PowerColour launches 2GB Radeon HD 4850

For someone like in our family, where pc upgrades will happen only every 6 years or more - at least per PC, then it might not be total waste if 2 GB is going to be needed in 2-3 years time. Games requiring minimum 512 MB is still out of the league, no-one in this household has such a powerful graphics card... Of course, this forum is frequented mostly by enthusiasts, so it is easy to forget there are many users who upgrade their machines only when the hardware fails to fulfil minimum requrements....

Comment by claptrap at 9:55am 2nd August 2008

a lot of you seem to be missing the point that graphics cards don't just handle computer game graphics at real time pace. this is the era of general purpose processing on graphics cards, maybe not in the mainstream but some physics (and other) simulations (i'm talking in the science community not just mainstream game stuff) can utilise these cards parallel architectures and 2gb of on chip ram to play with could be very useful. there's also the offline rendering world, eg cg video where there could be a ridiculous amount of texture and mesh data being rendered which could very well exceed 1gb of ram, and no student wants to fork out for a workstation card when something like this will be just as good. powercolour might be marketing it towards gullable noobs but it does have real uses too and it's nice to have the option there.

Comment by mm0zct at 4:38pm 25th July 2008

4850 WON'T ADDRESS 2GIG VIDEO MEMORY anyway the path to high plain is a massive overclock on a quad (4.5 ghz) plus a big video card preferrably ati processor must be intel. Visit future mark to see what the top desktop rig is.

Comment by TIMEVANS90 at 9:02am 20th July 2008

'Bench test, bench test, bench test' 'Bench test, bench test, bench test' 'Bench test, bench test, bench test' I get the feeling it would need to be done on a 32 and 64 bit version of XP or Vista to truely validate if A) The 2GB Ram was necessary and B) If it actually makes a difference on a 64 Bit O/S, answering the questions about this card being in a neiche market or not...? hmm

Comment by Bassdominator at 2:59pm 18th July 2008

I think this card will be for a niche market at best. 2GB on any graphics card is only going to be useful for people who use a 64bit OS. And how many people is that?

Comment by cyberspice1 at 11:01am 18th July 2008

Crazyceo you're insane. It's a powercolour card, made by the individual manufacturer, so your digs at ATI are a bit insignificant when placed here. I think AMD/ATI are doing great at the moment anyway, getting it back together. As for this 2GB version of a 4850, surely the extra memory is a little useless when you consider that the GPU itself probably doesn't have quite enough muscle to justify that amount of memory. But I can see the people who like to boast about the amount of RAM they have buying it. The people who don't really understand that quantity of video memory isn't everything.

Comment by RedHotsRule549 at 11:42pm 17th July 2008

Given this is more a topic about large quantities of RAM rather than a specific card, I was wondering how much of a different more RAM makes on nVidia cards when used for CUDA stuff?

Comment by jonlumb at 4:35pm 17th July 2008

What, the way we spell colour? :S Lol just had to say that :D

Comment by NikoBellic at 10:42am 17th July 2008

Pete thats how we spell colour in the UK... But I would indeed like to see come benchies to prove that at actually helps performance.

Comment by typh0on2 at 7:57pm 16th July 2008

2Gbytes of RAM divided by only 256-bit commu bus... thats 8 clocks to get data out of it. games need them clocks. pfft... thats why my x1950 only has 256mb RAM.

Comment by thegreat0mi at 6:03pm 16th July 2008

Powercolor need to spell their name 'color' correctly before we start taking them seriously >;) 2GB card might be good, but the other specifications seem, 'last year.'

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 5:54pm 16th July 2008

It really is a shame because "THE ALMIGHTY" 4xxx series in a positive step in the right direction which the company haven't taken in over 3 years. Considering the 8800GTX and it's overclocked Ultra version pretty much dominated the scene for over 18 months, it's been their 4870 card that has come anywhere near it. Then they allow Powercolour to produce this stupid creation. I'm sorry but it's the same old story with AMD/ATi, they just don't know what to do when they have something good going for them.

