4850 and 9800GTX for £125

[!TIMMY!]

How much is the 9800GTX+ going to cost?

[kalniel]

How much is the 9800GTX+ going to cost?

$229 ex.

[!TIMMY!]

I wonder how much oc headroom there will be with the 55nm gpu? It might be worth the extra $30.

[EarlGrey]

I wonder how much oc headroom there will be with the 55nm gpu? It might be worth the extra $30.

There should be quite a bit, so it might turn out to be a great card, as nvidia won't want it sold clocked too high as it'll start to interfere with the GTX260...

I was wondering, the 4870 memory is GDDR5, and running at 900MHz is quoted at 3.6GHz, suggesting it is 'quad data rate' does it really give twice the memory bandwidth over GDDR3 at a given clock?

[kalniel]

I was wondering, the 4870 memory is GDDR5, and running at 900MHz is quoted at 3.6GHz, suggesting it is 'quad data rate' does it really give twice the memory bandwidth over GDDR3 at a given clock?

Yes.

[!TIMMY!]

But in fps terms I wonder how much it will boost increase. All this competition is great for the end user!

[EarlGrey]

My 4850 arrived yesterday and it rocks

Been playing race driver GRID, which looks absolutely incredible on max settings at 1680x1050 with 4xMSAA. 8xMSAA is almost playable, but the occasional drop below 60fps makes it not worth it as I have Vsync on. Awesome stuff.

I did benchmark Crysis for you guys, sticking with the settings that Hexus recommended from their review:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==
In the GPU benchmark (in the Crysis\Bin32 folder) I get an average of 48.9 fps with a min of 29.9, and a max of 57.0
Mild overclocks (5%) suggest the minimums are caused by lack of memory bandwidth.
GPU at 655MHz Mem Stock gives an average of 50.1, min of 29.7 and max of 58.6.
GPU at stock and Mem at 1050 give an average of 49.7, min of 32.7 and max of 58.3.

I only did this as I was interested in finding with the core or mem had more influence over crysis speeds. Interestingly, both helped, but increasing the memory improved the minimum frame rate which in my book is the most important.

After a couple of days burn in I shall overclock further and see how far it'll go. Though I'm not too hopefull as it does run at just over 80 degrees under load (according to catalyst).

[EarlGrey]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146428...roduct_reviews
Pre-order a 4850 for £122.95 from ebuyer

And I thought I should note that the numbers above may seem a little high, I'm guessing that is partly because my system is a Q6600 running at 3.4GHz, and partly because most websites use run throughs in crysis rather than the built in benchmark. Obviously the built in benchmark is less taxing...
Having said that, I'll probably turn up some of the settings a little at the beginning of the game, as it runs faster than the later stages of the game.

[Maccer101]

How many and what number pin PCIe power connectors does this thing take?

Very happy with my current 8800gt (just like about 90% of the board members here) but so far this looks like a possible very fairly priced future upgrade to me.

Does it fare better than previous ATI series cards for performance with AA on as I beleive this has been one of the problems with ATI cards that their performance plummets as soon as 4-8x AA is enabled.

It will be great for us consumers if the ATI cards can really compete again in the Gaming graphics with nVidia

[this_is_gav]

HD4850 requires a single 6-pin connector.

[Maccer101]

EarlGrey, already edited your "My System", nice.

[Tetsu]

My 4850 arrived yesterday and it rocks

Been playing race driver GRID, which looks absolutely incredible on max settings at 1680x1050 with 4xMSAA. 8xMSAA is almost playable, but the occasional drop below 60fps makes it not worth it as I have Vsync on. Awesome stuff.

I did benchmark Crysis for you guys, sticking with the settings that Hexus recommended from their review:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==
In the GPU benchmark (in the Crysis\Bin32 folder) I get an average of 48.9 fps with a min of 29.9, and a max of 57.0
Mild overclocks (5%) suggest the minimums are caused by lack of memory bandwidth.
GPU at 655MHz Mem Stock gives an average of 50.1, min of 29.7 and max of 58.6.
GPU at stock and Mem at 1050 give an average of 49.7, min of 32.7 and max of 58.3.

I only did this as I was interested in finding with the core or mem had more influence over crysis speeds. Interestingly, both helped, but increasing the memory improved the minimum frame rate which in my book is the most important.

After a couple of days burn in I shall overclock further and see how far it'll go. Though I'm not too hopefull as it does run at just over 80 degrees under load (according to catalyst).

turn the fan speed up, the asus 4850 comes with fan control and if you boost it up it idles at around 45-50c

the 4850 defualt fan speed is 14% whack it up to 40% (if you have the software)

[Gerrard]

To use the Asus fan controller you need an Asus card. However, my mate managed to successfully flash his Gigabyte card into an Asus one in order to use the fan controller. At 50% his temps are now at 40 (along with his unique "side of the case off and 2x 120mm fans blowing against it"). It's also fairly noisy as well. Of course, now that he has the temps lowered, he's looking at volt modding it with a pencil and then downloading another bios where the clock speeds have been hacked to 725MHz.

[gamesaregood]

AMD Really have got it right this time

Try are meant to run a tad hot though!

[EarlGrey]

Very happy with my current 8800gt (just like about 90% of the board members here) but so far this looks like a possible very fairly priced future upgrade to me.

Does it fare better than previous ATI series cards for performance with AA on as I beleive this has been one of the problems with ATI cards that their performance plummets as soon as 4-8x AA is enabled

I'm not sure this is much of a replacement for a 8800GT, it's clearly faster but not by a margin that makes it a great upgrade, maybe the 4870 will fit that bill a bit better.

AA performance is really good with these cards, whatever was wrong before has certainly been fixed

[EarlGrey]

There is no way on this planet that a 9800GTX will be £125 in the foreseeable future (well...for the next 6-12 months anyway).

You simply cannot take a USA price and do the currency conversion and expect the prices to reflect here. We ALWAYS pay more for our hardware and thats never likely to change.

If you find the 9800GTX for £125 or under brand new in the next 6 months in the UK i will buy it for you.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=794148 a 9800GTX for £129.23 Sooooooo close...!!! Maybe next week