First Review: HD 4870 and HD 4850
A closer look: HD 4850
HD 4850, the front
HD 4850, the back
GPU-Z 0.2.4 is not fully support HD 4850, can not read the card’s name
VRM covered by cooper plate. The card need one 6 pin PEG power connector.
CrossfireX siteport
RV770Pro, inside this little 55nm processing chip there is more than 956 million transistor.
Qimonda 1ns GDDR3 memory
The VRM is not complicated, just like HD 3850, two phase for the core and one phase for memory.
The stock is way too small for our hotty RV770
The fan, DC12V 0.4A
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Card Specification
Page 3: A closer look: HD 4850
Page 4: A closer look: HD 4870
Page 5: Power Consumption Test
Page 6: Temperature and OC test
Page 7: Testing setup
Page 8: 3DMark06
Page 9: 3DMark Vantage
Page 10: Quake War
Page 11: Half-life2 Episode2
Page 12: F.E.A.R Perseus Mandate
Page 13: Call of Duty 4
Page 14: Unreal Tournament 3
Page 15: BIOSHOCK
Page 16: Crysis
Page 17: World In Conflict
Page 18: Lost Planet Extreme Condition
Page 19: HD 4870 VS GTX 260
Page 20: HD 4870 VS GTX 280
Page 21: HD 4850 VS 9800GTX
Page 22: HD 4870 VS HD 4850
Page 23: HD 4870 VS HD 3870×2
Page 24: HD 4850 VS HD 3870
Page 25: Final words
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
June 24th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
[...] Read the complete review HERE. [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
[...] and bought some HD 4850 and HD 4870. After day and night busy benching, here is the review… Source. __________________ C2D Overclocking Guide For Beginners. Part 2 & 3. Troubleshooting Guide [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
From which website can i order three 4870.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Shit , Ati is loosing all GPU battles since 2002.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
As GTX 280 is nVidia top card, so its better to compare it with HD4870X2.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
[...] che expreview ha ”tradotto” la sua preview in inglese. oraalmeno si capisce …. vi rimando al LINK della [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
if this review is true. The price per performance wins here. Not to mention that ati/amd will make the 4800 series compatible with 3870’s. So unlike all you nvidia shlong lickers, we can keep our cards and beat the crap out of nvidia for ALOT cheaper!!! All I can see, is a future igp like the 780g, coupled with a 3870 x2 and a 4870 all working as one. NVIDIA can’t beat it. AMD/ATI is on its way to an evolution while Nvidia is now trying to beat out the CPU. Please. I just hope AMD/ATI can keep its pockets full.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Hassan, ati has won most GPU battles since 2002. R300>nv30, r400>nv40, g70=r520, r580>g71, g80>r600, g92>rv670, r700>G200.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:17 am
r700 is not > G200. You are comparing a 2GPU card that has not been released (and won’t be for months!) to a single GPU.
An accurate comparison will be to compare R700 to the coming GTX280gx2. Nvidia still has the performance crown.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:44 am
10% Performance crown at twice the price. (sarcasm)
June 25th, 2008 at 1:03 am
What the HELL?
97C idle 100+C load?
I am a die hard ATI fan, but there is NO WAY i am putting this heater (4870) inside my precious Pcs.
The 4850 with a zalman cooler, seems more and more to be a better choice.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Great!!! 4870 is new best-buy card of 2008!
June 25th, 2008 at 1:50 am
@PSOLORD:
The high idle temperature is becouse powerplay (power saving feature) is not working with the current driver. will probably be fixed soon.
The high load temp is just becouse the fan is not spinning very fast (becouse the chip is designed to handle the heat and this way it can be cooled more quietely) not becouse it is using much power.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:54 am
That’s not the case anymore. People at ATI confirmed today that cards in a different series cannot be crossfired.
Sorry, I wish it was true too.
But, I agree that ATI is back baby. Screw the GTX 280 for more than twice the price. If nVidia doesn’t come down on their prices, ATI will make up a lot of what they lost! My business included!
