HIS and Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Face Off

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, October 07, 2008, 01:50 PM EDT

With the recent run of newer and more affordable graphics cards from ATI, it's almost easy to forget that there's already a sub-$200 frame-rate cruncher called the Radeon HD 4850. Based on the same RV770 chip as the more powerful, yet more expensive HD 4870, the HD 4850 ships with the same 800 stream processors, 40 texture units, and 16 ROPs that have made these cards such hot items. The main area where they differ, other than clock speeds, is in regard to memory. While the HD 4870 ships with high-end GDDR5 memory chips, the HD 4850 finds itself loaded with 512 MB of more mainstream GDDR3.

A major caveat with the Radeon HD 4850 that has arisen, however, is the excessive heat that gets produced by the RV770 GPU. It seemed the single slot reference cooling solution had a tough time handling the heat output of the RV770. With heat being a concern, and manufacturers having more time to tinker with their cards, we weren't surprised to find out that two of ATI's major partners, HIS and Sapphire, had two new cards waiting in the wings, each with their own ramped up clock speeds and with some superior cooling thrown in as well. Come on by the site and check out the Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 4850 512M and HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX...

HIS and Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Face Off

Tags: Radeon, Sapphire, HD, App, 4850, HIS, Radeon HD, SAP, AC, AP, and

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com