PowerColor Radeon HD 4850

Even if the Radeon HD 4800 series is now already has a few months on the back, and the board partners most of their planned adaptations have already been available in the retailer's shelves, it is still hard to decide which model is for now the best for one is suitable. The number of variants seems almost too big. Whether reference design or a separate cooling system, whether standard clock speeds or overclocked model, whether to 512 MB, 1,024 MB or 2048 MB: Something for everyone seems to be. And yet, it really inspired us was completely up yet, a Radeon HD 4800 card. In most cases, the impressions were very good all through the bank until we could hear the graphics cards under load (had to). There are many versions were even louder than the reference design. Power Color has been a while, the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + on offer, this flaw should not have. Instead, it should be of the house overclocked card with the slightest 3D accelerator, which is available on the market. To test this promises, we grabbed the 512 MB model for a short test.

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PowerColor Radeon HD 4850's view of the quite high number of different models in its portfolio. In addition to the reference design, there are cards with a different cooling systems, the overclocked and with a large memory of up to 2048 MB as standard. Which we-experimental Radeon HD 4850 PCS + is equipped with a 512 MB GDDR3 VRAM large and a modified cooling system. The card is available starting at 150 € and represents about 15 € more expensive than the reference design from the same home.

On the board itself has made no changes PowerColor. The PCB of the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + will come in red and measures a length of 23 cm, which should cause no difficulty in modern housing. All components are not only identical to those places of the standard model, but also in the same place. To operate the card properly, you must connect to one 6-pin power plug to the socket on the graphics card. PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 uses the PCS + on a dual-slot cooling system of the house ZERO therm, in contrast to previous maps, thanks to a smart fan control is to act but much quieter. The heat sink is built circular and consists only of expensive, but effective copper.

A cooling plate is mounted directly on the GPU. A heat pipe forms the circular shape at both ends and is connected to the cooling block. Some fins are designed to improve heat transfer. Right in the middle sits a 65 mm large radial fan that swirls the air to the radiator fins. And indeed, it remains consistently low - read more in the Other measurements.

PowerColor installed on the 512-MB GDDR3 memory, which is produced with an access time of one nanosecond, and passive heat sink on the sensitive VTs. The RV770 GPU on the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + driven faster with 665 MHz to 40 MHz as the reference design. The VRAM operates unchanged with the 993 MHz. Under Windows, the computing core is clocked down to 500MHz while the memory is still running at 750 MHz. The equipment of the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + is only average, and clearly lower due to the price. More than one driver CD, a DVI to D-Sub and an S-Video to composite adapter does not exist.

PowerColor has increased the clock speeds on the Radeon HD 4850 slightly, so the graphics card can only easily deduct from the reference design. Thus, the Power Color adaptation renders in 1600x1200 faster on average by four percent as a standard model, while pursuing other partner cards after all, a performance increase of almost eight percent. Since only the PowerColor GPU has not overclocked the memory, the games behave quite differently in terms of the speed increase. Falls, the increase in Crysis with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, with seven percent of the highest. Unlike the other hand, without anti-aliasing. Then Crysis only runs even faster, at three percent. In general, the three-percent performance seems most likely to occur regardless of the quality settings.

The managed have led to other Radeon HD 4800 cards already. These were under load, however uncomfortably loud, what with the PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 PCS + is not the case. 45.5 decibels louder than the fan at any time what a good deal lower than the values of the reference designs and even better than the Asus Radeon HD 4850 TOP, which was until now the slightest Radeon HD 4850 in our laboratory. For a Silent PC Power Color card that is suitable without restrictions.

Because of the low speed of the fan, the temperatures are on the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + slightly higher than the competition, which is to get over but. On Windows, the GPU 56 degrees Celsius is hot, which is still significantly lower than in the reference designs. Under load we measured a maximum of 86 degrees Celsius, but this is still completely in the green zone. On the back of the chip PowerColor product 72 degrees Celsius is hot.

When there are power between the reference design and the house of overclocked graphics cards under Windows as usual only slight differences. The PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 PCS + is 163 watts, what exactly six watts more than with the standard model does. Under load the 3D accelerator pulls 305 watts from the line. The usual ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 290 watts somewhat frugal. On the PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 PCS + we were able to RV770 GPU from 665 MHz to 46 MHz to 711 MHz overclocking, which is an average result. The 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM made with a good increase of 107 MHz, resulting in a circular frequency of 1.100 MHz. Thus the Radeon card acted in a 3D application again 6:00 to 8:00 per cent faster than the standard frequencies. While many graphics cards have enough power on the high edge, a slight gamer system is unfortunately often been utopia. If the video card tested today actually constitutes an exception? About the performance, there is not much exciting to report.

The Radeon HD 4850 PCS + renders due to the slightly higher clock speeds slightly faster than the reference design of the Radeon HD 4850 feel, it will be in play this everyday but hardly or not at all. We were already quite graphic cards in the test lab, which could benefit more by overclocking. Nevertheless, the speed to make rendering all modern games smoothly, as long as one does not exaggerate the quality settings. With the volume of the PowerColor card can then play to their strengths. It is the quietest Radeon HD 4850, which we have ever had in our test lab. Even under load remains the 3D accelerator pleasantly restrained, which with the reference design is not the case. In addition, the Radeon HD 4850 PCS + which cost 150 € only minimally more expensive than other models. Even if the performance turns out only slightly higher than in the standard model, we consider the graphics card because of the low noise level and the acceptable purchase price for the best currently on the Radeon HD 4850 market.