Quote Originally Posted by Star_Hunter View Post
4870 is out on the 25th of June while the 4870x2 is unknown but is looking like July/August
Actually there are no reports of a July release for the R700 that I am aware of. For now, we are talking August 15th as a best case scenario. It could easily be delayed further. If there are any unforeseen problems it could be October before we see it.

Let's not forget how ambitious the R700 is if it's true that it seeks to connect the two GPUs in some way that is not Crossfire. Sort of like what the CPU folks have been doing for a while now, but for GPUs. If AMD can make the two GPUs look like one functional unit to the OS and drivers it will be a major milestone for PC graphics cards. A huge step forward. And it will vindicate AMD's new design philosophy for GPUs. The 6 month refresh could be a 4870x4, and then a summer refresh could be a 4870x8, and then a 4870x16 etc. Although, as some have mentioned wrt a GTX295 GX2, cooling could be an issue. Remember that GPUs don't have the scaling problem that CPUs have. Graphics processing is an "embarrassingly parallel" problem domain. SLI and CF (usually AFR) is basically a crude 3DFX era hack. That's why it doesn't scale much past 2. If doubling the amount of stream processors is so effective for this generation there is no reason why doubling the number of GPUs couldn't do the same. At least in theory.

And to those of you who are reminding us of how a 4870x2 should utterly clobber a GTX280 in every game, remember that that is only true if AMD succeeds with this idea of eliminating "crossfire" from their dual GPU cards. Otherwise it would only be true for those games that fully support crossfire. Currently there are quite a few that do not. And for older games that isn't likely to change no matter how popular the R700 becomes. And that is not even considering the microstuttering or lag issues that continue to plague SLI/CF. Until someone is willing to break NDA and actually tell us, it will remain a mystery.