Introduction

Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 Series. Both cards are built around the new RV770 graphics processor. The GPU comes with a largely increased number of shaders: 800 vs. 320 on the previous generation. Another new feature is support for GDDR5 which will be included in the Radeon HD 4870 only, not in the 4850. AMD's rendering pipeline has also evolved greatly with vast improvements to AA performance and texturing. Another new feature is the inclusion of UVD 2 which supports dual HD streams decoding. The HD 4870 has lower memory clocks because it uses GDDR5 which offers twice the bandwidth clock-to-clock when compared to GDDR3.

AMD is determined to claim price/performance leadership in the $199 and $299 segments, that's where those cards are positioned. A R700 card called HD 4870 X2 will appear later this year and is supposed to fight for the performance crown.

For reference, see our other HD 4850 review: MSI Radeon HD 4850

Both cards tested today use the AMD reference design, cooler and clocks, so there will be almost no differences between both reviews.

Packaging & Contents

The PowerColor card comes in the company's typical package. On the front you find the highlight specs and on the back further info in multiple languages.



You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Quick Install Guide
• Driver CD + Cyberlink iClone 2
• DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter + Video Out Adapter + Video Out cable
• CrossFire Bridge

The Card

I found it surprising that AMD managed to engineer their card as a single slot solution, given the performance it offers. If you look at the first image above you can see something that looks like a metal rim around the fan - this is just a sticker and doesn't look that great when holding the card in your hands.


The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days. In case you need an analog VGA port you can use the included DVI adapter. When using an HDMI adapter (also included), you will also have access to HDMI+HDCP+Audio, which allows easy setup of a media PC. A new feature of the Radeon HD 4xxx Series is that 7.1 audio is now supported, the previous cards supported only 5.1 audio with HDMI.
PowerColor includes two covers for the DVI outputs, I'm not really sure what their purpose is.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.