Very unhappy with the 4850

My 4850 card plays at the same frame rate when playing crysis at 1024x768 and 1680x1050, freezes after 3 minutes of HL2, and plays WoW at 30-50 FPS. I'm very unhappy with this product.

I am going to return this card and wait a little while for prices to drop. What is a more stable card that could soon be in the $200-$250 range?

SYSTEM





SPECS.

Of course I disabled v-sync. Why would ATI release a card that overheats and freezes at stock settings? I also tried the fan tweak but the CCC doesnt make an .xml file for the profile I create and therefor i am unable to change the fan speed.

Sure it does, the profile is in /Documents and settings\[Yourname]\Local settings\Application Data\ATI\ACE\Profiles.

The 4850 is a fine card, how's airflow? Also the 4200 does bottleneck the card somewhat.

Wow, you were able to troubleshoot the entire line from your one PC, impressive.

Just like nVidia, and S3, not everything work for everybody. Obviously you got one of the ones that didn't work for you, now whether that's your fault or the card's has yet to be determined.

The first part of your original gripe shoudl give you an idea that the bottleneck is not in the GPU if turn up / down the resolution has no impact on the framerate. That would not be fixed by changing to any other card, since obviously the bottleneck lies elsewhere. It's also likely the one that's keeping your WOW fps capped too (not that WOW was much of a GPU-oriented game even at the best of times).

The stability issue for HL2 could be a bunch of things, however, first thing first, what did you do to prepare for this card and what did you have before it?

Right now I'm guessing it's a CTKI issue, probably some critical thinking will help you resolve the issue, but we'll see.

The 4850 is a stable card.

I'm switching back to my Geforce 8800gts and getting an Intel processor so my computer doesn't suck anymore.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too, hence my mention of the preparation before install, and the crucial CTKI defect, I think it's the primary problem here.

Funny he moans about the drivers for this card as if the GF8800 had no problems.

As for the temps, there's alot of people moaning about the numbers out there but they seem to have a short memory of the temps of the other powerful single slot card, the GF8800GT which also had very high temps.

Interesting it's both the drivers and the temps, but with no supporting information. And then he's determined the rest of his system is stable but replacing his CPU once the GTS is in will make it stop sucking but not now with a more powerful GPU in it. It's like watching someone troubleshoot using google instead of their own diagnostic info.

Hello

There could be a number of problems with your computer configuration. Your motherboard might not work properly with the 4850 with your current bios. Your CPU could bottleneck your 4850 it might even bottleneck the geforce 8800...

You could have a defective card. I have had issues with 2 out of the 5 NVIDIA cards that I have bought in my lifetime and never a issue with any of the 7 RADEON cards I have bought. So it is just one of those things. And why upgrade from a geforce 8800 anyway at this stage????
The card is more that capable of running any new game on the market. If you want higher quality in graphics then a complete system upgrade is a better choice rather than just a graphics card...

My PENTIUM 4 3.0 with a RADEON 1950pro could not run crysis on LOWEST setting above 18fps but when I swapped the CPU to a CORE 2 6400 it ran at 24fps on HIGH setting 78fps on LOWEST...
RETURN the RADEON and save some money wait until you can afford a better system.

Very presumptive to say that the 4850 is not a stable card. You do realize that there's probably tens of thousands of 4850 owners who would disagree with you. The 4850 is over 9000.

Yes the RADEON 4850 is much better but is it better under his system...If he had a faster CPU then it would have worked better but he doesn't so why waste the DOLLARS for something that wont give him a significant performance increase???
If he were to upgrade to a faster CPU then GO and get the RADEON 4850 but he is not...Like I said my RADEON 1950 had a huge increase in performance when I got a new CPU...

You have to keep your upgrade relevant to what your current system can support. What if I put the 4850 in a 5year old Pentium 4???I would get crap performance. But if I had a Q6600 then my performance leap would be amazing...

Hi Guys,

I want to upgrde my system. Presently, I am running an intel core 2 duo 6400 cpu, with a 7950GT 512 mb video card and 2 gigs of ram. I would like to update my video card. I think I have enough cpu power to run most games. I can buy a Radeon 4850 for $199 or get a 9800GTX for 179. My monitor runs at a max resolution of1280x1024.

I need advice so I am asking some questions.

1) Should i stick with my current system and just update the video card?
2) Do i need to update my monitor, since max resolution is only 1280x1024?
3) Do i need a cpu upgrade?

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 ATX LGA775 Conroe P965 DDR2 PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 GBLAN

Any advice would be most appreciated!

Oh, I should mention that teh games I play are team fortress2, World in Conflict adn Assasin's Creed

1) Make a new thread.

2) What's your budget?

EDIT: This is replying to the guy 2 posts up.

I still don't understand why people are complaining about the temps when AmD themselves said it was designed to run at those temps..

Your card's cooling solution might be defective also... From time to time, some cards get defective gpu/ram paste or get so little it doesn't work. Or maybe, the paste is also defective (very, very rare though). One or the other, u should RMA it and check with another one. Also do the above listed by the other users, it could be a lot of problems or a little detail with some config somewhere. Don't give up on that card, or you might regret it sooner than later.

My 2 cents (or 2 pesos, since i live in Chile, lol)

Esop!

I am guessing this is just a jab against AMD/ATI and not a genuine query.

Anyone with any shred of common sense would know that even if it is the card, one faulty card does not mean the entire line of cards has the same issues, if that was the case, there would be plenty of articles and reports about production wide problems with the product line. If I got an 8800gts and experienced the same problems would it be fair to say every 8800gts is unstable and sucks? no! I only tried an ATI card once on an older system, and I had problems with it, I didnt assume all ati cards are crap because of it.

I think you are right. The 4850 totally sucks and isn't worth your time. I will buy that junk card off you for $50

I dunno...that is a lot for a crappy ATI card...

Yeah my guilty conscience is yelling at me. I feel sorry for him that he got suckered into buying one of those 4850 paperweights. Someone should have been there to warn him. This is our fault Jay.

I will do him the honors and offer him $55.01.... I win. So hand over that crappy card with bad performance on a system that had Nvidia drivers. Because there is no way that the card could be defective, or there are conflicting nvidia drivers, or your CPU is limiting the card's potential. Oh no, those things could never be the cause.

I don't know guys, paying $55+ for something that likely doesn't exist sounds like alot.

Anywhoo, I also agree a bit with slush, upgrading from a GTS might not offer much depending on the CPU-centric nature of the games played.

Yeah, we all know how demanding WoW is, especially with a nonexistant 4850

^Agreed!

okay the card must be faulty since it is crashing after a few minutes of gameplay, so don't don't yell at me for making assumptions that the 4850 is an unstable card. I'm sure if i had received a working one I wouldn't have made that assumption. btw I don't hate AMD I'm just saying i've had problems with their products.