The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head

Features
By Tino Kreiss
published

Radeon HD 4850

The 3D rendering speed of the Radeon HD 4850 is excellent. Compared to its predecessor, the HD 3850, we measured up to 47.5% more overall performance. MSI does not offer an overclocked model. Rather, the card runs at default clock rates of 625 MHz for the GPU and 1,986 MHz for the memory. The graphics chip supports DirectX 10.1, and the memory subsystem includes 512 MB of GDDR3.

AMD has done a lot with the price of the Radeon HD 4850. At just $179, it puts the GeForce 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 512, and 9800 GTX under serious pressure, and is responsible for the serious price reductions of the Radeon HD 3850, HD 3870 and GeForce 8800 GT.

Many gamers are waiting with bated breath for the 4850 sporting a two-slot fan, as the one-slot version is plenty quiet, but heats the interior of the PC considerably. If you do not have good case ventilation, you will want to change this or use the HD 4870 instead.

AMD has kept the fan speed very low, which reduces the volume while sitting on the Windows desktop to 36.3 dB(A), but the graphics chip (GPU) reaches temperatures of at least 78 degrees C. This affects the other components in the system, because the default fan only circulates the air within the case. In 3D mode, the GPU temperature increases to 83 or 85 degrees C, and anything requires the fan to kick into high gear.

The power consumption of the full system using the Radeon HD 4850 at idle is 122 watts. Under full 3D load, it can be as high as 237 watts.

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Factory overclocking is not available on the 4850 model.
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A PCIe power connection with six pins is necessary.
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The I/O panel has one video connection and two DVI outputs.
Tino Kreiss
146 Comments Comment from the forums
  • San Pedro
    Looks like the results for SLI and Crossfire were switched with the single card results. . .
    Reply
  • Duncan NZ
    Not a bad article, really comprehensive.
    My one complaint? Why use that CPU when you know that the test cards are going to max it out? Why not a quad core OC'ed to 4GHz? It'd give far more meaning to the SLI results. We don't want results that we can duplicate at home, we want results that show what these cards can do. Its a GPU card comparason, not a complain about not having a powerful enough CPU story.

    Oh? And please get a native english speaker to give it the once over for spelling and grammar errors, although this one had far less then many articles posted lately.
    Reply
  • elbert
    No 4870x2 in CF so its the worlds top end Nvidia vs ATI mid to low end.
    Reply
  • Lightnix
    It'd be a good article if you'd used a powerful enough CPU and up to date Radeon drivers (considering we're now up to 8.8 now), I mean are those even the 'hotfix' 8.6's or just the vanilla drivers?
    Reply
  • elbert
    Version AMD Catalyst 8.6? Why not just say i'm using ATI drivers with little to no optimizations for the 4800's. This is why the CF benchmarks tanked.
    Reply
  • at 1280, all of the highend cards were CPU limited. at that resolution, you need a 3.2-3.4 c2d to feed a 3870... this article had so much potential, and yet... so much work, so much testing, fast for nothing, because most of the results are very cpu limited (except 1920@AA).
    Reply
  • wahdangun
    WTF, hd4850 SHOULD be a lot faster than 9600 GT and 8800 GT even tough they have 1Gig of ram
    Reply
  • mjam
    No 4870X2 and 1920 X 1200 max resolution tested. How about finishing the good start of an article with the rest of it...
    Reply
  • I agree, the 4870 X2 should have been in there and should have used the updated drivers. Good article but I think you fell short on finishing it.
    Reply
  • @pulasky - Rage much? It's called driver issues you dumbass. Some games are more optimised for multicard setups than others, and even then some favour SLi to Crossfire. And if you actually READ the article rather than let your shrinken libido get the better of you, you'll find that Crossfire does indeed work in CoD4.

    Remember, the more you know.
    Reply