Vision Tek 4850 review

[jimmyz]

Today we will be looking at the Visiontek HD 4850 512MB Video card.

First off I would like to thank FXvideocards for supplying me with a review unit, as you can imagine it hasn't been easy, but they never let that stop them before.

The card: Radeon HD 4850

The site: http://fxvideocards.com/

Reseller ratings (platinum): http://www.resellerratings.com/store/FxVideoCards


As you probably already know from the news and leaks around the web, this card is code named "Makedon " presumably after Terry Makedon who heads up the Catalyst driver team. This is a good omen for having driver support, as it would be a bad move to have a card named for you and have the drivers not work well. So far I have no way of confirming the shader count or rops, tmu's etc. so that info will be updated as it becomes avaiable.

First off some pictures:

The VisionTek box, My favorite part is on the back where it says Lifetime Warranty!!! They have really stepped up where most board partners have adopted the 1 YR policy of ATI.

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What's inside the box, VisionTek doesn't bundle any games or Benchmark discs nor is there any DVD trial offers like other board partners, What you do get is a clean reference design card without the often tacky stickers of the other makers. which I find to be a better look. they do however include all the connectors you would need like the DVI to HDMI adapter, as well as a component out cable. and the usual DVI to VGA adapter. Also included is the crossfirex interconnect bridge. They also Include a PCI-E power adapter plug for the cards six pin power plug.

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Now onto the card itself. If you saw the HD3850 reference design this should look familiar to you, it is essentially the same card with a slightly different cooler,( and of course a truckload more power). It comes with UVD-2 the second generation on-chip video decoder.

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On to the back, again pretty familiar stuff here nothing earthshaking, It does BTW use the same mounting pattern as the reference 3850 so most coolers should fit fine

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Now onto the pron...lol here is the obligatory Die shot. The actually quite large chip is once again surrounded by a shield but this one looks to pose no issues with most coolers I have seen, the possible exceptions being the full cover waterblocks, but as the layout is very similar they may possible fit with some slight modification or with little contact on some ramchips.( which shouldn't affect performance)



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The main difference between the 3850 and 4850 visually is this vent which exits the side. to allow better airflow. instead of just bouncing the hot air off of the i/o plate.

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The sticker of course, and this is also the area that hide the volt mod...more on that in the overclocking section or you can look here http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=190990


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[jimmyz]

been hard pressed for time today, and internet has been going out along with the power. here is the first round in vista 64 ultimate.

Test rig:
QX9650 @4ghz for all of the non o.c runs.
4gb Patriot Viper 8500 ram. @ 960 5-5-5-12 all runs
DFI LP X38T2R running the chip @10 x400mhz for 4ghz
4 Seagate Hdds in Raid 0 dual booting XP PRO and Vista 64 ultimate.
Drivers show as 8.5 in ccc 3d driver is irect3D Version 6.14.10.0590


Some notes before the testing. The fan speed very low on the factory bios, I haven't been able to use any fan control to raise the speed so far. The temp is most likely fine even with an Idle of 79c but Being an XS'er I removed the factory thermal goop and replaced it with A.S. Ceramique. the idle temps are now 55c most of the time. That was a huge jump and I wonder if all of the cards suffer from this as I have seen rumors of other 4850's with similar temps (IE: FUD).
The card makes no capacitor squealing noise even during ATI TOOL scanning. I also ran 3d01 which makes most cards squeal if they are going to, not a peep out of it.
During testing I have noticedThis card seems very smooth. VPU recover works perfectly and the overclocking seems very rewarding. clock speed seems to play a huge role in performance of this card.

First up vantage.

performance setting.

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Xtreme setting.

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05 Default run.

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06 Default run.

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Call of Juarez basic default 1280x 1024 low details etc.

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Call of Juarez 1920 x1200 default settings.

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call of juarez 1920 x 1200 4 x AA default settings.

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As you can see it seems to scale well with the high resolution, I still can't get Crysis to run the proper bench, it keeps starting the game instead, any ideas?

[jimmyz]

Finally some XP testing. I use service pack 3 on XP media center 2005, Basically XP Pro.

I had immense problems with crysis benchmark utilities on 64 bit ultimate. the bench app would start the game at the july 7 screen and proceed to be the game not the beach flyover that it should be. I re-installed twice, both the game and applications as well as the patch. also tried without the patch. any advice is welcome. On XP it runs fine though so lets see how it fares.


1680 x 1050 no aa high settings card stock

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1680 x 1050 4x aa high settings card stock

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1900 x 1200 no aa high settings card stock

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1900 x 1200 4 x aa high settings card stock

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On to the synthetic tests.

3DMark 06 stock gpu.
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3DMark 05 stock gpu.

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3DMark 03 stock gpu.