June 25th, 2008 at 2:57 am
@ martijnve
I really really hope you are right my friend. I so much want a 4870 but i am not going to get one with these thermals and that power consumption. What bothers me greatly even if this is a driver problem, is that if the card reaches 100C+ as reported by expreview at load, the new driver isn’t going to help the load temps but only the idle temps. 100C is too much even for load.
@expreview
I would also like to ask Jeff and the rest of the expreview to doublecheck if the reported temps are Celsius or Fahrenheit. Please measure again the temperature with an external laser thermometer on the back metal.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am
[...] Early benchmarks for the HD3870 are out! .and these as well… First Review: HD 4870 and HD 4850 – Expreview.com 512MB ATI HD 4870 ve 1GB GeForce 9800 GX2 Crysis Tests AMD tests 4870 and 4870CF-beats GTX260 in [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
[...] the OP with the english article: First Review: HD 4870 and HD 4850 – Expreview.com These things are going for $399+ here, not much bang for buck in that. The 4850 isn’t too bad at [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 9:21 am
If thats true about the cross fire with diffrent seris why dont oyu link it
because as far as i know they can be crossfired
June 25th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Ps guys get rivatuner and crank that fan up should bring temps down alot
June 25th, 2008 at 9:26 am
yami, go to expreview’s home page.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:32 am
umm ok ^.^ after market cooler would work too probly
June 25th, 2008 at 9:42 am
you can allways ramp up the speed of the stock cooler, if it goes to 50%, get it to 80 atleast, then you will se drop in temps, also new thermal paste can do wunders to temperatur, put some Artic Cooling MX-2 on it and it will go down atleast 10c, DO NOT put Artic Silver on it, it will kill it, why? Artic Silver got silver in it and GPU does not like that, gpus does not have heatspreders like CPUs do etc
June 25th, 2008 at 9:44 am
nice review, am wating for atleast 3 more to confirm before i buy anything from any CPU/GPU company
June 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
can Expreview confirm that the 4870 and 4850 uses same mount holes as 3870 and 3850?
if it does then any aftermarket cooler will work that supports X1800/X1900 series
June 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
[...] entre la HD 4870 y la GTX 260, de todas formas no iria por una "Force3D"… Mira en: http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/f…0-and-hd-4850/ Parece que la 260 es mejor opci
June 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am
just out of curiosity where did you get drivers for a 4870 card that will allow it to be tested in its full potential and how come a blog user gets to review the newest and most expected UNRELEASED graphic card before the big reviewer sites?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:06 am
TosheX, no clue, meybe they bought them from a store some where
the 4870 has been selling in hong kong for the past few days
have a nice 4800 series day TosheX
June 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
@TosheX,
you should read more bit of it…
the first page mentions that all those cards are bought in Hongkong.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Wow, the 4870 handles AA and AF pretty well. This is pretty good and thanks Expreview.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Could the experts of expreview (or someone else) please recommend the ultimate cooler for the 4870 ? I don’t care if it’s massive and slightly expensive.. something that is relatively quiet and does an amazing job at getting the card waaay cool!
June 25th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Does “all-setting high” mean “very high” or just “high” settings? Bit confusing.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
hasan, you’re wrong ….. ATi lose just against g80/g92 for 1,5 years, before that it was a leading company
June 25th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
@PSOLORD
it is Celsius.
@sebastien
accelero s1 is good, but i believe it is not”ultimate”
@Mur8t
just high, the very high numbers will be used at CF tests.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
David, from where did you get that “People at ATI confirmed today that cards in a different series cannot be crossfired”. Tgdaily stated that 3800 and 4800 series can be crossfired.
Reference: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38056/135/
Prove me otherwise..
June 25th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
@AboOodz,
just try yesterday, doesn’t work
June 25th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
@PSOLORD
>I so much want a 4870 but i am not going to get one with these thermals
>and that power consumption. What bothers me greatly even if this is a driver
>problem, is that if the card reaches 100C+ as reported by expreview at load,
>the new driver isn’t going to help the load temps but only the idle temps.
