Gigabyte Radeon HD4850 review - Conclusion
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 16 Jul 2008

In most cases we can see Gigabyte's HD4850 performing slightly better than 9800GTX, while in a few others it is not quite there yet. When you even that out, you get a pretty even race, with the main advantage of the HD4850 being the price. However, immediately after the HD4850 launch NVIDIA announced its 9800GTX+ with a die shrink to 55 nm, which would push the plain old 9800GTX to $199, and is coincidentally exactly the same as the HD4850. With the recent driver editions, Crossfire scaling was pretty good, and there is no change with the driver for the HD4800 series, ranging from 50% to the low 90s. In our opinion, after a few weeks we will start to see the prices drop both for 9800GTX and for the HD4850, which will result in a great situation for the customers. Both of these cards deserve an equal place in your PC, and it’s really hard to decide between the slightly more advanced features of the HD4850 or the 9800GTX robustness and its superior cooler. On the other side, HD4850 is a much simpler design and the situation where NVIDIA is offering the GTX for $200 will not last long, because it was just a firefighting move. But as a consumer, you shouldn’t worry too much about that as long as you are getting more for your money.

The only thing that's causing a slight concern for us is the fact that this card heats up like crazy. This is down to first-revision cooling and we should see some better cooling systems coming up rather soon. Nevertheless, this is a Editor's Choice card: