Conclusion
The Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is undoubtedly a strong performer and gives ATI more ammunition to compete against Nvidia’s current high end solutions. The expected retail price is £300 inc vat and that puts it between the GTX 280 and GTX 260 Maxcore which retail for around £330 and £240 respectively. With ATI’s current top model (4870 X2) costing considerably more than the GTX280, they really needed something to compete directly with the GTX280 to increase their marketshare. We feel after spending considerable time with the Sapphire board that they have achieved their goals.
Apart from a couple of instances the Sapphire beats the GTX280 in the tests and performs particularly well at high resolutions with AA and AF enabled. With the resolution lowered the GTX280 is more competitive, however we feel that most enthusiast gamers in the market for this product will be looking primarily at high resolution / AF/AA performance, which is the 4850 X2's particular forté. Additionally, the card is a great overclocker and thermal performance is class leading ... Sapphire have even designed their own cooler which works extremely well as full load temperatures are lower than our "out of the box" experiences with the 4870X2 at idle.
For those who cannot afford a 4870 X2 the 4850 X2 may well be the perfect card to shortlist as it retains all of the same features (DirectX10.1, HDCP, HDMI, PCI-Express 2.0) whilst improving on temperatures and noise levels. Sapphire also provide a great bundle with this product ensuring total connectivity and additionally there is a substantial level of free software provided. All in all this is a stellar product which deserves to be on your final shortlist.
Second Opinion - Stuart Davidson (Lead Hardware Reviewer)
Consumers never get value from buying the fastest graphics card available, they get the best framerates and that is what they pay for. It is only when Nvidia and ATI begin to fill out their product catalogue in each generation that value starts to come into play, especially if there are a few parts competing in the same performance range. To me, this is the area where the 4850 X2 really excels, for a little less than the GTX 280 Sapphire have a card which has the potential to outperform the GTX 280 and provide end users with additional features. For example we have DirectX 10.1 which is supported by games such as Far Cry 2 and then we have 7.1 audio without internal cabling which is ideal for media enthusiasts.
It is not just against the GTX range that the 4850 compares favourably though, even when looked at against the 4870 X2 we see that there is at least one major benefit, other than price, and that is thermal performance. The 4870 X2 has the potential to run too hot or too loud when compared to the GTX series but with Sapphires redesigned cooling this becomes a non issue and brings the ATI range to where it should have been a few months ago.
Competitive price, market leading features, great cooling and some excellent performance, it really is hard to ignore just how good the Sapphire 4850 X2 is.
Append 11th November 2008: Sapphire issued us with a new bios which lowers fan speed in 2d/idle mode. This bios flash reduces the noise significantly and when not gaming it is almost silent.
