of all affordable, but also a thorn in the side of NVIDIA. The prices in the table are the not the final MSRP, but the price ATI aims to stick below. Meaning that the retail prices should end up lower than what the tables shows.

When AMD/ATI, unveiled the Radeon HD 3000 series they had added a nifty feature called PowerPlay. PowerPlay dynamically controls the power consumption and will severely reduce the power consumption when idle, but also reduce the peak consumption somewhat. When we look at the figures they don't quite add up, but as stated above, these figures are all most likely going to change before the launch. The idle power consumptions of all cards are extremely low and even the dual-core Radeon HD 4870X2 will consume less than 25W when idle.

Radeon HD	Core(s)	Idle	Load	Price
4870X2	2xRV770	<25W	250W	<$499
4870	RV770	<10W	150W	<$299
4850	RV770	<10W	120W	<$249
4670	RV740	<10W	100W	<$149
4650	RV740	<10W	80W	<$129
4470	RV710	<10W	50W	<$79
4450	RV710	<10W	30W	<$59

The number of TMUs have finally been increased, actually doubled, to 32 with RV770, while RV740 sports 24 TMUs, and the low-end RV710 has 8 TMUs. Don't bother getting upset with the 256-bit memory bus because it will not become any kind of bottleneck. The only time it might be even close to that is when you're pouring liquid nitrogen into the container and have the GPU running at +50% of stock frequency, which will happen though.

Core	Shaders	TMUs	ROPs	Bus
RV770	480	32	16	256-bit
RV740	240	24	12	256-bit
RV710	40	8	4	128-bit

To end this long and speculative post, we would like to say that if not all, most of the variables here are subject to change and should be considered with a "tiny" pinch of salt. We're still 4 month away from the launch.

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2008-05-15 Radeon HD 4000 series launches June 18, lots of details
2008-05-14 RV770 will hit 1GHz on air with ease *corrected*
2008-05-03 RV770 Pro GDDR3 in May, RV770XT GDDR5 in July
2008-04-21 Fake Radeon HD 4870 benchmark...
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