Final Thoughts & Conclusion

While the Palit's Radeon HD4850 is nearly identical to Sapphire's, I did come across a few differences aside from the different colored stickers. Those differences are the heat output and fan noise levels. My assumption is that the Palit's Radeon HD4850 shipped with a newer BIOS than Sapphire's, keeping the card quieter and cooler.

Palit's Radeon HD4850 is an excellent choice for enthusiasts and gamers alike, and the card is also quite stable in Linux. Obviously I'd like to see a little more performance from the card in Linux, but I'm told that a future driver release will show some solid improvements in that area. Readers can be assured that BIOSLEVEL.com will stay on top of this.

Overall, Palit has a great product on their hands. I'd like to see them expand their ATI-branded offerings with a few overclocked models, much like they do for their nVidia-branded cards.

Pros

• PCI-Express 2.0 Support
• 512MB GDDR3
• CrossFireX Supports up to four GPUs
• Runs cool and quiet
• HDCP / HDMI compliant for watching HD movies on HD displays
• Only takes up one slot

Cons

• ATI Linux driver still needs work