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Hardware Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 23 Jan 2009.

  1. naokaji

    naokaji whatever

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    The problem is Sapphire, I mean seriously, if they want to release a card noone else has they should make drivers for it and if they don't have the ability to do so they shoudn't release the card in the first place.

    Sure, AMD drivers should support it as well, but they don't and there is no 4850x2 around other than from Sapphire.
     
  2. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    No, it shouldn't have waited... that's like saying I should wait for Santa to come before celebrating Christmas. The card has been on the market and there are public drivers available for it from Sapphire's website. That's fair game to me. And no, I'm not ignoring the point about Cat 9.1 since I've mentioned it here, mentioned it in the review and mentioned it in several other places on this website.

    Again, Sapphire is an ATI partner and they have a partnership. Without ATI, this graphics card will not work. They're clearly making drivers for Sapphire, but where's the official support on game.amd.com? AMD talks about this card like it's the second prodigal son, but isn't confident enough in it to release official drivers. We'll no doubt be testing the card again for future reviews when we update drivers, so we'll be looking at the card again in our Spring Performance Update article at the very least.

    Ultimately, any opinion based on fact is as valid as any other factual opinion - and with that in mind, there's no point trying to change my opinion since it is based on facts. If you don't like my opinion, that's fine, this isn't a dictatorship and that's why we have comment threads that we take time to respond to. The beauty of the internet is that no one opinion is law and there are plenty of other opinions out there - we recommend people do their research and look at several websites to gather a range of opinions. Our opinions tend to be a bit more stern than most other places and I believe that is why a lot of readers appreciate our opinion - we don't see value in stamping 9/10 recommended on every product we see, regardless of how good or bad it is.

    Anyway, this is going round in circles - I think we'll have to agree to disagree in light of what I've said above in the last paragraph. I'm sure our readers appreciate another perspective from someone who is a bit more tolerable towards the fan noise in particular, but as a team working together in the office, we concluded the card was loud - it wasn't just my opinion. :)
     
  3. Gremlin

    Gremlin What's a Dremel?

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    on the topic of Catalyst 9.1 any idea on when they are actually going to release them?
     
  4. teamtd11

    teamtd11 *Custom User Title*

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    Some time this month :D
     
  5. Gremlin

    Gremlin What's a Dremel?

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    yeah but i ment specifically dude , ive been waiting all month for them and the month is almost over already! :p

    i suppose it's be safe to expect them around mid week since its the only week left hahaha
     
  6. PopcornMachine

    PopcornMachine Snacker

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    Thanks very much for the article. I find these kind of comparison reviews facinating.

    What I find most interesting about it though is the fact that the 280 SLI and 4870 Crossfire almost always bettered their two core counterparts, the 295 and 4870 X2. I would have guessed the opposite.

    It would have been interesting to see a 4850 Crossfire included for comparison, at the expense of even more work for you guys.

    Thanks again for your efforts.
     
  7. KayinBlack

    KayinBlack Unrepentant Savage

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    I've got a pair on order. I'll be glad to post some benches with a 4 GHz+ quad.
     
  8. headman

    headman What's a Dremel?

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    Well Catalyst 9.1 is out and no it shows no love for 4850x2. At least the 8.12 hotfix works with this card.
     
  9. Denithor

    Denithor What's a Dremel?

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    Great article overall, I especially appreciate the power consumption charts, those are telling. One thing here I wish you guys would do: come up with a composite performance score & divide that by watts under load for a perf/watt chart.

    One other thing I wish you could have included in this article: 9800GX2. That's still a very capable card, I believe, would have been great to see how it stacks up against the higher end G200 single & dual core cards.

    SLI GTX 280 is nearly always going to top the GTX 295. The 295 runs GTX 260 clocks & only has 2x896MB RAM (only!!).

    CF 1GB 4870 vs 4870X2 should be a wash in most cases.

    Tim, that comment about those who fold: that's the single reason I won't consider AMD GPUs today. Their PPD just suck compared to what is obtained from even lower end G92/G200 cards. The 4850X2 might be a great value for gaming but just won't cut it in a folding farm (not to mention - two or three of those cranking away @ 100% fanspeed - ouch).
     
  10. Fletchertron

    Fletchertron What's a Dremel?

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    Radeon 4850 X2 Fan Noise Problem Solved
    I purchased the Radeon 4850 X2 2GB card 3 days ago (upgrade from nVidia 8800 GTS OC) and nearly sent it back due to the ridiculous noise it makes.

    Having scoured the internet for a solution (editing profiles, downloading new bios updates etc) I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to put up with it.

