Bjorn3D small review on the 4870 X2.
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1317
CONCLUSION
While we still want to wait with our final judgement on the HD4870X2 until we got a production board in our hands our initial impression is that this seems to be the card that finally lets AMD compete directly with NVIDIA for the performance crown. As far as we can see from these first tests the HD4870X2 easily will be able to hold its own against the GTX280, in some cases even beating it by a large margin. It is no wonder that NVIDIA got worried and, almost in panic, had to dump the prices of the GTX260 and GTX280 so quick after its launch. It will be interesting to see how AMD prices the card compared to the GeForce GTX280. Competition is great, isn't it?
If there is something we did not like it was the fact that the card ran really really hot (you could not touch the backplate as it was so hot), something probably in part due to the fact that powersaving through Powerplay was not working and thus the card could not throttle down when in idle mode. This is something we also see in the HD4870 so AMD definitely has some work to do if they do not want the HD4870X2 to become a money and energywaster when you are not playing games.
The card is expected to be released in August and we will certainly be back then with a full review of the card. For those of you who cannot wait you already can get near-HD4870X2 performance by combining HD4850 and/or HD4870 in CrossfireX-configurations but then of course you loose the ability to combine two HD4870X2 boards in CrossfireX in the future.
I don't know about you, but I want one ^^
After I have seen what the 4870 1GB can do of course.
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