Sapphire HD4850 Dual Slot Fansink and Accelero S1?

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:46 am

Hey all,

Sapphire has a HD4850 part with a custom designed PCB - the Dual Slot Fansink model. Currently, it is by far the cheapest 4850 card available where I live. Does anyone have an idea whether it's compatible with the Accelero S1?

FiringSquad has a review of the card, but disappointingly, they don't even mention the noise level of the cooler used on the card, let alone compatibility with third-party coolers: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sap ... ot_review/

Here's Sapphire's product page: http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products ... p?gpid=249

If the cooler on the card is considerably quieter even under load than the reference cooler, I could consider buying the Sapphire. Optimally though, I'd want to put an S1 on it.

Thanks for any help!

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 4:53 am

"As you can imagine, with your graphics card running 28 degrees cooler, the rest of your PC runs much cooler as well."

Awesome review. They win teh internetz lol.

On a sidenote, I keep on getting amazed with 1$ ~= 1â‚¬ price conversion.

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 5:32 am

Matija wrote:On a sidenote, I keep on getting amazed with 1$ ~= 1â‚¬ price conversion.

It gets depressing when i see things close to $1 : Â£1 conversion some companies use, even though the exchange rate is $1 : Â£0.56....
And i havent heard any reviews of this custom design 4850. Its still very likely that they uyse the same mounting holes, but since you cant be sure unless its significantly cheaper than the rest i would avoid it until someone who has one can provide confirmation.

MiKeLezZ · Post by **MiKeLezZ** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 5:54 am

I can find it at 127 euros so it is not a really 1:1 - add taxes to the USA price and that's just it - no more no less.
FiringSquad review is useless: I wanted to know if power consumption has improved, how does compare the noise, if that special design ruins video quality, and so on.

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:38 am

There are some customer reviews of this card at ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148468/sh ... ct_reviews
Sounds like its fairly quiet rather than silent, comments include "it runs quiet (inaudible at 2m)" and "theres hardly any sound from it either apart from the typical hum, very nice card."

As its the first completely redesigned 4850 PCB I'm surprised more proper reviews haven't appeared.

Re fitting the S1 to this card: Because the GPU is what looks like an additional 4 or 5 cm along the card compared to a normal 4850, wouldn't that mean the S1 would be 4 or 5 cm closer to the front of the case and possibly clashing with the HD cage? (I doubt it would fit in my Antec Solo).

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 6:24 am

Thanks for the comments so far. I think maf718 may have hit on the real problem here - the GPU does look to be a couple of cm more to the front of the case compared to the reference design:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/productf ... cimage.jpg

vs.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/ima ... 850-11.jpg

I would be putting it in a Solo as well, so I could be out of luck here... oh well, for the price of this card and an S1 I could also get a Sapphire 4850 Toxic, which comes with a Zalman VF900 pre-installed. Maybe that would be quiet enough.

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 7:33 am

Non-reference designs are tricky... Sometimes they are worth it, sometimes not; with this one, we don't know how 3rd-party cooling would work, and there's the issue of possibly not being able to flash a reference BIOS (or edit the current one).

WRT prices, monitors are the worst. I have to pay 2-3 times for a certain monitor than someone across the ocean, not to mention a much smaller collection of choices. Every time I hear someone say "OMG, this monitor is so expensive, it's $400" when the same thing costs 800-1000â‚¬ here (with much lower living standards), I want to strangle him.

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:34 am

Prism, I don't know if the Powercolor PCS version is available in Finland (it is in UK), but techPowerUp claim it is the quietest non-passive graphics card they have ever tested. According to this it is 15 or 16 dbA quieter than the Sapphire Toxic: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powe ... CS/25.html
I doubt you can trust their sound readings as much as you can at spcr, but they do seem quite thorough in their reviews.

Edit: it is a Zerotherm copper heatpipe cooler on the card by the way.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:17 am

earlier HD 3850 and HD 3870 OC version from Powercolour used same fancombo. And it was full tilt entire time... In order to get so low noise level as its claimed in the review, fan must have fan control, which would be nice since previous HD 38x0 models lacked that.

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:45 am

Thanks for the link Maf... I could find Powercolor 4850s at a couple of shops here, but not the version with the Zerotherm cooler. Maybe it'll pop up in a few weeks, or then not - Powercolors aren't that widely available in Finland these days.

In Techpowerup's noise measurement results the Toxic is actually a lot louder than the reference cooler.. I assumed they were running the Zalman at near minimum speed constantly, but apparently it's actually near maximum speed. That just ruins it from a silence perspective - 16 dB louder than the reference cooler at idle is a lot. So much for all the reviews claiming it is silent...

I'm leaning more and more towards the cheapest reference board I can find, with an S1.

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:47 pm

The PCS 4850 has only recently become available in the UK, I think Powercolor are replacing their reference designs, so I guess Finnish Powercolor stockists will get it eventually - ie when their stock runs down.

