15 Year Anniversary of the HD 4800 series launch. One of the greatest GPUs of all time.

It’s been 15 years since one of the greatest (if not the greatest) price/performance GPU was launched. I am talking about the legendary HD 4870/HD 4850. For just $200 the HD 4850 was faster than the previous generation top end nvidia GPU the 8800 GTX which cost $600. That’s like the current RX 7600 beating the last gen RX 6900 XT or at the very least 3080/3080 Ti. Leaving the 3090 out since I am comparing it to the XX80 series equivalent to what the 8800 GTX was. For me it was my first ATI/AMD GPU with the HD 4870. Couldn’t justify getting a GTX 280 since it cost $650 and the HD 4870 would have gotten 70% – 75% performance of it and over half the price at $300. And it was $100 cheaper than it’s direct competitor the GTX 260. You would have to be an idiot to buy nVidia at the time.

But alas, those days are gone. It’s sad to see than we leave an era of $1000 and $1500+ high end graphics card where 15 years ago we could have gotten “close” to high end graphics performance at $300.

Heck not even too long ago back in 2016/2017 you could have gotten a GTX 1060 6GB and get the performance of GTX 980 at half the price that the GTX 980 launched and it had 2GB more!

So, what do you guys think, it was the greatest price/performance graphics card in history? Anyone of guys owned It back in the day? Was it the turning point for you to switch to AMD/ATI like it was in my case after over half-decade of nVidia use.

Share your thoughts.

FYI, here's a retro review of the HD 4850 (which I still have as one of HTPC and to play older games).

Surprised Maroxad isn't still using one of these.

Celebrating a GPU 🤦‍♂️

@last_lap: You say that as if it's a bad thing.

@Xtasy26: Truly a classic, and arguably defined PC gaming when it released. Even got me to go off Nvidia until the 1070.

But I am probably gonna go with AMD again soon enough...

I'm trying to remember back then. I think i still had the 8800GTX (decided once to go completely nuts on a PC). I remember reviews being pretty solid but AMD still had the reputation of running hot and loud from the HD 2000 series.

Or did that whole PC blow up under mysterious circumstances by that point? Interesting times :P. Yeah that PC was dead because i remember i was trying to troubleshoot it.

Anyway, no didn't have the 4000 series. I did get the 5000 series (the bat mobile...though i got the Sapphire Toxic edition model). That launched to very strong reviews and i needed a new card so seemed like a good idea...and it was :). That old 5850 still works last time i checked (which is a while ago now). Great card.

I had an HD 4850 in my first build. No complaints.

Bad no, weird AF, yes.

I remember back then when I saw high-end GPUs going for $500 and went "geez, people pay that for graphics cards?" when the most expensive one I had owned up to that point was $80.

Little did I know.

To be fair, $500 in 2008 dollars is more or less $800 in 2023 dollars.

But yes it is still crazy expensive and while I can't sit here and give you a valid argument as to what it should be priced, I abso-freakin-lutely know it shouldn't be as high as it is 😜

If you want the best, well, you gotta pay for the best GPU. Today's pricing standard shouldn't be this ridiculous as it is with Nvidia's cards. You don't need to pay for top-of-the-line, buy what matches the resolution you are targeting.

I wasn't there when the HD 4800 series came out though. I started with the 8800 GT/GTX/Ultra series when Crysis 2007 came out.

I played Crysis on a HD4850. Legendary card

How is it weird? People post about Anniversaries of the Xbox 360 and PS3. This thing was WAY powerful than the Xbox 360 and the PS3 and it costs less.

When people celebrate say a car, they don't celebrate the door, or the wheels, the engine etc, they celebrate the whole thing. A console as a whole is celebrated not its GPU, CPU, controller etc.

So yes, it's weird AF, but expected from Hermits as they don't celebrate games, just hardware, this thread is just further proof of that.

8800GT was my first high end gpu I bought back in 2007. Then I bought a 2nd 8800GT in late 2008 for SLI and ran those until 2011.

Still remember my 4870 build. Great GPU.

Not any weirder than celebrating a console IMO.

@lebanese_boy: I partly agree as I don't celebrate consoles either, but I understand why people do. But celebrating a GPU, a part is weird af.

As I said earlier, when a manufacturer celebrates say a cars 50th year, you celebrate the car as a whole, not the doors, wheels, engine etc separately.

GPU is the heart of PC Gaming And this was a special one, World's First Teraflop consumer grade GPU. I have seen other PC Gaming Hardware threads on it. This was way significant then some "controller" which is no where near as complexity as designing a GPU. Comparing this to a controller shows the ignorance of consolers.

And no we do have significant games that have been celebrated like Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Crysis. Since you are consoler you don't know about it.

As for the HD 4800 GPU series.... I never really payed much attention to it and I think I had a GTX 260 around that time. The only ATI/AMD GPU I ever owned was a 9800 Pro. It had good performance... when it worked. I had to RMA it twice. Worst GPU I ever owned and I never bought another Radeon GPU again.

As a consoler, you obviously don't know the impact this had on the PC Gaming World. It brought AMD back from irrelevancy from their previous generation. Kind of like when a certain console maker comes back from irrelevance after bombing on a console cycle. AMD had the mediocre HD 2000 series which was late to market, barely matched nVidia’s mid-end and consumed power. The HD 3000 series was a slight improvement but nothing home to write about. HD 4800 series brought ATI/AMD back from irrelevancy. It actually caused nVidia to have a loss that year (while AMD's Gaming Graphics division made a profit because it raking in the sales) and it kicked off several series of successful GPU’s from ATI/AMD with their Terascale architecture with the HD 5000 series, HD 6000 series and the HD 7000 series. So, much so that nVidia didn’t recover from it until really the GTX 600 series. nVidia even had loses in the subsequent years after the HD 4800 launched. AMD was able to get back to 40% market share in the Discrete graphics space the year the HD 4800 launched and in the laptop Gaming space reached up to 50% market share with HD 5000 series so yeah it had major impact on AMD/ATI’s resurgence in the later 2000’s and early 2010’s.

