Those of you who thought NVidia was sinking the final nails into ATi's coffin, think again.  ATi's next generation Radeon, the 4800 series has scored a direct hit with pixel pushing power and a price point so low that NVidia had to drop prices significantly to compete.  Let me explain.

Some of you old fools like me will remember shelling out the "big bucks" for two Voodoo2 daughter cards at $200 a hit to give you cutting edge game play.  That same $400 today wouldn't touch the ultra high end graphics.  Consider for example NVidia's GeForce GTX280 costing upwards of $650.  ATi with their HD4800 series looks at putting performance oriented cards out for the masses with the HD4870 pricing out at $300 and the HD4850 at $200.  When you think about two HD4870 cards in Crossfire mode costing less than NVidia's big gun, you are really on to something.

Today, we have a sample of ATi's new wares in the form of a Force3D Radeon HD4850.  Force3D is a new name in the field.  Based out of Hong Kong with operations also in Shenzhen, China, Force3D manufacturers products for the OEM market but as we can clearly see from their HD4850 packaging, they are looking at taking a bite at the retail segment.  While they are a new name for the time being, we can expect to see an increasing presence from both their products and their market share as time goes on.  Without further a do, let's jump right in with the Force3D HD4850 Card and see how it stacks up.

Specifications

• Graphics Engine: Radeon HD4850 (RV770)

• Interface: PCI-Express 2.0

• Engine Clock: 625MHz

• Memory Clock: 1986MHz

• Memory Type/Size: GDDR3/512MB

• Memory Interface: 256-bit

• Stream Processing Units: 800

• Texture Units: 40

• Max Resolution: 2560x1600

• VGA Output: Yes with adapter

• TV-Out: DVI x 2/Composite Out

• HDMI Support: HDMI with 7.1 surround audio

• HDCP Support: Yes

• Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for Blue-Ray and HD Movies

• Supports full HD 1080p playback

• Native CrossfireX support

• DirectX 10.1 Ready

What you get

Force3D is all business from the first opening up of its package.  In addition to the HD4850 Radeon inside the box we also have a driver CD (at the time of this writing there is no public 4800 driver download on the AMD/ATi website), CrossfireX bridge cable, DVI to HDMI adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, HD component cable, S-Video adapter and a 6-pin PCI-E power adapter.  The average HD4850 card is retailing at $200 with it being far from uncommon to find $30-$50 rebates at a number of e-tailers.  We don't have a MSRP as of yet from Force3D but I think it is safe to assume that with the all business, no frills or extras packaging, Force3D is looking to price out below the competition.

NEXT

Pg. 1 - Introduction
Pg. 2 - The Card
Pg. 3 - Installation/Noise/Test Bed
Pg. 4 - Benchmarks
Pg. 5 - Image Quality/Overclocking/Conclusion