AMD/ATI’s Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 are the video cards to pick up if you’re looking to build a new gaming rig. An excellent balance of price and performance really shook up the video card landscape and it was no accident. This was a planned attack which began in 2005.

AnandTech has the back story which involved gutsy moves, new ways of thinking and patience. I was surprised to find out that AMD/ATI decided to not only use both a new manufacturing process and a new architecture which focused on price/performance, but they also decided to use GDDR5 memory when it wasn’t even properly speced yet.

When the options were either make the chip too big or make the performance too low, ATI looked elsewhere: let’s use a new memory technology. Again, put yourself in ATI’s shoes, the time was 2005 and ATI had just decided to completely throw away the past few years of how-to-win-the-GPU-race and on top of that, even if the strategy were to succeed it would depend on a memory technology that hadn’t even been prototyped yet.

The spec wasn’t finalized for GDDR5 at the time, there were no test devices, no interface design, nothing. Just an idea that at some point, there would be memory that could offer twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3, which would give ATI the bandwidth of a 512-bit bus, but with a physical 256-bit bus. It’s exactly what ATI needed, so it’s exactly what ATI decided to go with.

What a gamble.

Did you hear? AMD is dividing into two companies. One half will design chips and the other half will manufacture them. I bet you’re scratching your head wondering how that will save them money. The new manufacturing company, dubbed Foundry Company, will not only be working closely with the design half of AMD, but it will also manufacture chips for other companies.

This proposal still needs to be approved by shareholders and is “expected to be completed by 2009″.

This piece of news is pretty big. If you purchase an Intel X58 based motherboard for your Intel Core i7 you will be able to use both AMD/ATI’s Crossfire and Nvidia’s SLI capabilities with the appropriate video cards. Intel chipsets tend to be the best of the bunch and with this solution, you aren’t forced to make that decision of red team or green team; now you can choose the blue team and get both!

There are many hoops for motherboard manufacturers to jump through and since they are part of the Intel “X” chipsets, they will be expensive motherboards, but this is the step in the right direction.

I wonder how long it will be until we see this capability trickle down to the more mainstream chipset offerings.

AnandTech and The TechReport have their reviews up. They like it. It’s a fast card, but it is a multi-GPU card and multi-GPU cards only flex their muscle with proper driver support. So if you’re willing to spend $549.99 USD and willing to deal with the fact that not all games will benefit from it, the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a prime choice.

Personally, I would still go for AMD’s Radeon HD 4850 — it’s a steal for the asking price of ~$169 CAD.

Specifications wise, the 4870 and 4850 only differ in one area: core and memory clockspeeds. 750/900 (GDDR5) vs 625/993 (GDDR3). Everything else from transistor count to number of processors remain the same. The reason why the clockspeeds are so much higher for the 4870 is attributed to the default dual-slot cooler it comes with. More details? Check out the review from AnandTech.

It’s not a surprise to see how competitive the 4850 remains. It’s not that the 4870 is slow, it’s actually quite a bargain at $299 — it just doesn’t seem very appealing since the 4850 is so good!

Nvidia’s Geforce 9800 GTX+ for $229 is no match for the overall buffness of the ATI Radeon HD 4850. Not really surprising since Nvidia didn’t even believe the speed bump warranted a full numerical upgrade.

Interestingly, AnandTech pointed out how the Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB and the Geforce 8800 GT are at a disadvantage when it comes to pricing. They will need to either lower price or axe one of the cards from retail shelves.

Since Nvidia has no real answer to the AMD Radeon HD 4850, I guess we have new mid-range king.

Intel’s Atom based devices are slowly rolling out, but what about AMD? They have nothing at the moment. We’ll have to wait until 2009 for AMD’s contribution to this up and coming processor market. As for details, check out this quote:

“This new report still doesn’t mention a name for the chip, but it says AMD will base it on a 65nm K8 core clocked at 1.2GHz. That mostly corroborates the leaked slide, which mentioned a 1GHz AMD64 CPU with 256KB of cache, a built-in DDR2-400 memory controller, an 8W power envelope, and a 27 x 27-mm ball-grid-array package. AMD will supposedly attempt to undercut Intel’s Atom with lower prices.”

Cheaper than Atom? Not bad. Consume more power than Atom? Ooo…I don’t know about that.

The Geforce 8800 GT is a fine card at approximately $199 USD, but that’s months ago and we’re now looking ahead to the new “hotness”. The new AMD Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the next great card for that mid-range price point. The Tech Report has a great first look with AMD’s new card and I am impressed. It outpaces the newly priced Geforce 9800 GTX.

It’s a single slot and as much as I enjoy single slot cards, the high temperatures worry me a bit. Regardless, it looks like it’s our new mid-range king. Nvidia is trying to fight back with a overclocked and refined Geforce 9800 GTX+, but until we have numbers from that card and a competitive price: they’ve got nothing.

It looks like the iPhone 3G people have been wanting since day one of the iPhone’s launch is finally launching next month. Well that is if these rumors are to be believed. I’d love to get an iPhone, but the lack of unlimited data rate plans for cheap scare me away.

Hopefully, AMD’s Game! initiative will be more successful than their Live! one. If widly adopted, this initiative will help mainstream gamers pick out games and compatible PCs with relative ease. Just match the logos and you’re good to go. If only it included Intel and NVIDIA components…

Next, it appears that Xbox 360 exclusive, Splinter Cell: Conviction is starting over. Can’t say I cared much for the original concept so this news is welcomed.

Finally, Chair Entertainment, developer of Undertow, is receiving a new beginning under the wing of Epic Games. Hopefully, they’ll continue with creating XBLA games.

It looks like AMD and NVIDIA are gearing up for a GPU war next month. That is if rumors are to be believed.

Here’s the rumored break down for AMD:

• Radeon HD 4850 - Hard Launch on June 18th or June 16th for about $229
• Radeon HD 4870 - Soft launch on June 25th for about $349
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Q3 2008 for about $529 - $549

NVIDIA’s breakdown which includes the GT200 based cards (formerly known as GeForce 9900 series):

• GeForce GTX 200 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 260 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 280 - Sneak peak at Computex (June 3 - 7)

As for performance? We only have preliminaries for the AMD cards.