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If the 8800 GT was the gaming card made for the PC gaming masses Everyman in 2007, in 2008, it would be the HD 4850. The HD 4850 was the flagship initial release of the HD 4000 series, marking the a new resurgence of AMD in the discrete graphics card market.

It was the HD 4870 that wowed gamers by being able to keep up with much more expensive GTX 280, and blew away even many more gamers  with its impressive anti-aliasing ability. But released at the virtually the same time, the HD 4870's little brother -- the HD 4850 -- was the product that offered high-end performance at a price point that was affordable by most. It wasn't all that long ago at all that the second fastest card you could get in a new generation of GPU's would bust the bank -- but this wasn't the case with the HD 4850. For many, the deadly cost effectiveness made the HD 4850 the more memorable of the brother wonder-cards coming from ATI.

The most significant difference between the HD 4870 and the HD 4850 is the memory that each uses: the HD 4850 sports very common GDDR3 modules, while the HD 4870 debuted with extremely fast GDDR5 memory. Nonetheless, compared to video cards of the last generation, the HD 4850 offers a humongous step up in performance for video cards selling under $200. Today's R4850 sells for around $200 dollars (USD) -- about $25 more than MSI's own reference design HD 4850.

But the HD 4000 series has been out for a few months now -- so where are we now? Recent benchmarks here at Neoseeker have shown the HD 4850 to still offer a great price-to-performance ratio, but since the card's initial release, there has been entire new crop of models to compete in between the $80 to $180 price range. Does today's HD 4850 still stack up, or has the HD 4850 been challenged by NVIDIA's 9800 GTX, 9800 GT or undercut by ATI's own HD 4830 and HD 4670 cards? 

Today we will look at a HD 4850 from MSI. Called the R4850 T2D512, it has a nifty cooler on it, and is HDMI ready with a bundled adapter. Let's check it out and see what it can do.