Sapphire HD 4850 X2 Graphics Card

Bob — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:56:58 +0000

The worlds number one developer of ATI-based graphic cards for the personal computer – Sapphire Technology – has done it again with the introduction of the SAPPHIRE HD 4850 X2 (one card with two very fast graphic chips).This impressive top contender of graphic accelerators has two complete HD 4850 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected via an on board PCI-Express Gen 2 bridge chip. The HD 4850 X2 offers dual GPUs at a core clock rate of 625 MHz with 2 x 800 Stream process units and features a 256-bit memory interface driving 1GB of GDDR3 memory, for a grand total of 2GB of on board memory.

Sapphire equipped this heavy weight with their own cooler design and two independent 75mm fans to keep everything nice and cool. This cooler uses two aluminum heat sinks with a copper base and an aluminum cover that houses the unit, this configuration makes the card lighter and runs much cooler. The HD 8450 X2 video card has four DVI outputs (with HDMI support) fitted to the bracket as well as a TV-out (with component video support). We’ve never seen a video card with this many DVI connections. What this means is you can connect up to four monitors to this video card at one time. Of course this only works when your not playing video games. Same applies for the CrossFireX mode, video is generated only on one connection.

With a suitable PCI Express Gen 2.0 CrossFireX motherboard you can use two Sapphire HD 4850 X2 cards in CrossFireX mode to provide even higher performance. Meanwhile, Sapphire Technology incorporated the the latest ATI Avivo high definition technology for enhanced video display the HD 4850 X2 is HDCP ready and is compatible with the latest High Definition monitors The 4850 X2 also features a second generation built in UVD (Unified Video decoder) for the hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray™ and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as mpeg files, reducing CPU loading to a minimum.

In the package you receive the graphics card of course: a game DVD called Ruby ROM with three games (Call of Juarez, Dungeon Runners and Stranglehold). Programs that come with this video card are CyberLink DVD Suite, Power DVD, PowerDirector 5, Power Producer 4, Express, Power2GO, Mediashow 3, 3DMark full version, EarthSlim, GameShadow, then theres the documentation, driver CD, a TV out adapter and cable, DVI adapter, HDMI adapter, CrossFire Bridge. 6 pin PCI-E power adapter plus a 8 pin PCI power adapter.

Our Conclusion

I’m not surprised the Sapphire HD 4850 X2 weighed in performance wise between the Radeon HD 4870 and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and is faster than GeForce GTX 280. Beats the HD 4870 X2 in high resolution and has DirectX 10.1 support. If you’ve been saving for a GeForce GTX 280 you may want to reconsider and start looking at the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 as both cost the same price but the HD 4850 X2 is between 12 and 25 % faster. Compared to the Radeon HD 4870 the Radeon HD 4850 X2 was 62% faster. Keep in mind when you purchase a video card in this class you need to have a monitor capable of running resolutions like 2560 x 1600 or atleast 1920 x 1200 or your just wasting your money and should reconsider your purchase for a lesser classed video card like the Radeon 4850, which costs about half the price and will deliver performance that is considerable top rated.

We were really impressed with this video card, in fact the entire 4800 line up has been impressive. Nevertheless, this card has great performance and excellent cooling properties. It has great performance and lots of over clocking potential left. The Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is an all around great video card that would make any owner proud to have mounted in his or her machine. We found this video card at Newegg for $329.00 US Dollars. If you want to get your hands on this beast , we highly recommend this video card.

Features:

» 2 GB of GDDR3 memory
» 2.0 TeraFLOPS of GPU power
» DirectX 10.1 support
» PCI Express 2.0 support
» 1600 stream processing units
» 2 x 256-bit memory interface
» 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
» Dual mode ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
» Dynamic geometry acceleration & DVD Upscaling
» Game physics processing capability & Dynamic Contrast
» ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
» Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology
» Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) for Blu-ray and HD Video
» Accelerated Video Transcoding(AVT)
» Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support

Specifications:

» Display Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+HDTV
» Core Clock: 625 MHz
» Stream Processors: 2 x 800
» Memory Clock: 993MHz, 1986 Mbps
» PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
» 2x 1024MB / 2x256bit GDDR3 memory interface
» Dual Slot Dual Fan Active Cooler with Fan Speed Control
» HDMI compliant via dongle
» 7.1 Audio Channel Support
» Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support
» Shader Model 4.1 support

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The Fiery Source » Graphics Cards

Sapphire HD 4850 X2 Graphics Card

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