ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4870-Mobile M98 almost done

According to the following information from Fuad Abazovic via Fudzilla, the new Mobile M98 cards are ready to go into production phase. When they will actually be available in the marketplace is anybody's guess but perhaps it will be sooner than previously speculated.


ATI's new Performance chip

In ATI (AMD graphics) world, A12 means that this is a silicon that can go in production and that the product is ready. That is the current status of mobile graphic card codenamed M98.

You might call this card Radeon Mobility HD 4870, as this is the chip similar to RV770 and it even wants to speak with DDR5 memory. The current clock of the chip is 500MHz, but we are not sure if this is the final speed, whereas Quimonda's GDDR5 memory runs at 700MHz.

We expect to see some notebooks with this chip with the next refresh that should happen in early 2009. The chip is there and it’s up and running.

Original link: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11090&Itemid=1

 

So

Will any notebook use it?

ATI has some nice mobile cards that are considerably cheaper than nvidia's, but you rarely see them (like the 3850/70)

 

Well if the HD4870 performs just as well(if not better) than their Nvidia counterparts, but for a cheaper price, then the manufacturers may start buying them and we'll see more of them around

What I like about ATI is that their port to notebooks still works with their naming scheme. ATI's desktop and notebook counterparts can actually compare somewhat while Nvidia's mobile naming scheme is just kinda messed up lol

 

If speculation holds up, the 4850 easily outpaces the 9800M GTX, so the 4870 must be a serious piece of hardware.

 

I doubt the 4870 mobility will be the same as the desktop or anywhere near close. There's no way you can cool such a chip in a notebook. I'd expect 4830~4850 desktop speeds with the mobility 4870.

 

My preliminary estimates (What Kevin Jack2.0 is referring to when he says 'speculation') can be found here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4319687&postcount=129

My estimates for the mobility HD 4870 can be found here:

(Benchmarks using 625/800 clocks)

Estimates based on current information about the clock speeds of these chips.

 

Now if only ATI would fix their extensive driver issues.

 

Even if it is a 4850 speed, that's still up to par with what Nvidia has to offer in the notebook department. An HD4850 is more or less slightly faster than a 8800 GT/8800 GTS 512mb and those are roughly equivalent to the 9800M GTX in terms of brute performance.

The only thing is as the above poster said, for ATI to release more frequent drivers.

 

Also, hopefully the ATI would run much cooler now. It was kind of weird to see those reviews praising the 4850 for its price/performance value and low power consumption, but then... it idles at 71C?! Ridiculous!

AMD, in general, needs to work on their temps... CPU and GPU.

 

It does not idle at 71C, even with my fans off on a single slot HIS branded reference cooler the highest idle I get is about 61C. I run my GPU fan at a constant 35% which is inaudible over my barely audible case fan and at that speed it idles at 46C. While it runs hot, the thermal problems were overblown by drivers that didn't properly scale fan speed.

Also, ForeverMelody, the HD 48 30 is as fast / faster than the 8800/9800 GT, the 4850 is faster than the 9800 GTX and is as fast as the 9800 GTX+ in about half the games it's benchmarked in.

 

Keep in mind though that the 4850 uses a single slot cooler. The ones with the dual slot cooler have much lower idle temps.

 

I am a Sager customer. I have bought and will continue to buy Sager laptops, since their HQ office is literally within 30 miles of where I live.

That being said, when do you suspect we will start seeing 4870 Mobile enabled Sager notebooks?

 

no idea. clevo would be the one to ask, but i think they have a rep for being tight with info.