ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850

The ATI Mobilty Radeon HD 4850 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1 high end notebook graphics adapter. Technically it is based on the desktop HD 4850 GPUs but with a lower clock rate to save energy.

The gaming performance of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4850 should be compareable to the desktop HD 4830 and therefore very good. The high amount of shaders and the 256 bit bus allows to run every DirectX 9 game in high resolutions and details. Demanding DirectX 10 games, like Crysis can be played with medium to high details. Compared to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M, the HD 4850 should be a bit faster on average. The newer Mobility HD 5850 is faster if GDDR5 graphics memory is used. With DDR3 the 128 Bit memory bus of the 5850 becomes a bottleneck and the performance should be beyond a HD 4850.

The Mobility HD 4850 is based on the RV770 chip and features 800 stream processors (160 5-dimensional shader cores). These cores do the graphic work of the shader- and pixel pipelines of older GPUs. The stream processors are also called ALUs and are grouped in five-way VLIW units. Each of the five instructions of a VLIW bundle has to be independent from the others and therefore the performance depends on the optimization of the driver.

The Mobility Radeon HD 4850 includes the Avivo HD called video technology including an onboard soundchip for 7.1 sound output over HDMI or DisplayPort and the 2nd generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder). This UVD 2 supports full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 streams. In addition to this, it also supports dual video stream decoding and Picture-in Picture mode which makes the UVD full BD-Live compliant. Simplified, the Avivo HD technology handles all video tasks and enables the GPU to decode HD videos.

AMD published a current consumtion of about 45-65 Watt for the HD 4850-4870. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).

Compared to the desktop ATI Radeon HD 4850, the mobile 4850 features a slower core clock and therfore should perform in the region of the desktop HD 4830.

ManufacturerATI
Mobility Radeon HD 4800 Series

Mobility Radeon HD 4860 640@650MHz

Mobility Radeon HD 4850 800@500MHz

Mobility Radeon HD 4830 640@550MHz

CodenameM98
Pipelines800 - unified
Core Speed *500 MHz
Shader Speed *500 MHz
Memory Speed *850 MHz
Memory Bus Width256 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR3
Max. Amount of Memory1024 MB
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1
Transistors956 Million
technology55 nm
FeaturesOpenGL 2.0, PCI-E 2.0 x16, Powerplay, DisplayPort support up to 2560x1600, HDMI support up to 1920x1080 (both with 7.1 AC3 Audio), 1x Dual-Link/Single-Link DVI, 1x Single-Link DVI Support (all display ports have to be supported by the laptop manufacturer)
Notebook Sizelarge
Date of Announcement09.01.2009
Link to Manufacturer Pagehttp://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityrade...
* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

