Why on earth do half the damned benchmarks support 1680x1050 information but when you get to Crysis you offer 1920 information only?
Damnit this place is normally better than that, why dismiss the information for the lower resolution? If anything this is the game we should be seeing all resolutions benchmarked to see if it's texture memory / fillrate or what that's slowing it down.

The 8800GTX is trounced by the 4850 in most benchmarks, then we get to Crysis, I wonder why it's suddenly so close - then I notice you're in 1920 only, the first benchmark isn't 1680.
silly stuff.

What's the difference between the 4850 and 4870? Is this public information?

Also:

Do ATI's drivers still use over 100 megs of ram? I love AMD, but I will never install such garbage code on my computer...

So apparently the NDA has been lifted on the 4870 and the architectural details (or at least AnandTech has put their review up). Do we get more TR goodness?

I'd like to see independent thermal measurements, not just readings reported off (uncalibrated) silicon. Maybe a laser thermometer would work (but how to get consistent readings? I'll leave that up to TR to decide).

Another useful bit of information would be the effect of GPUs on case, system and CPU temps. With a standardised test rig, readers would then be able to judge how much a GPU affects their system temps. Simple temperature readings don't tell us enough, because a 110W GPU at, say 85C might be putting out less heat than a 150W GPU at 70C.

Don't know if anybody said it already, but I really appreciate the new way TR is doing the performance graphs. Much better!

And the fact that you guys got this review together with all the appropriate comparisons as quickly as anybody and definitely better than most was definitely impressive.

Kudos all around to Team TR!

Good review, as always I'm digging the common lingo and lame jokes only techies can get. >_<

No pictures without the heatsink on?

This might be a selfish request as well, but reading the Geforce 280 review and seeing the card without the heatsink, it would be nice to see the heatsink flipped over next to it to see what it all covers. It'd also be nice if the kind of material the heatsink was made out of was mentioned. Then again I like replacing a lot of my heatsinks with 3rd party ones if the originals are crappy.

Also, what's the heatsink covering towards the edge of the card with the power connector (guessing voltage regulators or something) and is it vital to be covered?

The Red Strikes Back!

I'm about to buy HD 3650
but I think I'll wait for a new HD 4650 (if it does exist).

Oh, and something I haven't really seen addressed anywhere: the idle and load temps on 4850 being not bad, and in fact quite good.

The 4850's load temp IME is around 80C. This is not unreasonable, and is in fact lower than most of the other current cards. My 8800GT had a higher load temp, even with a dual-slot cooler.

The 4850's idle temps are not right yet. Powerplay isn't working yet. The 4850 is putting out way more heat at idle than it will be in a month or two. AMD rushed the 4850 a bit to try and stink up the GT200 launches, and I don't mind, since it got me the 4850 a few weeks earlier. It's running hot, and performance isn't 100%, but a lot of that should be fixed in the next week when the 4870 rolls out, as that's when both 4850+4870 were planned to launch.

What's actually nice about the 4850 thermals is that the fan *is* spinning up at load, and load temps are only a few C above idle temps. Once the idle temps get fixed, this is going to be a very very sweet little card.

I would like to see test results with CrossFireX utilizing 3 or 4 GPUs on Phenom 9850 machine.

Something that I think gets a bit of short shrift in these things is image quality. Unfortunately, it's damned difficult to quantify. I have an 8800GTS (640) in my gaming rig and an X1900XT in my Mac. While the video card in the Mac is definitely the slower of the two, the image quality is loads better. I cannot tell you why with any certainty, but I can definitely tell a difference.

I remember thinking the same thing back when I got my 9800, which was my first ATI card ever.

This is the first time in a long while I've seen an article break the 200-comment barrier. What a fiery issue!

As much as the 4850 holds promise, I think I'll wait for a card with a dual-slot cooler (as people said earlier). Those temperature readings are waaaay too high for my tastes. Especially when I've been eyeing the Palit 9600GT, which doesn't even break 55 at load.

What is wrong with you people?? Why does everyone have to take sides? These are products, not religions. Gimme a damn break!

BTW, Tide kicks a$$ and anyone who uses Cheer is an idiot!

