4850 CROSSFIRE
IMPRESSIONS
These cards feature good build quality, with a single slot solid copper heatsink. In one pic below you'll notice exaust vents on the side as well as the back of the heatsink. Pics we've seen don't easily reveal these exaust slots. A good bit of exaust blows thru these directed towards the side panel. You'll see I mounted a 120mm fan near the front of the card avoiding the exaust slots. The fans never spun up past default speed which is low and quiet. There are no fan speed or shader adjustments in CCC.
With good airflow they're idling around 63c, with load temps about 74c. Under load, touching the heatsink will burn your finger after about two seconds. The cards run pretty warm thanks to the single slot cooler, but they run very stable with zero lockups or issues. The driver appears to throttle down the cards to 500 core 750 mem at idle. See CCC pic below under current clock settings. GPU-Z also reports the drop. So far I'm impressed with 4850's in crossfire.
I pulled the heatsinks off for inspection. On the GPU they use the standard grey thermal paste that looks silver based but isn't. Application patch was on par with every other heatsink I've pulled. They used the rubbery thermal pads for memory and the thermal paste/fiber layer stuff for the PWM modules. I used Arctic Ceramique on the gpu and reused everything other TIM's as they were in perfect condition. There were no significant drops in idle or load temps.
OVERCLOCKING
CCC's auto-tune feature was accurate in finding optimal overclocks. Anything higher produced lockups. Benchmarks were ran at 660 core 1050 memory, but the overclock shown is fine with gaming:
Default Clocks 625 core 933 memory
Auto-Tune Overclock 690 core 1153 memory
Take a look at the core temp during Auto tuning. Toasty!
TEST SYSTEM
- Dell 24" Ultrasharp 2408WFP
- Antec P182
- C2D E8400 @ 3.80
- Asus Rampage Formula x48
- 8GB Muskin Redline DDR2 1000 @ 1015 5-5-5-12, 7 performance value (per AT Rampage board review)
- PowerColor 4850's in CF clocked to 660 core 1050 mem
- Thermaltake Toughpower 850W PSU
- Catalyst 8.6 Betas
- Vista 64 Premium SP1
PICS
4850
Twins
Exaust Vents
Installed in Rig
Installed in Rig
Overkill Airflow
CCC
CPU & GPU Screens
BENCHIES
3DMARK06:
18059 3DMarks
*Edit* a few extra marks with Catalyst 8.6 Final and 680core 1100mem
18375 3DMarks
VANTAGE build 1.0.1:
P10431
GPU = 11666
CPU = 7916
X5314
GPU = 5226
CPU = 7831
MASS EFFECT:
FRAPS = 61fps
1920 x 1200, max detail settings, vsync disabled, avg 61fps
ASSASSIN'S CREED:
1920 X 1200, default driver settings, game settings maxed
184 fps
173 fps
162 fps
CRYSIS:
1024 x 768, dx9, high, no AA
Min = 28.68
Max = 96.29
Avg = 69.44
1280 x 1024, dx9, high, no AA
Min = 32.59
Max = 86.31
Avg = 62.67
1680 x 1050, dx9, high, no AA
Min = 26.83
Max = 56.83
Avg = 43.84
1900 x 1200, dx9, high, no AA
Min = 24.93
Max = 56.83
Avg = 43.84
1024 x 768 dx9, high 4x AA
Min = 26.28
Max = 81.06
Avg = 59.21
1280 x 1024 dx9, high, 4x AA
Min = 25.47
Max = 65.51
Avg = 49.07
1680 x 1050 dx9, high, 4x AA
Min = 19.70
Max = 47.53
Avg = 36.39
1900 x 1200 dx9, high, 4x AA
Min = 16.16
Max = 37.83
Avg = 29.97