Sapphire's New 4850 Card

[rwayne]

Some new pictures are surfacing on the net of Sapphire's new 4850 card. This card comes with 1 GB of onboard DDR3 ram and also has a different cooler.

What do you think? Like it? Or do you think the old design was better?

Here are the details outlining the differences:

http://en.expreview.com/2008/07/04/the-sapphire-hd-4850-in-blue-breeze/#more-508

 

[50bmg]

Sapphire sux. Sapphire has the worst customer service i have ever been exposed to.

I will never purchase any sapphire products again.

 

[swifty_morgan]

The reference card looks like the heat sink is all copper. The other looks more aluminum. Wonder what difference it would make. Wonder what the extra memory will do for it.?

I had a Saphire x850xt for many years. I gave it away to younger kin folk. Still going strong today. So just by judging from that one card I'd have to say Saphire puts out a good product. I have however, never had to deal with customer relations..... ?????

 

[ahslan]

I've had the same experience as swifty has...I owned a Radeon 9600pro for the longest time and I NEVER had a single problem with that card...I think Sapphire makes pretty good cards and they are usually the best priced cards as well...Fortunately, I have never had to deal with their customer service so I don't know how useful they are in that department...

As for the new 4850...I think it looks nice...It's smart for them to make it different in order to differentiate themselves from all the other cards...

 

[terror112]

Looks like the same heatsink as the reference underneath the blue metal case (if you look closely), but with a different cover and fan.

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

The reference card looks like the heat sink is all copper. The other looks more aluminum. Wonder what difference it would make. Wonder what the extra memory will do for it.?

the reference heatsink is painted aluminium, no copper insight, don't know bout the base though

 

[EXT64]

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. My 4850's "copper" surface looked sort of rough and I had a feeling it could just be a paint on. I wish they would stop doing that, though it cools fine with the fan tuned properly.

 

[Dopekitten]

Yea, the cooler is simply the old (stock ATI) cooler with a plate put over the top.

This is what i'm excited about:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8334&Itemid=1
Very nice graphics =P, i might buy it just for that!

Any guesses on how much it will cost? That's a pretty damn high overclock.

 

[3Ball]

Yea, the cooler is simply the old (stock ATI) cooler with a plate put over the top.

This is what i'm excited about:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8334&Itemid=1
Very nice graphics =P, i might buy it just for that!

Any guesses on how much it will cost? That's a pretty damn high overclock.

Yea I have been looking into a 4870, but I want one with a new cooler on it. Anyone know of any success with this cooler or have any yourself?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016

Best,

3Ball

 

[rwayne]

Sapphire sux. Sapphire has the worst customer service i have ever been exposed to.

I will never purchase any sapphire products again.

I have had a Sapphire 1950GT for almost 2 years now and have not had any major problems other than the default fan speed being set too high.

This is my take on their customer service. They have a phone # you can call for tech support (1-909-594-3128) however it is not widely advertised and is not printed on the box or any of the paperwork that comes with the product.

I called it in the middle of the day and I was like the 20th caller in queue. I called later on that evening and got through. The guy on the phone was very sharp, professional, polite and knew what he was doing. After talking to him I found out that he was not an employee of Sapphire but was apart of a company called Alpine technologies or something and other that Sapphire farms their tech support out to in California.

I kinda liked it. I rather have one sharp, college educated tech support person on the phone that is probably paid at or in excess of $40,000 rather than have a call center filled of 20 people just getting paid a buck or two over minimum wage or be routed to a call center overseas and get immediate poor service.

So after my experience with him on a few occasions it somewhat changed my opinion.

On the negative side I have sent several emails to Sapphire and never got a response back. However I have also sent emails to XFX and HIS and never got responses back either. So Sapphire is not the only guilty party.

 

[rwayne]

The reference card looks like the heat sink is all copper. The other looks more aluminum. Wonder what difference it would make. Wonder what the extra memory will do for it.?

What the difference is that aluminum is cheaper to produce than copper thus more profit for the manufacturer. The part that goes over the ATI chip is cooper because it has to asborb a lot of heat. Everything else is aluminum because it is cheaper and the ram does not need to be cooled as much.

BTW this new 4850 card by Sapphire is the same reference design cooler underneath. Sapphire just changed to an aluminum / copper base plate and changed the cover on top of it. The internals are all the same.

Personally I like the original reference design better because I think it allows for marginally better airflow.

 

[trevorvdw]

Yea I have been looking into a 4870, but I want one with a new cooler on it. Anyone know of any success with this cooler or have any yourself?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016

Best,

3Ball

I put that cooler on my 4850 and it now idles about 30C lower than the stock at stock speed and about 20C cooler at load. At load its still 10C cooler than the stock cooler was at idle. Pretty funny for a passive cooler. I'm thinking of adding their fan module to drop it down another 5 - 10C at load. Max I've seen at load is 70C and my computer room is hot as hades.. I live in southern California where its 100F all the time and my pc room is the hottest one in the house.. AC barely works in there.

