In an effort to remain competitive in the $200-$300 price bracket, ATI is launching yet another product from a brand new series which has been given the codename R700. The R700 will be better known as the Radeon HD 4000, and the first product from this new series that we will be looking at is called the Radeon HD 4850.Already the Radeon HD 4850 is shaping up to be a rather interesting product as its suggested retail price has been set at just $200, right between the GeForce 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512. With that in mind we would normally expect this new card's performance to at least exceed that of the 8800 GT, however, looking at its specifications the Radeon HD 4850 appears as it will be capable of much more than just defeating the competition's budget king.
The Radeon HD 4850 is comprised of a staggering 800 (160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs. Compare this to the 320 (64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs of the Radeon HD 3870 and you can quickly begin to understand why we feel this card could be much more potent than current mid-range offerings. Also to be noted, the Radeon HD 4850 boasts a memory bandwidth of 64GB/s, while the Radeon HD 3870 was limited to 57.6GB/s of bandwidth.
View: Asus Extreme Radeon HD 4850 review @ TechSpot
Ouch ebay time.
Ouch ebay time.
OMG !
mid range pwn High ended X2 monster !
And this is just the 4850, I wonder what the 4870 and 4870x2 can hit.
And this is just the 4850, I wonder what the 4870 and 4870x2 can hit.
Uhh, never assume something that like that. I'll buy an extra 8800GT for 60$ less and get better performance out of it:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=14
From those benchmarks, you can see that 8800GT SLI gets 13 extra frames in Crysis, 24 in COD4, 10 in Bioshock (theres more games but those ones interest me the most). So, would i rather spend 140$ getting another GT or 200$ to get a slower 4850?
You're just comparing it to AMD's cards.. which have been pretty lack luster the past few gens.
Last edited by WICKO on 23 Jun 2008 - 18:35
And this is just the 4850, I wonder what the 4870 and 4870x2 can hit.
Uhh, never assume something that like that. I'll buy an extra 8800GT for 60$ less and get better performance out of it:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=14
From those benchmarks, you can see that 8800GT SLI gets 13 extra frames in Crysis, 24 in COD4, 10 in Bioshock (theres more games but those ones interest me the most). So, would i rather spend 140$ getting another GT or 200$ to get a slower 4850?
You're just comparing it to AMD's cards.. which have been pretty lack luster the past few gens.
That's what i'd compare a new AMD card to, the old one. We're talking about going SLi or Crossfire, If you already have an nVidia card you're not going to bother with AMD's anyways.
But you mentioned both SLI and Crossfire, which made me think you were talking about both brands. The same goes for nvidia cards, I would sooner get another 8800 than a new nVidia card, because the only thing that would really beat that from nvidia's lineup is a 9800GX2.
My only point is that you should check benchmarks before assuming anything. For all you know, when the 5xxx series comes out, 4850's in crossfire might beat the top of the line for a lot less cash.
It took NVidia more or less two years to really beat their 8800GTX range of cards with the G280, meaning if you invested in SLI for those early on you got a very good run out of them.
[edited post so it makes more sense]
Last edited by Smigit on 24 Jun 2008 - 18:04
same here looking forward to this card
Best buy had a special 25% off on all VisionTek cards. Some stores got the 4850 early and honored the deal even if the cards didnt ring up by getting the manager to do it.
Even if they are working on performance improvements, I don't think we'll see much improvement for currently released games. Usually the improvements benefit new game releases, or bug fixes. The architecture hasn't changed much.
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