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Visiontek Radeon HD 4850

Will Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

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.

Visiontek’s Radeon HD 4850 delivers entry-level DirectX 10 performance at a compelling price.

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.

The HD 4850 does sport the same GPU as the 4870, but it’s clocked down to a modest 625MHz. Unlike the lesser Nvidia parts, which feature fewer stream processors, the 4850 includes a full complement of 800 stream processors paired with 40 texture units, just like the 4870. This means the HD 4850 is at its best in shader-heavy benchmarks such as Crysis.

At the $200 price point, this card’s main competition is the old GeForce 8800 GT/9600 GT line of parts, against which it compares favorably. In benchmarks that are limited by shader performance, the 4850 absolutely slaughters the older GPUs. In memory-bandwidth-limited benchmarks, the older GPUs close the gap. While the benchmarks we list are primarily geared toward high-resolution screens, we also run some lower-resolution tests—Crysis on Very High chalked up a respectable 15.3 fps, on High it averaged 28 fps. Our image-quality tests didn’t show any anomalies, and high-def video playback was flawless.

For anyone riding an old DirectX 9-era GPU, the HD 4850 is your ticket to full DirectX 10 capability—and a more than capable upgrade from your old card. For folks who already own a DirectX 10 card, there’s really nothing to see here.

Holy Moly! CyberLink Transcodes Four 1080P Video Files in Real Time on Radeon HD 4850

Paul Lilly — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:29:05 -0500

Chances are you own at least one high tech, handheld gadget, whether it be an iPod, iPhone, PSP, or other device capable of playing back movies. It's also a safe bet to say you probably don't look forward to transcoding your favorite flicks into a compatible format, particularly when dealing with HD content. That's what makes CyberLink's achievement so noteworthy.

CyberLink's PowerDirector 7 Ultra incorporates GPU-accelerated transcoding into the software suite, and during a business demonstration, Shuichi Takagi, CyberLink's VP of business development, showed just how powerful the algorithm is. Using an ATI Radeon HD 4850 videocard equipped with 512MB onboard RAM, PowerDirector 7 Ultra handily converted four HD MPEG-2 movies into MPEG-4 simultaneously and in real time. Details on the rest of the testbed remain sparse, but Shuichi did say it would take just 30 minutes to grind four full-length movies down into 200MB files. PowerDirector Ultra retails for $120 on CyberLink's website, awesome movies not included.

AMD Gives Graphics Partners Green Light to Overclock Radeon HD 4850 Videocards

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:55:08 -0500

Being a gamer has never been so good, and it stands to only get better this summer as AMD and Nvidia continue their GPU chess match. Nvidia went for the checkmate by announcing the new 9800GTX+, which features a die shrink and faster clockspeeds than the original 9800GTX, but AMD was quick to respond by releasing the HD 4850 a week ahead of schedule. Now it appears AMD is telling its graphics board partners to go ahead and overclock the new part, who are all too happy to oblige with a second wave of HD 4850 videocards expected to debut by the second week of July. Combined with the recent rumor that the new 4xxx series GPUs will play nice with last generation's 3xxx series in a CrossFire configuration, could this mean we're finally witnessing a more aggressive AMD? Either way, it's your move, Nvidia.

AMD's HD 4850 Launches Ahead of Schedule

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:11:41 -0500

We've become all too accustomed to watching release dates go by the
wayside, only to wait weeks (or even months!) until a released product
appears on store shelves. These paper launches are the bane of system
builders anxiously anticipating an upcoming upgrade, and major kudos
goes to AMD for releasing its HD 4850 almost a full week ahead of schedule!
First run batches come equipped with GDDR3 RAM with GDDR5 expected
later this year, along with all the requisite goodies (CrossFire, PCI-E
2.0, DirectX 10.1). Mail-in-rebates
have already started popping up, pushing pricing down to into $170ish territory. The
ahead-of-schedule release comes just one day after Nvidia announced its
9800GTX+ refresh, which the company claims will outperform the HD 4850.