Sapphire HD4850 X2 2GB Evaluation

Sapphire is a well known name in the world of ATi add-in graphics cards. They have been providing enthusiast, gamers and entry-level users for some time. Recently we took a look at Sapphire’s 4550 an entry level GPU that fits perfectly into an HTPC or a business system. Today, however, we are getting our hands dirty with Sapphire’s new monster the HD 4850 X2. Will this card sit at the right hand of the 4870 X2 or will the new page Prince get booted out of the castle.

Product: Sapphire Radeon HD4850 X2 2GB 
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: October 30th 2008
Product cost: $419.00
Manufacturer: Sapphire Technologies
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Planetx64 Staff

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}
Packaging and Accessories:
The 4850 X2 from Sapphire arrives in a black and red box featuring the ATi hottie Ruby (is that a GPU in your pocket…).  But the eye candy does not stop there as the box is tastefully littered with logos and imagery to show off the performance and features of the card inside.

After you stop ogling the out box and prepare to remove the 4850 X2 inside you will find that Sapphire has done a very good job of protecting the card within by cocooning it in foam. Under all of this protection you will find a fairly nice haul in accessories, including:

CyberLink Power DVD, 3DMark Vantage (Advanced), CyberLink’s DVD suite, a drivers disk and the Ruby ROM (Volume 1.1)
The Ruby Rom is a compilation of games, applications, screensavers and wallpaper all rolled into one easy to ship DVD. The games included with this version are:
Call of Jaurez
Dungeon Runners
Stranglehold
Applications include
EarthSim
Game Shadow

There is  also the usual assortment of power and video adapters thrown in for good measure.
{mospagebreak title=Design and Features}
Design and Features:
The 4850 X2 is, to put it very simply, 2 1GB 4850s in Crossfire on a single card. With two R700’s clocked at 625MHz and massive 2GB (1GB per GPU) of DDR3 to buffer to the 4850 X2 looks to have the “sack” to hold its own in the nasty GPU market.
Additional features provide icing on the cake:
Support for four Dual Link DVI outputs
7.1 surround (through HDMI)
Dedicated HD/BluRay decoder
DX 10.1 support
1600 Stream Processors
230GB/s memory bandwidth

The physical board is laid out with one GPU after the other in line down the board. Sapphire has given each GPU its own heatsink and fan with a “wind tunnel” like pass through for air.
For extra power ATi uses an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCI-e power plug this will give you the extra gas you need to fuel the 4850 X2.

{mospagebreak title=Performance}
Performance:
On November 2^nd Intel lifted the curtain on the new Core i7, this new CPU brings a new level of performance to the computing playground. As such I wanted to show off this newest addition to the ATi family on this latest CPU.  I also wanted to run this against some of the newest (and most demanding) games out.  So I assembled my list, maxed out my settings, and began to play, but I started to wonder (after some single digit frame rates) is the impact on the GPU the resolution or the advanced features and settings? So a added in a second run of testing here I kept the settings maxed out (Except for Crysis and Warhead) but lowered the resolution to 1680×1050 just to see if there would be any gain across the board. Each game tested will show the settings used for both Maxed out and “lo-res” testing. All gaming frame rates were captured in-game using FRAPS.
Image quality shots can be viewed at the links below, they are full screen images for both high and low resolutions. I did not put them in the sections for each game to prevent clutter. There are no image quality shots for the 4850 Crossfire pair as there is no difference between the single HD4850 and the Pair.
Hi-Res
Lo-Res

The test system
Intel Core i7 965
Asus P6T Deluxe
QIMONDA 3 x 1GB DDR3 1067 (Tri Channel)
Seagate Cheetah 147GB 15k RPM SAS Drive
Mushkin 1KW PSU
GIGABYTE GV-R485-512H-B ATi 4850 512MB (2x for Crossfire testing)
Zotac nVidia GTX 280 1GB AMP! Edition
Sapphire HD 4850 X2
All ATi cards were run using Catalyst 8-10 with the hotfix.
The GTX 260 used the 178.24 (these are the currently available non-beta drivers)
Microsoft Windows Vista x64 Ultimate was used as the OS for all testing.

The Numbers!  
For the 3DMark Vantage fans out there, here is how these cards stack up running the “High” test run.

In the only synthetic test run for this review; the HD4850 X2 lags behind both the HD4850 Crossfire pair and the GTX 280. I was a little surprised by this as I would have thought the X2 would meet if not exceed the performance of a pair of 4850s in Crossfire. This proved not to be the case although the difference was only 134 points for the GPU score and 137 points over all. The gap between the GTX 280 and the X2 was much larger although the over score difference can also be chalked up to the inclusion of the PhysX software into the nVidia drivers.

The Games:
FarCry2:
FarCry 2 is, as the name implies, the second in the FarCry series. Thankfully it does not use the beleaguered Crytek engine so the game is able to achieve a good image quality/performance ratio.
For testing I ran through the first few “errands” you are sent on by your savior. Settings for both Hi and Lo-res are shown below.

