Well, somewhere in Q3 the 4800 X2 is suppose to be released, which is pretty cool, as well as very soon. On that, the new 4 series cards do some very cool things, namely, they are using GDDR5, which will allow for much faster speeds overall as there is a drastic reduction in processing times, as well, use less power. Also the X2 is supposedly priced below $500, even though there are two cores, which puts it lower than what Nvidia is going to offer. On a final note, AMD is making an extra effort to make the performance difference between the 4870 and 4850, so you know one is a high end card, and the other is mid range. [First Look]有圖有真相ï¼AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4800系列照片æ›å…‰ Radeon HD 4807X2 in mid-Q3, costs less than GTX280 *corrected* | NordicHardware
Actually, not really, this is something that ATI/AMD is just pushing for. Their mindset is to use higher speed memory to increase the capabilities of the GPU. Being that a major limiting factor behind graphical processing power is the lag time for memory. In the process it will make their cards much more power efficient, which is about friggin time, all card makers currently just increase everything and power included. high end graphics cards continue to increase in speed, but at the cost of power consumption, frankly, its getting a little crazy. On that GDDR 4 is very new, it has just been implemented in cards, and GDDR 3 is still used.