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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830

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The AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 is a slower clocked Mobility HD 4860 and based on the 40nm RV740 core. Therefore, it is similar to the desktop HD 4700 series. Because of the 40nm production process, the power consumption should be similar to the HD 4670 (according to rumors).

Instead of GDDR5 memory of the HD 4860, the 4830 can be only equipped with slow DDR3 or faster GDDR3. Therefore, the 128 Bit memory bus becomes a bottle neck and the performance is clearly degraded.

The gaming performance of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4830 is sufficient for demanding games of 2009 in medium - high details. Our gaming benchmarks (see below) showed that a high preset in Crysis or NFS Shift resulted in barely playable framerates around 25 fps. Less demanding games, are playable in high resolution and detail settings.

The Mobility HD 4830 is based on the RV740 chip and features 640 stream processors (128 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 4830 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.

The HD4830 was replaced by the Mobility Radeon HD 5830, which features a higher shader count (800) and DirectX 11 capable shaders. Therefore, the gaming performance of the 5830 is better, but also the power consumption should be higher (same 40nm process, although more mature).

Compared to the desktop cards, the Mobility Radeon is similar to the ATI Radeon HD 4730. Still, the desktop 4730 offers a noticeable higher performance due to GDDR5 usage and higher clock speeds.

 

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860

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The Mobility HD 4860 is based off of the 40nm RV740 core with less shader cores than the Mobility HD 4850 and only a 128 bit memory bus. Because of the high core clock and GDDR5 memory, the card should still be able to perform comparatively fast.

An initial review of the desktop HD 4750 with similar specifications than the Mobility HD 4860 (but at higher clock rates) shows a score of 6000 points in the GPU test of 3DMark Vantage. According to our benchmarks, this score puts the AMD card above the GeForce 280M.

AMD has also published a benchmark comparison between the HD 4850 and HD 4860 mobile graphics cards and showed that the 4860 was able to perform a few percentage points better in 3DMark06 under 1920x1200 pixel resolution.

 

At Cebit 2009, Asus showed us a 15" laptop with a Mobility Radeon HD 4860 for a hopeful launch in Q2 2009. Our press contact stated that the mobile HD 4860 may perform a bit worse than the mobile HD 4850. In the presented pre-production sample, there was an unspecified "Mobility Radeon 4500 Series" graphics card installed that scored only a bit above 2000 points in 3DMark06.

The features of the HD 4860 should be comparable to the HD 4850 with regards to Avivo HD video functionality, Powerplay and the integrated sound controller for HDMI output.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850

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The ATI Mobilty Radeon HD 4850 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1 upper middle-class notebook graphics adapter. Technically, the GPU is based on the desktop HD 4850 GPU but with a lower clock rate for reduced energy consumption.

The gaming performance of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 should be comparable to the desktop HD 4830 and is therefore very good at resolutions below 1080p. The high amount of shaders and the wide 256 bit bus can allow the card to run practically every DirectX 9 game in high resolutions and details. Demanding DirectX 10 games, such as Crysis, can be played with medium to high detail settings. Compared to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M, the HD 4850 should be a bit faster on average.

The newer Mobility HD 5850 is noticeably faster than the Mobility HD 4850 if GDDR5 graphics memory is present. If DDR3 with a smaller 128 Bit memory bus is used instead, then this would bottlebeck the 5850 to performance levels closer to that of the Mobility HD 4850.

The mobile HD 4850 core is based on the RV770 chip and features 800 stream processors (or 160 5-dimensional shader cores). These cores do the graphics work previously done by dedicated shader and pixel pipelines of older GPUs. The stream processors (also called ALUs) are grouped in five-way VLIW units. Each of the five instructions of a VLIW bundle has to be independent from the others, so the overall performance is highly dependent on driver optimizations.

The Mobility Radeon HD 4850 includes UVD 2, Avivo HD software and an onboard soundchip for 7.1 sound output over HDMI or DisplayPort. UVD 2 supports full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 streams by the GPU, thus reducing workload from the CPU. In addition to this, the software also supports dual video stream decoding and Picture-in Picture mode for full compliancy to the UVD BD-Live standards. Simply put, the Avivo HD technology is able to handle most video tasks and enables the GPU to decode HD videos.

