Whereas AMD’s Radeon HD 4830 resembles a Radeon 4870 after a partial lobotomy, the Radeon HD 4850 that sits between these two cards comes with a full complement of 800 stream processors. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you can overclock a 4850 board to achieve the same performance as one based on the 4870: The latter uses GDDR5 memory while the former is limited to GDDR3.
PowerColor nudged this card’s core clock speed a wee bit to 635MHz (10MHz above stock), but left its 512MB of memory running at a stock 993MHz. Here again, PowerColor attached a decidedly non-stock cooler to the GPU and memory, though it proved to be quieter than the larger fan on its Radeon HD 4830 board. In addition to a dual-link DVI port, PowerColor provides both an HDMI port and a DisplayPort connector on the mounting bracket—the only card in this roundup to offer such a complete array of outputs.
Delivering higher benchmark results at a street price that’s $20 lower than EVGA’s GeForce 9800 GT, PowerColor’s implementation of the Radeon HD 4850 delivers an excellent price/performance ratio. The card falls just short of our minimum performance requirements for Far Cry 2 and Crysis, but it turned in a great performance with CoD 4. Its quiet nature and native HDMI support render it worthy of consideration for a home theater.
Complete array of outputs. Great price/performance ratio. Quiet enough for home-theater setup.
Falls just short of our minimum gaming performance requirements.
Links:
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[2] http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u90693/Radeon2_full.jpg
[3] http://.com
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[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/powercolor_radeon_hd_4830
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/evga_geforce_9800_gt
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/evga_geforce_gtx_260_core_216
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/his_iceq_4_radeon_hd_4870
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/evga_geforce_gtx_275
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/files/verdict-images/Radeon2_verdict.jpg
[11] http://powercolor.com
[12] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/his_radeon_hd_2600xt_isilenceiii
[13] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/his_radeon_hd_3870
[14] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews/hardware
[15] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/hardware
[16] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/powercolor
[17] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/reviews
[18] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/videocards
[19] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine/2009
[20] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine/2009/july_2009
[21] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews
[22] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews/hardware/videocards
[23] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine
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