Posted 08/14/08 at 02:00:00 PM by Will Smith

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!

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amd, ati, radeon, hardware, videocards, reviews, HD 4850, VisionTek

Posted 06/27/08 at 12:29:05 PM by Paul Lilly

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.

Get all the gritty details after the jump.

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gaming, Software, videocard, ati, video, gpu, radeon, hardware, cyberlink, 1080p, HD 4850, transcode

Posted 06/24/08 at 08:55:08 PM by Paul Lilly

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.

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amd, graphics, videocard, nvidia, radeon, 9800gtx, HD 4850

Posted 06/20/08 at 02:11:41 PM by Paul Lilly

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.

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amd, videocard, gpu, HD 4850