AMD has claimed a current consumption of about 45-65 Watt for the cards part of the mobile HD 4850 to HD 4870 range. Still, it is unclear if this value represents the core chip alone or the entire MXM board with memory modules. We estimate that the VRAM chips would contribute about 5 Watts total to the overall energy demands of the mobile HD 4850.

Compared to the desktop ATI Radeon HD 4850, the mobile 4850 features a slower core clock and is therefore more similar to the desktop HD 4830 in terms of overall performance.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
Mobility Radeon HD 4800 Series
Mobility Radeon HD 4860 640 @ 0.65 GHz128 Bit @ 1000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4850 800 @ 0.5 GHz256 Bit @ 850 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4830 640 @ 0.55 GHz128 Bit @ 700 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4860 640 @ 0.65 GHz128 Bit @ 1000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4850 800 @ 0.5 GHz256 Bit @ 850 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4830 640 @ 0.55 GHz128 Bit @ 700 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4860 640 @ 0.65 GHz128 Bit @ 1000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4850 800 @ 0.5 GHz256 Bit @ 850 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 4830 640 @ 0.55 GHz128 Bit @ 700 MHz
CodenameM97M97-XTM98
ArchitectureTerascale 1Terascale 1Terascale 1
Pipelines640 - unified640 - unified800 - unified
Core Speed550 MHz650 MHz500 MHz
Memory Speed700 MHz1000 MHz850 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit128 Bit256 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR3, DDR3GDDR5GDDR3
Shared Memorynonono
APIDirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1
Transistors826 Million826 Million956 Million
technology40 nm40 nm55 nm
FeaturesPowerplay, CrossFireX support, Powerplay, CrossFireX support, OpenGL 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 Sizelargelargelarge
Date of Announcement03.03.2009 03.03.2009 09.01.2009
Information512 - 768 GFlops Computing Power832 GFlops Computing Power
Link to Manufacturer Pageati.amd.comati.amd.comati.amd.com
Max. Amount of Memory1024 MB

Benchmarks

3DMark Vantage
3DM Vant. Perf. total + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. total
3863 Points (1%)
3DM Vant. Perf. total + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
min: 5000     avg: 5285     median: 5263.5 (2%)     max: 5614 Points
3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX
3200 Points (2%)
3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
min: 5307     avg: 5382     median: 5347 (3%)     max: 5491 Points
3DMark 2001SE - 3DMark 2001 - Standard
41976 Points (44%)
3DMark 03 - 3DMark 03 - Standard
33658 Points (18%)
3DMark 05 - 3DMark 05 - Standard
14938 Points (16%)
min: 12318     avg: 15419     median: 16496 (18%)     max: 17443 Points
3DMark 06 3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x1024 + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830
3DMark 06
7155 Points (9%)
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x1024 + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
min: 9322     avg: 9949     median: 9784 (13%)     max: 10965 Points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x768 + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830
3DMark 06
8380 Points (11%)
3DMark 06 - Score Unknown Settings + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
3DMark 06
9314 Points (12%)
Cinebench R10 Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit) + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830
Cinebench R10 - Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit)
4250 Points (3%)
Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit) + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
5682 Points (4%)
Cinebench R11.5 Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850
Cinebench R11.5 - Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit
56.3 fps (19%)

Average Benchmarks ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 → 0% n=

Average Benchmarks ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 → 0% n=

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation

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 detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Fifa 11

Fifa 11

2010
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
430  fps
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
180  fps
high 1360x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
111  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
78  fps
Mafia 2

Mafia 2

2010
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
63  fps
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
53.8  fps
high 1360x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
45.7  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
29.5  fps
low 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
254  fps
med. 1360x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
73  fps
high 1360x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
50  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
30  fps
low 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
133  fps
med. 1366x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
70  fps
high 1366x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
47  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
25  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
40  fps
Risen

Risen

2009
high 1366x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
37  fps
Need for Speed Shift

Need for Speed Shift

2009
low 800x600
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
64.8  fps
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
36.7  fps
high 1366x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
24.6  fps
191%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
47  fps
Anno 1404

Anno 1404

2009
low 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
132.3  fps
ultra 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
42  fps
Sims 3

