Radeon HD 4850 (David) against 9800 GTX + (Goliath)
It’s hard not to notice the obvious physical differences between the two cards that will be vying for a place in current midrange/high-end gaming PCs, in a world where you usually need a magnifying glass to tell them apart.
The Radeon HD 4850 plays it modest, looking a lot like the HD 3850: single-slot design, a single six-pin PCI Express connector, small size (23.3 cm – 9.2") and 6-cm radial fan. And while the heat sink covers the majority of the PCB, the card is not surrounded by a wide housing that makes it impossible to tell it from other models.
The GeForce 9800 GTX +, on the other hand, is impossible to tell from the 9800 GTX physically, unless you remove the housing and heat sink to see which GPU is installed. It’s a double-slot card with two additional six-pin connectors and a thick 7-cm fan, on a board that still measures 26.7 cm (10.5"). But at least most of the heat generated by the card is vented directly outside the case, which is not true of the HD 4850.
As for outputs, both cards have two DVI dual-link connectors and a TV output. The Asus Radeon HD 4850 ships with an active DVI -> HDMI adaptor, a DVI -> VGA adaptor, the internal flexible Crossfire bridge, a Molex -> six-pin PCI Express adaptor and the HDTV connectivity. The GeForce 9800 GTX’ output connectors can also carry sound, but without an audio controller they have to be connected to the internal S/PDIF header via a cable, which has to be limited to a stereo signal (non-compressed).
The Asus model we tested turned out to be overclocked, with a GPU frequency of 680 MHz (8.8% more than the reference clock frequency) and a memory frequency of 1050 MHz (+5%). But since the overclocking is mild and the card won’t really be sold at a higher price than the others, we’ve used it in our tests as is.
