Sapphire Radeon 4850 X2 Review

Back in August when ATI originally introduced the Radeon 4870 X2, we were told that a less expensive Radeon 4850 X2 model would arrive in the coming weeks. We weren’t given a specific embargo date for reviews, we were just told that ATI wanted to focus on the 4870 X2 for right now and they would get back with us with more specific information later. If you dug a little deeper for info though, the general consensus was that the 4850 X2 launch would follow the 4870 X2 by roughly a month, with cards arriving in the September timeframe.

There was a lot going on behind the scenes though and we were getting conflicting information from various partners surrounding the launch of the 4850 X2. Back then ATI’s board partners were more focused on transitioning to 4850 and 4870 cards with 1GB of memory rather than the 4850 X2. As we now know the 4850 1GB and 4870 1GB launched quietly in August, while the Radeon 4670 was launched successfully in the beginning of September.


At the time of the 4670 launch ATI provided no new guidance on the 4850 X2, indicating that the card was still on track for a September release towards the end of the month. Of course if you spoke privately with ATI’s board partners they all had conflicting plans for the 4850 X2; some weren’t certain the amount of memory they’d ship their potential 4850 X2 boards with (1GB total or 2GB), while others weren’t even sure if they’d produce a 4850 X2 SKU at all! In comparison to ATI’s previous 4800 launches that went off without a hitch, the 4850 X2 was a pretty confusing mess to follow because of the inconsistent message we’d hear from each of the board partners, all while ATI reps were confident that the card would arrive soon.


With October’s arrival of the Radeon 4830 we asked ATI what the status of the 4850 X2 was yet again. From our news post on the topic: “I spoke with ATI about this yesterday and they explained that their board partners have chosen to focus on the 4870 X2 rather than the 4850 X2. Since they won't be providing a 4850 X2 card directly, they're entirely reliant on their board partners to distribute cards. As Xbit mentions, ATI is now pushing their board partners to ship 4850 X2 cards with 2GB of memory (1GB per GPU); back in August most of the board partners we spoke with were leaning towards going with just 1GB of RAM.

The cards are indeed in the process of getting certified, although right now it looks like Sapphire is going to be first out of the gate with cards at the retail level. This shouldn't be much of a surprise considering that Sapphire is currently handling all 4870 X2 card production for ATI and their board partners.”


Fortunately ATI’s projections were correct this time with Sapphire’s Radeon 4850 X2 hitting retail shelves at the beginning of November. We recently snagged one of these cards for review and were impressed by its performance and feature set, but all isn’t perfect with this card.