ATI Mobility 4850 / 4870

I'm getting pretty excited about these upcoming releases. It's kinda funny that the 8600m GT is still the most common mid-range GPU, especially when no one really liked it to begin with. The mid-range mobile GPU market has been hurting for a while now. I just hope that the 4850 will be available as a replacement for the 8600m GT on 15.4 INCH LAPTOPS. Does anyone know what screen size will most likely correspond to which mobile 4000 series chip? I'm thinking

4650 - 14" maybe?
4850 - Hopefully 15.4"
4850 X2 - Most likely 17"
4870 - Most likely 17"

 

Yeah I have the 8600 and I'm looking to upgrade. I was thinking of the Nagamaki with the 3870s, but now I think I might wait for the 4870s to come out.

 

The 4850 and 4870 will be 256bit high-performance cards, meaning MXM-III, 9700gts and above on the Nvidia side. I doubt you'll be replacing the 8600 with one of those two.

 

If he buys a new notebook he will

 

He was talking about the mid range market so Kevin is right.The 8600M GT is severely limited by its 128 bit bus. And I agree that a 4850/4870 will be a great upgrade.

 

The 4800s are inappropriate for taking over the space where the 8600M GT currently resides. They take too much power, generate too much heat, and require too complex a PCB to show up in that market segment.

The 4600s, however, are ideal for that. Frankly, desktop 4650 level performance would be miles ahead of the 8600M GT anyhow, and the 4650 can definitely fit in the same power envelope the 8600 can.

 

The 4850 on the desktop are usually a good deal and they'll also be it for the laptops I suspect.

 

I don't see how can they decrease 4800 power output down to reasonable levels.
8600gt mobile TDP is 40W vs 70W for the desktop version.
And there's no magic here they lowered it by decreasing volatage and clocks for chip and mem.

Surely they will have to do the same for 4800 series, but you can only go so far with this.

The TDP for 4870 is 150W, which in my view is way too much to begin with anyway, but in particular to try and think of it as a mobile chip.

 

Yeh right. Lets no dream too far here. I doubt you will see a 4800 series card in a 15in, unless its a 1.9in, 4kg beast like the qosmio f55.

And how do u know most vendors will offers the ati cards? Dell never offers high end GPUs in their 15in (thats for alienware), HP always use severely underpowered ATI cards, and i cant think of any other vendor (cept MSI and Arima) offering a high end ATI card in their notebooks, let alone a 15in.

 

how are these comparable to the nvidia 9XXXm series?

cus the pc 4850 beats the 9800gtx+ and 4870 beats the gtx260.
so are these better then the 9600m gt and 9650m gt that dell are probably going to use? if they are i hope dell use them

 

Your right, for the high end gaming notebooks right now, its just about Nvidia exclusive. I've also mostly only seen the lower end Radeon cards in notebooks. I hope far more vendors will use the HD4850/HD4870 in their gaming notebooks. They are an excellent match and can best most of the Geforce 9700M+ cards.

 

I agree and they're also more economical than the 97xx and the 98xx.

 

I don't think you can really compare the cards at the moment since speculation off of desktop variants is highly different than their notebook counterparts.

 

Yeah you all are probably right, desktop R700s are VERY power hungry. I just figured that maybe since 4850s are single slot cooling systems we could cram one into a (not m15x priced) 15.4 incher heh. We'll have to keep an eye out. Any info on when we will start seeing these things in the wild?

 

You cant compare desktop to laptop. Example: 9600 GT and 9600M GT.

And for ****s sake, dell are not going to use the new 4000 radeons in their xps refresh (if their is one). They only just started shipping to vendors today (and how do u know dell got them?) and Dell will never try and be economical with their consumer 15in. Im 90% sure of 9600M GT being the card used.

 

the 8600m gt doesnt have a power rating of 40w, its 23w sir. ATI could fit a 4850 into a 15 inch form, look at the 8800 gt (i dont know the TDP of it), but the 8800m gt TDP is 37w and the GTS is 35w. for gods sake the 7950m GTX was 45w, and i am sure 4850 and 4870 will make it into the 17 inch form.

 

Which manufacturers do you think will use the Mobility HD4850/HD4870?
Its a shame that the only company I know that uses the current HD3870 card is OCZ.

I hope not only will some boutique makers use the card, but also larger companies like Sony, Gateway, HP, etc.

Nvidia has a stranglehold on the mobile gaming card market with their Geforce 9000 series. ATI's put up a great fight with their HD4000 cards in the desktop market, I hope they can do the same for the notebooks. Can't wait for benchmarks between the HD4850/HD4870 and Geforce 9800GT/GTX.

 

I read on a site that the 4850m (forgot link) got 10000 or so on 3dmark06.

Another example of why Dell wont use the 4000 series: they do not want to differentiate with other vendors. When a newbie at computers sees one with a 4850 and one with a 9700m GTS, they would go for the 9700m GTS as its got a higher number (i know someone who did this).

Also, when Hp, toshiba etc all came out with notebooks with 8600M or equivalent, did Dell take it up a notch with a 8700M GT? NO.

