Which 4850?

[Ernie]

Ok, 'best' is subjective so probably the wrong term, so can you help me choose the most suitable make for my needs.

I have to replace my current card because it has failed, so this card is going to be far from stretched in any respect. I currently play WoW, quake III and some BF2142, So i'm probably looking for the card with the lowest noice, least heat, and I don't overclock.

Any brands that will historically 'fit the bill'

Cheers

 

[reflux]

Well, all the ones OCUK has in stock have the same, reference cooler. All cards are also made in the same factory, regardless of manufacturer as well, so just choose the one with the best warranty and RMA department in case things go pear-shaped.

 

[Elevon]

Ok, 'best' is subjective so probably the wrong term, so can you help me choose the most suitable make for my needs.

I have to replace my current card because it has failed, so this card is going to be far from stretched in any respect. I currently play WoW, quake III and some BF2142, So i'm probably looking for the card with the lowest noice, least heat, and I don't overclock.

Any brands that will historically 'fit the bill'

Cheers

All the 4800 series so far are all on reference design so virtually no difference,personally I just look at the bundle you get plus price and warranty of the card in question,bundles are more or less the same.

In my case I went with Gigabyte 4780 in the end ,mainly because of the great price I found on the net and warranty period.

 

[willhub]

The 1GB has a different cooler and I'd expect the 512mb ones will do eventually.

 

[psychas]

cheapest one tbh they all the same just some other gives you more warranty time and better rma servises and etc etc..

 

[Elevon]

The 1GB has a different cooler and I'd expect the 512mb ones will do eventually.

Thats true about the 1GB 4850(ie Asus card) however its very close to the 512mb 4870 cards in pricing so not rerally worth it IMHO.

Plenty of options with regards to cooling ie use the profile hack in CCC or put or own cooler on the card,or go with an Asus model since they have SmartDoc which can adjust fan speed without profile hack.

If memory serves me warranty periods are as follows.

VisionTek lifetime warranty(not seen any available in UK).
Asus and Gigabyte 3 year warranty
Club3D,Sapphire,GECube have 2 year warranty
Powercolor 1 year warranty.

 

[Deleted member 2277]

It took me ages to decide but in the end I went for the cheapest card with a 2 year warranty - a Sapphire 4850 @ £114incl

I have had sapphire's before and they have always been great cards. I have also had 2 powercolor cards die on me so I stayed away from them, they only have a 1yr warranty as well.

 

[Elevon]

It took me ages to decide but in the end I went for the cheapest card with a 2 year warranty - a Sapphire 4850 @ £114incl

I have had sapphire's before and they have always been great cards. I have also had 2 powercolor cards die on me so I stayed away from them, they only have a 1yr warranty as well.

My old Sapphire 9700 is still going strong but this time I fancied a change of brand,besides the Gigabyte was cheaper then the Sapphire version(from where I ordered it online) so that made it easier.

 

[C64]

Went for gigabyte too has a 3 year warranty and I have had a bad experience with a sapphire 1950 pro was told on sapphire forums by admins that my corsair 520hx wasn't good enough to power it lol
on further investigation it was the fact that the voltage chips have inadequate cooling so I had to rma it under the dsr, so that kind of put me off them for life.

 

[willhub]

Went for gigabyte too has a 3 year warranty and I have had a bad experience with a sapphire 1950 pro was told on sapphire forums by admins that my corsair 520hx wasn't good enough to power it lol
on further investigation it was the fact that the voltage chips have inadequate cooling so I had to rma it under the dsr, so that kind of put me off them for life.

Where those forum admins actually Sapphire employees? Have you got the link to the thread still?

If they work for Sapphire I'd be put off buying after hearing that tbh, a HX520w proberbly could run 2 1950pro's.

 

[C64]

No not employees but it was on the official sapphire forums so go figure.
http://forums.sapphiretech.com/showthread.php?t=13951

 

[Scougar]

Where those forum admins actually Sapphire employees? Have you got the link to the thread still?

If they work for Sapphire I'd be put off buying after hearing that tbh, a HX520w proberbly could run 2 1950pro's.

They never got round to even activating my membership on sapphire forums, even after emailing them!!

But yeah, basically advice on saph forums was usually.. psu not good enough. Well I can tell you that the corsair hx520 was good enough for a seriously overclocked x1950xt, running extra voltage. The main prob turned out to be the PCI-E frequency at 100mhz wouldn't work. Changed it to 109Mhz (or anything else non-standard) and it worked perfectly).

BTW... guess who helped me with that... CORSAIR Supporting graphics cards on their PSU forum. Really decent blokes (RAM-GUY, and Yellow-Beard I think).

EDIT: Read your thread on Sapphire just now. So funny. They actually believed it was the PSU's fault. Oh my word. Talk about defending a turd. Surprised they didn't ban you for suggesting you had an opinion.

Matthew

 

[willhub]

I'd like the email that guy from sapphire forums he is clearly a douchebag.

I'm pretty sure if the X1950Pro could not run on that PSU then adding a 4870 to my rig would results in a big fireball magically appearing in my room with the PSU in the center of it.

Funny really what PSU his X1900XT rig is running too aint it? A CORSAIR!!!!!

C64 can you access his profile and get his email I'd like to email him since I own that PSU and have tested multiple GPU's including a 2900XT on this system.

http://forums.sapphiretech.com/showthread.php?t=20261

Check it out he's at it again.