Looks like the tables are turned here. In FarCry 2, under real gaming, the 4850 X2 wins out by just under 10 FPS at max settings and just under 18 at 1680×1050. I also noticed a slight stutter running the GTX 280, the game would seem to render properly then jump a frame or two, it made combat difficult as the enemies pop around the screen.
 

Dead Space:
Dead Space is a new release and one that fits into the Sc-Fi Horror genre. It is a graphically stunning game, with amazing HDR effects.  Although, the third person view and flaky mouse speed do cause some problems during play it is a great game none the less. For testing I ran through the entry level until you finish clearing out the tram path. Settings for both Hi and Lo-res are shown below.

Dead Space is another story. Here the ATi offerings are simply trounced by the nVidia GTX 280 by almost 100 FPS. Game play was actually very smooth on all cards.

 
Crysis (DX10 x64)
If you have not heard about Crysis you are reading the wrong site. Crysis has been praised and damned at the same time (often by the same people). No matter what your opinion of it this game is seriously rough on your system. For testing I ran through the entry (Contact) level until the third beach. Settings for both Hi and Lo-res are shown below.

Although very minor(Less that 5 FPS at maxed out settings) the 4850 X2 still takes the prize for this round and had the smoothest game play.

Crysis Warhead (DX10)
Warhead is the extension of Crysis and takes place on the same island. Although Crytek claims the engine has been optimized there are still complaints that mimic the ones made about Crysis. Again it is one rough game on your system. For testing I ran through the Call me Ishmael level. Settings for both Hi and Lo-res are shown below.

For Warhead gaming at Max settings the 4850 X2 manages a small 4 FPS lead over the rest of the group. The margins for Warhead at 1680×1050 were so close for the top three I do not even know if I would declare one the true winner. I will say that the HD4850 X2 and HD4850 Crossfire pair seemed to be a little smoother during combat where multiple enemies and vehicles (like the fight at the tiki bar) needed to be rendered.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky:
Stalker Clear Sky is another part of the Stalker series and puts you into the shoes of a Stalker once more. Clear Sky boasts an improved AI (although I did not see it) and greatly enhanced graphics (DX 10 support). For my testing I ran through first 4 quests. Settings for both Hi and Lo-res are shown below.

Some very interesting numbers came from our Stalker testing. At Maxed out settings the 4850 X2 and the 4850 Crossfire pair we within 2 FPS of each other while the GTX 280 lagged far behind. Under the lighter load of 1680×1050 gaming we see the Crossfire pair drop back below the GTX 280 and the X2 is out in the lead by over 5 FPS.

Gaming Conclusions:
After gaming with all four sets of cards I found that the X2 seemed to be better at over all game play and rendering smoothness with the exception of Dead Space. In Dead Space all of the cards tested ran very smooth and to be perfectly honest you could use anyone of them and be happy playing the game as in game play was no different between the GPUs used. ATi had a slight edge in rendering HDR effects but you would honestly have to really be looking to tell. In the frames per second race the X2 did win the majority of gaming tests run (again with the exception of Dead Space where the GTX 280 handily won).
Image quality between the cards was also so close that I could not call a clear winner. There are minor “nit-picking” differences in color and textures but overall they all look the same. 

{mospagebreak title=Value}
Value:
The Sapphire Radeon HD 4950 X2 will put a $419.00 dent in your wallet.  Considering the performance increase you should see from the X2 it is a very good price and only $5 more than the GTX 280. Unfortunately this price puts you over the cost of a Crossfire pair of HD 4850s with 512MB ram (running at $170 per car) by about $80 but right around the cost of two 1GB HD 4850s. The single 4850 X2 does have a performance advantage over the crossfire pair especially on boards where the PCI-e lanes are limited to x16 and x4 or two x8 slots.   
{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
Dual GPU cards have been in fashion for some time, the first one to truly show the consumer a performance difference was the old Voodoo 5 5500 Dual GPU where we saw true SLI on a single card.
Although both nVidia and ATi have released cards since many (with the notable exception of the 9800 GX2) have failed to really give a good performance lead over a pair of cards or in some cases a single card. With the 4870 X2 ATi finally got the formula right, and they have applied this same framework to the 4850 X2 and we see a great single card GPU solution at a great price and gives AMD a nice place to sit owning both of the top single card performance slots. Sapphire’s implementation of this card fits right in and gives the enthusiast and gamer with a budget the chance to get in on the high performance action while not breaking the bank. In game performance was excellent and even tackled GPU killers like Crysis and Warhead very well out running nVidia’s top end GTX 280 in the majority of our testing.  It looks like the Page Prince of GPUs will be able to take its place by the HD4870 X2 King’s side and should also find a place in your system. 

For the newest category here (the Value Enthusiast Class) we are happy to give the Sapphire Radeon HD4850 X2 our Best on the Planet Award.

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