ATI Radeon HD 4850 announced from one vendor

by: John - posted: 6/20/2008 10:37:00 AM

I guess with all the hoopla over the card and the NDA, I can let it out of the bag that the Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4850 is the one I am currently testing. With that, Diamond has issued a press release announcing the card. I should have some looks at the card next week so stay tuned. In the mean time, check out the teraFlopping red monster that looks to be a great performer for the price.

-UPDATE- Here's a list from NewEgg of cards available if you want to purchase one.

Bring Your Game to Its Knees With the Next Generation of ATI Radeon HD Graphics Cards
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Diamond Multimedia


Diamond HD 4850

CHATSWORTH, CA--(Marketwire - June 20, 2008) - Diamond Multimedia (www.diamondmm.com), a leading manufacturer of PC graphics cards, sound cards and communications products, launched today the ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 graphics card. This card offers exquisite gaming capabilities combined with state of the art efficiency.

The HD 4850 is a single slot card, PCIE 2.0, with 512MB of DDR3 memory and a clock speed of 625 MHz. The memory speed is 993 MHz and is designed with 480 stream processors. The HD 4850 provides plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX™ upgradeability with up to quad-GPU support. Continuing with ATI's Power Play and 55nm processing technology, this card is fast and efficient.

The Radeon HD 4000 series of GPUs delivers superlative visual performance with next generation technology like a powerful new TeraScale engine that delivers high resolutions and fast frame rates. Unified Video Decoder 2 frees up the CPU for other tasks, especially the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities. As with their predecessors, the Radeon 4000 series provides graphics support for the latest Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 games and realistic 3D graphics and shading effects. Experience the best of Windows Vista and take advantage of the Windows Aero™ graphical interface.

The HD 4850 is truly the definition of value for gamers. Bruce Zaman, CEO, states, "Early testing shows quite profoundly that this model, especially in a CrossFire configuration, will provide the frames per second performance that gamers are looking for at a price point that cannot be equaled."

Unique to Diamond's version is an offer that will give gamers the opportunity to protect their systems from virus's while they game, and not suffer performance loss. The Radeon 4000 series will come with a special 60 day risk free trial version of BitDefender's GameSafe software.

"BitDefender's partnership with Diamond is a reflection of our commitment to working with the gaming community to develop gamer-friendly security solutions that offer full protection while not interfering with user activities," said Vince Hwang, Global Director, Product Management. "GameSafe software is designed with gamers in mind, eliminating the need to sacrifice speed and performance for system security. When activated, BitDefender's GameSafe, minimizes processor time and memory consumption, postpones automatic updates and scans, eliminates all alerts and pop-ups and sets the scanning level to 'permissive,' so only the most important files are scanned. All of this is designed to enhance the gaming experience, while maximizing protection from e-threats."

All Diamond video cards carry the Diamond guarantee of quality assurance. Unlike many cards that are simply first to market, Diamond carefully tests and retests every new model for its ratio of performance to reliability. Diamond is legendary in the PC video card business for its less than 1 percent return rate. Diamond cards use superior connectors, cables and components, as well as undergo more thorough testing for heat susceptibility and durability.

Availability

Diamond Multimedia's ATI Radeon HD 4850 will be available for purchase starting June 20, 2008 and will be available at Fry's, Amazon, CompUSA, Newegg, NCIX, Tiger Direct and ZipZoomFly. Learn more at http://www.diamondmm.com/4850PE3512.php.