Thursday, July 10th 2008

Pictures of the Non-Reference 2GB Radeon HD 4850 Emerge

The Radeon HD 4850 has been in for a while and boy, did it change the face of the market as we knew it. PowerColor / TUL came up with the first non-reference design for the HD 4850, it sticks to the AMD reference PCB alebit changes to the cooler and the memory. It uses ZeroTherm full copper GPU cooler with CVVT technology(Continue Variable Velocity Timing). The card now features a mammoth 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are minor changes to the GPU parameters as well: 665 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory.

We could have understood if they gave it 1 GB of memory, knowing that the RV770 is a capable GPU and might be able to use higher amount of memory but 2 GB seems too much. The card is loaded with 16 x 1 Gb GDDR3 chips. The chips on the other side of the PCB have a heatspreader. There's no information about availablilty and pricing yet.
Source: Expreview
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22 Comments on Pictures of the Non-Reference 2GB Radeon HD 4850 Emerge

#1
tkpenalty
Its not the first non reference because ASUS and sapphire have BOTH already made non-reference cards...

That is not the reference PCB FYI, its only got two phases; one phase on each side of that heatsink. Its inferior to the reference one afaik, with only two phases instead of the four that is found on the normal HD4850.
Posted on Reply
#2
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Yes I verified it. Thanks.
Posted on Reply
#3
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Look at the FCC box at the back of the card. AMD uses revisions of its PCB and coolers. That PCB is reference, even Expreview says the same.
Posted on Reply
#4
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
Looks kinda bare... And I don't know if this card will benefit from that much memory.
Posted on Reply
#5
chron
2GB!?!!!? That's how much system ram I have! I wonder how crysis will react to all that headroom...
Posted on Reply
#6
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
That high memory could benefit GPGPU apps at the most...else it's just a gimmick.
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#7
Paintface
IF thats the same zerotherm cooler as on the powercolor 3870 than i advice to stay away from that one or put on a different aftermarket cooler , very very loud.
Posted on Reply
#8
chron
btarunrThat high memory could benefit GPGPU apps at the most...else it's just a gimmick.
you dont think if crysis had the option, it wouldn't fill up all that vram? Or in the very least, excede what any other card on the market even has? (I think 1gb was the max with the gtx280, amiright?)

(and I only use crysis as an example. I can't even think of any other game that would potentially do something like that, much less fill up ONE gb of vram...)
Posted on Reply
#9
Millenia
PaintfaceIF thats the same zerotherm cooler as on the powercolor 3870 than i advice to stay away from that one or put on a different aftermarket cooler , very very loud.
The cooler itself isn't loud really, I've come to understand that the noisyness is caused by it having only a 2-pin connector so it doesn't change the speed and runs at max speed all the time.
Posted on Reply
#10
Kei
I know the 4850 is a beast and all (I own one), but 2Gigs is a bit overkill for such a card. I could see if the clocks were significantly increased but even then it'd be very iffy. I think they should've just went with 1Gig of ram which would fit the card very nicely I think with a little clock boost.

K
Posted on Reply
#11
Unregistered
Error :p-->full cooper GPU cooler

Does the 4850 really need 2gb?
Posted on Edit | Reply
#12
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
The card is loaded with 16 x 1 Gb GDDR3 chips.
lol woops
Posted on Reply
#14
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
[I.R.A]_FBiGigabit not gigabyte
damn freaking ways of measuring these things why couldn't he just say 16x128MB chips?
Posted on Reply
#15
WarEagleAU
Bird of Prey
OMG I love that cooler and that card. Holy hell 2gb is waaay too much but it would be killer for ACAD 2009, which I use on my pc right now :D
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#16
Megasty
Just because GDDR3 is dirt cheap don't mean they have to flaunt it like this. Since GDDR3 is a dying breed, I guess its ok to do this. But its still just a 4850.
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#18
HTC
Someone please correct me if i'm wrong but ... weren't there cards of the previous generation with 2 GB as well? I seem to remember reading about it!

Don't recall if it was nVidia or ATI cards, though.
Posted on Reply
#21
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
cdawalldamn freaking ways of measuring these things why couldn't he just say 16x128MB chips?
That's not how they measure sizes in the memory chip industry, they use gigabit. (x Gb / 8 = y GB.)
Posted on Reply
#22
Hayder_Master
both 4850x2 and 3870x2 have a gddr3 , but i think the 4850x2 have much more performance than 3870x2 not because it have 2g ram but somethings improve in 4xxx , even gpu of 3870x2 is higher
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