Great value, especially compared to the nvidia equivalent (Sapphire Radeon HD 4850)

Member Name: bored_at_home

Product:	Sapphire Radeon HD 4850
Date:	11/01/09 (106 review reads)
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Advantages: DX10, Shaderv4, good utilities, good value

Disadvantages: ATI drivers are hit and miss

Treated myself to this and have never looked back! I can play all my favourite games on the highest settings without much thought. The card supports cutting edge everything including full directX 10 support (for vista games), shader version 4 and PCIE 2.0 which covers all of the current top-end games.

This is by no means a budget card and to my knowledge the only difference between this and the 4870 is the clock speeds. The fan is virtually silent and not intrusively large, the card fits snugly - some fiddling is required if you want to put a drive behind the card but its certainly not as long as some previously disastrous ATI cards.

ATI are slowly improving their drivers, they have let consumers down in the last 18 months but the latest drivers are problem free and the 'catalyst' software is everything you need to start over clocking or to tweak for a specific game.

I haven't tried out HDMI, I'm using a HDTV through VGA without any problems and the video playback and graphics quality is fine.

Compared to NVIDIA: There is so much contension that it's impossible to declare a true winner. Some sites have posted reviews that suggest the two companies peform better for specific games. Given that there is so little difference and NVIDIA cards are up to 25% more expensive I decided to go ATI.

Summary: Great value but by no means a budget card

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