 

[3Ball]

I put that cooler on my 4850 and it now idles about 30C lower than the stock at stock speed and about 20C cooler at load. At load its still 10C cooler than the stock cooler was at idle. Pretty funny for a passive cooler. I'm thinking of adding their fan module to drop it down another 5 - 10C at load. Max I've seen at load is 70C and my computer room is hot as hades.. I live in southern California where its 100F all the time and my pc room is the hottest one in the house.. AC barely works in there.

Wow I suppose I may have to go ahead and pic one of those up for the 4870. The fact that it is silent is a good added bonus to the great performance that it is providing. Thanks for your input.

Best,

3Ball

 

[rwayne]

Yea I have been looking into a 4870, but I want one with a new cooler on it. Anyone know of any success with this cooler or have any yourself?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016

Best,

3Ball

Don't get that one. It is a good cooler but Artic Cooling will have a newer verison of it available this month that fits 4850 and 4870 cards for about $34 USD. If I get a 48XX series card this is what I am slapping on mine:

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8274&Itemid=1

Arctic Cooling has announced yet another graphics card cooler, the Accelero Twin Turbo. Unlike the Accelero Xtreme behemoth which featured three 80mm fans, the new Accelero Twin Turbo uses a rather modest dual-slot design with two low-noise 80mm fans.

The new Accelero comes with four heatpipes which are connected to 30 fins. These 30 fins are cooled by two 80mm PWM fans, which give the Accelero Twin Turbo airflow to 40CFM and up to 120 Watts of cooling capacity. With these specs, the new Accelero achieves 34°C lower temperature when compared to the Nvidia Geforce 9600GT reference cooler.

 

[Dopekitten]

Na, this is a way better cooler for a gfx card:

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_page/vga/t-rad2/product_vga_cooler_trad2.html

For one, it's very slim, two, you can put your choice of fans, (2x92mm or 1x120mm)

And 3- it looks amazing

 

[rwayne]

The Accelero Twin Turbo is not like the old one.

The old one was a GIANT heatsink. I saw reviews online where people who had 120mm side mounted fans on their cases had to remove them because the heatsink was so wide.

The new twin turbo version addresses this issue by making a more narrow compact cooler.

How much does the thermalright cost?

 

[Dopekitten]

No idea, its not out yet =P

 

[M3d]

Yea, the cooler is simply the old (stock ATI) cooler with a plate put over the top.

This is what i'm excited about:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8334&Itemid=1
Very nice graphics =P, i might buy it just for that!

Any guesses on how much it will cost? That's a pretty damn high overclock.

OMG!!! can't wait to see what Diamond's HD 4870 XOC Black Edition can do.

 

[Dopekitten]

Yea, i can't wait either. Ima buy it and then slap on an aftermarket cooler to try and get past 1ghz on the core!

 

[rwayne]

The best it yet to come...

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8339&Itemid=1

DAAMIT holds back RV770 non reference cards

Written by Slobodan Simic
Tuesday, 08 July 2008 17:16

Partners ready with their own

Our sources close to ATI's AIB partners are telling us that DAAMIT is apparently holding back the RV770 chip sales until it sells enough reference based ATI made HD 4800 series cards.

As you may already know, all of the HD 4800 series cards are based on the reference design and ATI gets a third company to make it for them. Some of the partners managed to make their own designs but if you haven't noticed by now, Asus' HD 4850 with Glaciator cooling is still using ATI's reference PCB. The only partner that has a non-reference PCB, at least when it comes to color, is Sapphire with its HD 4850 1GB version which we wrote about here. We are not sure if anything else is changed or Sapphire simply ordered some different colored PCB cards from ATI.

DAAMIT is simply holding back the RV770 chips until it gets rid of enough reference based ATI HD 4800 series cards. According to our sources, we will be able to see first real non-reference cards at the end of July, but that date isn't carved in stone for every AIB partner, as ATI simply loves certain partners more than others.

 

[ahslan]

wow...didn't know aftermarket gpu coolers were that much more effective...how hard is it to remove the stock coolers and install one of those aftermarket ones??? cuz they look really intimidating...

 

[rwayne]

Dude,

I was in your same situation a few months ago. I created several posts on Toms Hardware forums because I was intimidated by removing the stock cooler on my Sapphire x1950GT.

It is real simple.

1. Unscrew the 4 screws underneath the processor
2. Lift the heat sink straight up
3. Clean the old thermal paste off the GPU with an alcohol swab
4. Clean the Ram modules if needed
5. Install your new after market heat sink.

It made a huge difference for my x1950GT. It is now virtually silent and it dropped the temps of my card by 10C degrees Celsius. I as a result I was able to overclock my card beyond 1950 Pro levels which brought my card back to the original temps it had with it's old stock cooler.

That white stuff you see between the heatsink and the card is like soft putty. It is not like double sided tape. You would be amazed out easy it is to replace.

I'll see if I can find a picture later.