Plenty of proposition for 4850 from different vendors appeared in Germany already. Prices are in 145-160€ region. Some have it in stock even, for example here:
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
Man, I dont know if I should wait for the cooled 4870X2 instead of going for the first release model.... With the 3870X2 I went for the regular model and I don't regret it, but just a month after the extra cooled model was the same price.
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
The fans are only running 14% at idle on the 4850s currently, thats why they are 70c at idle. Ati will release an update but in the meantime you should be able to use atitool or speedfan to increase the speed of the fan for cooler temps.
It'll be faster, but I wouldn't do it myself. It won't be twice as fast and that's where I draw the line on GPU upgrades. It might be like 50% faster though.
For those worried about the 4850's temps, ASUS is releasing the first non reference design card which has their own cooler on it which is said to bring down temps to non-crazy levels.
should i return the 4850 that's on transit for this
then again
kiUNiT said:
The fans are only running 14% at idle on the 4850s currently, thats why they are 70c at idle. Ati will release an update but in the meantime you should be able to use atitool or speedfan to increase the speed of the fan for cooler temps.
It'll be faster, but I wouldn't do it myself. It won't be twice as fast and that's where I draw the line on GPU upgrades. It might be like 50% faster though.
I don't think they realize you have a GTS 320. GTS 512 and 640 are still fine, but going from a 320 to 4850 should give you a pretty good boost in FPS.
Just wait till RivaTuner supports the 4850, that'll let you set fan profiles so it runs cooler at idle. I don't see why people worry too much though, These cards are designed to withstand this heat, its not doing them any harm really. The only real downside is lack of overclocking overhead and the possability of raising ambient temps.
This visiontek is silent at idle. It's much quieter than my evga 7600GT was at load as well. As a reference my specs, please don't laugh
I plan on tossing a Q6600 into this box this weekend hopefully
...
os: Microsoft® Windows Vista Ultimate - Service Pack 1 (6.0.6001) 64bit
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz at 1862MHz
ram: 4029MB DDR2 800
W/ the Evga 7600GT 256mb GDDR3 my 3dmark06 score was 3897 @ default 3dmark06 settings.
W/ the Visiontek HD4850 512mb GDDR3 my 3dmark06 score was 8420 @ default 3dmark06 settings.
I'll certainly take a 110% improvement for $150 dollars. A lot of what's holding me back from getting 10k or much MUCH higher, is my processor. I've seen people w/ this card and the QX series proc's pulling down 13k-14k 3dmark06 scores.
Just wait till RivaTuner supports the 4850, that'll let you set fan profiles so it runs cooler at idle. I don't see why people worry too much though, These cards are designed to withstand this heat, its not doing them any harm really. The only real downside is lack of overclocking overhead and the possability of raising ambient temps.
Honestly, this is a great time to be a pc gamer. Nvidia's got some excellent offerings with the added bonus of CUDA and Physx, and ATI's releasing some killer cards that rival their foe's, but at a lower price.
I'd never really been an ATI man myself in the past, but this card at that sale price @ Best Buy was too good to pass up. I almost picked up the 8800GT in last weeks ad for $130; I'm glad I showed some self-restraint.
Wait to see what the 4870 and 4870X2 bring to the market. If the X2 really does have a shared framebuffer then it will be a beast of a card and a very worthy upgrade from your 8800. At the very least they should both put some downward pressure on Nvidia's new high end solutions which currently off poor bang for your buck. The 4850 just wiped a $100 off Nvidia's midrange offerings, so if the performance is there with ATI's two new cards then the market is going to get a lot more interesting at the high end.
Wait to see what the 4870 and 4870X2 bring to the market. If the X2 really does have a shared framebuffer then it will be a beast of a card and a very worthy upgrade from your 8800. At the very least they should both put some downward pressure on Nvidia's new high end solutions which currently off poor bang for your buck. The 4850 just wiped a $100 off Nvidia's midrange offerings, so if the performance is there with ATI's two new cards then the market is going to get a lot more interesting at the high end.
Judging by the GTX200 prices, the 4870X2 must cost $600. I think the 4870 will be the sweet spot depending on performance. With a $80 price cut and a performance upgrade through drivers, the GTX260 could also become a sweet deal.
Oh man I'm so tempted to walk into Best buy and pick up 2 of the 4850's. One of the video cards on one of my computers just blew out last night, and I've been waiting forever to upgrade them both (Radeon X1300's).
