In an effort to remain competitive in the $200-$300 price bracket, ATI is launching yet another product from a brand new series which has been given the codename R700. The R700 will be better known as the Radeon HD 4000, and the first product from this new series that we will be looking at is called the Radeon HD 4850.
Already the Radeon HD 4850 is shaping up to be a rather interesting product as its suggested retail price has been set at just $200, right between the GeForce 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512. With that in mind we would normally expect this new card"s performance to at least exceed that of the 8800 GT, however, looking at its specifications the Radeon HD 4850 appears as it will be capable of much more than just defeating the competition"s budget king.
The Radeon HD 4850 is comprised of a staggering 800 (160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs. Compare this to the 320 (64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs of the Radeon HD 3870 and you can quickly begin to understand why we feel this card could be much more potent than current mid-range offerings. Also to be noted, the Radeon HD 4850 boasts a memory bandwidth of 64GB/s, while the Radeon HD 3870 was limited to 57.6GB/s of bandwidth.