In the uk the cheapest 4850 I've seen is Xpertvision (Palit), about Â£102, which is about the cost of an S1 cheaper than the Powercolor! I'm still waiting to see if someone brings out a card with lower idle/2D power consumption which is why I was interested in the redesigned Sapphire in the first place. Not that I'm holding out much hope for an improvement till the next gen......

spykez · Post by **spykez** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 3:18 pm

Hi

Im thinking on buying the sapphire 4850 1GB GDDR3 http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products ... =248&grp=3 to use it with my new 24'' monitor, anyone knows if this is considered a reference card? the thing is i dont know if i will have any compatibility problems using accelero s1 with it since im not sure if the 1GB version differs in some way of the 512MB model...

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 1:41 am

Yes, that 1GB Sapphire has a reference design pcb, I've seen a picture of it without the heatsink. I think I can find it again, if you want to see for yourself.......... here it is, about halfway down the page: http://en.expreview.com/2008/07/04/the- ... ue-breeze/

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 1:42 am

It seems that memory on the 4850 is a big power hog (someone even mentioned 40W just for the RAM), so I'm not sure if getting a 1 GB version would be such a good idea...

spykez · Post by **spykez** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 2:22 am

Matija wrote:It seems that memory on the 4850 is a big power hog (someone even mentioned 40W just for the RAM), so I'm not sure if getting a 1 GB version would be such a good idea...

What, really? You think the 4850 1GB GDDR3 consumes more power than the 512MB version of 4870...? can someone confirm this? if that is true i think im goin for the 4870 since the difference in price is not that much.

soloman02 · Post by **soloman02** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 9:39 pm

IIRC GDDR3 consumer more power than GDDR5, which means that 512MB of GDDR5 memory would consume less power than 512MB of GDDR3. Therefore it would be safe to assume that 1GB of GDDR3 also consumes more power than 512MB of GDDR5.

All this however is contingent on the fact that GDDR3 consumes more power than GDDR5.

When it comes to memory designs, usually the latest gen (GDDR5) consumes less power than the previous gen (GDDR4).

spykez · Post by **spykez** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 3:07 am

Humm OK... but overall what you think will consume more power (idle and load), ATI 4850 1GB GDDR3 or 4870 512 GDDR5 ?

naappa · Post by **naappa** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 11:40 pm

About the dual slot; I don't know if accelero s1 fits, but I can say that the default fan is really noisy. However it was easy to replace the fan with Nexus 92mm (with cable tie), which keeps the card cool enough with 12V (max 95C with renamed furmark). Maybe with Noctua's 92mm you could get even better performance, I think I'm gonna test that, because 92mm Nexus is still the most noisy part of my build. So, I could recommend the card with certain limitations: if you think nexus 92mm is silent enough for you then this combo is quite cheap.

Not sure how I could check if S1 fits?

MiKeLezZ · Post by **MiKeLezZ** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 2:20 am

soloman02 wrote:IIRC GDDR3 consumer more power than GDDR5, which means that 512MB of GDDR5 memory would consume less power than 512MB of GDDR3. Therefore it would be safe to assume that 1GB of GDDR3 also consumes more power than 512MB of GDDR5.

All this however is contingent on the fact that GDDR3 consumes more power than GDDR5.

When it comes to memory designs, usually the latest gen (GDDR5) consumes less power than the previous gen (GDDR4).

This would be right if they used double the chips.
Since 512MB of GDDR3 are 8x64Mb chips and 1GB of GDDR3 are 8x128Mb chips... No difference at all in power consumption.

Also, GDDR5 COULD draw less energy... if driven at the same frequency. Since they set them at 3,6GHz... power consumption is in the same league of GDDR3s.
We should check mem's datasheet searching for mA consumption, but I doubt we would found evidences for GDDR5 to draw less energy - look also the reviews of HD4870, it is 25W-40W more than HD4850.

Mems that could make a little difference are GDDR4 - since they are a low-power version of GDDR3.

Backontopic, @maf718: do you know if the Xpertvision HD4850 you talked about is a reference? 'cause I could find it at a shockin' 125 euros...

spykez · Post by **spykez** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 11:09 am

Since 512MB of GDDR3 are 8x64Mb chips and 1GB of GDDR3 are 8x128Mb chips... No difference at all in power consumption.

Considering this i think i'm going for a 1GB version of 4850, sapphire maybe my first choice since they didn't change the memory clock like powercolor did, actually the change of the memory clock of powercolor was complete fail in the 2GB model and i'm guesing 1GB too, since 512MB and higher clocks have better results as you can check here http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd ... r3-review/

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 2:29 am

MiKeLezZ wrote: Backontopic, @maf718: do you know if the Xpertvision HD4850 you talked about is a reference? 'cause I could find it at a shockin' 125 euros...

Yes and possibly no.