@Xtasy26: Like I said no one celebrates part of an item, they celebrate the whole item. If you celebrate a GPU, then that's weird af, even a "consoler" knows that lol.

What's next you gonna celebrate a mouse, keyboard, monitor etc.

A GPU/video card is the most important component for gaming. PC gamers often only need to upgrade their video card to get a huge performance uplift similar to buying a new console. So, yes, it makes sense to celebrate specific GPUs. The mid-gen refresh consoles were essentially just GPU upgrades, but forcing you to buy a whole new console just to get that extra GPU power. Pretty shitty way of doing things.

GPU or Video Card is basically like a whole console in a sense thus why it's celebrated just like a console anniversary and those that came before. A single GPU is the heart of the PC as a whole. When it's time to upgrade, it's always a choice if you want the new tech/uplift performance that comes with it, and it's no different than the mid-gen upgrade consoles.

CPU is also the second important component but hardly anyone celebrates that kind of hardware.

Not knocking you down on why PC gamers celebrate GPUs, but they are important to remember and still do represent the whole gaming hardware not just for PC but for consoles as well.

(Fun fact: The best thing about gaming PCs is that you have a choice to upgrade and only upgrade when you think you are ready when a game isn't giving you what you desire thus time to upgrade the GPU. And not unlike consoles that require the whole machine to do so)

Good performance for the price? Nice. AMD should try that again.

@BassMan: Talk to me when you reach that elite PC status.

@davillain: I'm just saying that it weird to celebrate a GPU. Imagine me celebrating the engine of a car and not the car itself, it would be weird af lol.

Oh but the engine is the most part of the car, but without the other components the engine just sits there and does nothing.

@last_lap:

Ahh the 4870... my first ever high end GPU, and my cheapest too, at $180 in early 2009. Prior to that I had only had "budget" (but still expensive) Nvidia stinkers like the FX 5200 and the mediocre 6600 gt, but the 4870 opened up a whole new world of maximized graphics, framerates, and 1200p resolution. Completely blew away anything the PS360 could do as well.

The only comparably good time I can think of in terms of price/performance was the start of the Xbone/PS4 era. You could get a 7870 (or Nvidia equivalent) that solidly outperformed "the most powerful console to ever have existed" for half the price.

Let's hope days like these can return one day, whether it be from Intel finally catching up to the other two, AMD pulling their heads out of their asses, or Nvidia taking a financial clobbering from an AI bubble burst.

Why would anyone by dumb enough to celebrate a mouse keyboard? You as consoler don't know the significance of a GPU. It's basically like getting a brand new console except more powerful. I went through several generations of GPU upgrades and kept the CPU the same and it's was as if I got a brand new PC with each upgrade of the GPU being able to run at higher resolutions with better framerates. Especially since this things was powerful than the whole Xbox 360 or PS3 and costing less than those at the same time. That's why it should be celebrated since the significance of it.

Got me off of nVidia too until I got the GTX 1060 6GB. It would be hard and dumb to get nVIDIA at that time since GTX 280 cost $650 and I could get 70 - 75% the performance of it with my HD 4870 and it was half the price.

The 8000 series was a strong line-up which made HD 4800 even more significant and surprising too since it the HD 4850 could beat the 8800 GTX so AMD/ATI closed the gap in one generation after struggling for two years and did so at a mere $200 when the 8800 GTX cost $600 at launch.

The HD 5000 series was great series too. Beat nVidia to the punch was the best GPU in the world until the GTX 400 series released. Even when the GTX 400 series was released it wasn't as impressive considering the high power consumption and how hot it ran. Hence it was nicknamed "Thermi" making fun of the generation that was codenamed Fermi and all the memes over the web.

AMD knocked it out the park too with the HD 5000 series. I think it was hard to obtain though as far as I remember it being constantly out-of-stock for the first couple of months due to AMD having hard time producing it on the new 40 nanometer node.

I remember looking at old youtube videos of the Radeon HD 4800 and 5800 cards play Crysis and was so amazed. I miss those times.

@Xtasy26: Because I'm a "consoler" I don't know about anything lol.

You celebrating a component doesn't surprise me because Hermits are weird who care more about how many frames, resolution games are than the games themselves. So celebrating a GPU is weird af but expected.

My first high end GPU too. Got mine HD 4870 for $200, also was stuck to the mid-end or budget GPU's too. The one prior being the 7600 GT. It destroyed the PS3 and Xbox 360. Especially since consolers where hyping the "Cell" processor as it's something the best thing since sliced bread. The HD 4870 could push HD 1080P on certain games while the Xbox 360 or the PS3 was still stuck at 720P. :P

I have doubts we will get back to those. AMD seems to be comfortable with selling GPU's at the price to protect their profit margins they don't seem to care about trying to cut costs as much to get market share like they did with the HD 4800 series. They reached up to 40% GPU share. Now they are half that. Only thing I can see is intel pushing them. It's essentially a duopoly now.

Yeah this "component" is more powerful that the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Seems like you don't as the other PC Gamers in here pointe out the significance. This was more powerful than those two GPUs combined...LMAO. Yes, hermits care about frames and resolutions that's why we shell out the money for it to get you know a better experience.