"Versprochenen 40- bis 60 Prozent Performanceboost einhalten!"
German hardware site Hardware-Infos came up with the entire specifications for the new high-end HD 4870 and HD 4850 video cards, which are rumored to be arriving in late May. Whether these specs are accurate or not, only an official announcement and time will tell -- but they look reasonable enough. The number of stream processors set to '480' has been a something that has been talked about (and rumored about) for a while now.
One of the more interesting details is that these cards will have GDDR5 memory. However, for a cheaper video card, after these two come out it looks like a slower HD 4850 with GDDR3 memory will be coming out. The incredible chart below compares these possible specifications with the current line-up of cards out today:
| | HD 4870 | HD 4850 | 9800GTX | 9800 GX2 | 9600GT (reference) | 8800GT 512MB (reference) | 8800 GTS 512MB (reference) | HD 3870 (reference) | HD3870X2 (reference) |
| Stream Processors | 480 | 480 | 128 | 256 (128x2) | 64 | 112 | 128 | 320 | 640 (320x2) |
| Core Clock | 850 | 650 | 675 | 600 | 650 | 600 | 650 | 775 | 825 |
| Shader Clock | 1050 | 850 | 1688 | 1500 | 1625 | 1500 | 1625 | 775 | 825 |
| Memory Clock | 1935 | 1728 | 2200 | 2000 | 1800 | 1800 | 1940 | 2250 | 1800 |
| Memory Interface | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 512 bit (256x2) | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 512 bit (256x2) |
| Memory Type | 1GB GDDR5 | 512MB GDDR5 | 512MB GDDR3 | 1024MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR4 | 1024MB GDDR3 |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) | 123.8 | 110.5 | 70.4 | 124.0 | 57.6 | 57.6 | 62.08 | 72.0 | 115.2 |
| Texture Fillrate (billion/sec) | 27.2 | 20.8 | 43.2 | 76.8 | 20.8 | 33.6 | 41.6 | 12.4 | 26.4 |
| Fabrication Process | 55nm | 55nm | 65nm | 65nm | 65nm | 65nm | 65nm | 55nm | 55nm |
One piece of information that isn't covered in the charts is that the HD 4870 and HD 4850 will have 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs.
Our German friends also came up with a price for these two upcoming cards: the HD 4870 will be selling initially for $349 USD, while the HD 4850 will go for $269 USD.