The ATI Radeon HD 4850 (US$199) is a performance graphics card that competes with the likes of the 8800GT, 8800GTS, and 9600GT Nvidia cards. It features:
- RV770 PRO GPU
- 800 Stream Processors
- 40 Texture Units
- 625MHz Core clock
- 993MHz (1986MHz data rate) GDDR3 Memory clock
- 256-bit Memory Bus Width
- 512MB Frame Buffer
- 956M Transistor Count
- TSMC 55nm Manufacturing process
AnandTech believes that AMD successfully delivers performance for the masses:
"... the Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the best buy at $199, even better than NVIDIA's price-dropped GeForce 9800 GTX. What's also unbelievable is that compared to the 4850, our beloved GeForce 8800 GT seems downright slow in a number of benchmarks - and the 8800 GT is only 8 months old. It's also very refreshing to see this sort of competitive pressure at such a reasonable price point, while it's fun to write about 1.4 billion transistor GPUs it's a dream come true to be able to write about this type of performance at under $200." [AnandTech | HD 4850 Preview]
And to add, sees it is a real bargain at the $200 price point:
"... For now, the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 are both solid values and cards we would absolutely recommend to readers looking for hardware at the $200 and $300 price points. The fact of the matter is that by NVIDIA's standards, the 4870 should be priced at $400 and the 4850 should be around $250. You can either look at it as AMD giving you a bargain or NVIDIA charging too much, either way it's healthy competition in the graphics industry once again..." [AnandTech | 4850 & 4870]
HardwareZone paired 2 HD 4850 cards in Crossfire configuration, and found the combo to be at par in performance with the new GeForce GTX 280 graphics card:
"... the Radeon HD 4850 newcomer looks to be a very interesting card and keeps our spirits up for the forthcoming Radeon HD 4870 model, as well as the X2 edition of it later in the pipeline." [ HardwareZone | HD 4850 Crossfire ]
Tom's Hardware gives the HD 4850 a "Recommended Buy":
"... there's no denying that the 4850 is a very good card. Its performance is only 19% below the GeForce 260 GTX' and is overall on a par with the GeForce 9800 GTX +, while beating out the 3870 X2! ... Despite its advance in presenting the GeForce 9800 GTX +, Nvidia has been bested for performance/price ratio and at this price level." [Tom's Hardware | HD 4850]
FiringSquad gave the MSI R4850 512M card a score of 94%:
"If you've been hesitant to pick up a Radeon HD 4850 card because you were concerned about GPU temps, you owe it to yourself to take a long hard look at MSI's R4850 512M. Thanks to its unique dual-slot copper cooler, the card is capable of running significantly cooler than the stock Radeon 4850 cooling at both idle and load." [FiringSquad.com | MSI R4850 512M Review]
If you are in the market for a nice graphics card within the $200 price point, look no further; the Radeon HD4850 is IT!
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