Introduction

I previously looked at Palit's GeForce 9600 GSO Sonic videocard, an nVidia-based card. The GeForce 9600 GSO featured many improvements over the base 9600 GSO, as Palit incorporated improved power phases, a more powerful cooling solution, as well as coming factory overclocked.

Palit recently sent their new Radeon HD4850 videocard our way, and while it lacks some of the improvements I saw in the GeForce 9600 GSO Sonic, I'll look at a newer firmware version than the Sapphire Radeon HD4850 BIOSLEVEL.com previously looked at.

As demonstrated in the review of Sapphire's Radeon HD4850, the Radeon HD4850 has some serious advantages against nVidia's current line-up, but it also had it's show of shortcomings. In this review, I'll look at performance and Linux compatibility, as well as performance in Windows.

Packaging & Appearance

Palit's Radeon HD4850 came to us in packaging very similar to that of Palit's GeForce 9600 GSO Sonic, with the exception of some text and color changes. The green was replaced with red, a color usually associated with ATI's Radeon brand. The front of the box once again features Palit's avatar, Frobo, the robotic frog. It also lists the model number and some of the major features of the card.

The rear of the box features the HD4850's features in about a million different languages.

Inside, the contents are protected with a cardboard covering. Putting it out reveals the installation CD and some of the accessories: a CrossFire bridge, component out cables, and a DVI to VGA adapter. The card is held in the cardboard packaging itself.

Once removed from the cardboard, the Radeon HD4850 is protected by anti-static bubble wrap. Once removed, the card doesn't look much differen that the card I received from Palit. This is because the initial make of the Radeon HD4850 are all reference designs, and much like Sapphire, Palit hasn't yet been able to put their own spin on the card.

Built with a red PCB to go with ATI's color branding, Palit added their own graphical enchancements to the GPU cooler and fan to make it their own. The card is similar in length compared to the GeForce 8800GTS and Radeon HD3870.

A single six-pin PCI-Express power connector is all that's required to power the Palit Radeon HD4850.