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Lightsmark 2007 for this I used the stock setting when bench is opened. as I have with my other cards. big improvements in this bench.

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These runs at 3240 Mhz on the cpu. including custom config runs.

A member ask me to post a comparison with his rig. so this is for Kai. But I figured the rest of you might like a lower cpu run or two. these also are at 1400 x 960 so that might be of use to some also. this represents a midrange rig a little better.

3240 360 x 9 baseline no aa

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same but with 4 x aa

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custom config no aa

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custom 4 x aa

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same but with a decent oc, still under CCC control unfortunately
It ran through 2 1/2 loops at 700/1138 but would lock. (vpu recover FTW). and i dropped it to 685/1100 and all was good again. I figured this would be a good place to start my overclocking area as well.

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[jimmyz]

Overclocking section.

First off let me say the card runs hot. the default fan speeds are very low. while this is fine at stock settings for the overclocking I used a 80mm fan covering the fan hole on the card, only because there is no utility to increase the fan in software, and I don't feel like modding the wiring any more. temperature fluctuates badly at idle, some times 60c sometimes 70c.

There is still no utilities for overclocking except for catalyst control center which tops out at 700 on the core. it allows up to 1200 on the memory but the highest I could push so far (un-modded) is 1133 wich seems to be fully stable.



W1zzard worked very hard to get GPU-Z updated to include detection of 4850 GPU's. and I am Glad to say it seems to work fine.
I had no idea there was so much effort that goes into developing these utilities. He deserves all of our thanks for the hard work he puts in to his utilities.


[IMG][/IMG]


K404 has a volt mod thread and I was the tester. results on second page for now. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=190990


Here is some 01 action, cpu clocked at 4.0 on this one.

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03 at 4.8ghz and card clocked up.

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06 at 4ghz card at 700 /1100

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05 at 4ghz ...23k done

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ONE last shot of the weekend, more to come of course when I can overclock the card properly. but this looks promising 25k single card 05 run in Vista 64 ultimate!!

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[DarkDisciple]

GL on the tests! Cant wait to see how it compares to 8800 Ultra, 3870x2, whatever else.

[GoldenTiger]

Woooo!

[Miwo]

vmods eh? Please give details on what to do! Subscribed

[Knight]

vmods eh? Please give details on what to do! Subscribed

Look here.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...29#post3059729

[OCZ«]

During the test, temps would be nice to see too...soo...

[BRiT]

Care to provide measurements of the GPU die? Or provide a closer shot of the die with some sort of scale near it? It certainly looks larger than the rumored size of 276mm^2.

[Eniqmah]

Thanks for putting this up. Can't wait. Would love to know if Accelero S1 Rev 2 would fit. If you need one, I will send it.

[w0mbat]

How many SPs u got on this one?

[WrigleyVillain]

Sweet Jim! Looking forward to the results...

[LaMpiR]

Looking forward to reading this

[zerazax]

Can't wait to read this!

And yeah, a measurement of the actual chip would be nice if at all possible.. that thing looks huge compared to the RV670

[MomijiTMO]

Woohoo. Keep us updated

[mascaras]

http://fxvideocards.com/VisionTek-Ra...0-p-16381.html

800SP .............



waiting for results



regards

[vengance_01]

Nice. If ATI can get numbers close to an 9800GTX, then people will buy these cards. Single slot and low heat.

[msgclb]

Wow, this card has a memory bandwidth of 55nm!

[demonkevy666]

Wow, this card has a memory bandwidth of 55nm!

lol

55 the rest seem ok.

that the real SP count for a 4850?

I wonder is the 4870 will have a 1,000 then maybe.

[conzymaher]

^ Nicely spotted

The 4850 is going to be the best bang for buck card in years! I'm going to stick a HR03 on it and hopefully it will approach / surpass 4870 core speeds and probably beat DDR3 versions of the 4870 \o/

[LaMpiR]

How would 4850 compare to current 9800GtX? I have 8800GTS 320MB and I want to update. Maybe I should wait for official benchmarks beetwen GTX200 and 48xx series

[G0ldBr1ck]

Im realy starting to think that this was real all along. Especialy considering how big AMD is on the whole Flops messurment in there marketing this round.

[LaMpiR]

I'm just glad that AMD will have chance to fight Nvidia in Hign-end graphic market.

[conzymaher]

Im realy starting to think that this was real all along. Especialy considering how big AMD is on the whole Flops messurment in there marketing this round.

exactly, doesn't the whole Teraflop marketing campaign prove that is has 800SP?!

1Teraflop = 800 shaders X 2 flops per unit X 625mhz
1Teraflop = 480 shaders X 2 flops per unit X 1040mhz!!!

And it sure as hell is not clocked at 1ghz +