In some ways Sapphire’s Radeon 4850 X2 reminds us of a NASCAR race car or an ultra exotic sports car like an Enzo Ferrari. Just think, if you could park a NASCAR or Enzo in your garage, you’d have a vehicle capable of delivering a tremendous amount of fun for weekends at the race track. But at the same time, is it something you’d really want to live with on a daily basis?

Depending on how you use your computer, that answer could vary wildly.

If you have one PC devoted solely to gaming and absolutely nothing else, your answer would definitely be yes to the Sapphire 4850 X2. After all, like that Enzo Ferrari it’s a tremendous performer.

At the same time though, the card may not be practical for you if you use your gaming PC heavily for other tasks such as web browsing, checking email, or getting a little work done typing up word documents and spreadsheets. For these types of tasks, the card’s noise levels at the Windows desktop could get irritating very quickly, not to mention its power consumption, which we measured at 210W at idle.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...850_x2_review/