Indeed today we are looking at the Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics card from Sapphire. Odds are that when you think ATI you think Sapphire as they are the number one maker of graphics cards for ATI. The Radeon HD 4850 is based upon the same RV770 chipset as also used on the faster Radeon HD 4870, but comes at lower clock settings. Sapphire is ver well known and actually the best partner of ATI to bring their graphics solution on the market. With the Radeon HD 4800 series they are ready to take on NVIDIA and this with a price tag that is really going to make some difference. And this is actually the new policy at ATI, great products with good gaming performance at nice pricing. - XtremeComputing

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Reference Cooling Review

The Radeon HD 4850's box is pretty sedated in terms of colors and CGI work on the box, but we like it. Some manufacturers tend to go all out with glaring colors and lots of futuristic CGI on the box, but we think the understated works a lot better. There are plenty of stickers on this box proclaiming all of its features and added bonus items. As the bundle is all that separates cards of the same model, it doesn't do any harm to shout about these features on the box. The back of the box has all of the card's main features, and a blurb about why the card is so good. The design works really well and isn't too cramped or overcrowded.

Opening the brown cardboard box we can find the included bundle sat on top of a foam cushion protecting the graphics card below it. Underneath the foam cushion the Radeon HD 4850 sits snugly in an anti-static bubble wrap bag, which is yet more protection for the card. The back of the card is empty apart from resistors and things but those are pretty jam packed on the board. The cooler for the card is only a single slot solution, so is bound to be rather noisy and potentially rather hot. ATI thinks that it is hot enough to require a warning sticker so that you are less likely to touch it and potentially burn yourself.

ATI have done very well with the Radeon HD 4850 and Sapphire has done just as well with the implementation of the card and bundle. Sapphire's Radeon HD 4850 can be found for around $150 online which while not the cheapest Radeon HD 4850 card is one of the lower priced versions out there. When combined with the decent bundle of parts and software it makes this good value for money. When we first saw the Radeon HD 4850 we were worried that the single slot cooler would be very loud and whiny, but actually using it we found it to be very quiet indeed. In actual fact it was so quiet we wondered if something was up with it.

ATI have said that this is normal behaviour for the Radeon HD 4850 and will work fine like this, but for our peace of mind we want the fan to run a little faster. There is in fact a way to manually set the fan speed through the Catalyst drivers, so Google around if you are worried about the high temps. The Radeon HD 4850 is set to play against NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX+ in the graphics card market and does so very admirably. While the GeForce 9800 GTX+ edition does just edge out the Radeon HD 4850 in overall game performance, the Radeon HD 4850 is at least $35 cheaper, which is a tidy little saving.