Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic 512MB

Product: Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic 512MB
Provided By: Palit Multimedia
Price:

Introduction:

A couple of years ago, very few people in North America had heard of Palit Multimedia.  Lately that has changed however.  Palit is a top-tier manufacturer who makes boards for other companies as well as doing extra research and development that enables them to improve upon the standard reference design PCB layout on graphics cards.  If done correctly, this extra R&D should give Palit a leg up in the business and enable them to provide consumers with hardware that will meet and exceed their expectations.  Today we are looking at the mainstream HD 4850 Sonic 512MB card to see how this card compares to an HD 4850 from HIS.  First, let's see a little more information about the company.

Palit Box

About Palit Multimedia:

Palit Multimedia Inc. provides a wide range of industry-leading graphics cards to North and Latin America with a focus on service, support and innovative products. Palit Multimedia is affiliated with Palit Microsystems, a world-leading supplier in the design, manufacture, and distribution of PC graphics accelerators which was established in 1988. Palit is well positioned to maintain an industry leadership due to the vast array of NVIDIA® and AMD’s ATi® VGA products and on-going development efforts.

Our China factory was established in 1992.As a competitive pc peripherals manufacturer; we own 21 SMT lines which daily maximum output is 8.0 million components. Our monthly maximum capacity reaches 1200K, and on-time delivery rate is over 99%. The factories currently used for mass manufacturing are all ISO 9000 qualified, as well as qualified by a number of major OEMs. We keep presenting the latest technology and full range solutions to our customers. These are the main factors that crucial to our success in such a competitive graphics environment. All products have been put through WHQL certification to ensure full compatibility.

Quality, reliability and service are the commitments that we offer to our customers. We are willing to face the challenges and make adjustments to meet our customer's requirements. Our goal is to develop a long-term business relationship with our customers by providing high quality and professional services. We are commitment to providing efficient and accurate delivery service to our customers. Flexibility is also one of our main advantages; we are willing to adjust ourselves to meet the different needs of different customers. Our commitment to the Palit brand keeps us growing and maintaining our leading position in the VGA card and Video industries.

First Impressions:

While many companies appear to try and seduce the buyer with an incredibly proportioned female figure, Palit chooses something a little more realistic - well maybe not very realistic but definitely different.  They use a cybernetically-enhanced frog to sell their products.  Remember this is an amphibian, not a reptile.

Palit Bundle

Box Specs

The included bundle and specs on the box are all a little lean and for a consumer that is trying to make an uninformed decision at the retail store, he might pass this card up for one with more details.  An informed consumer will realize that the "Sonic" series is the crème de la crème however.  Our bundle included a DVI-VGA adapter, Quick Installation Guide, 6-pin to 8-pin power cable and a driver CD.  Also included (but not pictured) is a Crossfire cable.

The specs on the box simple state that the card is DX10.1 ready, supports PCIe 2.0 and has the standard maximum resolution of 2560x1600 in 32bpp mode.  Other details are included, but nothing mentions clock speed.

First Look:

As we take a first look at the Palit HD 4850 Sonic, you may think that Palit has merely slapped a different HSF on this unit and turned up the clocks a wee bit.  The fact is the PCB design is different, power management system is improved and the cooling system has been tweaked to be much more efficient and quieter at the same time.

Card Front

Card Back

Before we head on over to the next page and cover the specifications of this card, please take a moment to read some information on what makes the Palit HD 4850 different.  This is clipped from the Press Release.

Redesigned from the ground up, the Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic has the latest engineering and manufacturing technologies creating what overclockers have been yearning for.

Palit’s exclusive factory overclocked Radeon HD 4850 Sonic has a core frequency of 685 MHz and 2 GHz frequency for its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory making it the fastest HD 4850 on the market. For those who want to push their cards even further, Palit upgraded the power management system to 3-phases to deliver cleaner and cooler power (Vs. AMD 2-phase). Extra power phases can prolong the life of the card under normal operation and provide more stability when overclocking. Palit also increased the amount of power that can be utilized by moving from a 75 W 6-pin to a 150 W 8-pin power connector.

Palit’s dual heat-pipe cooling solution is 15% more effective than the AMD stock cooling solution. While the Palit cooling fan is 3400 RMP slower, it is 10 dBA quieter and is 20 degrees cooler at full load.

The Palit Radeon HD 4850 supports Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 Shader Model 4.1, OpenGL 2.0 and ATI AvivoTM HD Video technology. The Palit Radeon HD 4850 supports PCI-Express 2.0 and ATI CrossFireXTM Technology making the Palit Radeon HD 4850 an amazing gaming and video playback graphics card that will take you to the next level.