Introduction

The ATI 4000 series video cards have taken the VGA world by storm. The surprising performance of the Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870, both based on the AMD/ATI R770 GPU, has driven down prices of all other video cards due to the low release prices of both. The HD 4850, at under $200, performs as well as the geForce 9800GTX, which only a few months ago was the most powerful single-GPU card on the market, and sold for over $350. The HD 3870's performance rivals that of nVidia's GTX 280, which a few weeks ago cost $150 more than the 3870's release price of $300.

If you've ever noticed, there is a limited number of ATI partners building Radeon video cards. ATI has always allowed a limited number of companies to build ATI-based cards, to keep from flooding the market with a huge number of identical video cards. They also limit the market area that their partners sell in, for example, not all of their partners are allowed to sell in the US market.

Our friends at Palit have recently been granted the licensing to build ATI-based cards, which makes Palit ATI's latest partner. Palit also joins the handful of ATI partners that build both Radeon and geForce graphics cards. Being allowed to sell in the US market, American enthusiasts will get the opportunity to buy Palit's ATI cards, which should be interesting, since Palit often foregoes using the reference video card model to make their own creation using nVidia's, and now ATI's chipset.

Today I will be looking at my first Palit-built ATI card, the Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic. With its large heatpipe cooler and factory overclock, along with another addition that I'll mention a little later, this should be a very interesting version of the HD 4850. Has Frobo the frog produced another winner here? We'll see in the following pages!

Specifications

Model Number: XAE/4850S+T352-PM9148
Chipset: ATI Radeon HD 4850
GPU: ATI R770
Streaming Processors: 800
Bus Interface: PCI Express 2.0
Memory Support: 512MB GDDR3
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory Clock: 2000mHz (1000 x 2)
Core Clock: 685mHz
RAMDACs: 400mHz

Features

- Full Microsoft DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1 Support
- Dual Dual-link DVI outputs support 2560 x 1600 resolution
- Dynamic geometry acceleration
- Game physics processing capability
- ATI PowerPlay technology
- ATI CrossFireX Multi-GPU technology
- ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
- HDCP capable
- HDMI function via dongle (optional)
- Built for Microsoft Windows Vista

Packaging

Rather than the familiar holographic gold/green box that Palit's geForce cards are shipped in, Palit has designed a new black/red box for its Radeon cards. Of course their mascot, Frobo the Frog, is proudly displayed on the front. As with their geForce boxes, there isn't a lot of information here, just basic specs info.

Inside, we see Palit's familiar box-within-a-box, the graphics card is enclosed inside of its own cardboard box, in a bubblewrap sleeve, and resting on top of a slab of foam.