Zardon

Read The Review Here

Today we are going to look at the HD4850 X2, an exclusive beast from Sapphire set to slot in directly below the class leading 4870 X2, a card which has scooped our highest awards in several reviews. We have high hopes for the new Sapphire board as the single core 4850 has been a big success in the enthusiast market with a potent combination of great value for money and strong performance.

longhorn1000

great to see Sapphire putting such a good cooling system on the board. I think this will do well.

macbiter

nice review and very impressive performance. AA figures are good, I think thats where these dual core solutions do well.

Alex

nice writeup. Interesting to see this outperforming the GTX 280 and as it costs around the same price, well impressive.

Of course its down to ATI's crossfire driver support and I still think a single core card is more elegant. Nontheless maybe ATI should get Sapphire to release all their boards, that 4870 X2 cooling solution should never have been released in the first place and I think if sapphire had a hand in it it would have had something like the 4850 X2 version.

Erroneus

"Cheap" solution for people with 24" monitors :P Great card and well reviewed.

__________________

Matth

The burning question, is it convincing against a single 4870 ?

Only cross compared a couple of tests and settings, and it was up on one, down on another, while the 4850 X2 is considerably more expensive than a single 4870.

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

brutusmaximus

I think we can safely assume the answer to this ..... in previous DH reviews the 260GTX 216 core is slightly faster than the 4870, so yes the 4850 X2 would walk all over it when you compare it with the 260 GTX 216 core (obviously asssuming the game has crossfire driver support).

__________________

Knight_Breed

Nice looking card but I ask myself @ stock on idle should we see temps like 40C? WTF is the card doing at that point

Load temps are a bit better than the 4870 and 4870x2 but still won't have one in my machine unless it is under 60C full load. I am looking into liquid cooling for them.

Stu an open question on fans and Sapphire. I always found Sapphire fans very loud especially over 50% any improvements on this?

Overall great review

__________________

OmegaRED

If what I read is true, it will go for around $350USD, that places it at the same price or cheaper than a 260GTX. It seems to perform as well or better at highest resolutions but what concerns me is you're kinda limited in upgrading after that. At least if I go for a 260GTX I can SLI it down the road.

Anyway, I'm only through the 2nd of the 5-6 4850X2 reviews and already they've mentioned the beta drivers aren't good so I'll withhold judging it too much. I was planning on getting a 260GTX and now this comes out lol...I suppose I should be happy there's a new option.

__________________

OmegaRED

Ok, now that I've read a bunch of reviews it's clear that the 4850X2 trounces the 260GTX and often the 280GTX. I'm very intrigued! I hope it's under $400

__________________

Alex

Its being cooled by a dual fan system and Sapphire have done a lot more with the heatsink design if you look. Also bear in mind the 4850 didnt quite reach the temps of the hotter 70 cores.

Well the 4850X2 is actually 30c-40c less than the 4870X2 at load if you use the out of the box settings and dont start altering fan speeds with various tools, this to me is more than "a bit better". There are many people reporting on forums (like DH) of temps over 100c load with the 4870 X2. Check out the sticky thread in the ATI graphics card forum. I am confident that with some additional minor tweaking along the lines of the 70 X2 tweaks that those temps could easily be under 50c load.

It was the new guy Nathan who reviewed this one, but id be interested to hear this myself regarding fan noise. Im guessing because there are two fans that they dont have to work as hard as the single card solution on the 4870 X2. I still firmly believe the 4870 X2 should never have been released as it was, it was never configured correctly on a driver level and the fan system is much too loud at speeds required to keep it cool.

Knight_Breed

Thanks for all the feedback Alex and on the fan noise levels will watch for Nathan to feedback. I was hoping the dual fans would run at lower speeds lowering the noise level as well. On the initial 4870 and 4870x2 issues I agree with you

__________________

OmegaRED

Other reviews said the fan noise made this one of the loudest cards ever tested

I suppose as long as you manually lowered it during idle it won't be so bad but I expect it will be very loud during gaming.

__________________

Knight_Breed

That's not what I was hoping to hear and it isn't just during gaming and benchmarking that I am concerned about fan noise level. The reason I installed the accelero S1 w Turbo kit on my 9600gt was because of noise at boot on my GA-X38-DQ6. This Giga mobo runs the viddy card fan @ 100% at boot and also the whole time you are in BIOS and its annoying. The 9600gt came with a decent dual slot cooler its too bad the fan was so noisy

I have 2x140mm and 6x120mm fans in my case excluding the ones in my PSU. The chainsaw that was on my 9600gt drowns all 8 of the other fans out even at 50 percent. I fail to see why manufacturers of video cards fail to provide quieter and better quality fans on there product especially when some of these things are retailing in the 300-500 dollar range

__________________

NathanMarks

On startup and in the bios the fans spin away quite loudly, louder than anything else i've heard on a card recently.

However, once in windows the card is tolerable, and even playing stints of Call of Duty and Grid didn't affect the fan speed and was easily drowned out by my Tuniq Tower 120.

When running artifact scanning and similarly intensive tasks the fans did speed up, but nothing near the maximum fan speed which is heard during boot.

