ATI Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850 GPUs were released 15 years ago

erek

erek

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“Worth adding that AMD was quick to notice the growing popularity of the HD 4800 series. AMD decided to launch HD 4870 X2 and HD 4850 X2 models featuring dual-GPU options just a few months later. The series still featured the ATI logo, despite the acquisition that took place 2 years prior. It wasn’t until the HD 6000 series that AMD completed took over the GPU branding.

Now, 15 years later, AMD and NVIDIA are competing in an entirely different and much pricier landscape. The only card with similar specs (TDP and pricing) would be Radeon RX 7600 based on a tiny Navi 33 GPU. This GPU has 10.9 TFLOPs of compute power, so over 9 times more than the HD 4870.”

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Source: https://videocardz.com/newz/ati-radeon-hd-4870-and-hd-4850-gpus-were-released-15-years-ago

auntjemima Red Falcon
 
I ran 2x 4850 as my first Crossfire setup and ended up with 2x 4870x2, which I ran for quite a few years. The 4850 cards saw great use in other computers as they were very slim single-slot cards and could fit just about anywhere, but they tended to run very very hot... you could burn your finger on that copper heatsink toward the rear power connector very easily. With the 4870x2 cards, it was cool being able to run Quad Crossfire with only 2 cards. Quad Crossfire was amazingly well supported during the era that I used them. A 4870x2 was faster than a 5870, which was AMD's first DirectX11 card. Luckily DirectX 11 games ran fine on DirectX 10.1 hardware.
 
I had jumper ship at that time from Nvidia to the HD 4890 XTX , it was a reworked HD 4870 XT refresh and I added my first water block to the card, so I was on a socket 775 board with the high overclocking e5200 dual core under a Danger Dan waterblock back then.

When the HD 5000 series came out, I moved over to socket 1366 / i7 - 930 for Crossftre, I do miss the old days!
 
erek said:
“Worth adding that AMD was quick to notice the growing popularity of the HD 4800 series. AMD decided to launch HD 4870 X2 and HD 4850 X2 models featuring dual-GPU options just a few months later. The series still featured the ATI logo, despite the acquisition that took place 2 years prior. It wasn’t until the HD 6000 series that AMD completed took over the GPU branding.

Now, 15 years later, AMD and NVIDIA are competing in an entirely different and much pricier landscape. The only card with similar specs (TDP and pricing) would be Radeon RX 7600 based on a tiny Navi 33 GPU. This GPU has 10.9 TFLOPs of compute power, so over 9 times more than the HD 4870.”

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Source: https://videocardz.com/newz/ati-radeon-hd-4870-and-hd-4850-gpus-were-released-15-years-ago

auntjemima Red Falcon
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Wowza, that makes me feel old.
I do remember the HD 4850 was one of, if not the first, GPU to have 1 TFLOPs FP32 compute, which was unheard of at the time.

It was the first GPU I started out F@H for Team 33 on, those were good times.
Thank you for sharing erek! (y)
 
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erek said:
RV770, best GPU of all time. Literally bought mine day 1 on hardocp hardforums for $169 shipped. Highest end enthusiast class at the time, never seen economics so good 👏 👏

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I remember the HD 4870 first came out with 512MB ram, then they release a HD 4870 with 1GB, then they came out with the HD 4890 which is a slightly modified 4870 with a few more million transistors to increase the core clock a bit. Those were good times. I remember it forced nVIDIA to lower the price of their GTX 260 and release a 216 cores version shortly after (original GTX 260 has 192 cores, iirc).
 
I still have my HD 4890 on the shelf. At the time, it was one of the best investments I ever made. Didn't realize it's been that long.
 
I still have a 4850 in my stash that the fans stopped working on so i removed them and zip tied a 120mm to it. Ran it a year or two that way.
 
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I have a 4850 512MB still kicking about and used to have a 1GB 4890 after my GTX 260 c216 died. For the third time. This was around the time XFX was doing their own Linus Torvalds impression and was switching to AMD.
 
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Brian48 said:
I still have my HD 4890 on the shelf. At the time, it was one of the best investments I ever made. Didn't realize it's been that long.
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Yep RV770 era rocked, wish more would understand how awesome the economics was with ATI there
 
I remember running Crossfire 4770's or 5770's, can't remember which. What a miserable experience that was.
 
erek said:
Sorry to hear
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All I remember is having to switch between Crossfire and single card setup between every game I played due to incompatibilities. When it was working it wasn't bad, but required too much fiddling to be perfect.
 
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I had a 4830 512MB card. First treat to myself after being broke for many years. OC'ed quite well and put me some what close to a stock 4850 performance.
 
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Damn time flies ! Had 4850 crossfire and 4870. You could go to Best buy and buy these easily as well. Great cards.
 
The 4870 1GB was my first high end card. I ran 4320x900 using a TH2Go on a e8400 (Cpre2Duo). It was my gateway drug to pc gaming. I bought a 5870 at launch, so I replaced it quickly, but it was still my first.
 
Those were the days. 4870 sure gave the 200-series a run for its money in the value department.

I was a cheap ass at the time so that was too rich for my blood even. :ROFLMAO:

I was still using an x1650 Pro at that time until I bought a 5770 in 2009.
 
Bloody hellfire I feel old...

Pretty sure I have one of these sitting on the shelf in my basement.
 
