ATI Radeon HD 4850: Smarter by Design?

[MxM]

So. performance per mm^2 win for ATI (not surprizing, they have 45nm process vs NVIDIA 55nm). This translates to cheaper chips for the same performance.
But performance per W I think is in favor of NVIDIA. Definetely at idle speeds and even in 3D (260 is slightly faster than 4850, and g280 is much faster) That translates to higher electrical bills especially when they multiplied by the fact that you need air condition the room better.

It would be interesting to calculate price of ownership which includes the price of electricity over 2 years, because it probably can be about couple hundred dollar difference between those two (depending on the use) just due to electricity consumption.

 

[ThePooBurner]

Tom's Hardware is not the review site it used to be. Only 1 card being reviewed, being reviewed with OLD drivers when every other site is using current drivers, using an OC card that isn't cleared for OCing yet and isn't suited for it with a stock cooler because of it's heat, why include flight simulator at all? if a benchmark's comments start with "once again this bench didn't tell us anything", then the bench should be thrown out. The point of a benchmark is to show us something and give us relevant information. MSFS has never been worth the time it takes to get "benches" from it.

The slant and bias this site has taken on is appalling. You favor Intel at every step, and slam AMD every chance you get. You praise Nvidia, and cast ATi in a bad light through craptacular testing. Tom's selling out to "'best' of media" was the worst thing that has ever happened. This site is a shill and hardly worth coming to for reviews anymore. Granted, other sites also have their biases, but they admit to it and don't try to cover it up with ridiculous lies about 2 year old drivers and "oh it's fine cause it's kind of like the beta driver that is currently in development". Give me a break! You pick and choose drivers specifically to match the results you want to display so you can cast ATi in the worst like possible and Nvidia in the best. Stop using beta Drivers for tests and reviews and us actual, current drivers so we can actually get an accurate picture of what is being offered.

How sad it is that Tom's is now a Junk site only good for an occasional news story that isn't on another site and their reviews are worthless. Way to destroy a once good, industry influencing reputation and prowess. Pride felled Golieth and it has been the downfall of the once noble tom's.

Rest in peace.

 

[silversound]

4850 is faster than 9800GTX, this review is a little bias too!
And 4870 is faster than GTX260 and 100 cheaper, almost same performance as GTX280
9800GTX use the latest driver, but 4850 used last year's 8.22 driver?

Tomshardware lean to Nvidia, and Anandtech leans to AMD(ATI)?

 

[mrmagoo]

As far as I'm concerned, this article is fair enough even if it doesn't show off the card in the best possible light.

Just look at the final judgement:

"A too-hasty launch, but a card with a red-hot performance/price ratio despite its use of a reworked architecture, now optimized and extremely effective at this price level. Despite its advance in presenting the GeForce 9800 GTX +, Nvidia has been bested for performance/price ratio and at this price level."

 

[Slobogob]

A nice review. I'm looking forward to the update once the 4870 arrives.

ps: I'd like to note that the launch of the 4850 is hardly "botchted" just because the press didn't get any time and because some retailers didn't react fast enough during a time window that is less than a week. Botched is a launch of a hyped product that gets delayed again and again that comes out with messed up drivers, bad performance and a too high price tag. The 2900 was botched.

 

[otheos]

Where has my commend gone Tom? Can't take critisism?

I repeat then:

You call the 4850 an interesting alternative to nVidia's new monster.

That's just pathetic, given that nVidia's "new monster" is slower more expensive and unavailable. You could have phrased that the other way around, but noooooo.

You can ban me if you want (and all others that call your reviews biased) and be left alone.

 

[mrmagoo]

Sorry for the double post but my comment got cut in half. Here's the rest:

I would hardly call that hating on AMD.

It rightfully won an award as a recommended buy because it offers the best bang for the buck.

The only con that was listed was the high power use and high heat, which I think is a very fair assessment.

You guys can nitpick all you want, but I think this was a good review that hit all the most important aspects and reached the proper conclusion. I think it might be some of you that may be biased, and not Tom's Hardware.

