Opening the brown cardboard box we can find the included bundle sat on top of a foam cushion protecting the graphics card below it.

The bundle is quite good with Sapphire’s 4850 card, and includes:

1. Cyberlink Power DVD and DVD Suite
2. A pro edition of 3DMark06
3. Drivers
4. A demo CD
5. A crossfire bridge
6. TV-Out to component cable
7. A generously long Molex to 6pin PCIe power adaptor
8. A TV-Out to composite video
9. DVI to HDMI adaptor
10. DVI to VGA adaptor
11. A 2GB USB stick
12. User manual.

The included free 2GB USB stick is divided into two partitions, one acts as a CD drive and runs a flash program with wallpapers and tech demo videos, while the other is free for you to use as you want. The useable space left is about 1.7GB

Underneath the foam cushion the 4850 sits snugly in an anti-static bubble wrap bag, which is yet more protection for the card.

The card is just under 24cm long (from the back of the PCI bracket), which in today’s enthusiast video card sizes is about average.

The back of the card is empty apart from resistors and things but those are pretty jam packed on the board.

The cooler for the card is only a single slot solution, so is bound to be rather noisy and potentially rather hot. ATI thinks that it is hot enough to require a warning sticker so that you are less likely to touch it and potentially burn yourself (Yes I had to touch it when it was on just to see how hot, and I can say it does get rather hot!).

Now that we’ve looked at the card in detail, let’s check out how it performs.

Next Page – Installation and Testing