AMD has really taken its time since the launch of the HD 3870 back in last November to work on creating a truly next-generation graphics card. The only exception to this was the HD 3870 X2, which was released in January of this year. Nvidia on the other hand has been so busy trying to take attention away from AMD that it has released model after model; it seems that this has affected it, with the GTX 280 not being the card that everyone thought it would be.

The new HD 4800 series will consist of two cards: the higher-end HD 4870 due out soon and the card that will sit directly under it, the HD 4850, which is what we have with us today. From a specifications viewpoint the HD 4850 really has it over the older HD 3870, while being priced under $300 at launch. Looking at transistors, we're already up from 666 million to 965 million on the new HD 4850. Stream processors also move extremely northward with 800, which is well over double the 320 we saw on the HD 3870. The other important area that gets a bump is Texture Units: more than doubled by moving from 16 to 40 on the new card.

Some areas have remained the same, however; the new HD 4850 still uses the same 55nm manufacturing process and Render Back Ends remain unchanged at 17. AMD must be feeling confident with the above changes as it has moved from a 512-bit bus back down to a 256-bit one. Clock speeds on the card also comes in a little lower, with the core being 625MHz; this is quite a fair bit down from the 775MHz clock seen on the HD4870. To help keep costs down and yield rates up, AMD have moved back to GDDR3 on this model. The 512MB on board comes in at 2,000MHz, and there are already rumours that 1GB models aren't all that far away.