ATI Radeon HD 4850 Preview: AMD Delivers Performance for the Masses
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 19, 2008 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
There's an unexpected amount of concluding we can do already based on these early results.
For starters, the Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the best buy at $199, even better than NVIDIA's price-dropped GeForce 9800 GTX. What's also unbelievable is that compared to the 4850, our beloved GeForce 8800 GT seems downright slow in a number of benchmarks - and the 8800 GT is only 8 months old. It's also very refreshing to see this sort of competitive pressure at such a reasonable price point, while it's fun to write about 1.4 billion transistor GPUs it's a dream come true to be able to write about this type of performance at under $200.
Take two 4850s, put them together and now you've got something even faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 in most cases. It shouldn't be too surprising since 8800 GT SLI and 9800 GX2 both outperform the GTX 280 as well.
Our CrossFire investigation illustrated a very good point: AMD's multi-GPU solutions still don't behave as well as their single-GPU products, there are still cases where performance doesn't improve at all and that's where these large monolithic GPU designs hold their value. Hopefully with continued effort in the multi-GPU space AMD can get us to a point where there is no perceivable difference between single and multi-GPU solutions. Until then, NVIDIA's strategy will continue to have a great deal of merit - although the GTX 280 isn't the best example of that, at least from a gamer's perspective. On the CUDA side however...
We'll have much more information on the Radeon HD 4850 and its faster brother next week when we can completely unveil AMD's RV770, until then sit tight and be content with the knowledge that the days of the 8800 GT vs. 3870 weren't a fluke, the new mainstream wars are upon us thanks to AMD's Radeon HD 4850.
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Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
Crossfire two of that ;)(starts looking for a humongous PSU...)
rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
lol oohhh yeah.. I'll be looking for Anandtech to be reviewing PCP&Ps newest 2kW Power supply with 200amps on teh 12V rail :)rudolphna - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
PS. (to PCP&P) Switch to 120mm fans, imagine how loud a 2000watt psu will be with an 80mm fan cooling it :)xsilver - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
the 80mm fan would require its own psu ;)Clauzii - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
There goes the carrot cutter :))Devo2007 - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
I can walk into a local retailer and pick one up right now (yes, they are actually showing stock on three different cards).Goty - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
Something is VERY wrong if a 1000W rated power supply can't boot a system that draws less than 500W at load. Most sites recommend a 500W-600W power supply to run a 4850 CF system, which should be PLENTY of power.Creig - Thursday, June 19, 2008 - link
That's exactly what I was thinking when I read that part of the article. A 4850 supposedly only pulls 110w. So if I was conducting the review, I would have immediately suspected a defective power supply, not an inadequate one.bob4432 - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
exactly what i was thinking....ocz quality????JarredWalton - Friday, June 20, 2008 - link
I believe the 1000W PSU having problems was specifically in regards to GeForce GTX 280 SLI - though Anand or Derek would have to confirm. The other factor that I don't know is whether the PSU is the problem or perhaps Derek just has really bad electricity in his house. I know I've had no difficulties with even 550W PSUs and 3870 CrossFire (with a Q6600 overclocked to 3.30GHz).