Radeon HD 4850 X2 Priced at $399, Claims to Outperform GTX 280

[jaydeejohn]

And currently ATI is winning. And brought in the great pricing. Yes, worthy of some good news, praise. Or did we all want to really have to pay 450$ for a G260? Admittedly, its looking very good for ATI, and AMDs cpus? Oh well, but they obviously arent dead yet. Im thankful for the new competition, and I can only blame ATI for it

 

[DaedalusHelios]

AMD is still doing very badly on the processor segment(sales). They have been for quite some time actually. Nvidia is having more trouble with the backlash of its mobile gpus breaking down overtime and getting sued/paying to replace them etc.

I want to see AMD come out with an octocore soon so they can win over workstation and server segments to keep them afloat but they aren't yet.

Nehalem will be powerful but many say its OC abilities won't be so great according to analysts.

 

[OnBoard]

the 4850 faster than the 9800 gtx+ ???

without a doubt

No it's not, other way around on lower res and even on higher. ATI is just trying to make it look better by positioning it sooo much over the 9800GTX's.

Powercolor card in here is overclocked one, the green bar is regular:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4850_PCS/26.html

with high filters, definitely

Enough resolution, AA and AF, then yes, but is the FPS still playable Where I've seem 4850 win 'big' is in the 1900x resolutions with AA and AF game settings maxed. 9800GTX+ runs out of memory sooner and suffers because of it, but 20FPS for 4850 was hardly playable either.

 

[jaydeejohn]

Id say that ATI uses their memory better, but whatever. Looking at all the sites and reviews, the 4850 wins at high filters, and both are close to each other, tho, that wont stay the same, as there should still be driver increases seen in the 4xxx series, whereas the G9xxx series is pretty played out for that. So, in the long run, the 4850 should ultimately come out on top, but not by a huge amount, but better nonetheless

 

[Kwod]

I thought most of the 512mb cards choked at 2500x1600

 

[jaydeejohn]

Depends on the card and the game, but yea it happens alot. Thats why these cards look good having 1 gig on them (thats 1 gig useable,2 total) in CF.

 

[Kwod]

Depends on the card and the game, but yea it happens alot. Thats why these cards look good having 1 gig on them (thats 1 gig useable,2 total) in CF.

CF scares the hell out of me{except for x2} as I have a HDTV card, and I'm not sure that the external USB2 tuners work properly.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Nice card but Im hoping after a month or so, the price drops down like 99 bucks or so. Then it would be definitely uber.

 

[..'Ant'..]

Id like to see what results we would get with two new 2 x GTX 260 216SP vs 4850X2.

 

[jaydeejohn]

Nice card but Im hoping after a month or so, the price drops down like 99 bucks or so. Then it would be definitely uber.

At that point, Id be out buying a G280 for 75$

 

[zithe]

The third slide shows how ATI is stacked up against NVIDIA in Q3, however, the entry of the revised GTX 260 could disturb that chart.

That part makes no sense to me. If it's a revised card that's going to end up (and did) slower than a GTX280, how the heck is it going to disturb the charts in an entirely different league of performance? (OK, it's not THAT dramatic, but it won't affect anything. It didn't. GTX 260's new revision isn't worth upgrading to over 'old' cards) Nvidia is not going to release a card advertised to be slower than the best offering when in fact it's not.

Other than that, I like the article lol.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

At that point, Id be out buying a G280 for 75$

You need to look at the charts more.

 

[jaydeejohn]

My point, charts no charts common sense is this. If you could get a 4850x2 for 99$, which would be a steal, then a 75$ G280 would be in that same scenario, as in dreaming. Not sure what any of what was said had to do with charts, as I was using a quote by wareagleau.

 

[jaydeejohn]

As far as charts go, its meaningless to account for the competitions unknown releases to have not included them. Also Id point out, that the new 260+2 or whatever, wont end up after oc any better than the first one. At stock, itll be better, but it wont oc as high as the original and in the end, only equal it. If ATI officially came out with a oc edition, wouldnt this also upset the charts? Or went with higher or better GDDR5, wouldnt this upset the charts? The charts change after the fact, not before, and this should be seen as a minor difference, which it is, and an unforseen blip. Now if it were from nVidia, and current, and they didnt have this card on their charts....thats different

 

[Megasty]

Bah, I just got my hands on a 4870x2. It lives up to the hype & then some but the 4850x2 does seem to be a bit overpriced just like the 4870x2. However, I picked up mine for $400 off one of my guys that needed the cash. It always have to be a visiontek But I don't mind it too much. I know these x2 cards are great and all, but the sticker shock is lasting too long. This kid definitely needs to be 100 bucks cheaper - just like the 4870x2.

