ATI Radeon HD 4850 Versus NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+

[Apoptosis]

It's tough to review 'real product' as the 4850 wasn't available online when our review was posted and as you know the 9800 GTX+ isn't coming out till mid July. =

In this article I listed it as $199-$229 as that is the MSRP of each card and at the time of writing no online pricing in the US was available. As for the comment on PhysX people that have read LR know that my card sat in the closet for well over a year and to me it didn't seem worth taking up a slot and using 30W of power for what it did in games. Now that this technology can be had with a video card it is a 'freebie' and I do think it will start to become more popular. Consumers that have a GeForce 8 series card or newer will essentially get PhysX for free and free works... People are going to try it out and since all (most discrete) NVIDIA GPU's coming out will support it game developers are sure to include more Phyiscs now than in the past.

As for DirectX 10.1 marketing stink... I know what you mean and I just saw a Sega presentation on a great new game title using DirectX 10.1... Sega repeated that over and over, then said they couldn't say the game title... Lame

Paper launches happen all the time and it's just part of the industry... You either choose not to review them or choose to... 90% of the reviews you read are using engineering samples, pre-production samples or product that was hand built or built in-house. For example many of ATI's first cards are made in Canada... The first few hundred review cards they send out are from Canada using early silicon... They don't say made in china on the back - btw... This cards are going to perform different than later silicon ones made in China and then shipped over, but no on says anything to that.

An example on how things change is this one from NVIDIA about board power on the 9800 GTX... The original card we and everyone else benchmarked was 156W - If you grab one off the manufacturing line today it is only 142W... NVIDIA made their card 9% more efficient and didn't say a word about it to anyone. They aren't going to send out new review samples or and the bulk of review sites aren't going to update or note this in the power consumption charts. Basically, the point i'm trying to get across is that in this industry nothing can or will be 100% spot on. Things simply change too fast and with Legit Reviews we try to bring the best coverage of new products with as much info as quickly as possible. It is tough, but I think the crew here at LR do a great job.

[aircommando13]

does this mean that the 9800 GT/S will be 55nm too?

[wiak]

1. 4850 was selling over a week before it was released, the 9800 GTX+ isnt even in stores or will be in the next weeks.
2. the drivers are to old,the Catalyst 8.6 gave hexus alot better scores, even a 4800 hotfix is out, check http://support.ati.com
3. PhysX is pointless, it invalidate the 3dmark vantage scores as ati does not have that, and well not many games has PhysX support, now that NVIDIA owns Ageia

anyway its a good review
but i would like to see a catalyst 8.6 review ;)

to the people, Don't just read ONE review but alteast 3

[DMB2000uk]

1. 4850 was selling over a week before it was released, the 9800 GTX+ isnt even in stores or will be in the next weeks.
2. the drivers are to old,the Catalyst 8.6 gave hexus alot better scores, even a 4800 hotfix is out, check http://support.ati.com
3. PhysX is pointless, it invalidate the 3dmark vantage scores as ati does not have that, and well not many games has PhysX support, now that NVIDIA owns Ageia

anyway its a good review
but i would like to see a catalyst 8.6 review ;)

to the people, Don't just read ONE review but alteast 3

Welcome to Legit Reviews ^_^

ATI's release date was broken by retailers who for whatever reason decided to start selling these cards even though ATI was not ready for them to be sold, so that is why the cards were available before they should have been. If Nvidia want to 'release' a product without general availability it's their choice, if LR have the choice to benchmark these paper launch products then odds are they will review them, as otherwise readers would just go elsewhere to find out.

The 4850 was actually benchmarked with the 8.6 drivers, but due to the nature of the brought forward launch, there wasn't enough time available to retest every ATI card with the 8.6 drivers. I'm sure if you stick around for long enough the whole scoreset will be updated to the latest driver (in a different video card review), but there are still too many product launches in the near future to dedicate that time just for a refresher 4850 review with restesting them all at the 8.6 driver level.

PhysX may well be pointless in it's current state, but like apoptosis said now that it has the support base, developers are more likely to take it seriously and start implementing it in their games. As for the Vantage scoring, it's messed up and I agree, but you only have futuremark to blame for that.

I also agree that you should always find out as much as you can about new products if you are interested in buying them, and reading reviews from multiple places is a great way to do that.

Dan

[aircommando13]

Physx isn't pointless, if nothing else it at least frees up cpu usage, on vantage the score nearly tripled. As far as performance, we'll just have to wait and see. GRAW looked pretty good with it a while back, but games shouldn't be built around graphics engines, it should be the other way around.

[Apoptosis]

1. 4850 was selling over a week before it was released, the 9800 GTX+ isnt even in stores or will be in the next weeks.
2. the drivers are to old,the Catalyst 8.6 gave hexus alot better scores, even a 4800 hotfix is out, check http://support.ati.com
3. PhysX is pointless, it invalidate the 3dmark vantage scores as ati does not have that, and well not many games has PhysX support, now that NVIDIA owns Ageia

anyway its a good review
but i would like to see a catalyst 8.6 review ;)

to the people, Don't just read ONE review but alteast 3

Welcome to the forums...

1) I didn't see it on any major US retailers...
2) The drivers are not old... The hotfix doesn't apply to the divers we benchmarked with. I checked with Terry (The Driver) Makedon while he is out of the country and he wrote me back today and said this:

that "hotfix" is the press driver. You should use the press driver that (xxxREMOVEDxxx) provided on FTP (and if you dont have that info, just get the public hotfix, its the same thing)

So, our driver on the 4850 was spot on...

3) PhysX isn't totally pointless - check out the list of some of the PhysX supporting games here - http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_physxgames_home.html With many more in the works GeForce owners will be able to enable Physics in 200-300 games very shortly.

[Apoptosis]

Just an update for all out forum members on what I have been doing on my Sunday... Benchmark ATI video cards! I'm finished testing the Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire and have been running the Radeon HD 3870 with the new 8.6 CATALYST drivers that a number people have been wanting to see...

Here is the test system running 8.6 drivers:

ati_86.jpg (78.31 KiB) Viewed 5026 times

Also here is a sneak peak with the Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire... Not going to make all the charts up since I can't include the Radeon HD 4870 since it is still under the gag order.

3dmark_vantageo.jpg (61.21 KiB) Viewed 5022 times

3dmark_vantage.jpg (54.54 KiB) Viewed 5026 times

As you can tell the Radeon HD 4850's are quick in CrossFire! They are able to pass up the GeForce GTX 280, including our $879 overclocked and water cooled EVGA Hydro Copper 16 card! Not bad considering a pair of Radeon HD 4850's run $340 for the set after rebate!

[aircommando13]

dang, I might have to get a crossfire mobo now, was planning on getting a GTX 260

[wiak]

the vantage PhysX scores are invalid according to Futuremark 3dmark Vantage Driver Approval Policy
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... 3dmark-177
NVIDIA is naugty

Good to see some more benchys of 4850s
keep up the good work , the 4850 crossfire does look good