Cant wait for 4870 reviews next week and availability around 8th July.

#211, of course it does but what you said later is true. As long as not too much of the heat from GPU stays in case (either due to overall case air/heat flow design or design of GPU cooler) then all is well.

Although, I would like to have more margin should GPU fan slow (normal wear and tear) or die plus added heat means more work to get rid of it.

I personally just like to build very quiet to silent (if possible) systems so that is why it is a larger issue to me. :-)

I'll make a point that some people seem to be missing.

GPU load temperature does not necessarily correlate to increased case temperature!

There, I said it. Now obviously in the case of a dual-slot cooler like the GTX 200 some heat is exiting the back of the case, so temps should improve. How many watts are actually disapating into the case is another question.

As long as GPU temps don't rise to the point where the card becomes unstable or prone to failure, absolute temps are largely irrelevent.

Actual heat production is then directly proportional to the power consumption of the device, with preference given to cooling solutions that directly remove hot air from the case.

The things holding me back from getting a HD 4850 right now (seen it on newegg.com) is: GDDR5 (maybe only for HD 4870?) and the load temperature. I think AIB will come up with something soon and replace that stock cooling solution. :-)

I personally don't mind dual-slot cooling solutions as I'll almost never go for multi card solutions and haven't run into space problem. But I suppose why go for dual slot when single slot is okay? Anyways, if HD 3870 was any indication, we should see better designs soon. :-)

Also, theinquirer.net, pit a 9600 GT against a HD 4850 and there was no comparison (to me). I suppose is useful given the 8800 GT / 9600 GT was / is very popular. :-) I would wait for a HD 4650 (guessing based on HD 3xxx naming) or to see Nvidia's newer mid - low range before considering get a 8800 / 9600 though.

It looks like AMD *cough* ATI *cough* embarrasses Nvidia for this round. 4850 is a genuine 9600GT and 8800GT killer.

Their strategy of shifting R&D resources to make smaller, multi-chip solutions is paying off. Remember how long ago, infamous FUDzilla said that Rxxx family will be multi-chip?

It is more ironic that AMD's CPU-division tried to pull off the same single-monolith philosophy (Phenom versus Q6xxx) that Nvidia tried for this round, but ran into problems.

Too bad ATI's Linux drivers suck. That little fact means I'm stuck with Nvidia.

1) Powerplay for the 4850 cards is not yet enabled, hence the high idle power draw
2) Members at OCAU are getting a 20c reduction in temps by remounting the stock cooling using AS5.
3) Do not buy the 4850 until you have seen the results for the 4870. The 4870 is the card you really want (and wont cost much more). Double the memory bandwidth of the 4850, much better cooler and beats the GT260 in pretty much everything.

I am not sure why AMD chose to sell this for $199. They can sell it for $249 or even $299 and it will still provide a better value than the 9800.

For $199 you have a card that can destroy 9800 GTX, and sometimes faster than the GTX 260 - a $399 part that does not even have DX 10.1. The only downside is you can't enlarge your epeen with 3D Mark Vintage, if it really matters.

gotta give it to those guys at AMD. good job!

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=59712

Geoff or anyone in TR labs confirm weither it's possible to crossfire a 3870 with a 48XX card?

i'd really like to get one, if they could do something about those crazy temperatures! forget sli / crossfire, i just want a single large and cool-running gpu block...

I really would like to see how a Crossfire of 2 of these performs, particularly on a P45 board. You'd FINALLY have a platform that offers both top performance AND stability (no, nForce + SLI does not offer that already).

Why no 8800gt in the comparison? I'm sure its a card ALOT of people own and would be good to compare with this card.

Also, you guys should pick up Mass Effect for testing, it seems like a pretty taxing game in some areas. Also, its really pretty :)

WOW, Amd's small monster 4850 (big monster is on its way ) just killed the 9800GTX... This was really good show..

Can the 4000''s crossfire with the 3000's? Please tell me it will work cuz then i don't need to discard my 3870's for a 4000 series, I can just add them all together and save a ton of cash.

This is ever interesting, great review!

waits patiently for the 4870 to hit the market.......