When I first mentioned it they were shipping this version which is definately the standard design:
http://www.tekcomputersuk.com/xpertvisi ... 13648.html
Now they are changing over to a new card that looks like it uses a shorter PCB but I have no further details:
http://www.xpertvision.com/main/vgapro.php?id=175

Hope that helps.

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:59 am

maf718 wrote:The PCS 4850 has only recently become available in the UK, I think Powercolor are replacing their reference designs, so I guess Finnish Powercolor stockists will get it eventually - ie when their stock runs down.

Well, that didn't happen, but as it seems that Powercolor and Club 3D are more or less the same company, or at least selling the same products, a Club 3D badged version of this card recently surfaced (Club 3D HD 4850 Overclocked Edition). I placed an order today, for 12 EUR more than the cheapest reference card available now. Not too bad I think, we'll see how it works out in practice. Thanks for the tip!

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:29 am

Let us know how you rate the card, hopefully it's as quiet as reputed.

I see one improvement with the Club 3D version - the packaging does not feature a "warrior chick" or other embarrassing picture.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:08 am

naappa wrote:About the dual slot; I don't know if accelero s1 fits, but I can say that the default fan is really noisy. However it was easy to replace the fan with Nexus 92mm (with cable tie), which keeps the card cool enough with 12V (max 95C with renamed furmark). Maybe with Noctua's 92mm you could get even better performance, I think I'm gonna test that, because 92mm Nexus is still the most noisy part of my build. So, I could recommend the card with certain limitations: if you think nexus 92mm is silent enough for you then this combo is quite cheap.

naappa, how did you use the cable ties to attach the 92mm fan? Where did you attach the ties to the heatsink? Could you post a picture if possible? Thanks

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 3:58 am

maf718 wrote:Let us know how you rate the card, hopefully it's as quiet as reputed.

I see one improvement with the Club 3D version - the packaging does not feature a "warrior chick" or other embarrassing picture.

I've had the Club3D card in a new system for a while now, and I have to say it's a disappointment.

It does look a *lot* like the Powercolor, identical in the product pictures in fact. The actual card has different memory and VRM heatsinks, with fins this time - this change might be in newer Powercolors too, of course.

However, this is not a silent card. Reasonably quiet compared to the reference cooler under load, maybe, but not silent. The Club3D is clearly audible over the rest of the system, otherwise the biggest noisemaker is the stock fan of the Xigmatek 1283, slowed down to ~850rpm. Under load it gets considerably louder, much much more than techpowerup's graphs would suggest. Idles at 55C, Furmark can push it to 108C. I don't know how techpowerup got their figures from an almost identical card, but they got 55C-88C temps. To top it off, they say the readings were from the MEMIO sensor in GPU-Z, on mine that one IDLES at 83C!

Something seems fishy, as the cooler is definitely the same Zerotherm as on the Powercolor variant.

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:30 am

Are you saying the MEMIO sensor idles nearly 30C higher than the other two in GPU-Z? It should be a little hotter, maybe 5 to 10 degrees, not that much.

I would try reseating the cooler and applying new thermal paste. The MEMIO sensor is on the edge of the GPU, not the centre, if you are getting this kind of temperature differential the cooler is probably making bad contact with the GPU.

Hope this helps with the temps, may not help with the noise but you never know it might even encourage the fan to spin a little slower.

prism_emf · Post by **prism_emf** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:27 am

maf718 wrote:Are you saying the MEMIO sensor idles nearly 30C higher than the other two in GPU-Z? It should be a little hotter, maybe 5 to 10 degrees, not that much.

I can't remember if it was higher than both others, but definitely nearly 30C hotter than the general "GPU temp" reported. Not even knowing that wasn't normal, I already thought I'd reseat the cooler when I have a bit of time. I'll report back when I do.

Right now my Solo just has one case fan, a Nexus 12cm exhaust running at ~850rpm. Maybe a 9,2cm Nexus intake fan at low voltage would help things a bit too. It seems 55C is a point in the fan control table, the GPU fan keeps throttling back and forth between 37% and 57% at idle.

Thanks for the input!

JohnVenture · Post by **JohnVenture** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:53 am

Hi, I have the Sapphire 4850 dual slot model and I found it way too noisy too.

So I've bought an accelero S1 rev 2 and it fits, I've also attached a scythe slip stream 1200 RPM fan which gave me good results.

Only drawback is that because of where they've put the GPU on the PCB, the accelero makes the whole thing much longer than usual, and I can't put a fan in front of my HD cage anymore (on an Antec sonata III).

I'll post some pics if you guys are interested.

pleb · Post by **pleb** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:52 am

JohnVenture wrote:I'll post some pics if you guys are interested.

Please do, I'm waiting for delivery of a Sonata III case + 4850 + other components and I'd be interested to see how yours looks.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:12 pm

JohnVenture wrote:
I'll post some pics if you guys are interested.

Please do so ^^

P.S. Welcome to the SPCR!!!