Asus EAH4850

Asus EAH4850
Midrange graphics card is tops in performance

ATI'S RADEON HD 4850 CARDS cost less than half as much as nVidia's GeForce GTX 280 (see review on this page) and can run today's most demanding games on typical systems. You won't be able to crank settings to full on 30-inch monitor, but you get performance rivalling cards that until very recently cost $350.
Our review card, the $199 Asus EAH8450, offers excellent image quality and performance comparable to the 9800 GTX, but it supports DirectX 10.1 (DX10.1), requires just one power connector instead of two, doesn't block an adjacent slot, and includes a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. The 512MB card is a single-slot PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 device that uses one sis-pin power connector and a 450-watt power supply. It features the aforementioned HDMI converter, two dual-link DVI ports ready for High-Bandwith Digital Content Protection (HDCP), and an analog video ports that supports S-Video and component-video output.
The card ran neck and neck with nVidia's GeForce 9800 GTX in our benchmark tests, with the cards trading places for the lead depending on the game and the resolution, but we were thrilled with the result in DX10 games like Company of Heroes and World in Conflict. To boost performance even further, you can drop up to three additional EAH4850 cards into a system that has a CrossFireX-compatible motherboard and additional PCIe slots.
Though the EAH4850's fan is nearly silent at idle, the single-slot cooler doesn't seem to do a great job of cooling the card-an idle temperature of 78 degrees Celcius rose to 85 degrees under load. Not only will those high temps increase system heat, they also mean the HD4850 won't tolerate much overclocking.-Denny Atkin.
source: Computer Shopper September 2008.

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