ATi are back in the saddle

We have been hearing rumours of a 480 stream processor equipped card from ATi for a while now. Featuring crazy capacities of GDDR5 memory and even coming with its own cold fusion generator which glows red and pats you on the ass periodically telling you ‘Well done my pet, now worship me’ ….

Ok, so most of that is not true, but some is! ATi have announced in the last few days two flagship cards from the new R700 range – the 4870 and the budget 4850. Rather than the 480 stream processors, both cards feature an even more impressive number – 800 (!) clocked at 750Mhz and 625Mhz respectively. A good preview and very promising benchmarks can be found over at gamespot. Its great to see ATi finally bringing out products to be excited about, rather than the recent damp squibs like current generation Phenom and the R600 series graphics cards.