Item: PowerColor&#039;s HD 4850: ready to punch above its weight
Author: Michael Harries

Review: PowerColor's HD 4850: ready to punch above its weight

Conclusion

Our testing showed no marked difference between the two Catalyst 8.6 builds when used with a single card. As such, the results of single-card and CrossFire testing in our previous HD 4850 and HD 4870 review are comparable.

The ~£125 Radeon HD 4850 512MiB certainly makes an impression; generally matching the GeForce 9800 GTX for performance, while consuming less power and requiring only a single expansion slot.

It's more future-proof too, with 7.1-channel audio pass-through, DX10.1, double-precision support and the potential for performance increases as developers start to harness the raw compute performance of the 800 SPs. You're unlikely to find a feature box the card doesn't tick anytime soon.

At the reduced price of £129, the GeForce 9800 GTX becomes a worthwhile consideration, but is hard to justify over the HD 4850, given it lacks the ATI's future-proofing. On balance, the Radeon HD 4850 just makes more sense.

There are some issues with the Radeon HD 4850, most notably the high operating temperatures. Hopefully a BIOS fix will be issued soon, to keep the cards a little cooler and enable a greater overclocking, without significantly raising cooler noise.

Overall, though, the PowerColor variant, currently priced at £117.49, makes for a stonking bargain in the mid-range space. It's hard to argue against it if your budget is around the £100 mark. Knowing this, and appreciating the widespread availability and reference nature of the product, we reckon it deserves due recognition and a place on your graphics-card shortlist.

HEXUS.CERTIFICATION

The PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 receives the HEXUS.labs certification for successfully completing our benchmark suite without issue.

PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MiB

HEXUS.AWARDS

Additionally, the PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 receives the Gaming Recommended award for offering high-end performance at a mainstream price.

PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MiB

HEXUS Where2Buy

PowerColor HD 4850 512MiB - available from Ebuyer for £117.49.

XFX GeForce 9800 GTX - available on pre-order from Scan for £129.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If PowerColor chooses to respond, we'll publish its commentary here verbatim.

HEXUS related reading

HEXUS.net- HEXUS.reviews :: AMD (ATI) Radeon HD 4850 and 4870: bloodying NVIDIA's profits
HEXUS.net- HEXUS.reviews :: BFG (NVIDIA) GeForce GTX 280: does it rock our world?
HEXUS.net- HEXUS.reviews :: NVIDIA (BFG) GeForce 9800 GTX. Got £200 for a graphics card? Read this
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews :: MSI vs. ZOTAC: shootout at the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 Corral
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews :: ATI Radeon HD 3870
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews :: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
HEXUS.net - HEXUS.reviews :: NVIDIA (ZOTAC) GeForce 9800 GX2 - the champ is back!

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These are Bargain Cards…

So much so, Carlh has just bought a 4850 :o

Shame about the choice of games again in this article - see feedback on the last one for some suggestions. Otherwise good review and nice card.

Can you (or someone at SCAN maybe?) verify the package at retail matches what you reviewed? So many cards reviews say they come with PowerDVD for example but when you open them up at home it's missing.

stop tempting me to raid my ISA.. quit dangling these shiny cheap fast cards infront of me.. you're so cruel HEXUS..

still at least theres nehalem to look forward too… AAARGH!!!!

I'm going out of my tiny little fragile mind at the moment.. down to my last backup mobo, cpu and graphics - I'm desperate to upgrade.. and you HEXUS keep tormenting me with all this graphical goodness.. that i can't afford..

when are the 4870x2's out, is it still end july/start august?.. I might buy 2 - might last another 7 years like my recent PC did..

kalniel
Shame about the choice of games again in this article - see feedback on the last one for some suggestions. Otherwise good review and nice card.

Can you (or someone at SCAN maybe?) verify the package at retail matches what you reviewed? So many cards reviews say they come with PowerDVD for example but when you open them up at home it's missing.

As Lee stated I bought the Sapphire version of this card yesterday, it came with the following accessories

S Video Cables

DVI to HDMI Adapter
DVI to DSub Adapter
Driver Disc

All the other bundles of the 4850 I belive come with the same accessories as it looks like the UK got the “lite” versions.

If you do buy one of these cards -I would recommend that you create your own profile in the Catalyst manager as the default profile has the fan set really low so the temps were 75C on idle :o - I created my own profile and set the fan to 50% minimum and the temperature decreased to 54C :) - at least until updated drives come out for the 48XX Range of cards