The ATI HD 4850X2 - A Dual GPU Beast 15 Years Later!
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In this video, we dive into the history of ATI's last dual GPU graphics card, the HD 4850 x2, which was released back in 2008. Despite being outdated by today's standards, the card was a high-end powerhouse during its time, offering impressive performance as a multi-GPU graphics card. We explore its specifications, compare it to its competitors, and test it with various games, shedding light on the challenges of multi-GPU gaming. While it may not be suitable for modern titles, this relic from the past provides a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of graphics technology.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:24 What Even Is This Thing?
1:14 What Made It So Good
3:12 Setup!
4:20 Crysis Warhead Gamer 1080p
4:50 Left 4 Dead Medium 1080p
5:20 Borderlands 2 Low 1080p
5:45 Dishonored Medium 1080p
6:14 Mirrors Edge Medium 1080p
6:38 L4D2 Medium 1080p
6:57 GTA V Low 1080p
7:30 CSGO Low 1080p
7:51 Minecraft Medium 1080p
8:15 ATI HD 4850x2: The Conclusion
9:42 Now Go SUBSCRIBE!
Script (As much as I could fit):
Hello everybody, and ive managed to get my hands on ATI’s last dual GPU graphics card: the HD 4850 x2. Now this is an old card - it lacks modern features and by todays standards has long since been ewaste. But - its cool, this card was made when crossfire and sli were in their prime, and this dual GPU solution was a high end beast. But it was overshadowed by its older brother and no one really talks about it. So what made it so good?
Now this card released in 2008 as part of ATI’s HD 4000 series. Games like crysis, far cry, and left 4 dead were some of the most popular titles and they all supported multi-GPU systems.
But the 4850 x2 isnt that. It was an enthusiast level card meant for those who had plenty of money and wanted top notch performance. And it wasnt the fastest, the 4870 x2 came out beforehand and had a higher core clock, newer vram, and cost $100 more. It was for those who didnt want to pay the premium for the aforementioned card, but still needed 2 GPUs like if they had to drive 4 monitors. Which wasnt alot of people, in fact the only vendor to manufacture this card was sapphire, and its price dropped by 25% only 3 months after its initial release.
Now this card was equipped with 2 terascale R700 processors, which isnt actually what the 4850 used. 4850’s were equipped with a single rv 770 processor - but the 2 chips were identical asides from the R700 having a higher tdp.
Together the 4850 x2 had 2 processors each with 800 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, 16 render output units, 10 compute units, and 64 z stencils all using 956 million transistors built on TSMC’s 55 nm process. Our model also pairs each GPU with half a gig of GDDR3 memory and a 256 bit bus, although 2 gig models did exist. This was also a large increase over the previous generations 3850 x2 and came with higher clock speeds and more vram
They also improved crossfire scaling and upgraded these cards with a new PLX chip. The 4850 x2 used a PEX 8647 which managed pcie bandwidth and allowed the gpus to communicate with eachother. This was a major upgrade and actually doubled the bandwidth over the previous generations 3850 x2 which used the PEX 8547. I also got bored and read the whole data sheet and these are the technical differences but point is it was faster, better and had more features.
It also got its own heatsink now. On the 3850 x2 it shared one with the GPUs and although I can't find anything about it, that sounds like a design flaw. Like a great way to quickly heat up your primary communication device.
So the 4850 x2 it was bigger, better and had to compete - primarily against nvidia’s geforce 9, and eventually 200 series. The 4850 x2 was often compared against the more much expensive GTX 280 - and it won with one reviewer dubbing it the GTX 280 killer. It was able to deliver more performance at a cheaper price and could alson power 4 monitors simultaneously, which was twice as much as the 280.
So why dont we still have multi GPU graphics cards? Well asides from increased power consumption and heat in a small area, game compatibility was limited and developers didnt have a need to add multi gpu support to their games. They were also prone to microstuttering due to uneven frame pacing which could make games feel less smooth despite high average frame rates.
Ours also only supports up to direct x 10 - this card came out in 2008 and we’re not going to be able to start most modern games. But what about those it can play? For the test system we used a prodesk 400 g1 with an i7 4790, 16gb of ram, and windows 7 running on an ssd. Its not the most powerful system but Im on a budget so consider leaving a like, commenting, or subscribing cause every interaction helps.
Now I bought this card for $30 online and after cleaning it out I wasnt sure if it even worked. But it spun to life and driver installation finished up quickly without a hitch.