Benchmarks

3DMark 2001SE - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 41976     avg: 41976 (69%)     max: 41976 Points
3DMark 03 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 33658     avg: 33658 (32%)     max: 33658 Points
3DMark 05 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 12318     avg: 15419 (48%)     max: 17443 Points
3DMark 06
0% 100%
min: 9314     avg: 9842.8 (38%)     max: 10965 Points
PCMark Vantage - Gaming Score 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 4543     avg: 4543 (21%)     max: 4543 Points
Cinebench R10 - Shading 32Bit
0% 100%
min: 5682     avg: 5682 (52%)     max: 5682 Points
3DMark Vantage - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 5000     avg: 5285.3 (17%)     max: 5614 Points
3DMark Vantage - P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 5307     avg: 5381.7 (16%)     max: 5491 Points
Cinebench R11.5 - OpenGL 64Bit
0% 100%
min: 56.27     avg: 56.3 (74%)     max: 56.27 Points
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Fifa 11
Fifa 11 (2010)
low:
430  fps      Compare
med.:
180  fps      Compare
high:
111  fps      Compare
ultra:
78  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Civilization 5 (2010): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings low. - more...
Mafia 2
Mafia 2 (2010)
low:
63  fps      Compare
med.:
53.8  fps      Compare
high:
45.7  fps      Compare
ultra:
29.5  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
StarCraft 2
StarCraft 2 (2010)
low:
254  fps      Compare
med.:
73  fps      Compare
high:
50  fps      Compare
ultra:
30  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Just Cause 2 (2010): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010)
low:
133  fps      Compare
med.:
70  fps      Compare
high:
47  fps      Compare
ultra:
25  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat (2010): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
CoD Modern Warfare 2
CoD Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
ultra:
40  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Risen
Risen (2009)
high:
37  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Resident Evil 5 (2009): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings high. - more...
Need for Speed Shift
Need for Speed Shift (2009)
high:
47  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Colin McRae: DIRT 2 (2009): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings high. - more...
Anno 1404
Anno 1404 (2009)
ultra:
42  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
ArmA 2 (2009): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
Sims 3
Sims 3 (2009)
low:
251.2  fps      Compare
med.:
173.7  fps      Compare
high:
97.5  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
F.E.A.R. 2
F.E.A.R. 2 (2009)
low:
193.6  fps      Compare
med.:
119.1  fps      Compare
high:
86.1  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto
GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto (2008)
low:
61.6  fps      Compare
med.:
47.1  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead (2008)
high:
115  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Far Cry 2
Far Cry 2 (2008)
low:
75 80.3 ~ 78 fps      Compare
high:
45 50.1 ~ 48 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Crysis Warhead
Crysis Warhead (2008)
low:
50  fps      Compare
ultra:
16  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings low.
Racedriver: GRID
Racedriver: GRID (2008)
low:
107.7  fps      Compare
med.:
68  fps      Compare
high:
62.1  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Trackmania Nations Forever
Trackmania Nations Forever (2008)
high:
85.4  fps      Compare
ultra:
40.6  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare
Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare (2007)
low:
133 197.6 ~ 165 fps      Compare
med.:
100.2  fps      Compare
high:
64.5 68 ~ 66 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Supreme Commander - FA Bench
Supreme Commander - FA Bench (2007)
med.:
57.2  fps      Compare
high:
47 52.6 ~ 50 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Crysis - GPU Benchmark
Crysis - GPU Benchmark (2007)
low:
99.5  fps      Compare
med.:
60.7  fps      Compare
high:
44.8  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Crysis - CPU Benchmark
Crysis - CPU Benchmark (2007)
low:
113.4 130.5 ~ 122 fps      Compare
med.:
57.6  fps      Compare
high:
38.9 43.8 ~ 41 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
World in Conflict - Benchmark
World in Conflict - Benchmark (2007)
med.:
55 76 ~ 66 fps      Compare
high:
34 46 ~ 40 fps      Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Command and Conquer III (2007): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
Call of Juarez Benchmark
Call of Juarez Benchmark (2006)
high:
43  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. (2005)
low:
461  fps      Compare
high:
141  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (2005)
med.:
190  fps      Compare
high:
43  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Counter-Strike Source
Counter-Strike Source (2004)
high:
198  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Doom 3
Doom 3 (2004)
low:
186.3  fps      Compare
ultra:
182.5  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Quake 3 Arena - Timedemo
Quake 3 Arena - Timedemo (1999)
high:
579  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.

For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List

Notebook reviews with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 graphics card

Advent 6555 (Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000, 17.0")
» Advent 6555 - External Review

MSI Megabook GT725 (Intel Core 2 Duo P9500, 17.0")
» Review MSI GT725 Gaming Notebook - Review
» MSI Megabook GT725 - External Review
» MSI Megabook GT725Q - External Review

» Comparison of GPUs
Detailled list of all laptop GPUs with a short description. Classified and sorted by performance.

» Benchmark List
Sortable and restrainable list of all GPUs with benchmarks (e.g. 3DMarks).

» Notebook Gaming List
Which game can be played with my graphics card.

Class 1
GeForce GTX 590
GeForce GTX 580
Radeon HD 6970
GeForce GTX 570
GeForce GTX 480
GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Radeon HD 6870
GeForce GTX 470
Radeon HD 5850
GeForce GTX 460 768MB
Radeon HD 6790
Radeon HD 5770
GeForce GTX 550 Ti
GeForce GTS 450
Radeon HD 4850
Radeon HD 5670
Class 2
GeForce GT 240
GeForce GT 430
7590M *
Radeon HD 5570
Radeon HD 6550D *
GeForce GT 220
Radeon HD 6450 GDDR5
Class 3
Radeon HD 4350
GeForce G 107M *
Chrome9HD *
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
SGX543MP2 *
Mali-400 MP *
PowerVR SGX540 *
PowerVR SGX535
unknown *

* Approximate position of the graphics adapter

> Notebook / Laptop Reviews and News > FAQ / Tips / Technics > Comparison of Laptop Graphics Cards > AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
Author: Klaus Hinum (Update: 2012-01-25)