Introduction

Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 Series. Both cards are built around the new RV770 graphics processor. The GPU comes with a largely increased number of shaders: 800 vs. 320 on the previous generation. Another new feature is support for GDDR5 which will be included in the Radeon HD 4870 only, not in the 4850. The HD 4870 has lower memory clocks because it uses GDDR5 which offers twice the bandwidth clock-to-clock when compared to GDDR3.

AMD is determined to claim price/performance leadership in the $199 and $299 segments, that's where those cards are positioned. A R700 card called HD 4870 X2 will appear later this year and is supposed to fight for the performance crown.

For reference, see our other HD 4850 review:
PowerColor Radeon HD 4850.

Both cards tested today use the AMD reference design, cooler and clocks, so there will be almost no differences between both reviews.

Packaging & Contents

The MSI package is quite big and is similar to what MSI uses for their graphics cards. On the back you have a load of information, some being not totally accurate like "5.1 Audio". Also the back looks a bit crowded to me with all the information being displayed.



You will receive:

• Graphics card
• 2x Quick User's Guide
• Driver CD (not included with our press package)
• DVI Adapter + Video Out cable
• CrossFire Bridge
• 2x DVI connector adapter

The Card

AMD has successfully engineered the Radeon HD 4850's power budget to be able to work with a single slot cooler.


The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days. In case you need an analog VGA port you can use the included DVI adapter. When using an HDMI adapter (not included!!), you will also have access to HDMI+HDCP+Audio, which allows easy setup of a media PC. A new feature of the Radeon HD 4xxx Series is that 7.1 audio is now supported, the previous cards supported only 5.1 audio with HDMI.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.