AMD HD 4850 - Best Mid-Range GPU Ever? Yes.

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

If you are excited about the GPU market right now, then good, you sure have the right to be. It's been a little while since ATI released a GPU to cause alarm for NVIDIA, but it's happening now with the HD 4850. Despite being a mid-range offering, it's more powerful than what would be considered high-end just a few months ago, and that, in itself, is impressive to think about.

Though our review is not yet ready, I couldn't help but make a post and build up some anticipation. The main reason for excitement would be the fact that the HD 4850 is faster in almost all of our tests than NVIDIA's 9800 GTX. The reason that's impressive is because the HD 4850 debuts with a $200 price tag. In most of the games we've tested, even 2560x1600 proved more than playable... especially with Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4.

Overclocking is not entirely impressive, but still reasonable. The fact is though, if you have this card, you should find little need to even want to overclock it, unless you are one of those who feels dirty unless there is a good OC in place. Add to the fact that the card at stock speeds is hot, overclocking feels even less important.

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Right now, the HD 4850 is a fantastic choice for someone looking to spend $200 on a new GPU. For those looking for something smaller, I still whole heartily recommend NVIDIA's 9600 GT, because at ~$140, it's still the king of that segment. Considering how much more power could be had for that extra $60 though, it can be a difficult decision to make.

The best part of the HD 4850 is the fact that it's available right now at numerous popular e-tailers. NewEgg alone offers eight different models... all priced at $199.99. NVIDIA will launch their 9800 GTX+ next month, which might shake up the decision-making process a little bit. That will most likely ride on pricing, though, so don't be surprised to see this new card even lower than its $199.99 SRP by that time.
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[Rob Williams]

Oh, and when people say this card is hot, they mean it:



In that picture, the diode was pushed into the fins of the cooler to be as close to the GPU core as possible. I estimate that the diode was about a quarter of an inch to a half an inch away from the outer perimeter of the core. During that result, GPU-Z was reporting 85°C, but really, that readout above speaks for it enough.

Because of it, overclocking is not going to be that impressive. It's not just us, either... don't expect to see many companies pushing out pre-overclocked cards. I've been told by some directly that their own pre-overclocked cards might not happen, squarely because overclocked temps (to the levels they'd like) are crashing the cards.

It won't happen without a cooler upgrade. I really appreciate the single-slot cooler, but the sad thing is... this card gets as hot as the dual-GPU HD 3870 X2, which funny enough uses a very, very similar cooler. It's just much taller.

Still, it's hard to dislike this new offering from ATI... they might not rule the high-end market (which will be hard to catch thanks to the GTX 280), but they are preparing to own the mid-range.

 

[madmat]

Looks like a great candidate for water cooling. I'm looking forward to seeing how their new drivers pan out, that's always been my major gripe with ATI. Their cards are solid but in my experience, their drivers weren't quite the best.

 

[Greg King]

With cards that can truly compete with NVIDIA's offerings, people like myself that would like a dual card setup but don't want to mortgage the house to get a decent SLI motherboard now have a Crossfire alternative. Virtually every motherboard available now that's not using an NVIDIA chipset supports crossfire and with numbers like many are reporting, the 4850s aren't too bad of cards at all. I am interested though in seeing how well the 9800 GTX+ performs when it is launched in a few days.

On a side note, I already own one 8800GT so with all these new cards coming out, prices of getting a second GT are in a free fall. Not bad at all.

 

[Rob Williams]

Their cards are solid but in my experience, their drivers weren't quite the best.

I couldn't agree more. Over the weekend, I was testing out both the HD 3870 X2 for certain things in addition to the HD 4850 and the drivers were giving me a massive headache. There were times when I'd install the driver, reboot, and the card not be active. I had to uninstall once again and re-install, to have it function.

I also had another occasion where after a fresh driver install, Vista wouldn't load. Luckily, a reboot fixed it, but still. I'm not gungho on NVIDIA's drivers either, but they haven't given me even a small percentage of the problem ATI's have.

the 4850s aren't too bad of cards at all. I am interested though in seeing how well the 9800 GTX+ performs when it is launched in a few days.

It's too bad that the 9800 GTX+ is essentially an overclocked card. Architecturally, it's identical except for the smaller process. From what I can tell though, the 9800 GTX+ is still going to be a tough sell, unless it's retailing closer to the $200 mark. The HD 4850 performs WELL at $200, so why would someone pay $30 more to gain an additional 1 or 2 FPS? That's the difference I'd imagine to see.

