ATI 4850 Review
The first ATI 4850 Review
| ATI Radeon HD 4850 Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 800 |
| Core Clock | 625 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 256 bit |
| Memory Type | 512MB GDDR3 |
| Texture Fillrate (billion/sec) | 24.0 |
| Fabrication Process | 55nm |
| Bus Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
ATI 4850 Review
Reviewer: Jimmyz
Review Link: ATI 4850 Review
Jimmyz did the first ATI 4850 Review over at Xtremesystems.org and after he spent the better part of the last two days putting ATI’s latest offering through it’s paces I have to say it has been a surprise how much performance this card brings to the midrange market.
It is capable of running crysis at 1680 x 1050 in dx10 with settings on high, frames rarely dip below 30 and the game actually feels smooth, quite an accomplishment in a single slot mid range card especially at this price point. The driver installations were simply and straightforward as were the packaging and accessories. This is a serious company and with a Lifetime Warranty to boot. That is something lacking with most board partners today.
The ATI Radeon HD 4850 video card performs flawlessly, however out of the box the GPU was registering 79c at idle in catalyst overdrive window, after changing thermal paste and re-installing temps are more like 55 - 60c idle and load temperatures are also much improved. With the heat taken care of I tried Catalyst’s built in overclocking utility which allows up to 700 core and 1200 memory clocks, I tried 700/ 1100 and found it to be stable for bench testing and the hour of crisis I played.
Overall I am highly impressed. this video card is a great step in the right direction for ATI, and it follows on the heels of the HD3800 series which were fantastic sellers in their segment. ATI is going to increase the pressure Nvidia now feels in the midrange market and if the HD4870 and its rumored GDDR5 ram makes the improvements they claim the under 400 dollar segment will all but belong to ATI. this promises to be a great summer as the 260 and 280 from rival Nvidia are just around the corner albeit at a much higher price than the current ATI offerings, in some cases twice as much.
I will continue testing as the official 8.6 catalyst drivers should bring performance increases across most games. I will also continue to test the card as newer games are released and better support is allowed such as overclocking utilities, Bios tools etc. competition is fierce in the midrange and ATI has brought a fighter to the ring this round, Things are looking up for this generation.
Stay tuned to FXvideocards for the latest and greatest cards on the market (and some that aren’t yet).
jimmyz.
ATI Radeon HD 4850 Review
ATI 4850 Review
Video Cards
August 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
ATI and Visiontek are extremely disinterested in making the 4800 series stable. I have 2 of them, and presently the intel bonetrail 2 board.
It is not stable on XP Pro 32 and 64 bit, nor is it stable on Vista 32 and 64 Ultimate.
I have centered down on the problem and spoken with BOTH ATI and VISIONTEK - 7 times to have their driver team investigate my findings.
I was told that because I am not a software engineer, they disregard any of my findings. Sorry guys, but the profession I chose pays about double to a software engineer, still doesn’t mean I am a cro magnun at a keyboard
I have the exact same problem on ASUS, MSI and Intel boards.
My setup is Intel DX48BT2 (Bonetrail 2) Motherboard
2 Seagate 1TB hard disks
8 GB of DDR3 ram (2 sets) (Corsair xms3-1333MHz 1.7V CM3X2048-133c9dhx) set at 1.62 volts 9-9-9-24 2T timing
2 visiontek ati 4850 video cards
Intel Q9550 processor
Power supply is 1000W Silverstone Strider Series
1 memorex DL DVD RW (ata)
1 LG GGW-H20L Blu Ray RW & HD DVD ROM (sata)
the ominous problem is (across thousands of ATI cards atm.
Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WMI
Date: 8/27/2008 6:56:35 PM
Event ID: 10
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Dad-PC
Description:
Event filter with query “SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA “Win32_Processor” AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99″ could not be reactivated in namespace “//./root/CIMV2″ because of error 0×80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.
Event Xml:
10
0
2
0
0
0×80000000000000
904
Application
Dad-PC
//./root/CIMV2
SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA “Win32_Processor” AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99
0×80041003
or I get the BSOD ATI.DKG error
Seems like WMI isn’t compliant with ATI drivers
The stores are lined with returned cards, and several places selling a replica of my system won’t sell them now due to the high volumes of returns.
I have a ticket # 1360265 with ATI, and they cannot resolve the issue nor can Visiontek.
Heat is not an issue either, I would be happy to post pics of my homemade “windtunnel” GPU main is stable 58 degrees Celcius, and secondary card 52 degrees Celcius without fans on.
I have run though all the various set ups , and installed Vista 64 Ultimate over 30 times, across 3 sets of 8gb ram, and 5 different MOBOs from 3 different manufacturers - all parts are supposed to be 100% compliant.
This particular ram has an operating voltage of 1.52 - 1.7v as per the chief engineer in the XMS3 dept of Corsair. In my long journey to try and get these cards working, I helped identify a compatibility problem with this ram set and the MSI P45 Diamond motherboard, and they have changed the latency setting since then. the same latency setting is for this particular board. and the voltages are optimum. if you read the error message it does not point to the ram, but to a major incompatibility with Microsoft-Windows-WMI!!!!
This is a driver issue that is returning values less than 99 and causing it to crash, usually system dropping video cards and unable to start them, and as VGA SAVE kicks in it causes a BSOD.
I can’t believe ATI nor Visiontek have never heard of these crashing problems, just for kicks try googling “4850 crash” and it appears in nearly every motherboard forum. ATI states and Visiontek as wel that these boards are compatible and operate with these cards, yet have never tested them, Pretty sloppy to state something works and don’t have drivers IMO.