When ATI unleashed the long-awaited RV770 core on the public, in the form of the HD4850, many were impressed by the bang for the buck the core offered, but they knew something even better was just around the corner, offering a bigger bang and something that would get Nvidia cutting prices with gusto. And now it's arrived; the mighty HD4870.

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The HD4850 and HD4870 are almost identical architecturally, with the HD4870 having a faster core and memory optimisations because of the type of memory it uses, but more on that in a moment.

The RV770 takes the architecture of the previous RV670 and fixes its main problem; the anti-aliasing performance. The RV770 now has 800 stream processors and 40 texture units, which have also had their communications links streamlined and updated. Despite the increase in shaders and the higher number of transistors (from the RV670's 666 million up to 965 million), the die size has only increased from 192mm˛ to 260mm˛, still on a 55nm process.