I know that MSI issued a bios mod for the hd4850 that sets the core and memory to 160/500 at idle. Catalyst 8.7 will likely incorporate that change for both hd48xx cards. For comparion the 3870 core ran at 300 mhz at idle. So i'm sure the power consumption for hd48xx will be lower than what we've seen in reviews so far, at least when you're not gaming.

From the Anandtech review, I took the benches at 1680x1050 and this is how much the HD4850 is faster than the 8800GT in % :

Crysis: 15%
Call of Duty 4: 34%
ET Quake Wars: 53%
Assasin's Creed: 31%
Witcher: 27%
Bioshock: 68% (no joke)
Oblivion: 16.5%

The 2 cards aren't as close as some people think.

Hotfix

Try Driver Cleaner if you had an Nvidia card before.

As for heat, do you not remember the 8800GT launch? Or did you just conveniently leave that out?

RayvinAzn

And the 8800gt wasn't released during the summer, if it did the temps would be even higher. And there's already an xml mod that lowers the temp to 45 C for the hd4850. Plus IIRC due to short supply at launch the 8800gt was around 250$ (i may be wrong here), when you can already see prices of 150$ (BestBuy) or 165$ (Asus on newegg) for the HD4850.

For the case, take a look at the Antec 300, very good ventilation with 4 120mm fans and 1 140mm.

Get a Radeon HD4870 instead of the HD3870X2, much better for the same price.

And there's no reason to get an nForce mobo if you buy an Ati card. An Intel chipset P35 or P45 would be a better choice.

th ehell he does.

if it supports 1333 or even 1600, it supports all below. he doesnt need an outdates 1066 board to run a q6600. right now i have my q6600 on a ds3l which supports a 1600fs. so dont say he needs a board that states it supports 1066

blooddrunk

Ok good then, my mistake.

[QUOTE="matrixian"]Your motherboard's FSB is 1333 Mhz and your cpu's FSB is 1066 Mhz. Will your mobo's FSB downclock to 1066 Mhz ?blooddrunk

no?

that just means it supportsa a 1333 fsb.

Yup. He has to get a mobo that supports 1066 Mhz FSB with that cpu.