The video examines a rare engineering sample of the AMD ATI HD 4870X2 dual GPU graphics card from 2008, highlighting its innovative design, market impact that forced Nvidia to cut prices, and the challenges faced by dual GPU solutions. It also reflects on AMD’s difficult financial period following the card’s release and the significance of preserving such vintage hardware to understand pivotal moments in GPU history.
The video explores a rare dual GPU engineering sample of the AMD ATI HD 4870X2 graphics card from 2008, purchased from a viewer. Although AMD never shipped this exact variant, the retail version of the HD 4870X2 was the fastest graphics card at launch, compelling Nvidia to significantly reduce prices on its GTX 280 and GTX 260 models. This release came at a critical time for AMD, shortly after acquiring ATI and just before the 2008 financial crisis, which severely impacted AMD’s stock and long-term prospects. The card represents AMD’s last flagship launch before a difficult period marked by financial struggles and strategic cutbacks.
The HD 4870X2 was marketed as an ultra-enthusiast card priced at $550 (about $820 today with inflation), featuring two RV770 GPUs on a single PCB, each with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, totaling 2GB. It supported DirectX 10.1 and had a 286-watt TDP. AMD’s approach was to combine two GPUs on one card rather than relying on a single large GPU, a strategy that allowed for fewer PCIe slots and power cables compared to traditional Crossfire setups. The card also introduced the Crossfire Sideport technology intended to increase inter-GPU bandwidth, but this feature was disabled at launch due to minimal performance gains and increased costs.
Despite the innovative design, dual GPU cards like the HD 4870X2 faced challenges such as limited memory sharing between GPUs and heavy reliance on driver support and software optimization. The video traces the history of multi-GPU cards, noting their rise in the mid-2000s and decline in popularity, with most recent dual GPU solutions being reserved for workstation use. The HD 4870X2 sits at the height of this trend, representing a significant but ultimately transitional product in GPU history.
The presenter details the teardown of the engineering sample, highlighting its thermal design, PCB layout, and components such as the PLX PCIe switch chip that manages data flow between GPUs. The cooler uses a blower fan design, which was common for stacked multi-GPU setups but resulted in higher temperatures. The card’s memory configuration was confirmed to be 2GB total, despite software reporting 4GB, and unique engineering features like DIP switches and debug LEDs were noted. The teardown also revealed some minor shipping damage and thermal paste quality issues, which may have contributed to difficulties in getting the card to function properly.
Attempts to use the card were largely unsuccessful due to driver incompatibilities and system crashes, underscoring the challenges of working with engineering samples and older hardware. The video concludes with reflections on AMD’s turbulent period following the card’s release, including financial hardships and strategic shifts that delayed major innovations until the Ryzen era nearly a decade later. The presenter invites viewers to share other vintage hardware for similar historical and technical explorations, emphasizing the value of preserving and understanding these pivotal moments in computing history.