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4770 vs 4850 vs 4870 - power consumption/silence

PAz

PAz

PAz

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Hi

Quick Q if you don't mind. Have to get a new card to replace my x1950xt 256mb ram as it has finally died its death and I've no choice but to order something new.

My choices are 4770, 4850 or 4870 (only because theres one on special offer at the moment for £103 elsewhere).

From my searches, the 4770 is a better choice than the 4850 as it uses less power right? Although would picking up a 4850 actually be the better choice?

4870 looks nice, but I hear the Sapphire stock coolers are noisey and the card is very power consuming.

Thanks as usual for any help :)
 
The 4870 is basically a turbo charged 4850 with GDDR5, which makes it about 25-40% faster :)
The 4850 is about 5-10% faster than the 4770, but runs cooler and uses less energy due to an improved 45nm rather than 65nm process. The 4770 uses about half the power of a 4870 under load, but is a fair chunk slower.

Noise actually isn't terrible on most of them these days, especially if you setup a custom fan profile, however they can get noisy on default settings as they speed up and down; whether they seem noisy would depend on the rest of your system.
 
I think you mean 40nm vs 55nm :p

And the Sapphire 4870 with the double slot cooler with 1 larger fan is not too loud...
 
Thanks for the info. So its worth spending the extra for the 4870 though? £103 isn't a bad price though I suppose.

Hopefully the fan on it isn't as loud as the one on my X1950XT was under loud, that thing was louder than my xbox when gaming!
 
Hi PAz.

What is your gaming resolution?. Well in fact you may have had to drop it for some titles with your current card so what is the maximum resolution of your screen?. That information should help define what card is better for you.
 
I have a 24" Dell widescreen (1920x1080).

To be honest, I'm not much of a gamer - just the odd bash here and there. Thats why I thought the 4770/4850 might be OK for my needs rather than the 4870.
 
I had read about them. So the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 Vapour-X 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI PCI-Express - Retail should be pretty good for my needs?

GDDR3 will be OK?
 
Yep, providing the rest of your machine is up to scratch it'll be a massive jump from an X1950 (I had an X1900XT then an 8800GTS 512 before my 4870 and each was a big jump, the 4850 is a bit faster than that 8800 (or an 8800GTX) :))
 
Just over 80w full load which is why it has a pci-e connector, however it's literally just over the rating. Think somewhere said it used somewhere between 80-90w fully stress test loaded.
 
Last edited:
Alexrose1uk said:
Yep, providing the rest of your machine is up to scratch it'll be a massive jump from an X1950 (I had an X1900XT then an 8800GTS 512 before my 4870 and each was a big jump, the 4850 is a bit faster than that 8800 (or an 8800GTX) :))
Click to expand...

Thanks, will be ordering the 4850 shortly :)

Cheers to all for the help.
 
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