02
Back in
December
2008 HEXUS reported that XFX was planning to jump ship and sell ATI
Radeon HD 4800-series cards. Now we're seeing the first few come
through, and they're a little different than what you might expect.
Giving you a sneak peek, looking at the Radeon HD 4850 512MB offerings,
XFX will sell two models - stock- and pre-overclocked - which eschew
the reference cooler that we see on most
cards and replace it with, dare we say, one that looks like it belongs
on a GeForce card. Take a looksie:
Both the HD 4850 512MB cards are identical in external appearance, with
the
cool-looking black PCB largely hidden under a double-height cooler.
The obvious downside is that, now, the card takes up two slots rather
than just one present on most cards, but it's not really a big a
problem as it would be on lower-end cards, which are more-suited for
HTPC chassis. Anyone considering HD 4850, and above, will be using a
large-ish chassis, we reckon, so space should not be an issue.
The XXX Edition will be clocked in at 650MHz core and 2,100MHz memory,
so another 25MHz on the GPU and 100MHz (effective) on the GDDR3.
Overclocking should be good, however.
The black PCB makes the board stand out from the competition. But a PCB
is just a PCB. You'll probably know that the two fingers at the
top-right of the board mean that (up to) three further boards can be
daisy-chained for four-way CrossFireX.
The red-coloured DVI ports are a nice touch, too.
Right now, the standard-edition card is available on pre-order for
£141
at Scan.co.uk whilst the XXX
part, also available at Scan,
costs some
£152
at the moment. We'll have the full review of the Radeon HD 4850 512MB
XXX and HD 4870 1GB XXX in a few days time, so stay tuned for that.
Trouble is, a default-clocked, albeit reference, Radeon HD 4850 can be
had for around £115, and a basic, vanilla Radeon HD 4870
512MB for £180. XFX's cards look good, but pricing will need
to come down a touch. Let's not get ahead of ourselves....
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HEXUS.community :: your right2reply
So the only red on the red teams cards is the DVI headers? :confused:
There's more red on my GTX260
Not to mention the hexus article mentions the red DVI ports as if they would make a difference to a potential purchaser....
Anyone who takes note of the colour of the DVI ports on a potential gfx card purchase has way too little knowledge to be left to make a £100+ decision on their own.........Quote
Anyone who takes note of the colour of the DVI ports on a potential gfx card purchase has way too little knowledge to be left to make a £100+ decision on their own.........
Come on, people comment about the look of heatsinks, fans, cases, stickers and so on all the time. Such things are virtually never functionally required, but bling is part and parcel of enthusiast PCing.Quote
Come on, people comment about the look of heatsinks, fans, cases, stickers and so on all the time. Such things are virtually never functionally required, but bling is part and parcel of enthusiast PCing.
And they are all things that are visable (as long as the case has a window)......the ports on a gfx card are around the back of the machine and have cables plugged into them!!Quote
And they are all things that are visable (as long as the case has a window)......the ports on a gfx card are around the back of the machine and have cables plugged into them!!
Personally, when I buy a graphics card I display it on the mantle in my living room. I'm really cool like that. Screw putting it in an actual computer - no-one would be able to see my awesome graphics card bling then. :rolleyes:Quote
Cooling performance is infinitely more relevant in my opinion, so looking forward to that review :)Quote
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