Introduction

We have all more than likely seen or heard about the HD4850 video card that ATI/AMD and Sapphire released so they would have a decent video card in the sub-$150 dollar region.  For those people that could not swing the money to purchase a single HD 4870. The HD 4850 offered a very viable option for those that wanted a card where they could play a large number of the current games available albeit at reduced resolution and also a card that would be ideal for their Home Theater PC.

Today all video cards including the cheaper cards be it ATI/AMD or Nvidia all have the capability to handle the decoding of Blu-Ray quality video which out a hitch, there by making the HD4850 the perfect card for HTPC use.  What happens when you take two HD 4850 video and add memory to them to total 2 gigabyte and then mount all of this on a single video card.  You end up with Sapphire HD 4850 X2.  This is the card that is designed to give the hungry gamer a video card they can use if they are unable to afford the more expensive HD 4870 X 2 video card.  So lets give this bad a run through and see just how well it performs.

Designed by SAPPHIRE, the new HD 4850 X2 comprises two complete HD 4850 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 800 stream process units and a 256-bit memory interface driving 1GB of GDDR3 memory, making a total of 2GB on-board memory. Four Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. This provides a choice of Multi-monitor operation or CrossFire mode in which 3D applications such as games use both on-board GPU’s together to deliver a single accelerated output on the Primary display with industry leading levels of performance.

Specifications