Unfortunately we were unable to manually control the fans with the set of drivers provided to us with our pre-release sample.

You have to remember as well, the card uses a dual fan setup and despite the potential to be quite noisy under VERY intensive stress it is an extremely effective cooling solution.

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

NathanMarks

Hey mate,

As far as your comment on the load temps. Despite obviously being a slower card than the 4870X2, the temperatures are fantastic -- plenty of our members experienced huge problems with scorching temperatures on the 4870 X2. The card has great temperatures for its class.

Also, the fans are very loud over 50% as can be heard during startup (with the drivers provided to us we were unable to manually control the fan speed), but the fans didn't get anywhere near that sort of speed during testing due to the dual fan configuration.

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

Knight_Breed

Nathan cheers M8 and thanks for the reply. On all temps in this series my apologies and I digress but they are too hot overall despite "class". We might as well go back to the 88xx NV series and cook some bacon for everyone while we play some games.

Nice review man and a great performing card don't mind me I am an old timer that is a cooling Guru and am picky about my noise level and temps.

TY again on the reply

__________________

NathanMarks

On some level I do agree with you and wish these newer cards could run a bit cooler. I have a 9600GT here clocked at 750/2100/1900 and it idles at 26c. Would feel a lot more comfortable if these new cards could sit at similiar temperatures. Unfortunately for us it isn't so.

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

Knight_Breed

Mine idles at 18c but know what you mean. I still feel improvements need to be made. The initial issues with this series were regarding the fan control under CCC and in general ... seems they haven't been resolved

__________________

NathanMarks

Nice cooler you've got there, just checked your spec sheet.


Fan control wasn't working at all in CCC with the drivers/software versions provided.

Funny, originally it was the 3xxx series not working and just the 48xx operating properly (with regards to CCC fan control), but now I guess we've got another card to add to the list until they sort it out.

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

Knight_Breed

Thanks on the cooler it works well. On the card and CCC I am sure they will sort it out still a nice performing card as it stands.

Thanks again for your replies and feedback

__________________

NathanMarks

Not 100% sure if the drivers we were given were the final release though, i'll try and find out. I checked on Sapphire's website and they haven't got any drivers up there at the moment for the card so I can't cross compare.

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

Knight_Breed

Keep us posted Nathan a topic I am interested in for sure. Does a third party tool such as Rivatuner work to change the fan speed? I don't have a card here to test lol

__________________

NathanMarks

Unfortunately with Rivatuner 2.11 at the moment I couldn't get any overclocking options to come up on the card, just basic display settings... Hopefully we'll see some developments soon

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

OmegaRED

Has anyone tested the 4850X2 against 260GTX SLI?

__________________

NathanMarks

Not sure, but you have to remember that many GTX260 SLI configurations will cost upwards of £380, which goes past even 4870X2 territory, never mind the 4850X2

__________________
nathanmarks.dh

OmegaRED

I've read every review on the web I can find for this card and I really want to pair it up with a 24" monitor...unfortunately the first Canadian stores listing this are asking over $500 which is just too high. A Geforce 260GTX goes for under $300 and that guarantees you solid performance. The X2 is a gamble because it is dependent on driver support to use both cards and there will be times when you're forced to rely on a single 4850 to run a new game.

Perhaps the price will drop in the next month but if not I may skip this one.

Right now I'm considering these two system builds:

Q6600 (~ $220)
EVGA 750i FTW (~ $250)
260 GTX with plans to SLI within 6 months (~$285-300)

or
Q6600 (~ $220)
Asus P5K series Crossfire (~$175)
Sapphire 4850X2 (no plans to use crossfire) ($500)

__________________

swimtech

Nice review - thanks Nathan! As of today, pricing still places the 4850x2 in competition with the GTX280. Too bad there's only the Sapphire available to order, maybe other vendors will introduce one...

Something I've been meaning to ask about - the condition has shown itself prevalent in reviews of the 48XXx2 reviews since the card series was introduced - and the answer I know requires a necessarily subjective response...
Just how do the random frame rate drops that look to occur in a lot of the latest games for the Radeon x2 cards affect the playability of the games during testing - and relative to the competing cards in the review? Again, I realize I'm asking for a subjective opinion rather than an objective analysis based on numbers, but the feel of the game matters a lot - and the minimum frame rates reported at the given resolutions look disconcerting - especially taken with the mention of their occurance as being "random".
I'm getting the idea that these drops are out of the ordinary relative to routine gameplay, and that the "ordinary" minimum frame rates might actually be higher - but that to remain objective for the sake of the review (which is of course a good thing), the FPS number apparent during the random frame rate drops are what is being shown and compared - even though the feel of the game in comparison with the other cards with regard to the "slow spots", by the numbers, could well be different.

__________________
It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Knight_Breed

In Canada here too and the HD4870x2 is around 600 locally not sure on HD4850x2.

On your systems I noted "Asus P5K series Crossfire" and the reason for my reply. If you have no reason to use true Crossfire(X38/X48) then go with the ASUS mobo. If you want true 2x pci-e x16 with ASUS you will have to use DDR3 ram. That is the reason why I chose Gigabyte over ASUS for my current build ...

__________________

kris23

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

$430 bucks man.....

__________________