Asus Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

A great card for the price, but has a few issues

Strengths: Very fast, great deal for the price, 3 year warranty

Weakness: Runs hot, loud fan, PowerPlay not fully enabled, high idle power usage

This card is really fast. It has handled every game I've thrown at it so far at 1920x1200 with no problems. It's a great value for under $200, especially since ASUS cards come with a three year warranty. It does have a couple of issues, though. The default firmware doesn't spin the fan up fast enough and doesn't implement PowerPlay fully. The result is that the card idles at over 80C and uses...
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This card is really fast. It has handled every game I've thrown at it so far at 1920x1200 with no problems. It's a great value for under $200, especially since ASUS cards come with a three year warranty. It does have a couple of issues, though. The default firmware doesn't spin the fan up fast enough and doesn't implement PowerPlay fully. The result is that the card idles at over 80C and uses more power than it should while doing it. I flashed my card with a modified firmware to correct this. After doing that it idled under 60C and used 9 watts less power. Even with PowerPlay fully enabled though, it still used more power at idle than I expected it to - about 40 watts more than my motherboard's built in video and about 20 watts more than a 3850. There was a drawback to having the fan speed up faster too - noise. Above about 40% speed the fan on this card starts to get noisy. At 100% it's like a jet preparing for takeoff. The result was a card that was fairly quiet at idle, but quite loud while gaming. If I were looking to buy another 4850, I'd stay away from ones like this with the stock cooler and buy one with an aftermarket cooler. Hopefully an official update of the firmware that enables PowerPlay will come out at some point too.

By in_awe - Aug 26, 2008

ATI 4850

Strengths: Best value for the amount of processing power

Weakness: Runs hot!

A very fast card. Beats Geforce 8 & 9. SO much power for $200ish. Runs hot because of single slot construction. Can be remedied by a registry mod, bios mod or the ASUS fan control tool. I choose bios mod for long term reliability of the card. Aftermarket cooler is also recommended.

By neogoh - Sep 6, 2008

Terrific bang for the buck. Heat/fan issues like everyone else

Strengths: Aggressive pricing from the start, terrific performance as single sub-$200 cards go

Weakness: Wish ATI could have come up with a better cooling solution for the reference design

Got this card last summer. It replaced two nVidia 7900GS cards that were running in SLI, and it handily beat them on a bunch of benchmarks. Heat production is an issue, so you are well-advised to google "4850 fan" or something along those lines to find out how to adjust your fan speed. The lack of a decently quiet and transparent cooling solution on the reference design definitely warrants a...
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Got this card last summer. It replaced two nVidia 7900GS cards that were running in SLI, and it handily beat them on a bunch of benchmarks. Heat production is an issue, so you are well-advised to google "4850 fan" or something along those lines to find out how to adjust your fan speed. The lack of a decently quiet and transparent cooling solution on the reference design definitely warrants a demerit, but performance is so good, you probably will not care.

By kgivens - Feb 8, 2009

Radeon HD 4850

Strengths: good price/performance ratio, single slot for crossfire

Weakness: Runs hot, poor drivers

The fan speed needs to be increased using Asus software or edited text file in CCC. Aftermarket coolers would also improve situation. Very powerful card for the money. It is a good value if the drivers mature. Heat is the primary issue with this card.

By stockshowgypsy - Oct 25, 2008

Best 4850 So Far

Strengths: Best performance for the $$. 3dMark06 score 13210. Crysis w/ Very High at 1280x1024 w/ no AA at 30-45 fps.At 1600x1200 the fps drops to about 25. COD4 at 1600x1200 runs at around 70fps.

Weakness: Runs Very Hot! Default Fanspeed is too low. Asus Smartdoctor allows OC & auto/manual fan ctrl. At 40% fan speed (quiet), and temps (idle-55, load-68) are pretty good.

This card delivers as promised, very fast at an outstanding price. I have not had the card for very long but everything I have thrown at it, Crysis, Oblivion, COD4, even older games, Doom 3, UT, Fable, it plays with no issues on the highest sets the game allows. LOVE THIS CARD. Use Asus Smart Doctor Utility to adjust fan speed in Vista 32. In Vista 64 you can use the profile edit trick to...
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This card delivers as promised, very fast at an outstanding price. I have not had the card for very long but everything I have thrown at it, Crysis, Oblivion, COD4, even older games, Doom 3, UT, Fable, it plays with no issues on the highest sets the game allows. LOVE THIS CARD. Use Asus Smart Doctor Utility to adjust fan speed in Vista 32. In Vista 64 you can use the profile edit trick to manually adjust the fan from the default 20% to 40% with no added fan noise.

By flamedduck - Sep 9, 2008