Sims 3

2009
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
251.2  fps
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
173.7  fps
high 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
97.5  fps
F.E.A.R. 2

F.E.A.R. 2

2009
low 800x600
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
168.1  fps
115%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
193.6  fps
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
88.1  fps
135%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
119.1  fps
high 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
86.1  fps
GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto

GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto

2008
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
61.6  fps
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
47.1  fps
Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead

2008
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
115  fps
Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2

2008
low 640x480
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
75 80.3 ~ 78 fps
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
45 50.1 ~ 48 fps
Crysis Warhead

Crysis Warhead

2008
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
50  fps
ultra 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
16  fps
Racedriver: GRID

Racedriver: GRID

2008
low 800x600
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
107.7  fps
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
68  fps
high 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
62.1  fps
Trackmania Nations Forever

Trackmania Nations Forever

2008
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
85.4  fps
ultra 1920x1080
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
40.6  fps
Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare

2007
low 800x600
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
169.7  fps
97%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
133 197.6 ~ 165 fps
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
61.5  fps
163%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
100.2  fps
high 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
64.5 68 ~ 66 fps
Supreme Commander - FA Bench

Supreme Commander - FA Bench

2007
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
43.1  fps
133%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
57.2  fps
high 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
35.7  fps
140%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
47 52.6 ~ 50 fps
Crysis - GPU Benchmark

Crysis - GPU Benchmark

2007
low 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
99.4  fps
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
99.4  fps
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
59.2  fps
103%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
60.7  fps
high 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
32.3  fps
139%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
44.8  fps
Crysis - CPU Benchmark

Crysis - CPU Benchmark

2007
low 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
106.9  fps
114%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
113.4 130.5 ~ 122 fps
med. 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
54.4  fps
106%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
57.6  fps
high 1024x768
100%
Mobility Radeon HD 4830:
27.5  fps
149%
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
38.9 43.8 ~ 41 fps
World in Conflict - Benchmark

World in Conflict - Benchmark

2007
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
55 76 ~ 66 fps
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
34 46 ~ 40 fps
Call of Juarez Benchmark

Call of Juarez Benchmark

2006
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
43  fps
F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R.

2005
low 640x480
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
461  fps
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
141  fps
World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft

2005
med. 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
190  fps
high 1280x1024
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
43  fps
Counter-Strike Source

Counter-Strike Source

2004
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
198  fps
Doom 3

Doom 3

2004
low 640x480
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
186.3  fps
ultra 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
182.5  fps
Quake 3 Arena - Timedemo

Quake 3 Arena - Timedemo

1999
high 1024x768
Mobility Radeon HD 4850:
579  fps

Average Gaming ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 → 100%

Average Gaming 30-70 fps → 100%

Average Gaming ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 → 130%

Average Gaming 30-70 fps → 137%

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850lowmed.highultraQHD4K
Fifa 1143018011178
Mafia 26353.845.729.5
StarCraft 2254735030
Battlefield: Bad Company 2133704725
CoD Modern Warfare 240
Risen37
Need for Speed Shift47
Anno 140442
Sims 3251.2173.797.5
F.E.A.R. 2193.6119.186.1
GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto61.647.07
Left 4 Dead115
Far Cry 27848
Crysis Warhead5016
Racedriver: GRID107.76862.1
Trackmania Nations Forever85.440.6
Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare165100.266
Supreme Commander - FA Bench57.250
Crysis - GPU Benchmark99.460.744.76
Crysis - CPU Benchmark12257.641
World in Conflict - Benchmark6640
Call of Juarez Benchmark43
F.E.A.R.461141
World of Warcraft19043
Counter-Strike Source198
Doom 3186.3182.5
Quake 3 Arena - Timedemo579
< 30 fps
< 60 fps
< 120 fps
≥ 120 fps

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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830lowmed.highultraQHD4K
Need for Speed Shift64.836.7224.6
Anno 1404132.3
F.E.A.R. 2168.188.1
Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare169.761.5
Supreme Commander - FA Bench43.0535.73
Crysis - GPU Benchmark99.459.232.31
Crysis - CPU Benchmark106.954.427.53
< 30 fps
< 60 fps
< 120 fps
≥ 120 fps


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

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