    It is true you can set the fan speed to 20% via the Catalyst Control Centre, however this is actually louder than automatic, which seems to run at 12%.

    At 3am last night however, I found a way which gives you the best of both worlds; superb gaming performance which is cooler than before but also non-gaming noise levels that are so low, my hard disk makes more noise

    The main reason for the excessive noise, is ATI/Saphires’ over conservative and inefficient approach to cooling their card. With the method listed below, I am able to get an idle temperature of 42 degrees celcius and a load temperature of 62 degrees celcius without spending a penny. My idle fan speed is 2% and anything above 50 degrees celcius has a % increase in fan speed relative to the temperature of the card (as it should be).

    To achieve this, just follow these steps:
    1. Download and install ‘Radeon Bios Editor’ (RBE)
    http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/RBE/
    2. Download and install ‘ATI WinFlash’
    http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1364/Winflash_2.0.1.7.html
    3. Run RBE and click the ‘Acquire/flash’ icon at the bottom
    4. Locate your installed ‘ATI WinFlash’ software by clicking browse at the top right (ATIWinFlash.exe)
    5. Click ‘Analyze’ at the bottom to refresh the attached graphics card list
    6. Select the first adapter in the list and click ‘Acquire Bios’ at the bottom
    7. The Bios will be load into the RBE program
    8. Click ‘Save Bios’ so that you have a backup copy of the adapters default bios settings (safety first)
    9. Select the ‘Fan Settings’ tab at the top
    10. Select the ‘Use transfer function (recommended)’ button under ‘Fan throttle control settings’ heading
    11. Change the following:
    ‘Tmin (C)’ to 50
    ‘Duty cycle min (%)’ to 2
    ‘Hysteresis (%)’ to 10
    ‘Tmin hysteresis (C)’ to 4
    12. Select the ‘Additional features’ tab at the top
    13. Select the ‘Fix/already fixed’ button under ‘Fix spin up bug’ heading
    14. Click the ‘Acquire/flash’ button at the bottom
    15. Click the ‘Flash Bios’ button at the bottom (this will apply the changes listed above)
    16. It may ask you to reboot, but say ‘No’ if you have the other GPU adapter to update aswell
    17. Repeat points 6 to 15, but selecting the second adapter
    18. When you click ‘Flash Bios’ on the second adapter, it may notify you the product number is different, but continue anyway
    19. Once updated, say ‘Yes’ to rebooting
    20. Once rebooted you should notice a strange sensation of your ears going back to normal

    I use a ‘Tmin (C)’ setting of 50 degrees celcius, because this is the level my card temperature sits below when idling. This level may be different for your system, so you may need to experiment.
    You will have noticed than when you were inputting the numbers, the graph on the right also changes. With the figures selected above you will get a linear increase in fan speed corresponding to a similar increase in card temperature after 50 degrees celcius (the graph can be manually adjusted to suit your needs).

    I hope this guide has been useful but please note any changes made your cards Bios is at your own risk.
     
  11. d4martin

    d4martin d4martin

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    Driver support has greatly improved, now with drivers for windows 7(64 bit included) and a whole thread of community support can be found at :
    http://www.overclock.net/ati/429656-official-ati-radeon-hd4850x2-thread.html

    When this card first came out, the Sapphire drivers were far better than the ATI radeon driver, so when tested with the wrong driver results weren't great, but now ATI drivers are great: Catalyst 9.2 and 9.6 stable and fast. Just released 9.9, but too early to say on that one. Great bang per buck!!!!
    http://www.overclock.net/ati/429656-official-ati-radeon-hd4850x2-thread.html


    This card can be bottle-necked by the CPU, so overclocking the CPU above 3ghz really makes it fly.
    I use an Antec 1200 case so don't find this card too noisy at all, and heat has never been an issue

    The price for the 2Gb version is now about the £200 or less. September 09
     
  12. Empr

    Empr What's a Dremel?

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    @Fletchertron:
    Your posting was very useful - and I am very afraid, that it does not work for me.
    It would be really nice, to see you still subscribed to this thread after all those months - because it seems that we are the only two users, who are interested in a silent Sapphire 4850 all over the internet. ;-)

    I have bought the SAPPHIRE HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E HDMI. Because of the extremely loud fan, I have tested several settings with RBE all day long. I also have tried Hysteresis between 0 and 50.

    The biggest problem is, that with most of those settings, the fan changes its speed every few minutes, which is very annoying.

    Do you see a chance for me, to find settings for a silent 4850? The card is already at 4% fan-speed very loud.
     
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