4850 Love Thread

I just can't contain myself anymore. I bought a Visiontek 4850 card a couple of months ago. It was mostly an impulse buy and even though this is a ridiculously powerful card at an insanely low price I really broke my budget to get the $160 it set me back. I had to sneak it in the house because I couldn't justify spending that kind of money to replace a card that still worked just fine. Normally I am prone to buyers remorse, but this impulse buy has been WONDERFUL. If you want to update your system on a budget the 4850 is an amazing performer. I'm so in love with this card.

I can't think of a computer hardware purchase that has ever made me this happy. It bought my aging (socket 939) system a new lease on life. Really this card just puts a HUGE smile on my face. It runs Fallout 3 at 1600*1200 Ultra high settings and everything maxed. My system is basically 3 year old tech and I can still play new AAA titles at higher graphical settings (comparatively) than I ever have in my gaming career up to now.

I've always bought mid-range cards (ATI 9700, Nvidia 6600GT, ATI X1950Pro, ATI 4850). I usually buy a bargain mid-range card. I spent LESS on the 4850 than I have any other video card on a game machine and it blows everything else out of the water. I know the 8800GT (512) has a lot of fans for its price/performance niche, but I'm sure the 4850 sets the bar even higher.

Anyway, I just had to rhapsodize a bit. I spent $160 on a card for a 2.5 year old machine and suddenly I can play the latest AAA title at ultra settings. Woot!

Can you smack me a link to it so I can check it out.

My 939 board is still AGP. The Radeon HD 3850 AGP by Sapphire Technologies breathed whole new life into it, so I totally understand your feelings in this post.

Oso wrote:

I know the 8800GT (512) has a lot of fans for its price/performance niche, but I'm sure the 4850 sets the bar even higher

8800 GT and 4850 isn't really a meaningful comparison, as the former is an older product that's not in production any longer.

However, the direct competitor to the 4850 is the 9800 GTX. And the benchmarks between the two are extremely close. So are the prices, though you can do a bit better with the 9800 GTX right now at NewEgg ($148 for the eVGA 9800 GTX versus $160 for the cheapest 4850).

Both are standing on the shoulders of the 8800 GT. Nothing was even in the same league in terms of price/performance when it came out. It completely changed the ballgame, and all of these new fast midrange cards are a result of that.

ATI really came back strong with the 4850 and 4870. Nvidia had to come down in price a bit to even up.

Yep, I bought a Palit 4850 Sonic a couple of months ago and while it was seriously underutilized with my 3800+ X2, my new Core 2 Quad is pushing it and it is fantastic. The 48xx series is much closer to the 9800 than the 8800 and the 4870 is close in performance to a 9800x2 while the 4870x2 is only slightly shy of a NVIDIA GTX 280. I was able to play Crysis Warhead at 1680x1050 with everything on Gamer with this card and it ran very well. Fallout 3 never dips and with the new hotfix drivers, Far Cry 2 runs like butter maxed out as well. I don't think ATI can save AMD from the death spiral they're in right now but I was really happy to see them come back and give NVIDIA the competition they most definitely deserve.

*Legion* wrote:

8800 GT and 4850 isn't really a meaningful comparison, as the former is an older product that's not in production any longer.

Absolutely. I don't mean to compare their head to head performance. I just want to point to how both of the cards offered breakthrough performance at a mid-range price point. Previous mid-range cards were much less powerful compared to the top end cards of their day. I point to the 4850 as being a step forward because it offers (comparatively) higher performance for a (comparatively) lower price point than the 8800GT did on its release.

The 8800GT was an amazing card for the price and will be remembered with fondness by many gamers. I'm just amazed that the 4850 managed to raise the bar in how close one can get to top of the line performance for under $200.

ATI is doing a good job with its drivers these days, too. I actually prefer them to NVidia's. It felt like the NV driver team was in real disarray for quite awhile, shipping lots of bugs, and ATI's been pretty solid for the last couple years.

You do have to install the .NET framework for the control panel to run, which kinda sucks when you're first installing -- .NET needs to be there before your video driver can even go in. That's annoying. But other than that, they're doing good work. Finally.