We've seen NVIDIA play their high-end cards, the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280, and then ATI rocking the mainstream market with their Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870. These are all excellent cards by all means, but in different price segments. The Radeon HD 4850 is the cheapest card in this roundup and you can find it priced at $189. Today, with a little help from the Diamond Radeon HD 4850 card, we remind ourselves of what this card can do. The new RV770 based products pack almost a billion transistors and in that respect the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 are identical. The other settings however are different as well as the looks and feel, and performance delivered. - FudZilla

Diamond Radeon HD 4850 512MB Video Card Review

The new GPU is built in 55nm and brings 800 shader processors on both Radeon HD 4800 cards. Compared to the last generation, the Radeon HD 3800, its 2.5 times more shader processors, and the same goes for the texture units, where the Radeon HD 4800 packs 40 whereas Radeon HD 3800 featured 16 only. ATI and NVIDIA aren't using the same approach, so we can't compare the GPU's using shaders, but both approaches get the job done. Just like the GT200, the RV770 has ten SIMD clusters, and these have 80 shader processors per cluster, which totals at 800 whereas the GT200 has 24 per cluster.

The Diamond Radeon HD 4850 card has all the characteristics of the Radeon HD 4870, except for the speed and memory. The Radeon HD 4850 runs at 625MHz, whereas Radeon HD 4870 runs at 750MHz. The important difference between these two is memory, or memory bandwidth to be more precise. Less bandwidth coupled with slower core will definitely affect the performance, but we can't hide the fact that Radeon HD 4850 is still a great video card. Consumption wise, the Radeon HD 4850 version is also different from its big brother. The maximum consumption totals at 110W, whereas the Radeon HD 4870 will draw 160W.

The Radeon HD 4800 series brings great performance and the best bang for buck we've seen so far in the mainstream segment. Today, we've seen the Diamond Radeon HD 4850 running at reference speeds, but after seeing the results, it still managed to impress us. At a price of around $189, you simply can't find a better graphics card. Still, reference cooling is not something we liked this time, and we burned our fingers quite a few times. Still, the cooler is not too loud and keeps GPU core temperatures at maximum 85°C. The Radeon HD 4850 card runs at 625MHz and has a 512MB frame buffer running at 1986MHz effectively.

It's quite a bit slower than its bigger brother the Radeon HD 4870, but both cards feature 800 shader processors, which is 2.5 times more than the previous generation had. The anti-aliasing unit is finally running like it should so the RV770 will treat you to this graphics feature as well. The muscle in the Diamond Radeon HD 4850 is so good that you simply can't miss an opportunity to buy a $189 card that lets you play all the popular games.