Last month, we spent a ton of time talking about the efficiency and overall pixel-pushing prowess of ATI’s new GPU, so we won’t waste much ink on the subject here. Suffice it to say, the 4850 delivers enough power to drive your sweet, new 22-inch monitor at its native resolution.

The card’s silicon is equivalent to that of previous-gen high-end cards. It’s equipped with 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993MHz. Unlike the Radeon HD 4870 boards (which cost $100 more), the 4850 doesn’t sport GDDR5 (GDDR5 transfers twice as much data per clock cycle as GDDR3). The upshot? The HD 4850 has the slowest memory interface of any card in the current generation, and benchmarks show that—especially at high AA/anisotropic filtering levels.

Full review after the jump!

If you’re already gaming with a G92-based 8800 GTS, there’s very little reason to move up to a G92-based 9800 GTX such as PNY’s XLR8. The architecture in both GPUs is nearly the same, with 128 stream processors, a 256-bit interface, and 512MB of GDDR3. Slightly faster clock speeds yield only a modest bump in performance. That’s not to say the 9800 brings nothing to the table, but you’ll have to decide for yourself whether its offerings are worth the price.

There’s never been a better time to be in the market for a new videocard. Nvidia’s GeForce 9600 GT, represented here by EVGA’s overclocked SSC Edition, is one reason this is true.

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This is the second Radeon HD 3870 we’ve reviewed, and we like it just
as much as the first. It doesn’t outrun Nvidia’s G92-based 8800 GTS 512
(reviewed above), but it’s a great value among midrange videocards.

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