I've got a non-video card related question and I'm sure somebody that's posting in this thread knows the answer.
While having my case open this past week installing my new video card, I noticed that I have 2 empty memory slots that looked very lonely. I've currently got 2gb of RAM on Vista Home Premium 32-bit. I know that the 32-bit OS can only read about 3gb or so of RAM. Does this include video card ram as well? Would it be worth it to add more RAM? The RAM that I paid $100 for a year ago is now $38 at Newegg.
If you add video card RAM, I've got a total of 2.5gb in my system. I'm not sure if another .5gb is enough of a performance increase to bother with it, but if the 32-bit OS doesn't count the vid card RAM, then I'd probably go ahead and buy more.
Oh man I'm so tempted to walk into Best buy and pick up 2 of the 4850's. One of the video cards on one of my computers just blew out last night, and I've been waiting forever to upgrade them both (Radeon X1300's).
You could pick both of these for $300 with the %25 discount on all Visiontek products. Thats $300 for a setup that is benching better than the GTX280 currently.
bill0527 said:
I've got a non-video card related question and I'm sure somebody that's posting in this thread knows the answer.
While having my case open this past week installing my new video card, I noticed that I have 2 empty memory slots that looked very lonely. I've currently got 2gb of RAM on Vista Home Premium 32-bit. I know that the 32-bit OS can only read about 3gb or so of RAM. Does this include video card ram as well? Would it be worth it to add more RAM? The RAM that I paid $100 for a year ago is now $38 at Newegg.
If you add video card RAM, I've got a total of 2.5gb in my system. I'm not sure if another .5gb is enough of a performance increase to bother with it, but if the 32-bit OS doesn't count the vid card RAM, then I'd probably go ahead and buy more.
I am pretty sure the video memory is treated independently. My page file shows 8GB of memory which is the amount of ram I have and ignores the 1GB of video memory I have in my card.
Judging by the GTX200 prices, the 4870X2 must cost $600. I think the 4870 will be the sweet spot depending on performance. With a $80 price cut and a performance upgrade through drivers, the GTX260 could also become a sweet deal.
I still reckon $200, $300 and $500 for the three cards, ATI are being very aggressive with their pricing this time, either way its going to make things interesting.
You could pick both of these for $300 with the %25 discount on all Visiontek products. Thats $300 for a setup that is benching better than the GTX280 currently.
I've got a non-video card related question and I'm sure somebody that's posting in this thread knows the answer.
While having my case open this past week installing my new video card, I noticed that I have 2 empty memory slots that looked very lonely. I've currently got 2gb of RAM on Vista Home Premium 32-bit. I know that the 32-bit OS can only read about 3gb or so of RAM. Does this include video card ram as well? Would it be worth it to add more RAM? The RAM that I paid $100 for a year ago is now $38 at Newegg.
If you add video card RAM, I've got a total of 2.5gb in my system. I'm not sure if another .5gb is enough of a performance increase to bother with it, but if the 32-bit OS doesn't count the vid card RAM, then I'd probably go ahead and buy more.
The 3GB figure already has the 512MB used for addressing your video card taken away. Adding another 2GB of RAM will give you between 1GB - 1.5GB of extra useable system RAM. On Vista your PC may "see" 4GB but the useable amount will be less than that. So whilst you won't get to use all of it, it should still be a nice boost especially considering you're using Vista, so Superfetch will make the most of any RAM you give it.
This visiontek is silent at idle. It's much quieter than my evga 7600GT was at load as well. As a reference my specs, please don't laugh
I plan on tossing a Q6600 into this box this weekend hopefully
...
os: Microsoft® Windows Vista Ultimate - Service Pack 1 (6.0.6001) 64bit
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz at 1862MHz
ram: 4029MB DDR2 800
W/ the Evga 7600GT 256mb GDDR3 my 3dmark06 score was 3897 @ default 3dmark06 settings.
W/ the Visiontek HD4850 512mb GDDR3 my 3dmark06 score was 8420 @ default 3dmark06 settings.
I'll certainly take a 110% improvement for $150 dollars. A lot of what's holding me back from getting 10k or much MUCH higher, is my processor. I've seen people w/ this card and the QX series proc's pulling down 13k-14k 3dmark06 scores.
WTF? the pluggins are specific? I hope the plugging is universal, else it could be something like $20 for the Photoshop one, and $20 more for the iTunes one, and $20 for the Zune one... Is there any specific info on how many pluggins are there?