Synthetic Testing:

Now that we have the game tests out of the way, we can move onto the synthetic testing.  Pretty much everyone and their dog uses the 3DMark line of GPU benchmarks, and today is no exception.  In this case, I used 3DMark06, since it has been such a standby, and the newcomer, 3DMark Vantage. 

3DMark06:

Default Settings, stock clocks:

Default Settings, overclocked:

For 3DMark06, the overclocks gave us a pretty nice bump in both the SM2.0 and 3.0 scores, giving us an increase of 702 points, or 5.4%.

3DMark Vantage:

Default Settings, stock clocks:

Default Settings, overclocked:

If there is a single thing that Vantage brings to the table, it is the fact that Vantage now has four default scores, each denoted by a letter prefix.  This is intended to emulate different kinds of setups and give a more well-rounded vision of a GPU's performance.  For the overclocking score, I only ran the Xtreme profile, as GPU provides 95% of the score in this scenario.  Other profiles should see improvements as well, just not as much.  Here, the overclocking got us a 14% score increase. 

Folding@Home GPU2:

For those that may be unaware, Folding@Home is a research project through the Stanford University.  Essentially, any home user can donate their computer's spare time and run computer simulations in an attempt to cure common genetic related diseases.  Stanford has done a good job of staying on the cutting edge by releasing clients that not only utilize CPU resources, but also can take advantage of the power that GPUs also have to offer. 

By simply running the GUI client, any user can see the progress they are making on any given work unit, including the computation rate.  Here, we see that the overclock has given us a nice 7.5% speed boost.  There has been chatter about the fact that currently, F@H is only using roughly half of the shaders that is possible in this case. 

Power Consumption and Heat:

While most people consider performance as the only indication of a good quality GPU, I think there are a couple other things to consider, the first being power.  If you can find a good performing graphics card that sips on the power, that is potentially less investment needed into a new PSU.  Less power consumption can also mean less overall heat as well.  So how does the 4850 do on the power?  To find out I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to gauge Idle and Load usage.  What I found was that the test system in total uses 243W in idle while sitting at the Windows desktop, and a maximum of 494W when both the graphics card and the CPU are stressed simultaneously.  Compare that to the 8800GTX: that beast idles at 310W and loads at 575W.  We are talking 70-80W less usage across the board.  Not bad at all. 

The next thing to discuss is heat.  While the 3850 was pleasantly cool on the stock cooler, you have to wonder how much of a beating a single slot cooler can take.  With the added stress of 300 million transistors, you know that has to be pushing that poor little heatsink to the limit. 

In almost all scenarios, the temperature is practically the same.  Stock speeds?  Yep.  Overclocked?  No change.  Even changing the TIM to Arctic Silver 5 brought practically no change in results.  And that is unfortunate, as 82C is some serious heat to have spilling out of your graphics card.  Of course, it does not help that the fan speed appears to be stuck at a constant slow speed, as we will have to wait for some better driver support to fix that.  Thank goodness this card has the same mounting profile as the 3850, as I see many people eager to swap out the cooling.  Until then, I would expect overclocks to be fairly low across the board with this card.

Conclusion:

What a crazy week this has been.  First, with the unintentional early release of the 4850, followed by the nVidia bombshell announcement of the 9800GTX+, there has not been a dull moment.  All this chaos in the market has precipitated a serious price war in which all of us win.  Even with the MSRP of $199, we are already seeing the 4850 sell for as low as $160.  8800GTX like performance for under two bills?  Yes, please!  All on a design that sips power and uses a single slot cooler?  Where do I sign up? 

On that note, there is only one thing I feel this card needs to improve, and that is the heat management.  As time goes on, there will no doubt be some new SKUs that address this issue with more advanced cooling.  Until then, I feel that the overclockability of the card is seriously limited.

Note: Sapphire sent over a new BIOS release for the 4850 which claims to reduce the running GPU temperature. Unfortunately we had already published this review before we received the new bios.

Performance:	5 out of 5
Innovation:	5 out of 5
Quality:	5 out of 5
Stability:	5 out of 5
Aesthetics:	4 out of 5
Software/Drivers Pack:	4 out of 5
Overclocking:	2 out of 5
Value:	5 out of 5
Project Skill Level (5 being most difficult)	2 out of 5

Page 1: Intro Page 2: Specs & Features Page 3: The Bundle & Layout Page 4: Overclocking Page 4: Crysis Page 4: Call of Duty 4 Page 5: Synthetic Tests Page 5: Power and Heat Page 5: Conclusion