AMD HD 4850 launched

[W1zzard]

i bought a 24" tft today for exactly that reason .. BenQ G2400W .. but no 2560x1600

 

[Gam'ster]

I wonder how many GS/GT/GTX orders have been canceled ?, by people who thought ATI wouldn't have done so well as they have today.
I bet w1zz broke into a sweat today.
Gam

 

[MrW]

Looks like I finally have a reason to throw out my CRT monitor.

 

[btarunr]

Could the difference in GPU base-plate design (for the heatsink) be the reason for difference in power consumptions between the MSI and TUL PowerColor cards?

 

[evil bill]

UK price From an unkown e-tailer too me anyway. but tekhead has it for £150 near enough.

I wouldnt trust these guys to actually have them. I "bought" an E8400 from them when no-one else seemed to have them, and despite assurances that it wasn't a pre-order, once they had my cash and failed to deliver on time the came back and said they were "having difficulty with suppliers".

To be fair, they did refund me straight away when I went mental at them ............

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

Amazing a card that cheap can kill an expensive card! I'm gettin it!

 

[ArkanHell]

I just wanna say that is so nice to have place where we can share ultmate news about a topic that all of us have interest into. It can be noted how no one can wait to have all the information.
Keep going guys!

 

[Gam'ster]

I wouldnt trust these guys to actually have them. I "bought" an E8400 from them when no-one else seemed to have them, and despite assurances that it wasn't a pre-order, once they had my cash and failed to deliver on time the came back and said they were "having difficulty with suppliers".

To be fair, they did refund me straight away when I went mental at them ............

Yeah i usually only by from recommended retailers but that was the first hit i had with the 4850, but thanks for the heads up, we should have a dodgy trader thread .

Gam

 

[Darkmag]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4850-review-force-3d--powercolor/19

Check out the crossfire it out paces the GTX280 in some games. Hopefully drivers will mature and the card will scale better in most games.

 

[miksanity]

DDAAMMNN look at those numbers! It beats a 8800GTX, which, as some remember, was all the rave a year ago - and it only costs 200 bucks! I will sell my 850xtPE to my friend for 150, and add 50 bucks, and be playing cod4 maxed on a 22! ATI- 1up for you guys!

 

[btarunr]

p45 and x48 comparison

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/7/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html

hd4850 crossfire is bottlenecked by p45 boards!

Since the p45 board has 8x pci-e 2.0 in crossfire. And since an 8x pcie 2 slot is equal in bandwidth to 16x pcie 1.1 slot, is the hd4850 bottleknecked by p35 boards?

Just because the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.1 x16 equals PCI-E 2.0 x8 theoretically, doesn't mean it should affect devices in the same way. A video-card primarily is an output device, 250MB/s x16 is what 1.1 x16 gives while 500MB/s x8 is what 2.0 x8 gives. But do GPU's fully utilise the bandwidth of a lane in one direction? Questionable. The GeForce 9800 GX2 uses PCI-E 2.0 aribiters (nForce 200), the card doesn't significantly bottleneck as such with PCI-E 1.1 x16. On the card's PCB, (on a standard 8800 GT), note the wiring heading to the edge of the interface. Does a 8800 GT really need PCI-E 2.0 x16? Don't think so. 1.1 x16? Yes, that's why the wiring is all the way up till the last lanes' interface Why didn't they leave the wiring half way through (though it's found that PCI-E 1.1 x8 doesn't bottleneck it)? Because of the efficiency of PCI-E lanes in transporting data. 250 MB/s doesn't mean it transports 250 MB/s all the time.

Apparently PCI-E 2.0 x8 might not be as efficient in transferring data as 1.1 x16. I'm talking to the walls but the odd benches should prove it. Which benches? The ones most ignored (as in the negligible differences of PCI-E 2.0 GPU's used/benched on 1.1 boards, in SLI/Crossfire setups where GPU's get x8 lanes each).

W1zzard did all his benching on a P35 board, including GT200 and 9800 GX2.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

The only thing that bothers me about the 4850 is the 100c (212f) that it reaches, which is stated in the conclusion... While it is within limits, its just really hot!! Otherwise all else is glorious!

Some notes before the testing. The fan speed very low on the factory bios, I haven't been able to use any fan control to raise the speed so far. The temp is most likely fine even with an Idle of 79c but Being an XS'er I removed the factory thermal goop and replaced it with A.S. Ceramique. the idle temps are now 55c most of the time. That was a huge jump and I wonder if all of the cards suffer from this as I have seen rumors of other 4850's with similar temps (IE: FUD).
The card makes no capacitor squealing noise even during ATI TOOL scanning. I also ran 3d01 which makes most cards squeal if they are going to, not a peep out of it.
During testing I have noticedThis card seems very smooth. VPU recover works perfectly and the overclocking seems very rewarding. clock speed seems to play a huge role in performance of this card.

Source

When you get your 4850, etc replace the thermal paste with something better.

 

[ShadowFold]

Anyone know if HIS is doing any IceQ versions?