 

[Wile E]

Not unless you crank up the filters. 4850 still has heat issues to the point of not completing furmark without a driver tweak.

No it doesn't.

A.) That was only a handful of people.

B.) It was mostly only non-reference cards

C.) It was only overclocked.

Sure, buffer might help at uber resolutions like 2560x1600 but I only do 1920x1200 and 1920x1440 usually. Also Age of Conan would use it apparently. Those are the only cases I have seen it be very beneficial.

If you have seen otherwise please link me to a review showing it because I am very interested in the card if it actually helps.

Even CoD4 uses more than 512MB at 1920x1200 with all the eye candy cranked up.

Bah -- any card with a 256bit bus and only GDDR3 doesn't seem to really benefit from having more than 512MB of RAM, at least from what I've seen from reviews and benchmarks. Once they get up to 1900x1200 (or whatever) and beyond, they perform the same as cards with only 512MB of RAM on a 256bit bus. I've seen the same thing form the 3850 1GB's and the 8800GT 1GB's.

(In converse, the 4870's GDDR5 paired with a 256-bit bus is very efficient at high resolutions, but that GDDR5 is expensive as hell. )

Maybe stuff's different now -- it's been a while since I really noticed in reviews. Maybe with newer GDDR3 clocked really, really high it might be different -- any reviews show this?

It depends on how the game is coded. Some games do make a huge difference between 512MB and 1GB. Look at the performance difference of something like PT Boats when using a 512MB 8800GT and a 1GB 8800GT. The difference is astounding. And with more and more 1GB cards releasing, devs are going to start optimizing for more ram, and the performance increases for these 1GB cards are only going to get larger. It will be especially noticable if you tend to keep a card for a long period of time. In a year or 2, you'll find yourself running the new games at higher settings than someone who bought the 512MB model of your card. Quake 4 proved that point pretty well when everyone said 512MB of buffer was pointless.

 

[jaydeejohn]

Thats putting it close to the new G260 in price. And thatd leave the 260 at 200? and the G280 at 280? Sounds nice, sure but....

 

[Hayder_Master]

im become taken pity on gtx280, it is good forward to be worst no1 nvidia card , gtx260 i think it is much more better chose , but amd still win the round

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

Just to revise the frame buffer debate for the 4850.... even being limited to DDR3 the 4850 shows that it can still benefit from having the extra vram. If you look at the crysis results the you see what I'm talking about.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-radeon-hd-4850-1gb-gvr485oc1gi-review/8


Just found it interesting...The power is in the devs hands here.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

No it doesn't.

A.) That was only a handful of people.

B.) It was mostly only non-reference cards

C.) It was only overclocked.

Even CoD4 uses more than 512MB at 1920x1200 with all the eye candy cranked up.

A "handful of people" experiencing problems doesn't require them to tweak drivers does it? They tweaked drivers because of serious complaints by many people. 4850's are known to have heat issues, that was my main point. The overheating was an example.

I use a 8800gts 512mb OC'ed in my living room for COD4 at 1920x1200.... It plays great. Are you saying that it can use it if its given to it but not required?

 

[Widjaja]

I don't know what temperatures these guys must have been getting in furmark but they must have been very high.

My HD4850 always goes up to 92-94degC max load and has never had a problem.

 

[Wile E]

A "handful of people" experiencing problems doesn't require them to tweak drivers does it? They tweaked drivers because of serious complaints by many people. 4850's are known to have heat issues, that was my main point. The overheating was an example.

I use a 8800gts 512mb OC'ed in my living room for COD4 at 1920x1200.... It plays great. Are you saying that it can use it if its given to it but not required?

Yes, a handful of people can spur a driver tweak. You seem to be missing the fact that only people having problems tend to be vocal, whereas people that don't have problems don't usually take the time to say so.

And to further prove the number of people having issues is relatively small, Furmark is a pure benchmark. It's mostly only tweakers and benchers that run Fur. As we know, tweakers and benchers constitute a vast minority of video card users.

Also, the only people that were complaining about heat problems where overclocked. 4850s run perfectly fine at stock speeds unless they are defective.

Lastly, are we sure it's a tweak made on purpose and not a driver bug? Do 8.9's exhibit the same behavior?

Sure, the fan speeds are too low, but it works just fine at the card's reference speeds, which is all one can actually ask for.

As for CoD4, on outdoor maps at 1920x1200 everything maxed in SP, I logged up to 700MB of vram usage in RivaTuner. Your's is probably going to system ram.