Its WELL worth the extra considering you can OC it so it destroys the 9800GTX. My VF900 cools my card at 650mhz very well. I don't want to volt mod so I cant really go much higher but people that do can take this card pretty high.
Side note: Anyone think I can flash my stock PCB 4850 to this BIOS? I like the 675mhz clock cause my card doesn't get that high. I'm thinking its got higher than stock volts.
Destroys the 9800GTX? Maybe a stock 9800GTX, but the 9800GTX can overclock to pretty amazing speeds also, and we have yet to see what the 9800GTX+ can really do.
$210 for this HD4850 isn't worth it when you have the 9800GTX going for $185, $25 less. The 9800GTX and HD4850 are pretty much neck and neck at stock speeds(within 2% of eachother). Then you have the 9800GTX still overclocking better than this HD4850. W1z only managed 21% over stock speeds with this card, while his last 9800GTX got to 26% over stock speeds. Just by that alone, one can infere that the 9800GTX should stay pretty much tied with this HD4850 when both are overclocked to the max(without volt mods). If you overclock both cards, they should still be within ~5% of eachother, which is essentially unoticeable in the real world.
Then you have the 9800GTX+, which should overclock even better than the 9800GTX, and it is still cheaper than this HD4850.
And hell, the HD4850 and Zalman Cooler would still be cheaper than this HD4850. You can get a HD4850 for $165, and a Zalman VF-900 for $38 and save yourself $7 over this card. What I don't understand, is why Sapphire is charging more than the combination of the card and cooler bought seperately when it should actualy cost them less since they don't have to manufacture the stock cooler.
They are only using three of the pins.
