HD 4850 Overclocked Vs 9800GTX+

Get the 9800GTX+ it's slighty faster and supports Physx.

It also does not run as hot and as the volcano 4850 so you can overclock it better.

The stock 4850 fan is a POS.

I call bs. gtx 9800+ right now are just 65nm highly clocked cards and nothing that I've seen so far in xs or reviews indicates that 55nm refresh 9800gtx+ can clock mad; the g92 core is already getting stretched to its limits anyways.
 
ati struck back at nvidia pretty good this round. i'm glad they did. we all came out winners. all in all, i would rather go with nvidia for the midrange, but ati for the high end cards.

the main reason is heat. my case is small. my room is hot. i do not overclock. steady speed limit for me, and i found my 9800gtx card plays all my games very well at 1680. but when moving to a high end card, the 4870 is a better value.

as for older technology, it seems not many really want to give up their 8800gt, while no one wants their 3870. i think nvidia cards are still very valid in the midrange. it seems not many upgrade to 4850 when they already have a midrange from nvidia.
 
It also does not run as hot and as the volcano 4850 so you can overclock it better.

The stock 4850 fan is a POS.

Wrong. The 9800GTX+ actually generates more heat than a 9800GTX, so that die shrink didn't seem to do much. As such, the 9800GTX+ generates significantly more heat than the 4850 (25w more idle, 18w more load according to http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=580&type=expert&pid=7 ), and will likely have lower OC headroom. The 4850, after all, is a downclocked 4870, so the 4850 definitely has tons of headroom in the OC area. Without increasing the fan speed at all, the auto-tune gave me a 690mhz core (which was stable in Crysis), a 140mhz OC on that stock fan that you incorrectly claim is a POS without increasing the fan speed.

From what I've seen, people have gotten OC'd 4850s to within 10% of the performance of a 4870 - can an OC'd 9800GTX+ come within 10% of the performance of a GTX 260?
 
4850 ftw, /thread.

Physx means nothing since it lowers FPS...I don't know why people keep bringing it up. As of yet, you can't use a second card just for physics either (doubt it ever will), and how many titles use it? I mean it is useful if you play 3DMark though.

First of all, you can do it. It may not be working 100% right now, but you can use a 9800 GTX for graphics and a 9600 GT for physics (for example). This is new tech. It takes time to get to that 100%.
Second, even though they are not many, there are already more PhysX games out there, than there are DX10.1 games.
 

Yea, but some early 9800gtx+ were just really high clocked 65nm cores. Btw, apoligies for calling bs on overclockability. Looked up some more reviews and it looks like 55nm core oc rather well. Hexus and legit reviews got their 9800gtx+ to speeds of 800-850 core and upto 2600 memory. Looks like gtx+ uses the same quality memory as the one found in gtx280 so memory should oc rather well. hd 4850 overclocks well to; you should be able to hit 4870 core/mem speeds no problem even on stock cooling so it all boils down to whichever card you can get cheaper.
 
I don''t get it, why is everyone complaining about the 4850 heat, the x1000 got a lot hotter, where louder and drew a ton more power, but it was praised!! Am I missing something here, or the 4850 PCB really cant handle 90C?
Because people are retarded and have short memories.
 
Anyway, in 3DMark Vantage P, a 4850 @ 750/1100 is roughly within 3% of a 4870 @ 750/900. I don't know how this translates to actual game performance though. At low resolution or AA settings, I'd say they're about equally fast. It's only when you need more memory bandwidth that the GDDR5 kicks in.

A passively-cooled 4850 @ 750/1100 >> 9800GTX+
 
a 750/1100 hd 4850 is usually 10% slower then similarly clocked hd 4870 in games.
 
On par? I don't really know but i'm guessing performance wise your 4850 should at least be as good as a stock 4870. Can't really recall any benchies from xs right now but another 13% gain on core should net comparable performance gains. I'm waiting until more non reference 4850s come out with higher binned memory. Theres a toxic sapphire 4850 out right now that nexus.net tested to go up to 2600 on memory no vmods. Talk about high quality samsung ram :D:D:D
 
I like mine :) . It even comes with a volt mod switcheroo :p.

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You went dremel happy huh :D . I have a bunch of swiftech copper ramsinks too, I just don't think it is worth the time to put sinks on the ram.

Hahahh, actually no... i tried cutting it with rotary tool and got maybe a centimeter... damn heatsink is 2 mm thick, and it's not made out of simple aluminum (yes heatsink is not coper but aluminum) it made out of aluminum + something else, cutting it with a dremel i would probably go trough 4 cutting disks..... and hour of work, screw that got the hack saw and did the job in 10 minutes.

It's a bitch to find good ram heatsinks that have a good thermal tape that actually freaking stick...

This works for me just fine :p
 
I have two things to say...

1. Toms Hardware was previously sued for corrupted reviews(a couple of years ago)
2. Go to www.TechPowerUp.com they have good reviews too... I think in TechPowerUp the 9800GTX+ and the 4850 are really close and the 9800GTX+ is better by a small margin if I remember correctly.
 
OP, don't know if you've made your decision yet, but I can solidly recommend an HD 4850. I have one and it blows through everything at 1440x900 (Crysis included...)

For all the nVidiots out there, the stock cooler doesn't suck. ATI's nonexistant power play and fan profiles within the BIOS suck. I edited my BIOS so that the card runs @ 680/1050 (random number I know...) and modded my fan profile and my card never goes over 60C. It also is dead silent while in 2D mode.
 
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