HD4850 Vs. 9800GTX w/AA, review inside .

wonder how well these 4850s will overclock...gah I cannot wait

wolf2009 said:

if anyone wants to buy this card below MSRP for $189 , look here Sapphire 4850

The vendor is reputable.

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Nice link, I checked this morning, they had 0 pieces. Just checked again, about 10:40CST and they have 22 pieces now.

Still debating, can't decide between these cards:

9800GTX - XfX $244.99 /w rebate $214.99 Tigerdirect
8800GTS - ECS $209 /w rebate $159 Newegg
HD4850 - Sapphire $189 FXcards

I'm only going from a 9600GT, but damn I am tired of using an underclocked 9600GT because of the Blackscreen OCP.

Might have to wait a bit longer for all the cards to be out then see if there's any good deals.

yogurt_21 said:

price/performance ie 200$/performance index vs the 8800gt's 170$/performance index. thus far the 4850 easily has a better ratio.

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I have seen plenty of GTs below $150, a pair or three as low as $120 after rebate. That's what I was saying not $170.

EDIT: And actually, it seems you can have a HD4850 for $189. 8800 GT below $150 has still a quite better perf/price ratio. That being said, I would take the Radeon any day.

yeah just took a look at the egg and they're averaging 150-160 prior to mail in. so it seems the 8800gt remains the price/performance king lol. wow a full gen later and still kicking.

This seems to confirm it, IMO:

wolf2009 said:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/724-1/preview-ati-radeon-hd-4850.html


looking at the AA charts, it looks like the AA hit has been fixed on the 4800's finally and it seems to solidly beat the 3870X2 and even beats the GTX260 w/ AA in some games. All at $199 wow.

Plz leave a thx if u found this post helpful .

EDIT : if anyone wants to buy this card below MSRP for $189 , look here Sapphire 4850

The vendor is reputable.

Click to expand...

4850 and 9800 GTX are really close, with the nVidia card very slightly ahead.

Now, notice what happens when you increase the details @ the same resolution:



The 9800 GTX loses by nearly 14%: quite significant, IMO.


And now, in an even higher resolution:




In here, the GTX is losing by just 5.4%: a small lead for the 4850 card.

Now, notice what happens when you increase the details @ the same resolution:



The 9800 GTX loses by a whopping 41.7%: WOW doesn't quite cover it, really!



I had posted this (modified it slightly, for this thread) in here (post #39).

Anyway after seeing the later reviews I can't help but think that this generation (at least right now) is better to Crossfire/SLI a pair of 3850s / 3870s / 9600GTs / 8800GTs than buying any of the new cards, from the pure perf/price point. A direct consecuence of the great improvements on multi-GPU configuration by both camps for sure. Funny how a new generation of cards has to come out for us to be able to see that multi-GPU scaling was NOT the problem after all.

up next: OC'd 4850 VS OC'd 9800GTX?

I wanty the 4850. I think i am going to wait till i get the money for one of them... looks to be a sick card

HTC said:

4850 and 9800 GTX are really close, with the nVidia card very slightly ahead.

Now, notice what happens when you increase the details @ the same resolution:

The 9800 GTX loses by nearly 14%: quite significant, IMO.


And now, in an even higher resolution:

In here, the GTX is losing by just 5.4%: a small lead for the 4850 card.

Now, notice what happens when you increase the details @ the same resolution:

The 9800 GTX loses by a whopping 41.7%: WOW doesn't quite cover it, really!



I had posted this (modified it slightly, for this thread) in here (post #39).

Click to expand...

That already happened with HD3000 cards and frankly is a good achievement. But going above 4x is pointless. At 1600/1920 x 1200 even 4x is kind of innecesary, 2x is enough to make dissapear the more pronounced edges when they change their position slightly (when they are more noticeable). I know there's people who would claim they can see the difference up to 16x @2560x1600 while they are playing COD4 MP and that they find annoying anything below that when they are gaming. The point is 99% of people won't, and it's those people who will pay for the cards. I just prepare the ground before the possible responses.