Comment by crazyceo at 4:21pm 16th July 2008

if you look at alot of the professional series gfx cards - Quadro FX5xxx & FireGL 7350 & 8xxx, they all have 1Gb, 1.5Gb & 2Gb of GDDR, so if the price is right (the 1Gb 4850 is £160), then students and schools of engineering, design & CGI would find this a useful alternative to paying £900-£2000 for a professional card while getting more-or-less the same performance (although even though it's not certified, they should work fine). So yes, this card does have a use, it's just not necessarily with games. The computing world is a big one and it doesn't always revolve around games - although games DO help push the tech forward just as much. That's why I've got a 1Gb 8800GT, the extra GDDR does help when you're using CAD/3D programs in openGL. My only gripe about this card is the clunky heatsink - whythey can't use a dual-slot cooler is beyond me - I have 2 & 4 fans on the side of my PC's, al blowing air IN over the gfx card and I think this kind of heatsink/fan would probably mess around with airflow somewhat. So there you go, not useless, but not that well thought-out either!

Comment by EdArch at 3:57pm 16th July 2008

This isn't anything special, this is just another product aimed at N00Bs, 1GB GPUs are only just starting to become usefull where as 2GB is pretty much Overkill TBH, if they even put 2GB on the fastest card it still would pretty much be useless till at least 2010, this GPU is just another one of those cards that will just be walked right past... maybe all GPU manufacturers (and 3rd parties) will learn from this mistake!.

Comment by NikoBellic at 3:51pm 16th July 2008

All the ATi guys have been burying the Nvidia price drop in the other topic and you see an ATi card here which will be completely useless. This is fantastic! ATi back to old routine.

Comment by crazyceo at 3:25pm 16th July 2008

Show us benchmarks to prove this theory.

Comment by CSQuake at 2:09pm 16th July 2008

I listened to the old argument about not buying more RAM on your GPU than you actually need and now have a 256Mb card that will now stay cool, but never really push Crysis to its furthest. If you want half a chance of selling on your graphics card (eg on Ebay) you double the memory and on a modern ATi card you never get the single-height cooled lower model anyway. It'll be a 4870 and above for me, next upgrade time.

Comment by KHenry_07 at 2:04pm 16th July 2008

I do think that this card will be aimed at N00Bs who think that the bigger number means better performance (I have to admit, when I was a N00B i made that mistake and bought a card with 512 memory which couldn't even take advantage of it... Go on take the pee...)

Comment by NikoBellic at 1:31pm 16th July 2008

ludicrous - I mean this card is going to be aimed at the mainstream upgrade market who will see this 2GB card and go for it over 1GB cards. Cheeky. Not only this but it's GDDR3 memory meaning it's going to be far slower than the GDDR5 on the 4870 - I think it's outrageous. The GPU will never be able to utilise the whole Gmemory anyway as you won't be able to game at ultra high res with loads of AA. No kudos to PowerColour.

Comment by NickMC07121989 at 1:24pm 16th July 2008

750 - 1GB is the sweet spot right now. I'd buy a 3870 with 1GB of RAM, although with 4GB of system (not all used even now) I'd need to move to 64 bit os.

Comment by NewParadigm at 1:23pm 16th July 2008

the other day that I'm buying the 4870 1024mb on the 30th because 512mb just doesn't seem enough anymore, especially for these games with high res textures, because I hate having to play games with 4x or 0x AA just to have High res textures, and I definately think 512mb is used up by most of todays BIG games, where as 1024mb would last a while and with todays graphics I dont think the decision to move to 1024mb is based on your monitor res anymore, I dont think I would look into moving to 2048mb for a while just yet though.

Comment by NikoBellic at 12:40pm 16th July 2008

Gimmick on a 4850 surely?

Comment by pveater at 12:41pm 16th July 2008

I would be more than happy with 2GB of video memory. Being a 32-Bit OS hog 2GB video memory would mean that I could only have 1.25GB of system memory nowhere near enough for todays applications and games. Bring On the 1GB 4870x2!!!

Comment by CPC_RedDawn at 12:37pm 16th July 2008

this just shows that 512mb is near its best before date now.

Comment by NikoBellic at 12:32pm 16th July 2008

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