 

[C64]

God just reading my posts so many mistakes I must have been very tired.Yes basically the problem was the voltage regulator overheating and not the power supply at all.
They clearly do not test all those power supplies as they so claim and as for that guy I bet he doesn't even own what he claims to in his sigs.
Yes and very funny how he owns a corsair psu now the bit that made me laugh was he was backing himself up by claiming seasonic (which he no doubt googled) made the hx series corsairs and tried to make it seem as though seasonic were a bad psu manu.
I have been seeing a few 4850 problems cropping up with people claiming black screens and resetting etc odds on they are sapphire cards tbh.

 

[Deleted member 2277]

God just reading my posts so many mistakes I must have been very tired.Yes basically the problem was the voltage regulator overheating and not the power supply at all.
They clearly do not test all those power supplies as they so claim and as for that guy I bet he doesn't even own what he claims to in his sigs.
Yes and very funny how he owns a corsair psu now the bit that made me laugh was he was backing himself up by claiming seasonic (which he no doubt googled) made the hx series corsairs and tried to make it seem as though seasonic were a bad psu manu.
I have been seeing a few 4850 problems cropping up with people claiming black screens and resetting etc odds on they are sapphire cards tbh.

I've just googled 4850 black screen and first item:-

Just got the card. Its performance is simply put amazing for the price.

The only problem I have is that the screen goes black while playing Crysis or running the Unigine 0.4 benchmark and remains there.

My display's hardware protection system kicks in saying ``The signal is not 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz". Sometimes the computer will autoreboot, sometimes not.

GPU temperature during the event is at around 82 degrees Celsius. CPU temperature is at 60 Celsius.

GPU: Gigabyte 4850
CPU: Intel E8400
Mobo: Asus P5E (X38 chipset)
RAM: 2x2Gb Mushkin
PSU: Sirtec A12S, 500 Watt true power.

The PSU carried without any problem a SLI of 8800 GTX's so I don't think it to be the culprit.

Should I RMA the card? Is it a driver problem?

Tested both in cleanly installed Vista X64 with Catalyst 8.6 and in XP SP3 with the HD4000 series hotfix non-WHQL Catalyst.

While in XP, at a time the system would recover and prompt me about the video driver stopping responding. It even started outlook with a file named ``states.dmp" as an attachment, but since I don't have any pop3 or imap account i hit cancel and saved that file.

It's out of the question me modifying in any way the card (aftermarket cooler or whatever) and I'm a new ATI user, just switched from nvidia.
As you can see this is a Gigabyte.

 

[Deleted member 2277]

Second item:-

God damn this new infernal machine of mine. Having installed all the neccessary parts and all correctly, I run and install the drivers required for the Asus 4850 512mb, and long behold, when i restart the computer, it merely loops and get a black screen of death, and restarting it manually gives me a memory dump.
I have also installed(tried) the 8.6 Catalyst drivers also to no avail, giving me the error message of not detecting the hardware.

Most of these cards are probably built on the same production lines by the same people using the same components etc. so if a problem affects one brand it will probably affect all of them.

 

[marscay]

Went for gigabyte too has a 3 year warranty and I have had a bad experience with a sapphire 1950 pro was told on sapphire forums by admins that my corsair 520hx wasn't good enough to power it lol
on further investigation it was the fact that the voltage chips have inadequate cooling so I had to rma it under the dsr, so that kind of put me off them for life.

i'd pick any card except for Sapphire, even though all the current cards are identical their support is attrocious...C64 experience above is the norm.

 

[montymint]

i have the powercolor, not a problem as of yet.

 

[Scougar]

If that 2nd guy is running Vista... I get exactly the same issue (black screen followed by memory dump), after installing the drivers. My card is however a 3870.... so would point to a problem elsewhere in my opinion.

EDIT: If someone can get that sapph tech emil address that would be awesome. I want to send him an honestly polite email saying that he is basically wrong about the corsair PSU's and stop trashing their good name.

EDIT: found a guy on tom's hardware with exactly same issue as me (black screen on boot up). Probably a conflict, but not sure what as only extra thing I have is X-FI, and that was plugged in after the issues started.

Still not sure why it does it though.. wierd.

Matthew

 

[Elevon]

I've just googled 4850 black screen and first item:-

Just got the card. Its performance is simply put amazing for the price.

The only problem I have is that the screen goes black while playing Crysis or running the Unigine 0.4 benchmark and remains there.

My display's hardware protection system kicks in saying ``The signal is not 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz". Sometimes the computer will autoreboot, sometimes not.

GPU temperature during the event is at around 82 degrees Celsius. CPU temperature is at 60 Celsius.

GPU: Gigabyte 4850
CPU: Intel E8400
Mobo: Asus P5E (X38 chipset)
RAM: 2x2Gb Mushkin
PSU: Sirtec A12S, 500 Watt true power.

The PSU carried without any problem a SLI of 8800 GTX's so I don't think it to be the culprit.

Should I RMA the card? Is it a driver problem?

Tested both in cleanly installed Vista X64 with Catalyst 8.6 and in XP SP3 with the HD4000 series hotfix non-WHQL Catalyst.

While in XP, at a time the system would recover and prompt me about the video driver stopping responding. It even started outlook with a file named ``states.dmp" as an attachment, but since I don't have any pop3 or imap account i hit cancel and saved that file.

It's out of the question me modifying in any way the card (aftermarket cooler or whatever) and I'm a new ATI user, just switched from nvidia.
As you can see this is a Gigabyte.

No problems or issues with my Gigabyte 4870 in Vista x64 (I do a lot of gaming)so that guys problems is probably something else,I'm using my old trusty OCZ 700W PSU so plenty of juice .

Side Note : Try running FurMark that stresses your video card like nothing else,my Gigabyte 4870 passed both the benchmarking and stability test with no issues,it also gives you live GPU temp readout as it does its benchmarks/ stabilitytests,good little program.