About:

The Palit Radeon HD 4850 sonic edition addresses the heat issues seen in the usual Radeon 4850 cards and also provides an incremental performance boost. It has two heat pipes and a large aluminum heat sink in combination with a rather silent 65mm fan to dissipate the heat that this capable graphics processing unit can produce.

Features:

Palit has overclocked the core from 625Mhz to 685Mhz (almost 10 percent higher) but the memory clock sees only a tiny hike from 1986Mhz to 2000Mhz. This palit scored 7851 #DMark Vantage (performance) points, over 11 percent higher than the figure attained by the Asus card using the same Radeon HD 4850 chip, but at stock speeds – 6960 ponts. Performance benefit in actual gaming is a mixed bag – it varies from next to no gain, to an improvement of 5 percent.

In Company of Heroes, for instance, the over clocked Palit card managed 105 FPS at 1680 x 1050 resolution and the highest quality settings. The Asus was marginally slower at 97 FPS. F.E.A.R saw an improvement of 3 percent. Other games like Crysis, World in Conflict and Unreal Tournament III did not see any improvement when tested at similar settings.

Verdict:

The Palit card idles at around 50 Degrees Celsius, while the usual single slot cards based on the same chipset run as hot as 75 Degrees Celsius. What’s more, you get a minor Performance boost as well with this Palit, and the premium you have to pay is not much less than $50.