AMD announced the world’s fastest graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. The company also announced the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card.

These cards comprise the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series, combining two ATI Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs with a more advanced cross-GPU connection based on the PCIe 2.0 standard, plus two gigabytes of memory. These technologies combine to make the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series perfectly suited for the most demanding games, able to deliver astonishing frame rates at extreme resolutions and image quality settings.

The capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series were on display in New York City, where experts from the game development community and Hollywood joined AMD to discuss and demonstrate eye-definition computing computing. The computational 2.4 teraFLOPS horsepower of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series makes computing experiences that approach eye-definition computing possible. The first application of eye-definition computing, is Cinema 2.0, the fusion of digital people, places and things, rendered with real-time interactivity. Cinema 2.0 shows the power to digitally create interactive environments and characters that seem optically real in either a video game or digital cinema context. AMD demonstrated the first “virtual” actor to be rendered in real-time in perfect, lifelike detail.

Based on an advanced 55nm design and DirectX 10.1 support, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series delivers the industry’s most compelling feature set. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is available from e-tailers worldwide priced at USD $549 SRP, while the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is scheduled to be available in September at an estimated price of USD $399.

The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series provides support for ATI CrossFireX. With the efficient use of all four GPUs in a dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration, gamers will enjoy more than 3 times the performance of a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 card in many games.

The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the world’s first graphics card to include 2GB of ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 memory. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 features two GPUs based on a second generation 55nm technology and clocked at 750 MHz, with a combined 1600 stream processors. Like its big brother, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 features 1600 stream processors, and two GPUs clocked at 625 MHz. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 features 2GB of GDDR3 memory.

The ATI Radeon HD 4800 series is supported by a dozen add-in-board companies offering custom designs of the products. Building high-performance versions of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series products are, ASUS, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, GECUBE, GIGABYTE, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE Technology and VisionTek.