 

[ZootyGray]

I wanted a review of the 4850. This is a mass comparison article. Agree with the comments re scores of "zero". And it sounded like the zero-scores were included in the final results - proofread - not very clear - and I am not rereading, to clarify this point.

A comparative article would be better when the dust settles - and what people buy is usually the settled-dust version.

Also some blatant mistakes pointed out - agree. But some AMBIGUOUS comments - again echo the call to PROOFREAD.

I think 4850 is a great card and a fat quiet-fan out the back door will make for a nice breeze thru the case.

I expect to see a similar "comparative" review with the 4870 release blowing the doors off the others - just to keep the same playing field.

I am also disappointed that this testing is coloured with a "slightly oclocked board" - basic bad science. Overall, there's some new tek-specs added here; but really the preview-reviews were almost as good. This is just a lil sloppy around the edges - it's not a bad review - just a lil messy here and there - and too much of comparison to the Nvid race - will you keep this playing field when the 4870 crushes them? Really, I think a separate shootout would have been better - now there's no need for that; cos you put Nvid in the parade. I guess I am pretty ticked about all this - and kinda looking for this trouble due to comments in forums about bias = sad.

 

[ZootyGray]

But, as GrapeApe said - thx for hard work. The new-tek specs were interesting (not that I fully comprehend all that - I get the pix, and appreciate real food to chew on).

 

[goonting]

They should place here "Nvidia, They way it's meant to be reviewed" maybe toms is waiting for a 9800gtx+ before reviewing....

 

[KaiserZr]

nice review, I am currently considering getting two of these cards for my new system (which is still in the planning stages)...

What I don't get is what is up with all this stuff about Tom's hardware being biased... I didn't get that from this article at all, heck if anything this article helped confirm my decision to buy this card. You forget over the past year Nvidia was kicking ATI's butt when it came to video cards. It is with in the recent months that ATI has came back and even pulled ahead in several areas...

And don't get me started on the CPU war between Intel and AMD...

 

[rhysee]

Well 4870 beats the 280 card of Nvidia in some games not all .. so again drivers are lacking full support.. or is it the game ?..
Price per performance , ATI wins hands down .. but I,m not buying a ati card if the drivers are lacking and dont have consistant results across all games.. is that too much to ask ??

 

[homerdog]

Well 4870 beats the 280 card of Nvidia in some games not all .. so again drivers are lacking full support.. or is it the game ?..
Price per performance , ATI wins hands down .. but I,m not buying a ati card if the drivers are lacking and dont have consistant results across all games.. is that too much to ask ??

What's funny is that the drivers are young and there probably is more performance to be had out of RV770 and it still beats the GTX 280 (a card that costs more than twice as much!) occasionally. And it consistently puts a healthy spanking on the GTX 260 (a $399 card). The only $200+ Nvidia cards that make a lick of sense right now* are the 9800GTX and the 9800GTX+, the latter of which hasn't even been released yet.

But feel free to wait all you want my friend, more 4870s for me

*unless you have a gigantinormous monitor.

 

[rhysee]

True HomerDog , I hear DDR5 is short in stocks .. so 4870s may be in short supply ,
I like ATI way of thinking , cross fire cheaper cards to beat one GTX280+ cards.. makes sense money wise..

 

[PURPLEHAZE2008]

HOW about the 8800 ultra and old card did very good compared to the new
cards so we did not gain that much.

 

[KITH]

I think the title of this review says it all:
ATI Radeon HD 4850: Smarter by Design?

what kind of title is that? doesn't that seem a little negative from the get-go? What exactly are they trying to suggest? sounds to me like any success is some kind of accident.

 

[TeraMedia]

Note to Tom's Editor in Chief: There was one article you released today (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/HD-PC-Audio,review-1101.html) that talks about the lack of ability to send HD audio from a PC. That article notes that "the Radeon 4x000 graphics cards appear to promise a fuller melding of 7.1 LPCM and high-definition video in their circuitry through a single HDMI output, but they aren’t due to hit the market until around the same time, perhaps as early as late summer."
Then, on the same day, you release another article that talks about the 4850. Is this not the same card you're talking about in the HD audio article as being a potential solution?

