AMD today announced the availability of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics processor, expanding the visual boundaries of PC entertainment well beyond the 1080P High Definition (HD) threshold.
The company claims that the new graphics processor breaks the Teraflop (one trillion floating point operations per second) barrier, nearly doubling the performance of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 introduced in November 2007.
The 55 nanometer process-based ATI Radeon 3870 X2 combines two ATI Radeon HD 3870s on a single graphics board, connected through integrated CrossFire technology. ATI Radeon 3870 X2 also supports Microsoft?s upcoming DirectX 10.1 technology. The ATI Radeon 3870 X2 will be available at a suggested retail price of US $449.
The board power is less than 225W, meaning that only 2x3 auxiliary power connector is required in normal operation (not overclocked). AMD also uses a hybrid cooling technology for better weight managment. A blend of copper and aluminium is used in the heat sinks.
"PC gaming enthusiasts demand the ultimate in performance and scalability for their HD gaming experience and the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 sets the standard by which all should be compared in this segment," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "With this launch we reaffirm our commitment to enthusiast performance leadership and send a clear message that the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 is the new gold standard of the PC gaming world."
ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 will also provide support for ATI CrossFireX, the next-generation AMD multi-GPU technology designed to support up to four GPUs. Software support to enable ATI CrossFireX is planned for late Q1 2008.
The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 also supports the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and ATI Avivo HD offering efficiency and image quality for H.264 and VC-1 high definition content. Enhanced HDMI functionality is also offered via integrated HDCP and audio for HDMI video.
The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 launches with broad availability from AMD?s Add-in-Board (AIB) and Systems Integrators (SI) partners. AIB partners building boards based on the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 include Asus, ASK, Club3D, Diamond Multimedia, HIS, ITC, Jetway, MSI, Sapphire, Triplex, Tul and Visiontek. Systems integrators launching ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 series include ABS, Alienware, Canada Computers, CyberPower, Falcon-Northwest, iBUYPOWER, Maingear, Systemax and Velocity Micro.