Pretty good cards and unbelievable value for money. Remember that they prompted Nvidia to give out money back to the people.
Good times!

15 years.... damn...
 
Wow, time flies. I remember going to a local Best Buy at lunch to pick up a 4850. Best Buy was clearing out old gen cards and had I think it was a $50 coupon floating around. Then they screwed up and put out the 4850 cards a few days early, so I used the coupon for the new 4850. Others did the same. It was a one day opportunity. One of the best deals I ever got.
 
Sir Beregond said:
Those were the days. 4870 sure gave the 200-series a run for its money in the value department.

I was a cheap ass at the time so that was too rich for my blood even. :ROFLMAO:

I was still using an x1650 Pro at that time until I bought a 5770 in 2009.
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That is sad bro. You had better options then that lame budget card. Smarter I am thinking you are now? I hope!
 
Bought a 4850 was a crazy good card, ended up getting a bonus at work and bought a 4870 that used until my r9-290
 
my 4850 was my last ati card.

later, once more-programmable generations hit, there was always a bum-rush on value-priced ati cards for bitcoin; I'm not dealing with 50 over msrp for a 5850, , so I grabbed an GTX 460, and easily overclocked it 20 percent
 
Time flies, just made me feel old lol!

I still have my 3870 and 3850 combo with UV reactive HIS coolers, but I don't think j have any of the 48xxS.
 
I've been bring up my old machine (in a closet for a decade or so), and it has a HD4850 - the ATi logo makes it a collector's item. :) Also: a leading edge card in a single slot! Remember those days?

Any chance this would run Win11? Would it be any worse than a Ryzen 5600G onboard VGA? When I got into Win7 it was running crazy temps (82*C with fan in auto, under 60*C when manually set around 50%).

-Bzj
 

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HeavensCloud said:
All I remember is having to switch between Crossfire and single card setup between every game I played due to incompatibilities. When it was working it wasn't bad, but required too much fiddling to be perfect.
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You just described NVIDIA SLI as well.
It was just how the technology worked, and how game developers chose to implement it or not.
 
funkydmunky said:
That is sad bro. You had better options then that lame budget card. Smarter I am thinking you are now? I hope!
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Why is that sad?
A HD 5770 was a mid-range current GPU in 2009, and the other was a mid-range from 2005, so not terribly old for its day.
 
Got the 4870X2 when it first launched, one of the best cards I've owned, despite the heat and noise under load. Too bad both AMD and NVIDIA don't make dual GPU cards in one anymore due to poor scaling of multi GPU setups along with numerous issues these days.
 
Down8 said:
I've been bring up my old machine (in a closet for a decade or so), and it has a HD4850 - the ATi logo makes it a collector's item. :) Also: a leading edge card in a single slot! Remember those days?

Any chance this would run Win11? Would it be any worse than a Ryzen 5600G onboard VGA? When I got into Win7 it was running crazy temps (82*C with fan in auto, under 60*C when manually set around 50%).
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Yeah the card works fine under Windows 10 and 11. The latest available drivers are unfortunately about 10 years old, but they still work:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-hd/ati-radeon-hd-4000-series/ati-radeon-hd-4850

Oddly, the latest drivers available for Windows 7 (13.9) are actually newer than the latest drivers available for Windows 8 (13.4 beta). I've never been able to figure out why. On my 4850 and 4870x2 cards, I've always just used the Windows 7 13.9 drivers when using Windows 10 or 11. Crossfire with 4850 and 4870/4870x2 cards still works also, but only with games that still support exclusive fullscreen, and the game also has to be at least 10 years old so that it still has a crossfire profile via the 10 year old drivers, unless you want to try setting up a manual profile. I tested using 3dmark Vantage on Windows 11 using the 13.9 drivers and Crossfire worked fine.

I'm pretty sure that the 5600G would be faster at this point. I built a budget rig with a 5600G for a friend who's kid plays Genshin Impact, and the 5600G ran the game well enough. The 5600G should also support DirectX 12 and has 10 years of driver optimizations. The 4850 is a DirectX 10.1 card that thankfully supports DirectX 11 due to the way DirectX 11 was built to run on DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware (DirectX 11 is a strict superset of 10.1, so compatibility is simply a matter of shedding the minor subset of unsupported features; stuff such as Tessellation). But you could always run a few benchmarks to confirm.

The 4850 runs hot because of it's single-slot fan, which tends to whine at higher RPMs, so the default fan curve is pretty conservative to keep the noise down. When I ran the 4850 cards, I always used MSI Afterburner to set a more aggressive fan curve. Good case airflow around the card helps also.
 
Good info there, sir! Much appreciated. I just might throw some benchmarks in there for funzies.

-bZj
 
Just wore out my HD 5870 that I bought over 15 years ago used w/ waterblock here from a Hardforum user. A fine card, it lived a good long life. I'm not much of a gamer but I do some CAD type stuff, watch movies and videos, have a lot of windows open. Debating between RX6700XT and RTX3070, both with 12gb, to replace it. (I suspect some Linux driver issues with using system RAM when VRAM is exhausted, and I want to make that go away via overkill.)

I checked out Newegg to see their prices, and they're still selling things like the 5870 (6870, 5850, stuff like that) and they don't have any 3070's and suggest I buy 4070 instead. For almost the price of a 6700XT with 12gb (310 on sale at Microcenter) I could get again something like my 5870, hey it was a good card but I'm not that old-fashioned.
 
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