Ninkobwi said:

up next: OC'd 4850 VS OC'd 9800GTX?

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That would be of interest. Wonder if / when such bench will emerge ...

Well looking at wizards review the 4850 only overclocked 9% which he believes may be because the higher binned chips are going into the 4870.

HTC said:

That would be of interest. Wonder if / when such bench will emerge ...

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Hmm that scenario doesn't look very promising for the Radeon card I fear. Wizz couldn't take more than 675 Mhz (8% overclock) out of the card.

EDIT: magibeg beat me to it.

DarkMatter said:

Hmm that scenario doesn't look very promising for the Radeon card I fear. Wizz couldn't take more than 675 Mhz (8% overclock) out of the card.

EDIT: magibeg beat me to it.

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Maybe a better cooler can help?

HTC said:

Maybe a better cooler can help?

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Sure. But low OC on stock cooler is not a good symptom to begin with. And Ati stock coolers are usually very good ones. I dunno, I hope non reference cards OC better for the sake of competition.

DarkMatter said:

Sure. But low OC on stock cooler is not a good symptom to begin with. And Ati stock coolers are usually very good ones. I dunno, I hope non reference cards OC better for the sake of competition.

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Signed!

OC is a hobby, not a must, they provide the cooler as a stock unit to keep prices down, but from looks of it the 4850 is far more powerful yet probably occupies the same Thermal Dynamics of the Older Part.

UPDATED FIGURES

OK, final results of summary scores from 34 sources:



Results of ATI vs. ATI

1./ 4850 is 31.9% faster than 3870 when scaling to a high resolution with low shader demand (Hardware.fr at 1920x1200)
2./ About 45.5% faster than 3870 at über resolutions like Apple Cinema 30" (Erenumerique.fr at 2560x1600)
3./ About 48.1% faster than 3870 at common resolutions with low shader demand (TPU at 1600x1200)
4./ About 64.8% faster than 3870 at common resolutions with high shader demand (Computerbase.de 1600x1200).

Conclusion

A. 4870 SOLVES the performance brick wall that hit 3870 at 1600x1200 when scaling shaders
B. 4870 improves but doesnt solve performance scaling to very high resolutions e.g. 1920x1200 and above

Results of nVidia vs. nVidia

1./ Across all benchmarks 8800GTX and 9800GTX are identical (although some differences in any one test)
2./ GTX280 is 60.0% faster on average than 8800GTX/9800GTX

Results of ATI vs. nVidia

1./ 4850 is faster than 8800/9800 by 4.9% on average
2./ GTX280 remains king by a lead of 50.8% over 4850
3./ At über resolutions 2560x1600 GTX280 is 70% faster than 4850

Conclusion ATI vs. nVidia
A. With GTX280>4850 by 50.8% and 4850>3870 by 45.5% then GTX280 is approximately "one generation ahead" in performance terms over 4850
B. With price point of $199 for 4850, nVidia need to get 8800/9800 down to $199 pretty fast or everyone (in the know) will move over to ATI
C. The GTX280 is simply an amazing performer in every case, even more so at über resolutions like Cinema 30"

***
.xls attached for anyone that wants to play with the figures

lemonadesoda said:

1./ 4850 is faster than 8800/9800 by 7.2% on average
2./ GTX280 remains king by a lead of 44.4% over 4850

Conclusion ATI vs. nVidia
A. With GTX280>4850 by 44.4% and 4850>3870 by 48.2% then GTX280 is approximately "one generation ahead" in performance terms over 4850
.xls attached for anyone that wants to play with the figures

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nota bad synopsis but you forget one thing in your generational comparison. the 4850 is the replacement for the 3850 the 4870 will be the replacemnt for the 3870

thus in order to make a generational comparison you have to compare the card against it's replacement. so in reality the 4850 is more like 60% faster than the 3850 meaning the gtx280 is not a fiull generation out from the 4850. we'll see how the 4870/gtx260 battle goes next week. that to me seems to be the more important one.