>100C is too much even for load.
1st, you always have alternative design coolers. Surely HIS will do smth like their great IceQ coolers. Also, Zalman coolers may come too. As to 4850s, 2-slot coolers would be fine for them.
2nd, you can bue your own cooler (Accelero?). It won’t be too much compared to GTX 260, I think.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
哇~~~原来外国的网站是这样的………………见识了~~o(∩_∩)o…呵呵
June 25th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
[...] ExPreview [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
[...] EXPreview – First Review: HD 4870 and HD 4850 [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
“An accurate comparison will be to compare R700 to the coming GTX280gx2. Nvidia still has the performance crown.”
… what crack is this guy smoking, anyway? GX2? nVidia is discontinuing their GX2 line completely. They’re not doing dual-GPU. They laugh at dual-GPU. If they say otherwise, then I’ll believe it. But right now, 280GX2… *laughs his ass off* … highly unlikely, and currently a retarded idea. 9800GX2 ‘SLI Sandwich Special’ was bad enough. Though admittedly it does perform well, it’s just so inelegant it disgusts me.
Also, for the crossfiring 4800s and 3800s… An ATi official actually said it could be done on the Game.AMD forums, but it would need Vista and it wouldn’t be any better than two of the 3800s in crossfire.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
[...] Radeon HD 4870 Edition @ MadBoxpc (español) @ AnandTech @ Hot Hardware @ Elite Bastards @ Expreview @ Fudzilla @ Ars Technica @ TweakTown @ PC Perspective @ Bjorn3D @ The Tech Report @ [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
[...] Zum Test bei Expreview [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 1:23 am
[...] Posted by n0e @ Hardware Canucks @ AnandTech @ Hot Hardware @ Elite Bastards @ Expreview @ MadBoxPC @ Ars Technica @ TweakTown @ PC Perspective @ Bjorn3D @ The Tech Report Take your pick [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 1:25 am
[...] Radeo HD4870: @ Hardware Canucks @ AnandTech @ Hot Hardware @ Elite Bastards @ Expreview @ MadBoxPC @ Ars Technica @ TweakTown @ PC Perspective @ Bjorn3D @ The Tech Report @ ExtremeTech [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Wow! awesome! only 20W lower TDP one the 4850 than the 9800GX2 /sarcasm… yeah right… nice try Expreviw… And the thermals you picked up are all f-ed up (even if they were so… it says you uses the 8.6 hotfix… the hotfix brings temps by 10oC avrage lower, so what… the card blows over 110oC with the 8.5/8.6 on load?… yeah sure.
Early reviews are always messy and/or biased/wrong in some areas…
You’d have to be a idiot, or a fanboyi(pretty much the same thing), to base anything on one review and/or absolutely no ACTUAL (unbiased) user review/conclusion…
June 26th, 2008 at 3:23 am
[...] came out for 4870, so just check them out and make your own choice. AnandTech Ars Technica Bjorn3D Expreview Hardware Canucks Hot Hardware PC Perspective The Tech Report TweakTown LEAVE A [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 3:24 am
@martijnve
Oh yes they will. Since fan-management seems to suck so much, I assume some driver changes(to increase it’s speed/efficiency) can do ALOT.
Also… alot of 4850 owners have replaced/reaplied the thermal paste on the chip/memory/heatsink… and it seemded to lower the temps by quite alot…
Heh… seems like the AIBs have been too busy building as much 4800s as they can… to pass all of them trough quality check… that such a shame…
Well… I’ll be getting a HIS/Sapphire custom cooled LATER batch of cards anyway… a 4870 that is… or maybe the X2…
Cheers!
