ATi 4xxx Series Review

[qliveur]

@ShadowOfMyself:
Considering that they are probably made in China with near-slave labor, then yes, the cards are that cheap to make.

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

280 is more expensive to make. There is no way their cost is $150 or less.

 

[zod96]

Just benched Company of heroes with the 4850

Avg: 111 Max: 201 Min: 43

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: zod96
Just benched Company of heroes with the 4850

Avg: 111 Max: 201 Min: 43

you should make a benchmarks thread. list all resolutions and aa/af levels, plus quality settings on your games. also, show what speed you cpu and gpu are running, even if you just put @ stock settings or whatever.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

last year nVidia sold products at 3 times the amount of the cost to produce. And AMD at 2 times the amount of cost to produce. (and I am not including R&D and Administrative costs, just cost of production).

 

[bigsnyder]

Originally posted by: Martimus
Rumor is that they will launch along side the 4870X2 in August. I'll see if I can find the link for you. There was a picture of the HD4650 along with the 4870X2 about 2-3 weeks ago on Nordic Hardware I believe.

Damn, don't want to wait that long, but if these will pass through Dolby HD (not just 8 channel LCPM) then it will be worth it. Thanks for the info.

 

[idiotekniQues]

man by end of summer when i want to upgrade it will be CHEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP to do so

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

last year nVidia sold products at 3 times the amount of the cost to produce. And AMD at 2 times the amount of cost to produce. (and I am not including R&D and Administrative costs, just cost of production).

What are you counting as "product"? The entire video card, or just the discrete IC we refer to as the "GPU"?

PFO (profit on operations) for producing/selling the GPU is going to be vastly different from the PFO for producing/selling the PCB+RAM+VRMs+GPU finished package.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

last year nVidia sold products at 3 times the amount of the cost to produce. And AMD at 2 times the amount of cost to produce. (and I am not including R&D and Administrative costs, just cost of production).

What are you counting as "product"? The entire video card, or just the discrete IC we refer to as the "GPU"?

PFO (profit on operations) for producing/selling the GPU is going to be vastly different from the PFO for producing/selling the PCB+RAM+VRMs+GPU finished package.

I am counting "cost of revenue"

Each company published (if i remember right):
revenue - cost of revenue = gross profit
gross profit - administrative costs - research and development costs = net profit (nvidia) / loss (AMD)

I think there were a few extra sections there too...
I compared the revenue - cost of revenue to get my figures. (again, if i remember right, its been months since I looked at it, I just remember nvidia had 200% profit and amd had 100% profit... 100% profit is the MINIMUM a business should be running at)

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Sylvanas


LOL. The 4850 was released early because retailers started selling the thing already and results were popping up all over the place so reviews got the opportunity to provide some substantial benchmarks. The GTX+ was introduced ( although we could hardly say introduced...one benchmark on one site conveniently at the 11hr and no availability) after the 4850, they can't panic about something that didn't exist at the time.

OK. So it's panic if NVIDIA releases a card early, but it's heroic if ATI does it?

Got it. :thumbsup:

Your words make no sense....

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

last year nVidia sold products at 3 times the amount of the cost to produce. And AMD at 2 times the amount of cost to produce. (and I am not including R&D and Administrative costs, just cost of production).

What are you counting as "product"? The entire video card, or just the discrete IC we refer to as the "GPU"?

PFO (profit on operations) for producing/selling the GPU is going to be vastly different from the PFO for producing/selling the PCB+RAM+VRMs+GPU finished package.

I am counting "cost of revenue"

Each company published (if i remember right):
revenue - cost of revenue = gross profit
gross profit - administrative costs - research and development costs = net profit (nvidia) / loss (AMD)

I think there were a few extra sections there too...
I compared the revenue - cost of revenue to get my figures. (again, if i remember right, its been months since I looked at it, I just remember nvidia had 200% profit and amd had 100% profit... 100% profit is the MINIMUM a business should be running at)

SO what is the estimate margin for gt200??? Let me ask another way; How low can NVidia price their new gen cards (not 9 series) and still maintain acceptable profits? If they can't drop past a certain point then I don't think there's any point in waiting for an even more expansive price war.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Considering the price of the 4850, specially the 149$ best buy deal, Im curious how AMD will price the low end parts... How do they even make a profit out of it? Are the cards that cheap to make? Its funny that the price of a retail 4850 is the price Nvidia spends making each GTX 280

I would like to know what kind of profit margins they make per unit aswell, I wonder how much of a cut AMD actually get comparative to the Vendor (Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS etc).

last year nVidia sold products at 3 times the amount of the cost to produce. And AMD at 2 times the amount of cost to produce. (and I am not including R&D and Administrative costs, just cost of production).

