HD4850 Roundup Four cards that break the mold Gainward  Gigabyte Sapphire   Palit

Author: Toni Siik Published: 17.11.2008 Product Group: GFX cards In English Suomeksi

Sapphire HD4850 Toxic

Package

Despite the small size of the box, Sapphire has crammed in a formidable bundle. In addition to the card, the bundle includes a power adapter, adapters for VGA, HDMI, component and composite, a driver CD, AMDs Ruby ROM, Cyberlink DVD Suite, PowerDVD and Futuremarks Vantage Advanced installation CDs.

Now that we've gotten the card out of the box we can start examining it a bit closer. The card itself differs from the reference design as the PCB is Sapphires own. The PCB seems fairly simple as the front of the board has very few components. The back however looks pretty much the same as every other card.

The reference cooler of the HD4850 series has been widely critisized, as the temperature of the GPU have been really high. Especially when compared with older GPU-generations and cards. The main reason for the high temperatures is the fact that AMD has wanted to keep the cards quiet. Now that we've started to see more and more non-reference cards on the market, the manufacturers have replaced the reference cooler with 3rd-party solutions. Sapphire has chosen to use the Zalman VF-900 on their Toxic-series HD4850. The improved cooling has allowed Sapphire to clock the core higher than the reference card. The GPU clocks in at 675 MHz when the reference cards have a clock speed of 625 MHz.

In addition to the GPU-cooler, Sapphire uses some Zalman memory heatsinks to keep the memory chips nice and cool. This additional cooling might actually be needed, as this card has some of the highest clocked memories on any HD4850 card. While the reference cards memories run at 1986 MHz, the Sapphire runs at 2200 MHz.

Overclocking

After messing around with this card for a while, the GPU was running at 730 MHz and the memories at 1200 MHz (2400 MHz effectively) nice and stable.

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