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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 2001 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 41976     avg: 41976 (95%)     max: 41976 Points
3DMark 03 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 33658     avg: 33658 (58%)     max: 33658 Points
3DMark 05 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 12318     avg: 15419 (65%)     max: 17443 Points
3DMark 06
0% 100%
min: 9314     avg: 9843 (52%)     max: 10965 Points
PCMark Vantage - Gaming Score 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 4543     avg: 4543 (36%)     max: 4543 Points
Cinebench R10 - Shading 32Bit
0% 100%
min: 5682     avg: 5682 (72%)     max: 5682 Points
3DMark Vantage - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 5000     avg: 5285 (38%)     max: 5614 Points
3DMark Vantage - P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 5307     avg: 5382 (40%)     max: 5491 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.

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.
Metro 2033 (2010): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings low. - 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.
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.
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.
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