Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850
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Date: 15.10.2008 |
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Palit stands out among the other manufacturers of video cards in that it prefers developing own design for its video cards rather than using a reference offered by GPU developers. Radeon HD 4850 is no exception. The modified design in Palit's style is first of all a reworked subsystem for the video card's power supply. Secondly, on video cards like these they normally fit cooling system of Palit's own production. Evidently, both these factors may affect the overclocking capability of the video card. In the case with Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic, this effect has proved to be highly positive.
Palit has not departed from its principles, and released Radeon HD 4850 Sonic in a standard box with a silvery label. The manufacturer may use a box like that for other cards as well, through a mere change of the label. The label displays the name of the video card and some of its specifications.
The package bundle for Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic includes:
- a 6-pin > 8-pin power adapter;
- DVI -> HDMI adapter;
- DVI -> D-Sub adapter;
- drivers CD;
- user's guide;
Strangely, but a CrossFire bridge is missing in the bundle. Most likely, the package contents which arrived at our lab for testing the video card was incomplete. AMD's policy implies shipping video cards with such a bridge included.
Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic offers a standard set of display connectors - two DVI-I and one S-video. It is also equipped with a "two-tier" cooling system.
Another distinction of Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic is the 8-pin power connector. It is not quite clear why just that type of connector was used. Perhaps, as a margin for the future, for compatibility to matching power supply units. As it turned out, it is technically possible to plug in a standard 6-pin cable as well, but in that case a warning is displayed, saying that no additional power supply is plugged in to the video card. With an adapter that comes as a bundled item, no warnings are displayed and the computer boots up as it should.
The cooling system hides the GPU AMD RV770 as well as eight GDDR-3 video memory chips which make up 512 MB capacity altogether.
The memory chips are made by Samsung and offer 1.0 ns access time, which is equivalent to the effective clock speed 2000 MHz. It is just the frequency at which they run.
The radiator of the cooling system is made mainly of aluminum. The insert contacting the graphic chip, as well as two heat pipes, are made of copper.
Tests of the cooling system and overclocking
We examined the efficiency of the cooling system with FUR Renderer Benchmark 1.4.0. The Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was heated up until the GPU temperature stopped rising.
(click to enlarge)
In the end, the temperature of the GPU in Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic raised from 53 C in the 2D mode (left-hand mark on the graph) to 78 C under load (the middle mark on the graph). At the same time, the video card was running absolutely noiselessly, which is no wonder because the rotational speed of the cooler was a just a little bit more than 900 RPM. A remarkable result, especially that the GPU on Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic runs at default frequencies higher than the recommended 625 MHz. As we found out, the maximum rotational speed of the cooler on Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic is 2800 RPM, and the fan was making quite a immense whistling noise which can't be ignored. There is absolutely no need to set such a high rotational speed of the cooler because at the rotational speed 60% of the maximum still remains almost noiseless, and the efficiency of cooling the GPU rises sharply (the right-hand mark on the graph).
The overclocking capability of Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic proved to be really good. Starting from the nominal clock speeds 685 MHz for the GPU and 2000 MHz for the video memory, the new product by Palit was able to reach 780 MHz and 2200 MHz for the GPU and video memory, respectively. In the end, the clock speed of the GPU for Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic proved to be 30 MHz higher that in Radeon HD 4870. It is curious to compare performances of the two video cards.
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