How many times do you get more than you bargained for? Sure, when you are taking a risk you can end up worse of then you started. But we are talking about the other end of the spectrum. When was the last time you went shopping for something only to realize it was on sale or it was a two for one day? It's times like these that you really feel like you got your money's worth. In the world of computing these feelings occur even less often. Not because of lack of deals or overpriced equipment but rather the pace of innovation. What is a good deal today will be next to nothing in a few months making the decision of when to buy a daunting one, and surely that won't change any time soon. - Bjorn3D

VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 512MB Cool Card Review

Today we are looking at a video card that gives you more than you bargained for at a price that is just amazing for the level of performance. The newly released VisionTek Radeon HD 4850. Performance of the big boys for the price of the little guys. We don't want to spend much time talking about the packing and such since you aren't buying this card for the pretty box it comes in. With that said we find something absolutely misleading with the packaging VisionTek has used for the Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. The box itself is rather small which is great. We were really shocked to see just how small it is.

The problem with the box are the images and text plastered all over the front. Looking at this box and reading the text on the right side the ultimate visual experience for Mass Effect would lead us to believe that this game has been bundled with the card. This is common practice for companies to adorn their boxes with logo's and characters from the bundled game. ATI has been using 55nm manufacturing process for a couple of generations now and it has yielded decent results when it comes to overclocking. Our overclocking results are only one result out of many possibilities and should not be taken as the standard.

Not too shabby on the core but look at that memory. A 130MHz increase over stock is a nice little boost and one that is sure to yield nice results. Ironically it would seem as though NVIDIA and ATI have swapped places when it comes to core speed. Where NVIDIA tended to have slower speeds on their GPU's and ATI had GPU's pushing 850MHz on the core, it is now the green team that has higher speed cores and ATI who runs with lesser speeds. Not that this is a judgment on overall performance. We feel in situations such as this it is important to separate the card from the company.

What we mean is that ATI has made a kick ass card. The kind of card that brings them right back into fight. As long as board partners don't damage the card through mishandeling it, it's hard to find fault with the card. It is a great time to involved in PC gaming and the mid-range market hasn't been this exciting in years. With its 800 stream processors and 512MB of GDDR3 memory, the Radeon HD 4850 allows you to play games with the sort of high quality settings developers have in mind when they created it. ATI has really hit a home run here and we can't say enough positive things about.

Even if you don't like ATI you have to be happy that they brought competition back. You don't believe us? Just look at the prices of the older GeForce 9800 GTX's out there. They have dropped dramatically in recent days, not to mention the rehashed GeForce 9800 GTX+. A card that owes its very creation to the ATI Radeon HD 4850. Turning to the vendor side of things, VisionTek has a great card on their hands though they don't do much to differentiate themselves from the bunch. In coming days we are going to see overclocked versions of the Radeon HD 4850 and you can expect a few of those to come with a free game.

Even if a free game isn't your thing there are plenty of vendors out there that include other items such as game pads, leather CD wallets or even vouchers for you to pick up a game of your choice. With the competition as fierce as it is we can only hope VisionTek steps up their game and sets themselves apart from the crowd. As it stands now you have a great card with a mediocre bundle.