HD4850 Reviewed

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Yellowhello

Have you guys heard about the new 9800GTX+ from nVidia? Set to compete with the 4850... and the regular 9800GTX's will drop to *gasp* $199!

Linkage

Originally Posted by screwballl

DailyTech announced their arrival to the market

DailyTech - AMD Radeon HD 4850 Now Available to Purchase, Priced as Low as $170

and did someone say 9800GTX+?

DailyTech - NVIDIA Rains on Radeon HD 4850 Parade With 9800 GTX+

Originally Posted by polobunny

Truth be told, if you had an Nvidia card you could try the 177.35 hacked drivers. They are really fast, they give a nice boost even on my 8800GT. I'm not sure it's driver limited. It looks a lot as if Nvidia was caught a bit with no new technolgy and they're just churning higher clocked or die shrinks of their current products. GTX280 is a new architecture, but nothing crazy if you look at G80 and then G92. Seems they're getting better on higher resolutions though, so that's a good thing.


I'm still not expecting a 99XX series. I'm almost certain they will dump it as 9800GTX+ and the likes. Or maybe 9850GTX not to explode their naming scheme too much. :P

Nope, didn't hear! ;P

[azianai]

BAM!

$298.70 out the door of BB after 25% off 199.99 and 25 dollars in reward certificate.
Now just waiting on my P5Q Deluxe...and my TRUE Black

[Elysium]

Aw, you b@st@rd... I'm jealous!

[screwballl]

*looks down at his X1950GT*
*shakes head*

[RA1D]

man, it would be bad ass to write up a user review on those cards. that would be awesome

[polobunny]

Or GeForce GTX280. Like in your sig. :P

[azianai]

Couldn't wait to try out the 4850s, so i opened the box thought i'd prep them for when my P5Q comes (got all the stock thermal off and put IC Diamond 7 on instead).


It seems there's 2 different designs for the coolers put on these cards. Was surprised that they used 2 different parts for the same card. Memory is made by Qimonda, cards were diffused in taiwan and made in taiwan, couldn't see what manufacture made them though.




Nice touch on the backplate for the card imo, help to keep pressure on the GPU for the heatsink.


Anyway, taking them apart i wanted to see how much thermal they used. Was a bit surprised that it wasn't the usual thick mess i found in my 1st GX2 and my GTS G80 and GTS G92 from nvidia.


I gotta learn how to take pictures of the stamps on CPU/GPU, this is the best i can do. Or maybe its my camera lol:


Anyway, as you could see, its the usual Ram pads and it looked that if i took them off then the ram wasn't gonna touch the sink, so i guess im stuck until they make an aftermarket cooler for these suckers. Anyway, i'll be back after i throw one into my system right now (im tempted to test one out...)

*edit*
Just my luck, the grey cooler one was defective. Had artifacts/lines on the display -_-. Gotta go swap it out a BB tomorrow or something -_-;;
Anyway, popped the all red one in and just ran a 3D mark06, came with 10685 total score with a 4185 SM 2.0 score and a 5284 SM 3.0 score by itself. Compared to my GX2 i ran like 15 mins b4 i pulled the card out had a 14189 3dmark06 with 6251 SM 2.0 and 7554 3.0 Score (default settings).
Gonna try out WoW and some other games to see how it flows. Course i know its gonna be a lower performance as a single card since my 1920 X 1200 resolution prob taxing it a bit. Hopefully i'll have some Crossfire results soon.