Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 versions. Both cards are built around the new RV770 graphics processor. The GPU comes with a largely increased number of shaders, meaning 800 versus 320 on their previous generation. Another new feature is support for GDDR5 memory which will be included in the Radeon HD 4870 only, though not on the lower Radeon HD 4850. AMD's rendering pipeline has also evolved greatly with vast improvements to anti-aliasing performance and texturing. Another new feature is the inclusion of the new unified video decoder version which supports dual high definition streams decoding, which should accelerate the video streaming. - techPowerUp!

PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MB Graphics Review

AMD is determined to claim price to performance leadership in the $199 and $299 segments, that's where those cards are positioned. The R700 card called Radeon HD 4870 X2 will appear later this year and is supposed to fight for the performance crown. The PowerColor video card comes in the company's typical package. On the front you find the highlight specs and on the back further info in multiple languages. We found it surprising that AMD managed to engineer their card as a single slot solution, given the performance it offers. The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days.

The cooler is fairly simple compared to cards like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280. It uses a full copper design and cools all the important components on the card. The CrossFire connector is covered by a plastic cap which is slightly more useful than the covers on the DVI outputs. You can use two, three or four of these cards in CrossFireX to build an even more powerful rig. Power to the card is supplied via 6-pin power connector, and the card will not startup without power connected to it. The GDDR3 chips are made by Qimonda and are rated at 1.0ns which is pretty much what we saw during overclocking.

AMD has certainly engineered a winner with their Radeon HD 4850 series. This card, positioned in the $199 segment, reaches unprecented performance levels thanks to its excellent architectural improvements. In most benchmarks it can beat the GeForce 9800 GTX which is almost $70 more expensive. Though as we expected, AMD's RV770 GPU can not take on the GeForce GTX 280 version, but sometimes it comes really close. Due to AMD's renewed anti-aliasing design, enabling it is basically free now, so there is no reason not to use. Even though it offers lots of performance the Radeon HD 4850 graphics card is quiet.

Under load the fan ramps up but noise stays within well acceptable levels. A small tradeoff of these fan control settings is that the GPU almost reaches 100°C under load, not critically high but a few less would be better. AMD has also kept the power consumption down, the card offers one of the best performance to watt ratios on the market. Since recent price drops brought the Radeon HD 3850 down to a mere $120, and there is no way AMD can beat that card's price to performance. And on the other hand that price drop lets AMD have a very nice product stack going from lowest-end up to $199.

NVIDIA has taken measures and announced their GeForce 9800 GTX+ version today which will have higher performance at a lower price. Overall we think the Radeon HD 4850 is the best card on the market right now if you are on a limited budget, yet want to be able to play all the latest and greatest titles out there.