ATI Partially Launches Radeon HD4800 Series

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It seems to be getting more and more impossible for etailers and similar partners to hold their fire: After some Radeon HD 4850 cards, which are officially launching later this month, had appeared on Amazon.com, AMD has decided to drop the embargo on benchmark numbers and product photos of the mainstream card.

Techpowerup posted news from AMD’s Jon Carvill, clearly saying that AMD decided to lift the embargo on the new cards. However, the change of course does not affect Radeon HD4870, which is expected to come with GDDR5 memory, and it also does not include publication of technical details.

Sometimes a hard launch can have its disadvantages if cards become available too early.

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Patrick Schmid
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • swiftpulse
    At last.

    I look forward for a passive cooled 4850!
    Reply
  • draxssab
    Who wants the review of the europe launched 4850?? it's in French but numbers speeks by themselves, impressive! it beats the 260GTX in many games!!

    http://www.hardware.fr/articles/724-1/preview-ati-radeon-hd-4850.html
    Reply
  • Fedor
    draxssab, thanks for the link. You're right, the graphs are understandable for anyone, including those who don't know french. I would say your comment about it beating the 260GTX is quite misleading, however I still got a very positive impression of the card from the review - it is roughly the same at 1920x1200 without AA as a Geforce 9800GTX, and I believe they say 18% faster with AA. In my case, where I live, the 4850 is already in stores at a price of 300 of local currency, whilst the 9800GTX is 470+. This makes the 4850 a GREAT deal for those without huge budgets.
    Reply
  • customisbetter
    pretty sweet and exactly what i expected, a healthy but stable jump from the last gen. but are there driver issues with AA?
    Reply
  • crockdaddy
    For the reported 200$ ... I would be estatic to get this type of performance from my graphics card. I might now have a reason to chunk by 7800GTX, and re-install (shudder) Vista Ultimate again. Now if only Creative Labs would get some decent driver support for my XFI in vista.

    I am curious to see what the benchmarks for the 4870 will turn out. The best part of all of this, competition at last.
    Reply
  • JonathanDeane
    Sounds like good news to me :)
    Reply
  • tonyn84
    Or just punch it in google translate and most everyone can read it.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    Looks decent if priced right.

    crockdaddyI might now have a reason to chunk by 7800GTX, and re-install (shudder) Vista Ultimate again.Did the 7800 not work with vista? Please explain or pm info.
    Reply
  • draxssab
    I can translate the most important points for everyone:
    The big GIANT step is made with AA filter, that was an issue in general for the Radeon 2000 and 3000 series. With this filter it sometime pass or equal the GTX 260, and in general it score higher or same as the 9800 GTX.

    They underline the fact that in the average, it score a bit higher with Antialiazing than the 3870X2, and 18% more than the 9800GTX (the graph at page 8 is an average made of every games)

    They also tell that the card is as silent as a 3850, as the cooler is almost the same (all the cards released yet are "referance" cards, the companies only put their sticker over the AMD ones)

    They say that at this price (around 159 euro) no Nvidia cards can compete with it, as the nearest (th 9800GTX) sells around 220euro and often more.
    Reply
  • gm0n3y
    Good deal, sounds like it may be a good time to buy a new card, though I'd wait for the 4870 to see if there are any more price drops.
    Reply