By now most of you probably already know this, but the Radeon HD 4870 X2 (R700) graphics card will be launching in the middle of August. Upon launch it will be the single most powerful video card ever created. Early previews have hit the web on many sites, all of which herald the card for its massive shading power and unparalleled image quality. Many of the stories have the 4870 X2 crushing the best that the competition has to offer in the GTX 280. This is not good news for NVIDIA, who is expected to launch a 55nm variant of the GTX 280 in the near future. This die-shrink technique didn’t really seem to work as well as anybody expected with the 9800GTX+, but power optimizations on the GT200 core might be a different story altogether.

However, it would seem that in the flood of positive vibes coming off the HD 4870 X2 that its major flaw has gone largely unnoticed. According to numbers achieved by HardOCP, the card draws nearly 470W under load, which is more than 100W beyond the requirements of even an overclocked 280. If before you were just barely squeaking by on your current power supply, you can rest assured that you’ll be needing a new one now. That’s not the end of it either; two 4870 X2’s in CrossFireX suck as much as 690W. If you consider this figure in conjunction with the draw of current quad-core processors when overclocked, you get pretty darn close to that 1kW mark. Skulltrail users will need to be outfitting their systems with power supplies that push their home circuitry to its limits.

For those willing to look past the outrageous power demands (which really are not so different from a 3-way GTX280 configuration), the only remaining question is pricing. AMD could potentially launch this card for twice the price of the HD 4870. When the HD 3870 X2 launched early this year, it was $450, which was a bit less expensive than two HD 3870’s. We strongly suspect that not only will AMD follow their precedent by bringing the MSRP down below the price of two HD 4870’s, but it will probably not launch the card at a price point that is not competitive with the market in mid-August.

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