Sapphire HD 4850 512 MB 100245L Own PCB Design Review

Name: Sapphire HD 4850 512 MB 100245L Own PCB Design
Brand: Sapphire

W1zzard

on Sep 17th, 2008,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Sapphire

(6 Comments) »

Introduction

Sapphire's new Radeon HD 4850 is based on AMD's well estabilished RV770 GPU but uses a PCB and cooling design created by Sapphire. This allowed Sapphire to optimize their product for lower production costs and better thermal efficiency. Unlike many other companies the Sapphire HD 4850 comes with the standard clocks as defined by the AMD reference design, but it is also one of the lowest priced HD 4850 cards with a retail price of only $169.

	GeForce 8800 GT	GeForce 9800 GT	Radeon HD 4850	GeForce 9800 GTX	GeForce 9800 GTX+	GeForce 8800 GTX	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870	GeForce GTX 280
Shader units	112	112	800	128	128	128	192	800	240
ROPs	16	16	16	16	16	24	28	16	32
GPU	G92	G92	RV770	G92	G92	G80	GT200	RV770	GT200
Transistors	754M	754M	956M	754M	754M	681M	1400M	956M	1400M
Memory Size	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	768 MB	896 MB	512 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit	448 bit	256 bit	512 bit
Core Clock	600 MHz	600 MHz	625 MHz	675 MHz	738 MHz	575 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	602 MHz
Memory Clock	900 MHz	900 MHz	993 MHz	1100 MHz	1100 MHz	900 MHz	999 MHz	900 MHz	1107 MHz
Price	$140	$160	$170	$185	$200	$295	$270	$280	$430

Packaging & Contents

From the outside the Sapphire HD 4850 box looks just like the HD 4850 reference design. The only difference is the SKU number which is 100245L on the card reviewed here and 100244L on the reference design card.

You will receive:

Graphics card
Manual + PowerDVD + 3DMark Vantage Full version + Driver CD
DVI adapter, HDMI adapter
Video out cable + Video out adapter
CrossFire bridge
PCI-Express power cable

The Card

Sapphire uses a special kind of blue color PCB for all their custom board designs. The cooler is something I have never seen before, anyone know who makes this cooler? It certainly looks impressive, but occupies two slots in your case.

The card has two DVI ports which is the standard output configuration nowadays. If you need a VGA port you can use the included DVI adapter. When using a HDMI adapter (included as well), you will also have access to HDMI+HDCP+Audio, which allows easy setup of a media PC. AMD has integrated a Realtek 7.1 audio device inside the GPU which means that the sound card's HDMI output shows up as sound device in Windows. In my opinion this is an easier solution than on NVIDIA's cards where you have to route an audio cable from your motherboard to the VGA card.

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.

A Closer Look

A tiny piece of copper makes contact with the GPU core while the rest of the cooler is made from aluminum. A large number of fins ensures optimal heat transport, yet there are no heatpipes in use on the cooler.

You may combine two, three or four RV770 cards in CrossFire for increased performance or better image quality settings.

A single six pin PCI-Express power connector is required to supply juice to the card.

The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Qimonda (formerly Infineon) and carry the model number HYB18H512321BF-10. With a latency of 1.0 ns they should be good for at least 1000 MHz. Unfortunately Sapphire has chosen not to put any heatsinks on the memory, which potentially limits the memory overclock.