Analysis - ATI Radeon HD 4850 - benchmarked against mid-range and high-end GPUs

[HEXUS]

Just how good is it?

Read more.

[REM_Jupiter]

Well Its Safe To Say That What Ever AMD/ATI Have Done They Have Done It Good

Welcome Back

&

Watch Out Nvidia

[SiM]

Great... Looks good now
Btw, typo on penultimate page "Crysys"

And last page title is:
"Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - high-end, and preliminary thoughts"
shouldn't it be Final thoughts?

[DR]

Great... Looks good now
Btw, typo on penultimate page "Crysys"

Fixed - cheers!

[SiM]

Fixed - cheers!

No probs...

[Tarinder]

Great... Looks good now
Btw, typo on penultimate page "Crysys"

And last page title is:
"Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - high-end, and preliminary thoughts"
shouldn't it be Final thoughts?

Nope, because we've not looked at multimedia performance, architecture, and talked about clock speeds and overclocking.

That'll all come on Wednesday, so these are preliminary thoughts.

[SiM]

Ok fair enough... I though the other one from yesterday was the preliminary one and this review is quite a bit more extensive... yeh but you are correct its still missing those things, so isn't final

Its quite odd that it gets beaten by the 9600gt at low resolutions but keeps up with the 9800gtx at high resolutions... I think when drivers are improved a bit this should pick up a bit of performance...

Also just a general remark about the 3d mark Vantage benchmark. Is it really relevant for today gaming? It seems like 3d mark 06 is still more demanding than all games (other than crysis)...

[Tarinder]

The reason it's missing them, stupidly, is because ATI won't let us publish those facets of the review but is more than happy for everyone to disclose the numbers.

There's also the little matter of Radeon HD 4870 to contend with.

[Tarinder]

Ok fair enough... I though the other one from yesterday was the preliminary one and this review is quite a bit more extensive... yeh but you are correct its still missing those things, so isn't final

Its quite odd that it gets beaten by the 9600gt at low resolutions but keeps up with the 9800gtx at high resolutions... I think when drivers are improved a bit this should pick up a bit of performance...

Also just a general remark about the 3d mark Vantage benchmark. Is it really relevant for today gaming? It seems like 3d mark 06 is still more demanding than all games (other than crysis)...

3DMark Vantage does test various facets of DX10 performance and gives an easily repeatable benchmark that users can run to gauge their card's relative prowess.

You won't see it in retail card reviews, just in launches, and it will be accompanied by various additional tests that help explain the efficiency and purpose of the architecture. But that's for another day.

[chaotic_russ]

£125 ? i have seen it as high as £160 , your take on a mid range system makes my system look like a bargain basement system lol . as always a nice read

[Tarinder]

Here's one that's purported to be in-stock - £117.87, including VAT, excluding delivery.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...&NavigationKey

[Thorsson]

It's great to see these benchmarks. But what about something for the non-FPS gamer? Why not The Witcher, Oblivion and some MMO stuff (and yes I realise the difficulties, but that's no real excuse for everyone ignoring the largest section of the PC gaming market).

[Biscuit]

I reckon they focus on FPS games so much as they are often the most demanding on FPS for a good gaming/competetive experience.

Whilst the 4850 looks exceptionally good for the cash, when upgrading from a 320MB 8800GTS Its looking like the GTX260 is going to be the one for me unless the 4970 is something really spectacular!

[chaotic_russ]

Here's one that's purported to be in-stock - £117.87, including VAT, excluding delivery.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...&NavigationKey

out of stock , anyways back on topic . why do any of the benchmarks not have the res of 1680x1050 ? , i wanted to see what they perform like at this res

[Blackmage]

I'm really not impressed Nvidia 9800GTX+ should be coming out soon. might be the better buy.

[Rosaline]

Welcome back to the game, ATI!
I have to say, the figures were frankly shockingly good, and I will be eagerly awaiting the CrossFire results, too. It will be interesting comparing results at the same price level, it could well make things very interesting indeed for the middle-upper range...

Definitely looking forward to the full review, and if the 4870 is priced as has been suspected, the market could well be seriously interesting soon.

Regarding game selection, to be honest I do tend to read around reviews until I find ones covering Oblivion. Oblivion on maximum settings can be very demanding, and every extra frame per second means it can take more modding. Dedicated Oblivion fans will tend to play with extreme texture packs (like QTP3) and mods that add more objects visible at distance. Such a tricked out Oblivion is probably the harshest test possible

Edit: The 4850 appears to be around £130 at realistic current launch prices. Two of them, hence, would be £260. nVidia's 280 is around £430, and the 9800 GX2 comes in at £330. Looking at x2 crossfire reviews on other sites, it seems that when it fails, it is simply useless, but when it works, it completely smashes the performance of these more expensive cards! I'm sitting here, giggling in delight at having a proper graphics card competition again!