Reviews - XFX Radeon HD 4850 XXX 512MB. £125 worth of value?

[HEXUS]

Are the upgrades worthy of a £125 price-tag?

Read more.

[scaryjim]

Hi Tarinder - if you're reading could you please confirm whether the ASUS 4850 you use in these comparisons is the old version with the single slot reference cooler? The ASUS EAH4850 currently available from most etailers has a custom dual-slot fansink, and (while I've not put any heavy load through it yet!) I've found the one I bought last week tends to idle at around 43 degrees...

[DeludedGuy]

Hi Tarinder - if you're reading could you please confirm whether the ASUS 4850 you use in these comparisons is the old version with the single slot reference cooler? The ASUS EAH4850 currently available from most etailers has a custom dual-slot fansink, and (while I've not put any heavy load through it yet!) I've found the one I bought last week tends to idle at around 43 degrees...

Yup, +1

[Tarinder]

It's the old version, and I'll now note that in the text.

Thanks for your advices, though.

[GaryRW]

Not that I'm looking to buy at the moment, but this is the price bracket I'd usually be looking at. You've run the bang 4 buck at 1920 x 1200, but I reckon they'd be a fair proportion of people looking at 1680 x 1050 (myself included) at this price range. It might even be the more popular resolution at this price point.

Wouldn't take up too much space to include both If nothing else, it would be interesting to see if the figures stayed proportional, or if different cards were better at different resolutions.

(& yes I know the individual figures are all in the article, but the bang 4 buck is a very good instant summary.)

Straying even further off topic, what would be great would be a round up review including current cards but also from a bit further back every now and again. I'm on a vanilla 8800GT. I keep seeing lots of references to how the new 250 is essentially the same chip, just die-shrunk and higher clocks, but very little about how much difference that makes in performance. I'm sure they'll be people on old 7 series nvidia cards and equiv ATI cards who would be interested in just how much better the newer stuff is as well. Would probably only need 2 or 3 games to give a clear illustration of the likely increase in performance.

(fingers crossed you haven't done this recently and I missed it....)

[Breezey]

Could someone from hexus please confirm wheather this is a custom design PCB or a refernace design.

Many thanks

[Tarinder]

Not that I'm looking to buy at the moment, but this is the price bracket I'd usually be looking at. You've run the bang 4 buck at 1920 x 1200, but I reckon they'd be a fair proportion of people looking at 1680 x 1050 (myself included) at this price range. It might even be the more popular resolution at this price point.

Wouldn't take up too much space to include both If nothing else, it would be interesting to see if the figures stayed proportional, or if different cards were better at different resolutions.

(& yes I know the individual figures are all in the article, but the bang 4 buck is a very good instant summary.)

Straying even further off topic, what would be great would be a round up review including current cards but also from a bit further back every now and again. I'm on a vanilla 8800GT. I keep seeing lots of references to how the new 250 is essentially the same chip, just die-shrunk and higher clocks, but very little about how much difference that makes in performance. I'm sure they'll be people on old 7 series nvidia cards and equiv ATI cards who would be interested in just how much better the newer stuff is as well. Would probably only need 2 or 3 games to give a clear illustration of the likely increase in performance.

(fingers crossed you haven't done this recently and I missed it....)

Yup, I'll update the table with the HEXUS.bang4buck at 1,680x1,050.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH with the HD4870 going for £150 and under an HD4850 for over £120 is simply not worth it.

[neologan]

i do like the use of black PCB's in XFX's new ATI line, really good move imo.

[Main]

Could someone from hexus please confirm wheather this is a custom design PCB or a refernace design.

Many thanks

It's non-reference, as can be determined from the photo of the rear of the PCB - the memory layout is different, the cooler bolts and GPU are in different places, and the components are generally different.

XFX Radeon HD 4850 XXX 512MB


PowerColor PCS+ 4850 HD4850 512MB - REFERENCE DESIGN PCB From the Hexus review

[Jimbo75]

I agree that the 4870's recent move downward in price is starting to make everything else below £150 look overpriced.

There is a gap between even the 9800gtx+ or 4850 when compared to the 4870. When the 4870 was retailing at £180 then the gap looked like the performance difference it really is.

Not saying this XFX 4850 isn't a good buy - heat and noise are big factors for a lot of people including myself. If I were to buy a 4850 I think it would be this one. However...4870's for under £150 are just too good to ignore. Nvidia have no way of matching ATI with that, and tbh the 4850's are starting to look very overpriced now too so I'd expect a cut in price on the 4850 soon enough.

[chis]

Hmm, this is about what I want to pay... but I'm concerned about the RAM size and future proofing. I'd want to stick this in an E6600-based system with 4GB RAM, and run with a monitor capable of 1680x1050.

Is a 4850 enough to play Left 4 Dead at FULL detail? Should I go for a 4870?

More importantly, with the 4890 looming around the corner... are these cards a good buy right now?

[PeterStoba]

the two 4850s I had (not crossfire, seperately) ran l4d amazingly good at 1680x1050!

[chis]

Alright, bought one from Dabs today (Scan, shame on you for those prices). *Digs out his games PC from the garage*

[Sumanji]

Was thinking that a pair of these in Crossfire would be peachy... but you haven't done any Crossfire benchies although I largely blame XFX, as I presume they didn't have the courtesy to send you two cards

Odd though, that they a) don't have an overclocked 1GB card and b) don't use a custom cooler/PCB on the 4870 cards...

Suman

[chis]

Got one through from Dabs a few days ago, runs perfectly well. L4D indeed runs just fine at 1680x1050 at max detail.

Don't try crossfiring one with Catalysts newer than 8.11 though, there are still bugs in the newer ones supposedly preventing 4850s from running in a crossfire config.