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

Palit HD4850 Sonic

Package

This time the bundle includes two different adapters, one DVI->HDMI and one DVI->VGA, a 6-pin ->8-pin power adapter, a driver CD, and a small guide and of course the card itself. The power-adapter really is a requirement, as this HD4850-card features an upgraded power circuitry that has an 8-pin connector.

Once again the front side of the card is dominated by a large heatsink that eats up two slots from your case. Unlike the Sapphire and Gigabyte cards, Palit has an even larger heatsink that covers the card a little bit more. Despite the large size, the heatsink does not cool the memory modules. The PCB is actually just about completely redesigned as while the power management circuitry is beefed up, the card is actually slightly shorter than the reference HD4850 cards.

Palit has clocked the GPU-core to 685 MHz from the reference speed of 625 MHz and the memory is clocked at 2000 MHz which is slightly faster than the reference card.

Here you can see the cooler a bit better. The heatsink uses two heatpipes and a large aluminum heatsink that should be able to deal with the heat generated by the overclocked GPU-chip. On the right is a closer shot of the 8-pin power plug and the improved power circuitry.

Overclocking

After seeing the large heatsink I had high hopes for this card. After working on it for a while, I got it running nice and stable at 750 MHz on the core and 1125 MHz for the memory.

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