 

[kylew]

look at those prices! 4870 is 300 bucks and the gtx 280 is 659.. and if the 4870x2 beats the gtx 280.. it cant be more than 600 bucks... so amd's gonna have faster cards that are cheap.. the only concern is that you can tri sli with the gtx 280 but you cant with the 4870x2 yet i think..

Don't forget AMD have said they want to keep their cards at under $499!

You won't be able to crossfire 3 4870X2s because crossfire X is only upto 4 GPUs, and as far as I know, vista only supports 4 AFR devices maximum.

 

[wolf2009]

p45 and x48 comparison

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/7/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html

hd4850 crossfire is bottlenecked by p45 boards!

Since the p45 board has 8x pci-e 2.0 in crossfire. And since an 8x pcie 2 slot is equal in bandwidth to 16x pcie 1.1 slot, is the hd4850 bottleknecked by p35 boards?

WOW, i'm so glad i didn't wait for p45 when it was delayed , and went for x38.

 

[kylew]

I will sell my 850xtPE to my friend for 150

That's just harsh!

 

[kylew]

WOW, i'm so glad i didn't wait for p45 when it was delayed , and went for x38.

! Would you think I'd be better off getting an X38 motherboard for crossfire 48XXs?

I'm on P35 at the moment, and I know they're supposed to bottleneck 3800s (even if it is slightly) too nevermind 4800s .

 

[lemonadesoda]

UPDATED FIGURES

OK, final results of summary scores from 34 sources:

Results of ATI vs. ATI

1./ 4850 is 31.9% faster than 3870 when scaling to a high resolution with low shader demand (Hardware.fr at 1920x1200)
2./ About 45.5% faster than 3870 at über resolutions like Apple Cinema 30" (Erenumerique.fr at 2560x1600)
3./ About 48.1% faster than 3870 at common resolutions with low shader demand (TPU at 1600x1200)
4./ About 64.8% faster than 3870 at common resolutions with high shader demand (Computerbase.de 1600x1200).

Conclusion

A. 4870 SOLVES the performance brick wall that hit 3870 at 1600x1200 when scaling shaders
B. 4870 improves but doesnt solve performance scaling to very high resolutions e.g. 1920x1200 and above

Results of nVidia vs. nVidia

1./ Across all benchmarks 8800GTX and 9800GTX are identical (although some differences in any one test)
2./ GTX280 is 60.0% faster on average than 8800GTX/9800GTX

Results of ATI vs. nVidia

1./ 4850 is faster than 8800/9800 by 4.9% on average
2./ GTX280 remains king by a lead of 50.8% over 4850
3./ At über resolutions 2560x1600 GTX280 is 70% faster than 4850

Conclusion ATI vs. nVidia
A. With GTX280>4850 by 50.8% and 4850>3870 by 45.5% then GTX280 is approximately "one generation ahead" in performance terms over 4850
B. With price point of $199 for 4850, nVidia need to get 8800/9800 down to $199 pretty fast or everyone (in the know) will move over to ATI
C. The GTX280 is simply an amazing performer in every case, even more so at über resolutions like Cinema 30"

***
.xls attached for anyone that wants to play with the figures

 

[wolf2009]

! Would you think I'd be better off getting an X38 motherboard for crossfire 48XXs?

I'm on P35 at the moment, and I know they're supposed to bottleneck 3800s (even if it is slightly) too nevermind 4800s .

absolutely , didn't u read the article .the performance numbers speak for themselves .

 

[MrW]

Conclusion

A. 4870 SOLVES the performance brick wall that hit 3870 at 1600x1200 when scaling shaders
B. 4870 improves but doesnt solve performance scaling to very high resolutions e.g. 1920x1200 and above

Perfect card for high-res monitors.

 

[kylew]

absolutely , didn't u read the article .the performance numbers speak for themselves .

Not properly no

AH, wow that's actually quite a bottleneck, there goes a P45 motherboard off my shopping list!

 

[crow1001]

Are the quake 4 benches right, the fps seem way to low on NV hardware, even the GX2 looks crap.

 

[DarkMatter]

Know what else I like about the 4850 that's been missing in a lot of other ATI cards? The fact that it's fast in ALL games, not just a select few, leaving others where it's trounced by much cheaper nVidia chips (of course that could just be the old nvidia "partner" program showing it's colors).

Oh... What a disapointment. I thought that the fact that this new card performed well at all games was going to finally show people the truth and make them get rid of the myth (fallacy I would even say) that there was any involvement in that performance discrepancy other than the actual weaknesses of the R600/RV679 architecture.

Seems not. If a new released card with new (and probably unpolished) drivers and NO game support AT ALL (the card was not available to developers), performing quite well across all games where it's predessor failed*, doesn't demostrate that the only factor for R600's erratic performance was it's own limitations, I don't know what is going to demostrate it.

*While not doing extremely well in 3Dmark 06 in comparison BTW, also important to note, as further demostrates that R600 didn't do qite well on games, because it couldn't and nothong more than that.

 

[ShadowFold]

I can only imagine how powerful the 4870 is gonna be.. 4870X2 is probably gonna be the performance crown. I myself am gonna buy a 4850 with a nice cooler and OC it..

 

[crow1001]

4870 will probably just be a higher clocked 4850 so performance gains will not be that significant.