 

or it could be that nvidia pays these companies or give them a discount on GPUs to only put their own cards into them. since ATI is smaller company maybe they dont have the money to give to other companies. look how the Nvidia promotion on games is like and you will understand what i am saying.

 

What? Thats sounds quite absurd. ATI is smaller but still very successful. I doubt thats the case. Maybe companies just like sticking to the mainstream nvidia cards.

 

Personally I don't mind having to go with a company like Sager over Dell. These smaller builders usually have much higher build quality over the crap consumer Dell lines. From http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...adies_Dual_Chip_Mobile_Graphics_Solution.html

At Ceatec ATI demonstrated an MXM module featuring ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000-series processor inserted into a development board, which means that while the card itself is ready, there are no final notebooks to utilize the novelty just yet. It remains to be seen whether graphics product group of AMD will be able to roll-out the new Mobility Radeon HD 4000 family this year.

EDIT: Found some interesting benchmarks here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21969965@N05/

 

Are you saying that Mobility Radeon 4000 series now started shipping to vendors? If so, I completely missed the news - are there some article links?

 

there ya go. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=316086

 

This should be interesting. Maybe, and hopefully, the prices of mobile cards will drop. It`s about time..

 

Great stuff! Thanks!

On that note though - I am already in the process of buying a new Sager NP5793 notebook. It hasn't shipped yet, but I already wired the money. Now I am less sure about the purchase, as I would love to get my hands at one of these ATI cards, but I guess it is too late for me.

 

The 5793 is a great machine. You'll be fine with it. Also, even if they put the 4000 series in a Sager (unless its xfire) it wont have that much of a performance gain.

 

You are probably right - and the prices for it are currently pretty good too (which is why I am getting it in the first place). I guess I thought that the 4800 series might provide an even better price-performance ratio.

 

Nope, unless ATI make the cards dirt cheap.

 

It was the great value of the HD4850 and HD4870 which had forced Nvidia to issue price cuts on their Geforce 9800 and GTX cards.

I hope it can be the same for the notebook market.

 

This is a good point Rahul... maybe a little market competition is all we need in the high-end GPU market. Maybe then it wont be a $500 dollar upgrade to go from 9800m GT to 9800m GTX!

 

8600 desktop TDP is around 40W-50W, while the mobile version is around 20W

 

The desktop and notebook variants are rather different. I don't think you can compare them since they use different processes and have dif amounts of transistors, which is where the heats comes from. The relationship isn't linear wrt clock speeds.

 

You're sort of right, but also very wrong.

Notebook GPUs are basically desktop GPUs that have had their clocks tweaked for better thermals. But it's the same silicon.

Where things differ is in branding, where NVIDIA basically smokescreens all of us. All of its 32 shader notebook parts are based off of G96, or the GeForce 9500 GT. Same transistor count, same process (65nm).

Basically, with the 9 series mobile parts, check the shader count and match it up with the desktop part that has the same or similar number of shaders in the chip. That means the 16 and 32 shader parts are all variants on the G96 (GeForce 9500 GT), the 48 and 64 shader parts are variants on the G94 (GeForce 9600 GT), and above are variants on the G92.

Being as how I've been an ATI fanboy as of late, I'm keen to remind you that the notebook chips branded in their respective families match up with their desktop counterparts. That means a Mobility Radeon HD 3650 is using the same RV635 chip the desktop version uses.

 

Seems like they removed all M98 related info from this site. I saw the M4850/M4870/M4850X2 models listed though.

Whoever includes this gpu in a model listed below €1100 gets my money for shure.

 

Hmm. I don't see any of the Mobility Radeon HD 4xxx Series cards on AMD's website any more.. what happened?

*Crosses fingers* I'm still hoping for a decently sized 15.4'' barebone with a 4650/4670 to come out before next year.

 

To myself, these cards are vapourware, until I can configure one in a notebook.

 

Alienware is hopping on the ATI train--this bodes well for future 4000 series availability:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/03/alienwares-surprise-the-crossfire-x-enabled-m17-gaming-noteboo/

 

No more vapourware:
h77p://asia.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodtmpspec&maincat_no=135&cat2_no=271&cat3_no=&prod_no=1676#menu

 

DDR2 on the mobile version of HD4850?

That's a crime!

 

Are there any 3850 with GDDR2?

 

I'm sure that's a typo. If I remember correctly the 4850's memory controller doesn't even support DDR2.

 

Let's hope DDR2 system memory is a typo too.

 

it is a typo, why in the name of unicorns would they do that to high end mobile card.

 

i think its a typo aswell, ati isnt that stupid -.- ATI cards are crippled by the FLOP count, if the card is DDR2 then the card would turn out to be a mid range.

 

What about a card with a single 4870? How would that perform?

 

are there any lappy out now with a single 4870 card?

 

the alienware m17 and m15x use the mobility 3870, roughly around the power of the 8800m series.

 

Well first of all, I posted that some months ago, before there was a notebook that carried the 3870s.

Second of all, Alienware is a gaming vendor, a boutique vendor. They strive to put the latest and greatest in their laptops, no matter the size. I was talking about MAINSTREAM brands' 15" and 17".