I would have liked to have seen something about audio capabilities in the article, even as a footnote or addendum. Then again, given the high temperature, noise and power consumption, this card doesn't look very good for HTPC use anyway.

 

[dirtmountain]

I have a tough time understanding criticism of Tom's because they honored a NDA that ATI imposed. Just because other sites reviewed without disclosing key information or broke the NDA agreement shouldn't be a reason to badmouth this review. Is this review perfect? Nope. Is this review the be all and end all of 4850 reviews? Nope. If you think you can do better, then do your own and post it here. We're all awaiting with bated breath your leet 4850/4870 reviews. btw please include all the various info, resolution sizes, CPU factoids and every other niggling bit of information that everyone and their brother wants or they'll call you in the pocket of Nvidia or ATI or AMD or Intel. Good luck.

 

[Guest]

What about "Cuda" like tests?
Does ATI has something equivalent?

Thanks for the lovely review.

 

[homerdog]

I have a tough time understanding criticism of Tom's because they honored a NDA that ATI imposed. Just because other sites reviewed without disclosing key information or broke the NDA agreement shouldn't be a reason to badmouth this review. Is this review perfect? Nope. Is this review the be all and end all of 4850 reviews? Nope. If you think you can do better, then do your own and post it here. We're all awaiting with bated breath your leet 4850/4870 reviews. btw please include all the various info, resolution sizes, CPU factoids and every other niggling bit of information that everyone and their brother wants or they'll call you in the pocket of Nvidia or ATI or AMD or Intel. Good luck.

The NDA is off and the high quality reviews from the major sites are out. These two come to mind right off the bat:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990

 

[homerdog]

What about "Cuda" like tests?
Does ATI has something equivalent?

Thanks for the lovely review.

AMD is pushing OpenCL, but from what I hear CUDA is a lot easier to use at this point in time.

 

[spearhead]

the radeon 4870 is out and its a pretty powerfull product. its price is just even a lower then that of the 3870x2 yet it uses less power and has atleast 5% more power in benchmarks and in crossfire it out preforms one very expansive gtx 280 by a good margin also for the price of one gtx 280 you will have 2 of those babys in crossfire all by all it whoops nvidias competition away in this price sigment. yet if you seek ultimate maximum power and you dont mind to spend +1100 dollar on graphic cards and also dont care for your power bill then the gtx 280 in sli would be your option.

 

[caamsa]

Well I installed my Asus 4850 just a little while ago and yes this sucker runs hot. 76C at idle. I think I will remove the cooler and try some AS to see if it lowers the temps. Well it runs very quiet. I think it is quieter than my 7950GT which was very quiet. My system is practically silent now.

 

[homerdog]

Let us know how that works out Ishmael

 

[jokinawa]

[citation][nom]Malovane[/nom]No offense, Fedy Abi-Chahla and Florian Charpentier, and thanks for the hard work, but I think the article should be revised a bit. First off, this should be a review of graphics cards.. not a burned out overclocked Asus motherboard. If you attribute your 4850 test crashing due to your motherboard.. why throw in results of 0 across the board for the 4850? You just corrupted your data and made the final fps averages meaningless, which is the thing people were generally interested in. Secondly, why in the world are you including tests that don't fit the definition of "playable" on any card in your test lineup (Crysis 2560x1600). It just throws off averages, as people aren't going to run this game at 7fps! If there's no card in the lineup that gets close to 30fps in a certain test, just move on! Save it for the quad crossfire or triple sli tests or something. You're giving high weights to resolutions that only a fraction of a percentage point of dedicated gamers can utilize (and those wouldn't bother with a single GPU). Lastly, please get those annoying gigantonormous screenies out of the review. It makes the review look like it was done by kindergarteners.[/citation]

They attributed it to the Factory Overclocked Asus 4850 not their motherboard.