Headlines - AMD Radeon HD 4850 - the preliminary benchmarks!

[Fraz]

lol - I love how my graphics card which was £220 about 10 months ago, as now worth about £60.

[cptwhite_uk]

...and that price we have a winner!

Edit:

With more serious thought though, this is not going to tempt me from my 8800GT just yet. Given its comparable to a 8800GTX/8800Ultra or within 10% better in some tests I can approximate it's 20% faster than my 8800GT and that just aint enough to warrant a graphics card change just yet. I want a 50% increase sub £200 before I change.

Having said that, for someone with a 7900 series, X1900 series or HD2*00 card this would be a very good value upgrade.

[sleepyhead]

OMFG, that is cheap and the 4850 hits hard

Nvidia almost got caught with their pants down (and maybe still have judging by the early benchmarks out there).

Just means the hard earned cash of the 8800 Ultra is now...an expensive paperweight! lol! Hurrah!

[Biscuit]

the fact you are here and posting that Biscuit does make me think the damage wasnt as severe as it could have been, the 48's are certainly entitles to a fair crack and no doubt hexus will provide that, but without the "Keeping up with the Joneses" attitude now.

time zone's mean you cant keep up with the yank sites, so its far better to not try and do your own thing instead. i would put more weight on a later but more concise review anyway.

Iv seen hexus make mistakes before and i will see them make them again, only human after all! I agree with the time zone thing but its clear Hexus are as anxious as we all are to see the results of these cards (= hexus' mistake and why im a little dissapointed)

[wiak]

people with 8800 GT and 3870 wait for 4870, thats where the speed is, heck the 4870 uses GDDR5 and is higher clocked and uses the same core

[shadowmaster]

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

117.87 exc postage

At that price, the 4850 suddenly looks much better.

I agree with the above, I am going to wait for the 4870, the 4850 is not that much better then my overclocked 8880gt, but the 4870 should be quite a bit better.

[chaotic_russ]

seen the 4870 listed @ scan pre-order for £240 , not as bad as i thought it would be priced tbh

edit : it has been removed now lol

[Michael H]

Today I've been running the 9800gtx as a midrange card, and the 4850 as a high end card so you will all have a more fair and balanced comparison in Tarinder's main review. Needless to say the HD4850 doesn't dissapoint as the preliminary benchmarks indicated.

We've also recieved two HD4870s today which we'll test on monday.

Exciting times ahead for fans of the red team

[directhex]

mail me one, i'll do an editorial on ATI's apparent linux improvements. and an eqivalent nvidia, of course.

[Biscuit]

mail me one, i'll do an editorial on ATI's apparent linux improvements. and an eqivalent nvidia, of course.

Ati can run well in lunux now? this may seal the deal if its true?

[directhex]

Ati can run well in lunux now? this may seal the deal if its true?

well, the rumour is they don't suck, which is half the battle. the fact that there are 4000-series drivers today, and not after their usual 6-12 month new-gen-driver delay, is a good sign

nvidia's good linux drivers come in large part because they're developed simultanously with their windows drivers, and share a lot of code (e.g. 177.10 for linux was released to testers on the same day as 177.11 for windows)

[wiak]

or 38x0, the 4850 is like 70% faster than 3870, but me will wait for 4870

[FlashHeart]

Well although I was a little worried when I purchased my X1950XTX, as the 8800 came out within about 2 weeks of my purchase, it really served me well.

I just didn't see the point of buying anything else, as it has never let me down - quite the opposite.

Well worth the 300squids I shelled out. Now it'll find a continued purpose in my 2nd PC on the LAN.

These new ATi cards have left me no option - it's upgrade time!

Though I had initially set my sights on the GTX 260, it's gonna be another Big Red One sitting in my P180 for the next cuppla years

If the HD 4870 justifies the £200-odd - which is looking promising - it'll be that. Otherwise one or two 4850's, methinks.

The only thing that concerns me is the Physx issue. Big deal or not?

(and I gotta wait until Monday for your review??!! )

HEY! Wait a minute.... does that mean.... TODAY?!

[HardBall]

A harsh first post indeed... especially after the author said the results are being taken down!

ATI provided review driver - newer build than the public CAT 8.6



I agree that our standard midrange tests aren't adequate for testing these new 'midrange' cards. Thats why I've pushed for us to test using our high end benchmarks and setup. This will be done tommorrow, where judging by other results I'm expecting the HD4850 will fare rather better in comparison to the competition.

The results do however reflect the performance of these cards - in our standard benchmarks. Should you be looking to run these settings the results are valid.

However the HD4850 design seems designed for more taxing loads, and in our benchmarks I'd dare say most of its shader power is going untapped bottlenecked by other parts and as such increasing detail settings, resolution, AA etc. may have a relatively small decrease in frame rates making the card more attractive.

Our full review will of course explore these issues in more detail, however our first batch of testing was our standard 'midrange' (determined by pricepoint) benches.


Michael - Trained monkey, HEXUS performance labs.

Ah, didn't mean it to come out so harsh; sorry.

Just wanted to encourage Hexus to do it with more appropriate settings and benchmarks.

[MadduckUK]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2116

was looking for early 4870 benchmarks, found that... i know its old but oh dear

edit:http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...=8075&Itemid=1

aww well thats bad news...

edit again: courtesy of fudzila

must do some work

[SiM]

Tarinder and Michael H, when you do the big round up please could you include 3d marks and in game frame rates of the 9800gtx and upward with the new drivers (physx enabled).