June 26th, 2008 at 4:52 am
[...] test complet par Expreview ICI (en [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 6:26 am
[...] 4870 seems to have better VRM than the 4850. Here are some close up pics and a little more info: 4850 4870 [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 7:12 am
[...] AMD 4870 Bueno aqui les dejo una review de la 4870 realizada por expreview.com . LA PLACA GDDR5 DRAM [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 8:11 am
[...] Canucks AnandTech Hot Hardware Elite Bastards Expreview MadBoxPC Ars Technica TweakTown PC Perspective Bjorn3D The Tech Report Share and Enjoy: These [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
[...] entre todas as placas da geração mais atual já pode ser vista, o site Expreview lançou o primeiro review da Radeon [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
to mur8t:
“all-setting high” means all “high” setting
June 28th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
GTX 280 phail’d @ price : performance…
June 30th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
[...] Tralasciando questo ATI
June 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
[...] dire questa pagina ??? First Review: HD 4870 and HD 4850 – Expreview.com A questa mi riferivo infatti. La situazione mi sembra comunque regolare, solamente un po’ a [...]
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
[...] http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/f…nd-hd-4850/22/ 25% difference at stock is good enough for the extra $100,though it would be nicer if 4870 was a bit lower but since its almost as fast as a gtx260 i don’t think it would drop in prices anymore. __________________ I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned I believe you can’t appreciate real love ’til you’ve been burned I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Hasan says
“Shit , Ati is loosing all GPU battles since 2002.”
Do you even have a clue what you are babbling about? The current ATI line up looks to me to be beating the COMPETING cards in their particular range. E.G. 4870>GTX260
4850>9800GTX. Do you follow this now? Or are you going to continue to be blindly ignorant always sucking nVidia’s dirty balls?
July 4th, 2008 at 3:36 am
Hi All,
can I just say that TDP is NOT the same as power consumption! TDP (Thermal Design Power) is a value that states how much waste heat energy needs to be transported away from the GPU (or CPU). The Power consumption is the sum of (energy used for calculation + energy wasted as heat), or the energy used for calculation divided by the efficiency. Thus, the TDP will be LOWER than the power consumption, even more so in an EFFICIENT or a USELESS (ie NOT doing a lot of calculations) GPU/CPU.
Just wanted to get that clarified.
Otherwise, good review, still scared of these temps, but will make a nice BBQ!
July 8th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
[...] 4870. As of July 4th, GTX 260 has dropped to the same price as HD 4870. In fact, we found GTX 260 almost the same as HD 4870 in performance, but GTX 260 has advantages in NVIDIA’s drivers and industry [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Ok, what I wanna know, is if E6550, OCed to 3.0Ghz will bottleneck HD4870, and, if is there going to be any differences between the PCI-E 1.1 and 2.0 motherboards? If there’ll be, how big will it be?
July 10th, 2008 at 9:57 am
PCIe 1.1 x16 = 4GB/s
PCIe 2.0 x16 = 8GB/s
bottleneck issue will depend on games/applications…personally i think it is ok for current games
July 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Correct on that one Jeff, PCIe 1.1 and 2.0 was found to have no differences. Tom’s Hardware did a comprehensive test in this regards a while back.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
You complain about the AMD card reaching 100c like no Nvidia has ever done that before.
8800GTS 640 > ~130c benched in my very own rig.. (using furmark)
Fourth card to go back for RMA at the eleventh month, Nvidia just can’t make cards that won’t burn up.. 66gt, 78gt, 79gt, 88gts.. They all stopped working after about a year.
Some with after market coolers that dropped temps in half, still die like flies.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:47 am
This review is so old
September 12th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
[...] 6. Hardware Canucks 7. HotHardware 8. Rage3D 9. Computerbase (Deutsch) 10. Arstechnica 11. Expreview 12. Hardocp 13. TweakTown 14. Bjorn3D 15. PCPerspective 16. LegitReviews 17. FiringSquad 18. [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
[...] Perhaps you’d be interested in reading the first review: HD 4870 and HD 4850 [...]
December 15th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
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January 22nd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I have 2 HD4850 cards in Crossfire but don’t really know how to adjust the settings to best suit what works.
Where can I find instructions on how to familiarize myself with the features and optimize the settings, and when would I use OverClocking?
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Actually, I’m looking for the equivalent of “HD4850 Crossfire for Dummies”