So many video cards, so little time to use them before the next crop comes due. ATI has a series of proven performers with the Radeon HD 4800 series of video cards, having just dropped the Radeon HD 4870 X2 performance bomb on the world. Depending on the performance level there is a card in the ATI deck to match up with the green camp and fight them on a performance per dollar platform. The question is where really do you want to spend your money? ATI or NVIDIA? The decision comes down to brand preference and feature set. The problem is that with costs going up on everything the cash you have available is shrinking on getting the most bang for your buck. - Overclockers Club

Palit Radeon HD 4850 512MB Graphics Board Review

The Palit Radeon HD 4850 is a PCI Express 2.0 compliant video card built on a 55nm manufacturing process. Sporting clock speeds of 625MHz and 1986MHz, respectively on GPU and memory the Radeon HD 4850 is equipped to challenge the green camp to see just how well the performance stacks up against the competition. The packaging of the Palit Radeon HD 4850 centers around the Frobot, dressed for battle andmore. Other mentions on the front panel include the model of the video card, the fact that it is HDCP ready, is certified for Windows Vista and can be used in CrossFireX configuration with two or more video cards.

The Palit Radeon HD 4850 graphics card built upon the RV770 GPU core. Built using a 55nm process, it sports 800 unified shaders, 956 million transistors, 512MB of GDDR3 meory running through a 256-bit memory bus. The front end of the Palit card has three connection points. There are two dual link capable DVI ports as well as the HDTV out that can be used in lieu of the DVI outputs. The rear of the Radeon HD 4850 shows off the pin fin design of the heatsink that covers the power regulation circuits as well as the required 6-pin PCI Express power connection, which we want to remind it comes with a single power.

If one card does not offer enough performance for you there is always the option to use two or more with your CrossFireX motherboard. There are two CrossFire bridge connections to link the cards together. The cooling solution used on the Palit Radeon HD 4850 is a single slot reference design cooler that at first glance appears to be copper throughout its construction. But on closer inspection it appears to be a composite piece. The Radeon HD 4850 heatsink is almost identical to the Radeon HD 3850 heatsink and indeed contributes to some of the hot running cards that have been seeing previously with this solution.

The Palit Radeon HD 4850 performed consistently just below the performance of the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870. However, it did beat out the G92 based GeForce 9800 cards in most of the testing. Against the GeForce 9800 GTX it did not fare as well, only pulling ahead in some of the benchmarks. At the stock clock speeds the Palit Radeon HD 4850 falls where it should on the performance ladder. To gain additional performance the Palit Radeon HD 4850 can be overclocked. We were able to gain an additional 50MHz on the GPU core and 166MHz on the Qimonda memory used on this card.

The GDDR3 memory is rated to perform at up to 2000MHz so this was a pretty substantial increase. The two increases helped to boost performance at all but two resolutions. Since ATI makes the fan speed uncontrollable through its own means, an additional program or two can be used to overclock the GPU and memory on this card as well as adjust the fan speeds. So you want to use the Palit Radeon HD 4850 in the nice home theatre PC you just built but you are not sure it can do the job? Well it can. The Palit Radeon HD 4850 also allows for HDCP protected content to be played through your multimedia computer.

Palit has included two different means of connecting the Radeon HD 4850 to your high definition system. If you just need more performance, the Radeon HD 4850 can be paired with another in a CrossFireX configuration. In fact, up to four cards can be connected together, with the supporting CrossFireX mainboard of course. Last but not least, is the pricing. Palit has been pretty agressive with the pricing of its video cards lately and for around $170 the Palit Radeon HD 4850 can be yours. Since power, or more correctly energy costs, the Radeon HD 4850 can help reduce the cost of running your computer.

If you don't need a top of the line video card but need one that plays games at decent quality settings, can play all of your digital content and can reduce your carbon footprint all in one shot, then the Palit Radeon HD 4850 is the card for you and comes with a very attractive price tag.