These Dual GPU setups used to be the makings of a geeks wet dream but now they are common place among high-end gaming setups. So having a dual GPU used to mean having two cards with a bridging cable across the two cards which linked them together enabling them, theoretically at least, to work in tandem. ATI however, took a different direction and placed two GPU's on the same PCB with an on-board CrossFire chip, first seen with the previous generation Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards. The last incarnation of this format was with the range topping Radeon HD 4870 X2 monster. While upon it's release back in August it obliterated all the competition but it's Achilles heel was the price. - Overclock3D

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 Multi-GPU Style Review

At the time ATI promised a cheaper version based upon the Radeon HD 4870's sibling, the Radeon HD 4850, due for release around September but due to delays and backroom indecision on whether to ship the GPU with one or two gigabytes of memory the release date was put back. Based on a 55nm process, the RV770 core pushes the transistor count to 956 million, including 800 stream processors. Now couple this with a 256-bit memory controller, DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 support, cooled by a twin fan heatsink design all wrapped up in a sleek aluminum frame and Sapphire has a giant killer on their hands.

The outer sleeve of the packaging makes no bones of the fact that this is a full premium product. And a scantly nice clad Elvin female adorns the front of the package along with a 2GB emblem, signifying that this is indeed the 2GB model and not the cheaper 1GB model also available. The side and rear of the package go into greater detail regarding the features of the card. Removing the glossy outer sleeve and then opening the plain inner box we arrive at a well packed, foam reinforced graphics card. Underneath the main unit is yet another box containing a basic set of accessories with a copy of 3DMark Vantage included.

The product is protected by a thick anti-static bag which should stave off any damaging electricity and finally, we come to the card itself. The card itself is huge and it's also a dual slot design. Bigger than both the GeForce GTX 280 and its bigger brother, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 this card is the largest mainstream GPU on the market today. The main cooler on top is a black anodised aluminium affair which should dissipate heat much better than the plastic casing of the previous generation of X2 GPU's. The rear of the card also has an extra heatsink cooling the power circuitry which may be an issue for CrossFire configs.

Well, what can we say that the benchmarks haven't already shown. Blistering performance coupled with cool running and swish looks are the order of the day for the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2. With a competitive price tag, NVIDIA have a lot to worry about as this card beats it's current flagship model with relative ease without being too much more expensive. And well as usual, ATI and more specifically in this case Sapphire, have some driver issues to iron out. Failing to run Vantage and Crysis without throwing up a load of glitches and texture anomalies is not acceptable. We do get the feeling that this model was rushed.

While the product performs amazingly in some titles, it falls flat on its face in others. Hopefully, this will be sorted with future driver revisions. Overclocking is good for a dual card of this nature and cooling is very good, even when under load. This however, comes at a cost and is perhaps the cards biggest deficit. The noise this card produces is crazy. It will hum away happily when idle but when you fire up something a little more demanding than your favourite Internet browser, the Radeon HD 4850 X2's fans wind up to such a speed as to disrupt the space and/or time continuum and reports have been heard of dogs howling.

Well, of course it's not quite that bad but believe us it is loud, louder than almost every card on the market today. Consideration should also be made to the price, at $399, it is not far from the Radeon HD 4870 X2 territory and with the Radeon HD 4850 X2's bigger brother having mature drivers with most of it's issues now ironed out, it would be hard for us to recommend the Radeon HD 4850 X2 over that. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 simply sails through everything we threw at it with no issues at all apart from it being quite considerably slower than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 in some of the benchmarks we ran today.