Preview : Radeon HD 4850 & GeForce 9800 GTX v2











Source: hardware.fr

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gtx280 better n' better

DarkMatter said:

That already happened with HD3000 cards and frankly is a good achievement. But going above 4x is pointless. At 1600/1920 x 1200 even 4x is kind of innecesary, 2x is enough to make dissapear the more pronounced edges when they change their position slightly (when they are more noticeable). I know there's people who would claim they can see the difference up to 16x @2560x1600 while they are playing COD4 MP and that they find annoying anything below that when they are gaming. The point is 99% of people won't, and it's those people who will pay for the cards. I just prepare the ground before the possible responses.

Click to expand...

lol see the funny thing is I remember an ati fanboy saying the same thing when the 2900xt couldn't process aa so well. imo it's a dumb argument. just because you assume *most* people wont use aa, doesn't mean they don't and turning up the pretties is the whole point of buying a new graphics card. I can play any game I want in dx9 with aa off with my 2900, if I wasn't wanting dx10 with aa I wouldn't upgrade. ATI not only fixed their aa issue, they are now beating nvidia in it and throwing that away just because you don't think the 4850 is worth it isn't a good argument, it sounds alot like the ati fanboy. and 1280x1024 with 8xaa is a popular gaming setting at which the 9800gtx loses by 14% 1600x1200 with 8x aa is less likely for the guy getting low frames, but the instant the 4850 user sees that he can game at those settings, you can bet he's going to use it. it's not a matter of what most people do because most people don't have the luxury of a card/monitor that can game at those settings and you can bet that if they did have the hardware to do it, they would.

MrHydes said:

gtx280 better n' better

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is that an actual v2 or just a 9800gtx clocked to v2 levels?

yogurt_21 said:

lol see the funny thing is I remember an ati fanboy saying the same thing when the 2900xt couldn't process aa so well. imo it's a dumb argument. just because you assume *most* people wont use aa, doesn't mean they don't and turning up the pretties is the whole point of buying a new graphics card. I can play any game I want in dx9 with aa off with my 2900, if I wasn't wanting dx10 with aa I wouldn't upgrade. ATI not only fixed their aa issue, they are now beating nvidia in it and throwing that away just because you don't think the 4850 is worth it isn't a good argument, it sounds alot like the ati fanboy. and 1280x1024 with 8xaa is a popular gaming setting at which the 9800gtx loses by 14% 1600x1200 with 8x aa is less likely for the guy getting low frames, but the instant the 4850 user sees that he can game at those settings, you can bet he's going to use it. it's not a matter of what most people do because most people don't have the luxury of a card/monitor that can game at those settings and you can bet that if they did have the hardware to do it, they would.

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I knew it will happen. 8x vs. 4x AA is not the same as 4x vs. 0x AA. 14% is not the same as 50%. Not going to say anything more.

has someone considered the load temps of HD4850 compared to 9800gtx???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

rockfella said:

has someone considered the load temps of HD4850 compared to 9800gtx???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

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yes. 4850 runs hotter. whats the problem? its probably higher quality materials otherwise ATI wouldnt consider running it that high.

Not really, we you are "comparing cards" keeping in mind generations. Compare price VS value. I dont care if i am buying a "generation card" for more or less, all i would care is erformance/price.

yogurt_21 said:

nota bad synopsis but you forget one thing in your generational comparison. the 4850 is the replacement for the 3850 the 4870 will be the replacemnt for the 3870

thus in order to make a generational comparison you have to compare the card against it's replacement. so in reality the 4850 is more like 60% faster than the 3850 meaning the gtx280 is not a fiull generation out from the 4850. we'll see how the 4870/gtx260 battle goes next week. that to me seems to be the more important one.

Click to expand...