Sapphire HD 4850 X2 Video Card Review

Conclusions

As expected, Radeon HD 4850 X2 achieved a performance level between Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 and being faster than GeForce GTX 280. Since Radeon HD 4850 X2 and GeForce GTX 280 cost the same thing if you are saving money to buy a GTX 280 you may want to change your mind towards the new Radeon HD 4850 X2, which is today our recommendation on the very high-end segment. The only problem is, of course, price (remember that besides the cost of the video card you also need a video monitor capable of running resolutions like 1920×1200 or 2560×1600, otherwise buying a card like this doesn’t make sense). If you are an average user looking for a high-end video card with the best cost/benefit ratio, our recommendation stands with the regular Radeon HD 4850, which costs less than a half and will produce a performance that is considerable very high for most users.

Talking specifically about Sapphire’s model, we loved the fact that Sapphire decided to use its own cooler (very stylish, by the way) instead of using ATI’s reference model, which is heavy and heats a lot. We also liked the fact that this card comes with four video outputs instead of just two as usual.

You can see detailed numbers comparing Radeon HD 4850 X2 with all current high-end video cards available on the market today in the previous pages. Below we present a quick summary comparing Radeon HD 4850 X2 to the regular HD 4850, to HD 4870 and to GeForce GTX 280.

Compared to Radeon HD 4850, the new HD 4850 X2 was up to 105% faster (more than 100% is possible because the regular HD 4850 has 512 MB memory, while X2 has 2x 1 GB). The difference in performance on 3DMark06 was between 41% and 84%, on 3DMark Vantage was between 68% and 105%, on Call of Duty 4 was between 66% and 92%, on Crysis was between 37% and 100%, on Unreal Tournament 3 it was up to 48% and on Half-Life 2: Episode Two was between 36% and 85% when we maxed out image quality settings (with no image enhancements enabled, performance difference varied a lot depending on the resolution, at 1680×1050 we saw HD 4850 being actually 3% faster than X2, but X2 being 6% faster at 1920×1200; at 2560×1600 X2 was 59% faster).

Compared to Radeon HD 4870, the new Radeon HD 4850 X2 was up to 62% faster. Partial results are like this: between 18% and 44% faster on 3DMark06, between 30% and 59% faster on 3DMark Vantage, between 28% and 47% faster on Call of Duty 4, between 14% and 62% faster on Crysis and between 10% and 44% faster on Half-Life 2: Episode Two with image quality enhancements maxed out. We only saw a significant performance on Unreal Tournament 3 at 2560×1600, where Radeon HD 4850 X2 was 14% faster.

And finally compared to
its main competitor, GeForce GTX 280, Radeon HD 4850 X2 was between 12% and 26% faster on 3DMark06, between 4% and 18% faster on 3DMark Vantage and between 77% and 204% faster on Half-Life 2: Episode Two with image quality enhancements maxed out (with image quality settings disabled both cards achieved the same performance). On Unreal Tournament 3 we only saw a significant performance difference at 2560×1600, where Radeon HD 4850 X2 was 43% faster.

The only time GeForce GTX 280 was faster than Radeon HD 4850 X2 was on Crysis with low image quality settings at 1680×1050 (9% faster). At 1920×1200 both cards achieved the same performance and at 2560×1600 Radeon HD 4870 X2 was 10% faster. With image quality set at “high” Radeon HD 4850 X2 was between 12% and 15% faster.