Radeon HD 4800 (RV770) Preliminary Performance Revealed

VR-Zone reports that the Radeon HD 4870 will be 30% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 and 25% faster than Nvidia's existing GeForce 9800 GTX. Apparently, RV770XT with GDDR5 (160W) will run 1.3X faster than RV770PRO with GDDR3 (110W). Two key factors that contribute to the 30% difference in performance between the 2 cards: a 100MHz core clock difference and a faster GDDR5 at 1.96GHz vs GDDR3 at 1GHz. Interesting, RV770PRO will run 1.25X faster than GeForce 8800 GT/9800 GT while RV770XT will run 1.25X faster than GeForce 9800 GTX. If accurate, this data means a single Radeon HD 4870 may be as fast as a pair of GeForce 9600 GTs or 8800 GTs running in SLI. As for the 4850, it may be in roughly same playing field as Nvidia's best current single-GPU offerings. Meanwhile, DigiTimes has chimed in with the latest pricing rumors for these two cards. Supposedly, the Radeon HD 4850 will launch at just $229, while the Radeon HD 4870 that will follow in late June or July will be pegged $349