To clear all the confusion, this is from the website.

ATI Radeon HD 4850 System Requirements
o PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
o 450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
o Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
o Minimum 1GB of system memory
o Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
o DVD playback requires DVD drive
o Blu-rayâ„¢ playback requires Blu-ray drive
o For a complete ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ system, a second ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4850 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card are required




Force3Dâ„¢ Radeon HD 4870 System Requirements
o PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
o 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
o Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
o Minimum 1GB of system memory
o Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
o DVD playback requires DVD drive
o Blu-rayâ„¢ playback requires Blu-ray drive
o For a complete ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ system, a second ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4870 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card are required

okay just got the card, testing it right now.

Counter Strike source - 200+ FPS. 1680x1050. wow.

u know, i usually suck at counter strike, but i'm pretty okay now with this card. i guess its because at 200 FPS i can anticipate everyones move..haha.

so a newbie question -- how can i check the temp and fan speed of the card. CCC?

eh, just played some bioshock. no slowdown. gears of war, no slowdown. everything runs fantastic.

maybe i should try some crysis. lol.

btw, should i be using rivatuner to tweak the card? anything better?

uhm. i can't seem to change the fan speed. my CCC doesn't allow me to adjust or turn on the ATI Overdrive section so that may be the fault.

From another forum:

if you make a profile in catalyst after turning on Overdrive( make sure clock and memory settings are correct). You can then go to the file "C:\Users\Bretware\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Bretware. XML. the xml file will have the same name as the catalyst profile you saved. right click and hit edit.

<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Manual" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="65" />

Change the value to "manual" and Want value to "65"

Save the file then reload your profile in catalyst.

65% seemed perfect for me, 70% was loud but you may need it if your case has poor air flow.

You will may have to select the profile everytime you start the computer, but it will work until there is a fix or better info so i can figure how to change the auto target temp.
Good Luck ,bretware

my temperatures are going over 90 degrees!! max 106.5! right now its 95.627 degrees..too hot.

the catalyst CC auto load doesn't work for me because i can't enable overdrive (sapphire card).

anyway to override this?? freaking hot!

thats what i did, but i can't go to the overdrive section on the CCC. so i can't load the profile with the changes

sapphire must have disabled it.

yeah its all grayed out (not accessible)

ahhh the lock button, stupid me!

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Added on July 11, 2008, 1:52 amfan working now!

This post has been edited by OmniAtlas: Jul 11 2008, 01:52 AM

hah i left it at 45% fan -- not loud and now the GPU keeps cool at 52 degrees.

Whats your 3dmark vantage score?

mine is only 6017 -- is that low??? Is it because I only have a core 2 duo 2.3 ghz??

i'm playing bioshock now + xbox controller, lol, its like playing on the xbox360. very impressed...have you guys tested with crysis?

alright, finally got my 3dmarks 06 score with the 4850.

9369!

why so low lah -- is it because my CPU is only a core 2 duo???

--

i haven't overclocked my card, default at 625 mhz.

oh..maybe its because i ran the tests at 1280x1024....

let me try at higher resolution.

This post has been edited by OmniAtlas: Jul 12 2008, 01:51 AM

just tried it with 1680x1050 max settings. 3d marks score of only 6576... ?

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Added on July 12, 2008, 2:05 amI uploaded my scores and people with similar setups have scores of 10,000+ 3dmarks06 -- what are your scores?

This post has been edited by OmniAtlas: Jul 12 2008, 02:05 AM

Perhaps its the motherboard? I am using a cheap gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L.what limits the speed of the card? the bus speed?
Does the ram also affect the speed of the card? I only have 2 gigs but i am not running in pairs because i only have two slots on the motherboard -- will upgrade to 4 gb eventually.

i am running vista as well.

but ram shouldn't affect the GPU speed right?

i didn't know that. do you have a reference by any chance?

so installing in pairs will give faster ram access = faster gpu speeds?

I'm still a little shocked why my card is performing below 10,000 3dmarks. I overclocked it to 660 MHZ and i get about 9955 3dmarks on the default settings.

Is there an obvious step i'm missing out, or is my computer just not configured properly, or is there a bottle neck? Running on a Intel 4600 chip - core 2 duo 2.4 GHZ.

--

btw, is it safe to overclock with the default fan. I'm running at 45 %, keeps cool at around 50 degrees. I can go up to 690 MHZ no problem. Any long term problems?

This post has been edited by OmniAtlas: Jul 13 2008, 12:03 AM

so uh, whata re you guys overclocking your cards (4850) to?

I got mine up to 670 mhz, 1050 for memory. bioshock started to crash when i put memory up to 1100 -- sensitive huh?

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Added on July 15, 2008, 4:35 pmstill crashing. perhaps its because my fan is only at 45 %??? is it the gpu clock or memory clock causing the crash?

I'm going to try at 650MHZ/1020 MHZ now, hopefully no crashing.

This post has been edited by OmniAtlas: Jul 15 2008, 04:35 PM