HEXUS put Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 X2 through its paces earlier today and surmised that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is simply the fastest consumer graphics card in the world, bar none.
However, taking into account the suggested price of £330, our HEXUS.bang4buck found it hard to justify the extra premium. Ultimately, we found that for most games you really need a high-res 30in monitor to make it worthwhile.
Regardless of value for money, when it comes to items marked as the world's fastest, there's always an audience. Therefore, we're taking a closer look at availability and pricing from some of the UK's leading online retailers. Please be aware that the following table is correct as of 13:00, Tuesday August 12th.
UK Market |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| etailer | Product | Availability | Price (inc. VAT) |
| Scan.co.uk | GIGABYTE HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £371.29 |
| PowerColor HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £375.99 | |
| HiS HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £381.86 | |
| ASUS HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £390.69 | |
| Sapphire HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £399.49 | |
| UK-based HEXUS.community readers can benefit from free shipping with Scan.co.uk | |||
| ebuyer.com | PowerColor HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £344.95 |
| Sapphire HD 4870 X2 | Pre-order | £354.98 | |
That, we're afraid, is the grim outlook for prospective customers. Two of the big-name etailers, Scan and Ebuyer, have a variety of Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards available for pre-order, but neither have any cards currently in stock. The likes of Dabs, MicroDirect, Tekheads and YoYoTech don't yet have the card listed, at all.
UK availability, then, is as severely limited as it gets. AMD may have officially launched its Radeon HD 4870 X2, and it may well be the world's fastest consumer graphics card, but getting your hands on one immediately won't be easy.
A second familiar problem is that of pricing. For a high-end part in limited availability, pre-order prices are in some cases nearly £70 more than we'd anticipated. Prices should fall as availability increases, but now clearly isn't an ideal time to buy.
So, UK availability is downright miserable, but what about the Euro and US markets? Well, to our surprise, they're even worse. Popular US etailers such as NewEgg and TigerDirect don't yet have the card listed, neither do European etailers Alternate and HardwareFreak.
