Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850

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.

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.

The Tests

We'll be running the tests on a platform of the following configuration:

In our tests, we'll be deducing results for the following video cards:

• Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic with the nominal clock speeds 685/2000 MHz;
• Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic, overclocked to 780/2200 MHz;
• reference Radeon HD 4850, with the results taken from the previous review;
• reference Radeon HD 4870, with the results also taken from the previous review;
• reference GeForce 9800GTX, with the results also taken from the previous review;

We used the following drivers for the tests:

• for Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic - Catalyst 8.9;
• for regular Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 - Catalyst 8.8.

We found no substantial difference in performances between the drivers Catalyst 8.8 and Catalyst 8.9, except that in the latest version there was fixed the bug which resulted in vanishing the image at Crysis in Radeon HD 4870 set to the resolution 1920х1200. So we complemented the the available results with those produced using Catalyst 8.9 drivers.

Following the tradition, we are examining the test results with 3DMark test suites.

At 3DMark 06, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was a little bit behind Radeon HD 4870, but due to overclocking it was anyway able taking the second place thus leaving the rivals well behind.

At 3DMark Vantage, Performance, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was very close to Radeon HD 4870. To all appearances, the faster GDDR-5 video memory in the latter makes itself felt.

At 3DMark Vantage, High, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic again took the second place, again very close to Radeon HD 4870.

But in the Extreme mode of 3DMark Vantage the first was overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic. The thing is that the Extreme mode requires more video memory than the previous two modes. To all appearances, the available 512 MB is definitely not enough. In the end, part of the RAM starts being taken up for the needs of the video card, which invalidates the advantages of GDDR-5 in Radeon HD 4870 as compared to GDDR-3 in Radeon HD 4850. Since the clock speed of the overclocked GPU in Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic is 30 MHz higher than that for Radeon HD 4870, it proved to be the leader. We also note that at all the three tests of 3DMark Vantage the GeForce 9800GTX took the last place.

At Call of Duty 4, Radeon HD 4870 proved to be the undisputable leader. The overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was the second, but its gap between the rivals was not so impressive.

At Need for Speed Pro Street Racing, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 lagged behind Radeon HD 4870 by about 5%, which is much less than in the previous game. BY the way, that is one of the few games at which the GeForce 9800GTX shows results close to Radeon HD 4850.

At Call of Juarez, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic again took the second place. However, it again suffered from using the slower GDDR-3 video memory which prevented it to take the first place despite the superiority at GPU clock speeds. GeForce 9800GTX suffered from the insufficient video memory optimization, so at higher resolutions it showed worse results than those for Radeon video cards.

For Crysis, the video memory speed proved to be not as critical, due to that the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was just a little bit well behind Radeon HD 4870. The GeForce 9800GTX suffered from the insufficient video memory optimization in this game as well.

At Race Driver: GRID, the overclocked Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic was not far behind Radeon HD 4870. Certainly, overclocking did help the new product by Palit, but the installed GDDR-3 video memory is no longer able to compete against GDDR-5 installed on Radeon HD 4870.

Final Words

Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic has demonstrated a superb cooling efficiency, a good overclocking capability, and impressive performance. At the same time, it cost just a little bit more than the regular Radeon HD 4850, as can be seen from the below table.

Approximate prices for video cards in Moscow's retail:

Needless to say, the work done by engineers at Palit at creating Radeon HD 4850 of proprietary design deserves the highest mark. So, Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic has been awarded with the "Editor's Choice" title.

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