That doesn't make sense. I doubt nvidia is making more money off selling 300+mm^2 gpus (g92) for around $150 than ATI is making selling 190mm^2 gpus for $150 (rv670)

 

[footballrunner800]

I just got a pair of 4850's and want to share some preliminary results. First of all, these cards run hot!. I live In A really hot and humid part of mexico and having these idle at 75 with AC and a fan on top of them is too much. I cant imagine how high they will get in load with 40c ambient temps

Performance is really good on these cards. My 9800gtx would struggle with stalker with everything on +AA(dont remember framerates but it felt choppy). With the 4850 cf i get over 100fps!

In cod4, the 9800gtx was getting around 75fps with all ingame settings on. With the 4850 cf, im getting around 100-140 fps

I havent installed crysis yet but i should get higher fps. Performance is really good but i might wait for the 4870 because of the heat.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
it's not hard to find positive things to say about either company right now.

Yes is very nice times for consumers. I hope this batch of cards brings some substantial games for pc to the table.

 

[lopri]

footballrunner, can you check the 2D clock frequency of your 4850? Either via CCC or Rivatuner, GPU-Z, etc. 75C idle is scary. I hope it's immature drivers that drive the card at full frequency under 2D.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
I just got a pair of 4850's and want to share some preliminary results. First of all, these cards run hot!. I live In A really hot and humid part of mexico and having these idle at 75 with AC and a fan on top of them is too much. I cant imagine how high they will get in load with 40c ambient temps

Performance is really good on these cards. My 9800gtx would struggle with stalker with everything on +AA(dont remember framerates but it felt choppy). With the 4850 cf i get over 100fps!

In cod4, the 9800gtx was getting around 75fps with all ingame settings on. With the 4850 cf, im getting around 100-140 fps

I havent installed crysis yet but i should get higher fps. Performance is really good but i might wait for the 4870 because of the heat.

Thanks for the well thought out comment on the cards that you actually own. Being anal about noise and such, I must research after market hsf's before selecting. Leaning towards having one nice silent 4870 (if they live up to expectations). :beer:

 

[footballrunner800]

im not so sure because ive never owned an ati card but under overdrive it says its 500MHz for the Gpu and 750 for the Memory.

 

[ronnn]

nm misread

 

[footballrunner800]

Quick update:


Lost planet DX10
All settings at the highrst possible including DX10 options
8xAA (cant go higher)
1680x1050
My sig With CF 4850 Stock

Snow:40.1
Cave:54.8

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
Quick update:


Lost planet DX10
All settings at the highrst possible including DX10 options
8xAA (cant go higher)
1680x1050
My sig With CF 4850 Stock

Snow:40.1
Cave:54.8

Ah! Your results seem in line with Computerbase... They have a single 4850 doing 29 fps in lost planet at 1600 @ 8x AA, assuming its the cave test that would be around 80% scaling which sounds reasonable

So Keys really is the one getting strange results

 

[footballrunner800]

Those are extremely high results that can't be done with a simple tweak. He is probably running the dx10 version without any of the dx10 options. It gets confusing because it goes from low to med to high to dx10 on like 4 different options. Im going to try this and see what i get.

EDIT:
Lost planet DX10 with all settings on high

Snow:57.6
Cave:73.3

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
I just got a pair of 4850's and want to share some preliminary results. First of all, these cards run hot!. I live In A really hot and humid part of mexico and having these idle at 75 with AC and a fan on top of them is too much. I cant imagine how high they will get in load with 40c ambient temps

Performance is really good on these cards. My 9800gtx would struggle with stalker with everything on +AA(dont remember framerates but it felt choppy). With the 4850 cf i get over 100fps!

In cod4, the 9800gtx was getting around 75fps with all ingame settings on. With the 4850 cf, im getting around 100-140 fps

I havent installed crysis yet but i should get higher fps. Performance is really good but i might wait for the 4870 because of the heat.

do you live in a sauna in mexico? no offense, but if it's 104 f outside I'm saving money for an AC unit instead of expensive video cards that heat the place up even more!

 

[Kuzi]

ATI released Hot Fix Drivers

Also found this pic of an Asus 4850 1GB with a better cooler

 

[Kuzi]

*double post*

 

[bryanW1995]

I think that 8800gt and now 4850 are very important cards for the pc gaming industry as a whole. They're so inexpensive that devs will be able to look at them as a baseline when making new games/updates to existing ones, giving all of us a better gaming experience. Unfortunately, I think that the crysis dev team used a gtx 480 in tri-sli as its baseline gpu...