When this card makes it through POST, it is really good. I have had all settings on high in a new game demo yet to be released at the highest resolution possible and it was just fine.
The fan never needed to go higher than 50 percent of speed, and it is very quiet up to 65 percent or so. I used ATI Catalyst to auto-tune the over clocking and it went from factory over clock at 870 megahertz to 980 megahertz all while with memory at 1,050 megahertz. Could probably go higher but it is definitely enough for right now.
The first original time that I powered this up the fan went to 100 percent, sounding like a jet poised to take off. And the screen was blank, though POST beeps sounded normal. Thought maybe my motherboard did not appreciate the change to ATI so I shelled out 40 five dollars for a cheap nVidia card.
Installed it, and it booted first time. Switching the 4890 back in, it is now working for some reason. Subsequent reboots worked about 50 percent of the time so I finally removed it and sent it to Sapphire. So now I am without the card for a couple of weeks due to poor quality control.
I have looked elsewhere and noted that other people have been seeing the same problem with this such as the blank screen on boot.
Perhaps there was a bad batch and I was the unlucky one. Really annoying as I am out 45 dollar for a replacement card plus the postage to send it to the Sapphire service location.
It seems it is not my motherboards fault as my friend's Sapphire 4850 worked like a champ.
I can overlook a defective unit if it's an isolated situation, but having seen others report the same issue. I rate it low when it does not work, and five stars when it decides it does want to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment