About a week ago, if you listened very closely you could probably make out one big collective groan coming from all of the hardware reviewers across North America. The video card many of us have been eager to share with you was supposed to be a dirty word until today. But, alas, the non disclosure agreement, which all of us reviewers have signed, turned out to be a non-event. As it turns out some of AMD's partners, eager to cash in on the Radeon HD 4850 jumped the gun and started selling the card in Hong Kong, and then shortly thereafter, certain parts of Europe. About a week later with the official launch date finally reached, the Radeon HD 4800's made their way to the rest of us. - NeoSeeker

VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Version Review

Hardware enthusiasts can finally find all about the poorly kept secret of the Radeon HD 4800's arrival. Today, we'll take our own look at the Radeon HD 4850. You'll probably see why so many technology writers were so anxious to talk about the Radeon HD 4850, as for many it is the most exciting product launched by ATI in quite some time. It all boils down to this, the Radeon HD 4850 is a $199 card that is fast enough to keep up with any card out there. That alone is enough to whip up some serious commotion. In the broadest possible terms, the Radeon HD 4800 series were designed to appeal to the majority of gamers.

Initially the Radeon HD 4850 will sell for $199, while the Radeon HD 4870 will go for $299. This is much different than NVIDIA's strategy. For the introduction of the new GeForce GTX 2x0 series, in the broadest possible terms, NVIDIA decided to initially make the fastest video card possible that would appeal to those not scared off by a price tag of more than $500. The graphics gurus laboring at ATI's laboratories have been working with the 55nm GPU design for a relatively long time now, so they have had time to optimize. The Radeon HD 4800 series has indeed reached a new apex of efficiency.

As according to standard operating procedure, the first wave of this new generation of cards will all stay close to the reference board designs. Our VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 is no exception. Adorned with an image from a great game, the Radeon HD 4850 has a single slot cooler. While fairly long, the Radeon HD 4850 is slim, and the cooler is fairly small in comparison to some of the monsters that have been sported recently on some cards. As for the cooler design, you have a high speed fan situated fairly close to the GPU. The fan is a touchon the louder side, when running at full bore, though still within acceptable range.

The VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 ran hotter at the stock clocks than you usually find in most cases, so this time around, we were a little more cautious than normal, not wanting to damage our first Radeon HD 4850. The reference clocks are set to 625MHz for the core and 1986MHz for the memory. We started with a small overclock, and as expected, that went over well, so we worked our way higher from there. After some smooth sailing, we got a little more ambitious. But not with much luck. We reached some rather severe instability operating running 700MHz for the core, and 2240MHz for the memory.

Overall, there isn't all that much negative to say about the Radeon HD 4850, and the engineers at ATI really crafted a fine piece of work here, and they should be proud of themselves. This product must have succeeded in reaching all of their internal goals or possibly well surpassed them. The VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 is lean, slick, and a stick of dynamite in a knife fight when up against the competition. Delivering a product to the market for $199 that packs this much punch is almost shockingly refreshing. The performance levels put out by this single slot card a quite good and very inspiring for the future.

With this particular Radeon HD 4850 from VisionTek, you also get the added benefit of an extended warranty, and a toll free technical support line in case you run into any trouble. If we really had to pick flaws with this card we'd say its just a bit too hot, and consequently, not much of an overclocker. But in the face of all the good things about the VisionTek Radeon HD 4850, it easily deserves the highest of accolades.