 

[Naish]

Question because I haven't been keeping up with ATI's drivers/cp since I switched to an 8800GTX a while ago...

Does ATI do flat-panel scaling yet? (None/Stretch/Correct Aspect Ratio)

 

[Kougar]

Pricing will definitely be the clincher!

This is a great card, but it doesn't appear ready to handle an overclocked 9800GTX+. Legit Reviews took a standard GTX+ and with basic OCing reached 855/2200/2550 clocks on it, and every benchmark showed performance gains of 15% or higher over the default GTX+ clocks.

If the 4850 is to hot to OC very well then that just leaves the 4870 and 4870 X2.... for $30 more the GTX+ looks to be well worth it for the moment.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yup, that's a tough one right now. If the 9800GTX+ is that much better overclocking-wise, it might look more attractive. But, not everyone cares to overclock, so it really depends on that.

As for the HD 4870, I'm curious as to how the temperatures will be there. With the dual-slot cooler, it will no doubt help. I actually expect it to run cooler than the HD 4850, even though it's faster.

As for the HD 4870 X2, I have a feeling the temperatures will not be much worse over the single-GPU version. The cores are spaced out enough to not tag-team and increase the heat that much.

 

[Kougar]

I bet ya that it'll be hotter, at least under loads. 125MHz higher Core isn't much, but ATI loves to push their GPUs to the thermal limit just like NVIDIA... NVIDIA would have given anything to clock GTX 280 high enough to hit that 1Teraflop mark if they could've gotten away with it...

Even without overlocking though, the GTX+ was winning the benches more often than not against the 4850. After the overclock, it won every one by a healthy margin. LR's review is making me really iffy about 4870, but I still do hope that 4870 can manage to pull it off.

 

[Rob Williams]

You could be right, but the fact is, both cards are far too hot. But on the other hand, they are very, very quiet and are still seriously fast. So it's a little trade-off. Overclocking, I think, is out of the question. I decided to exclude such results in our review (which will show face tomorrow) because I was receiving lower averages when running it overclocked. And any successful overclock is not going to be impressive enough to even matter.

 

[Greg King]

I would like to see these cards looked at with aftermarket coolers. As hot as they are, throw something on there with multiple heat pipes and the temps might come down, at least on the ATI card as I don't know exactly how the NVIDIA coolers are designed.

Since the ATI is also a single slot cooler, iIt might benefit more from an aftermarket cooler than the NVIDIA card.

 

[Rob Williams]

I would like to see these cards looked at with aftermarket coolers. As hot as they are, throw something on there with multiple heat pipes and the temps might come down, at least on the ATI card as I don't know exactly how the NVIDIA coolers are designed.

Since the ATI is also a single slot cooler, iIt might benefit more from an aftermarket cooler than the NVIDIA card.

To be honest, I think the main issue with these cards are the slow-moving fans. It seems that AMD really didn't want these cards to scream whenever they were in use. Even at full load, they are still quiet.

I guess they were happy enough to hit the 1TFlop mark, so they didn't find it necessary to clock the cards up even further and increase the fan speed.

 

[Kougar]

Well, seeing the performance figures it looks like they didn't have to clock them higher.

I don't have the link handy, but someone already mounted one of the good GPU coolers, supposedly dropped the temps almost by exactly half! 80 something to 40-45c range. Am sure the article is around somewhere... hmm.

I've not actually paid attention to the 4870 thermals... how are they shaping up against 4850 models?

Right now my biggest concern is GPU RAM longevity... GDDR3 is infamous for eventually failing, although how much is from GPU companies pushing the clocks absurdly high and how much is just the design is anyone's guess. It would be nice if GDDR5 wasn't as sensitive to heat, clock speeds, and rapidly declined with age...

 

[Rob Williams]

Dropped the temps by half? If you happen to stumble on that article again, please link it, heh. I'd be interested in giving that a go myself. Any idea what GPU coolers are good nowadays? Perferably one that would fit this card, of course.

As for 4870 thermals, I don't have a card, so I cannot test, sadly.

 

[Kougar]

I found it Pretty impressive... thought it was the 4850, but is actually a 4870 tested. Thermalright makes some great coolers! They also give a small list of coolers they tried...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...eon-hd4870-512mb-graphics-card-review-21.html

 

[Rob Williams]

Too bad it's a massive cooler... not too many people are going to want to pay a lot for a cooler that limits their ability to use Crossfire (at least I assume it would). Nice temps, but so large...