The 4800 series is outdated by today's standards. They were an interesting solution at the time of release, but today they are only suitable for outdated computers, the main task of which involves surfing the Internet and working with multimedia programs. The characteristics of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series do not allow the cards of this series to provide performance in games, especially modern ones.
HD 4850
This is the first video card in the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series line, the characteristics of which were good at the time of the announcement. The core operating frequencies are 625/1986 MHz. The card has 512 MB GDDR3 memory (outdated today) and a 256-bit bus.
It also uses a good RV770PRO graphics processor with 956 million transistors. This is much more than the previous generation processor - RV770PRO (there were 666 million transistors). So it is safe to say that ATI (now AMD) has made quite a big leap in terms of increasing productivity. The chip itself is made according to 55-nm standards. At that time it was not bad, but now modern cards are executed according to the 16-nm process technology, which allows placing much more transistors in the core.
Graphics supports DirectX version 10.1, but not DX11. The ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series features are close to those of the Nvidia 9800 GTX. This video card is the rival. When testing both models in the game Crysis, they showed an approximately equal result. And at the same time, AMD's HD 4850 is a cheaper solution compared to its competitor, which is why it wins this dispute.
Let's not forget that the HD 4850 card is not the only one in this series, there are others.
HD 4870 review
The characteristics of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, in particular the HD 4870 card, are better, because this model itself is an accelerated and more expensive version. It does not have architectural or processor changes, but its operating frequency is higher.
The only more or less serious change in favor of HD 4870 graphics is the memory of the new GDDR5 standard. It allowed without improving the bus parameters (the bus remained with a bit capacity of 256 bits) to increase the throughput of the video card, and much more. If the throughput of the HD 4850 was 63.6 Gb / s, then in the HD 4870 card this value increased to 115.2 Gb / s. The payment for this is the higher price of the video card itself and the power consumption increased up to 160 W. This is where the specifications for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series (HD 4870 models) end. But there is another video card in the lineup.
ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series review: HD 4890 specifications
After the release of two solutions created using the 55nm process, people started talking about ATI's possible release of new graphics based on the improved Super RV770 processor. And indeed, very soon, the manufacturer announced a new card based on the improved RV790 GPU chip.
The new solution was expectedly called HD 4890, and an updated video chip is already used here. As a result, the card became faster due to the fact that it works at higher frequencies compared to the previous model in the lineup. The main competitor to the graphics card is the GeForce GTX 275, which was released on the same day.
And although the manufacturer himself says that the main task was to create a new GPU that would become a leader in the upper price segment, the improved RV790 chip is only an improved version of the RV770. There are no other changes to the graphics card. Even the manufacturing technology and capabilities have remained the same; there are no architectural changes either. Most likely, AMD tried in this way to show that they are not behind the competitor who releases new and advanced solutions.
Features ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series (HD 4890):
- The frequency of the core is 0 850 MHz.
- The number of transistors is 959 million.
- 256-bit bus.
- 10 SIMD cores.
Partner Developer Versions
After the reference sample was released, many partner manufacturers created their solutions based on this chip. However, all of them turned out to be approximately the same and were reference products created by order of AMD. That is, partners simply bought ready-made cards from AMD, stuck their stickers and put them on the market as products of their own production. In fact, the difference between the cards from Sapphire, HIS or Powercolor is practically absent, so the question of choice here is only in price.
Moreover, all these products are equipped with the same cooler and have a similar cooling system.
Conclusion
AMD with the release of this card managed to strengthen the product line of the 4xxx series and almost come close to the flagship from Nvidia (we are talking about the Geforce GTX 285 card). However, Nvidia also did not lag behind and created an improved version of the Geforce GTX 285 card, which had a 448-bit bus. This allowed reducing memory from 1 GB to 896 MB, however, throughput increased. Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 285 graphics got a little better, but this product had a limited edition, and AMD’s graphics card was shipped to the market in large volumes.
Note that at the time of release, the memory characteristics of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series were quite serious. But now these cards are no longer sold, and they can only be used in old computers. By modern standards, even the Radeon HD 4890 is outdated graphics that are not able to satisfy user requests, not to mention gamers. Nevertheless, at one time the card was popular and even today it is actively used in computers for everyday use and surfing the Internet.