need help deciding between these two cards for another system im building..
Radeon 4850 1GB or Radeon 4870 512MB .. both are same price at my local shop.
the system will be a q6600, asus p5q board, 500gb sata drive and antec sonata III case, 22" inch samsung monitor,.. res will be 1680x1050.
no gaming, pure video editing machine (pinnacle, vegas etc..) doing HDV/DV work.
Radeon HD 4850 is like HD 4870 with GDDR3. The memory is one of the only difference between HD 4850 and HD 4870. While HD 4850 uses GDDR3, HD 4870 uses GDDR5 which offers more bandwidth.
Some people said that having more memory only improves the frame rate of higher resolution but it does not increase the core clock speed since its bandwidth would remain the same.
So 1GB GDDR3 still has lower bandwidth and lower clock speed than 512MB GDDR5.
Since your resolution is 1680x1050 and that the price of HD 4850 1gb, HD 4870 512mb are the same then I think that it would be better for you to get Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5. HD 4850 is bottleneck by its bandwidth limitation of its own GDDR3.
More VRAM allows higher resolutions with larger monitors, faster VRAM allows better throughput...
Thank you, you are correct. The OP states he needs this card for video editing and not gaming so a fast clock won't do a whole lot for him. However, He also states that it is HD video which means very large graphic images (files) that have to be moved across the screen and more vram has been shown to be beneficial for this.
See it is not that hard to have an intelligent conversation.
AFAIK the software cannot make use of the processing power of a video card, so both are overkill. Get an HD4350.
And I would recommend a Q9400 over a Q6600, it will be faster and run cooler.
really.. well thanks for the tip. i have been reading a lot of the vegas and pinnacle forums and the consensus seems to be that CPU power is the important factor, GPU is not.
just checked prices on the 4350HD cards and they run about $60 CDN (very inexpensive) and has me worried that this wont do the job.. you sure this is all I need on a quad core system to do HD video editing in vegas/pinnacle? sounds too good to be true. the card doesnt even have a fan on it, only a heatsink.. is this ok?
I think that 512MB of GDDR3/GDDR5 is enough for video editing on 1680x1050 resolution and since the price of HD 4850 1GB and HD 4870 512MB are the same in your local store then I would say get HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 so you'll also get extra bandwidth for extra core clock speed for faster processing. Perhaps you can even save a bit of money by getting HD 4850 512MB GDDR3?
What I know is that most people who does video editing on 1920x1080 resolution, goes with HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 and they need 1GB GDDR5 because of their higher resolution but for 1680x1050, perhaps 512MB GDDR3 or 512MB GDDR5 is enough?
It also depends on how big your videos are and how high your resolution is. If your videos are big and your resolution is as high as 1920x1080 then you would need more RAM. If the RAM has lower bandwidth then it would be slower to process the operations like converting video or publishing video. The higher the bandwidth and core clock speed, the faster the processing would be. The higher the resolution, the more RAM you need...
(I'm not 100% sure about how much RAM you really need but I was just thinking and wondering about whether 512MB of Ram is enough for your resolution or not)
Message edited by Techno-boy on 03-22-2009 at 06:36:29 AM
really.. well thanks for the tip. i have been reading a lot of the vegas and pinnacle forums and the consensus seems to be that CPU power is the important factor, GPU is not.
just checked prices on the 4350HD cards and they run about $60 CDN (very inexpensive) and has me worried that this wont do the job.. you sure this is all I need on a quad core system to do HD video editing in vegas/pinnacle? sounds too good to be true. the card doesnt even have a fan on it, only a heatsink.. is this ok?
Unless you're gaming, this will be fine. The card generates little heat, so a fan isn't necessary
You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months. If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.