Features & Specifications

The Radeon HD4850 is a brand-new series of cards, featuring a new GPU and 512MB of GDDR3 memory. That said, it can only be assumed that aside from improved performance, the Radeon HD4850 also brings new features to the table as well.

Features

• GDDR3 memory 256-bit memory interface
• DirectX 10.1
• 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
• ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
• Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard
• PCI Express 2.0 support
• PCI Express 2.0 support
• Dynamic geometry acceleration
• Game physics processing capability
• ATI Avivo™HD video and display technology
• Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD)
• ATI PowerPlay™ technology
• HDMI with 7.1 surround sound audio

While benefiting from a new 55nm manufacturing process, the Radeon HD4850 has several advantages over the HD3870 such as 7.1 audio over HDMI, and improved physics processing. Let's look at the specifications of the unit to see the power providing these features.

Specifications

• Display Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+HDTV
• Core Clock: 625 MHz
• Memory Clock: 993MHz, 1986 MHz effective.
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
• 512MB — 256bit GDDR3 memory interface
• Single Slot Active Cooler
• HDMI compliant via dongle
• 7.1 Audio Channel Support
• Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support
• Shader Model 4.1 support

Surprisingly, the Radeon HD4850 is clocked slightly slower than the Radeon HD3870, but has roughly 50% more transistors. I hope benchmarks will reveal that the new manufacturing process has given the card a large advantage over the previous generation of cards and such a difference in clock speeds will mean nothing.