Sapphire HD 4850X2 reviewed

Its the time everyone was waiting for the great review on ATi one the most awaited graphics card the dual chip version of RV770PRO, HD4850X2. As we told u earlier about the card here, the card does have some serious horsepower and can smoke some serious games!

As we told u earlier that the card will be a huge one but it seems that this is the biggest card ever made with a length of 28.5cms which is even more than the HD4870X2 & Geforce GTX 280!

The hardware used for the review is:

• Core 2 Duo E8400 overclocked at 3.6GHZ.
• Gigabyte P35C-DS3R.
• A-Data 2GB DDR2 1066 CL4 RAM.
• WD Raptor 74GB 740ADFD.
• OCZ Game Extreme 700W.
• Windows XP Sp2.
• ForceWare 177.83 for nVidia GPU & Catalyst 8.10 for ATi GPU.

As u can see the HD4850X2 is the second most expensive card available but at that price it goes head to head with GTX280.

The card undergoes several tests including games & 3Dmark.

• In Call of Duty 4 benchmark the card performance was more than GTX260 & HD4870 but stayed behind GTX280 & HD4870X2 at 1920X1200 resolution with 4XAA.

• In Call of Juarez the card did exceptionally well by beating every other card except HD4870X2 at 1920X1200 with 4XAA & 16X AF turned on.

• Company of Heroes also love HD4850X2 & the card performed better than every nVidia & ATi graphics card except the HD4870X2.

• When it comes to Crysis the every graphics cards does cry out loud & same happed with our dual chip RV770PRO but it did beat out the HD4870X2 with a fraction but not the GTX280 & 9800GX2.

• HD4850X2 excels the Enemy Territory:Quake Wars by hitting maximum FPS with 4XAA & 16X AF beating even the big brother(HD4870X2) behind.

• The game F.E.A.R also loves ATi & this time our dear 4850X2 breaks all records & kills every single card on the block!

• In Prey, HD4850X2 did smokes everyone but scoring highest FPS of 162.9 at 1920X1200 with 4XAA & 16X AF.

• In STALKER the card performed better than every other card but stayed behind than HD4870X2 with mere 4FPS.

• In Team Fortress 2 the HD4850X2 stayed on the top beating all other cards.

• World in Conflict is nVidia fanboi so here nVidia wins but 4850X2 stayed on top of HD4870X2 & GTX260.

• The card scores second highest in 3Dmark 06 with 15066 points with not much behind from HD4870X2 which scores 15279 points.

When it comes to power consumption, the HD4850X2 consumes 158W at idle & 327W at peak load.

Final Verdict:

The new ATi baby doesn’t fall much behind the world’s fastest card HD4870X2 but it indeed performs better than any other card in that price range with price of USD419, it even beats the GTX280 & HD4870X2 at some points. When it comes to power consumption, the card does eat some watts but it is sure better value than nVidia hotrod GTX280. ATi was targeting this card to beat nVidia high baby GTX 280 & ATi has done some homework making this card to burn envies.

Via – techpowerup