Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 1GB Passive Review

A Closer Look at the Gigabyte HD 4850 1GB

As if we haven’t mentioned it already; the HD 4850 1GB we have here is completely passively cooled by what Gigabyte calls their Multi Core 3-point cooling system. We will get a bit further into this later but it is amazing that this heatsink can keep the core under a melting point and still take up a single additional slot. Even though this means the Gigabyte card takes up one more slot than the reference version, it will not intrude as much as some other coolers (Thermalright’s come to mind)

Other than the massive passive heatsink, this card is decked out in a Gigabyte-blue PCB and is of the exact same length as the reference design. There is also a Crossfire connector covered up by a blue protector in the right-hand picture above.


Gigabyte used Samsung’s K4J10324QD-HJ1A memory for this graphics card which is rated at 2Ghz DDR operation at 1.0ns and 1.85V. We mentioned that our sources point to this memory being slightly crippled in the overclocking department even though it is rated to run at 2Ghz for additional power savings. While we won’t be testing overclocking in the article itself, stay tuned to the comment thread to see if this proves to be true.


The back of the card is remarkably devoid of much of the usual power distribution components normally seen on the reference designs. Instead, it makes do with a cluster of chokes and capacitors here and some more under the heatsink towards the front of the card. There is only a single PCI-E power connector which keeps with the reference design.

The backplate is where all of the fun happens. Along with the usual DVI connector there is also an integrated HDMI connector and a single VGA. All in all, this selection of connectors is absolutely perfect for everyone from HTPC users to people who are still using VGA monitors.