Package and Accessories

Gigabyte’s product comes to retail in standard-sized glossy box. There is a trivial picture of a girl holding a BFG on the front panel, but the color scheme is quite eye-pleasing.

The type and amount of the graphics card’s memory are indicated on the box. There is also a vague mention of a unique multi-core cooling system. We will discuss later on what this really is. If you turn the box around, you can also learn that the GV-R485MC-1GI comes from the Ultra Durable 2 series that features high-quality electronic components such as polymer capacitors, low RDS(on) MOSFETs, etc. However, the manufacturer does not claim this card to have an increased thickness of the metallization layers like the GV-N250OC-1GI model we have tested recently. The card offers full support for Gamer HUD technology which allows controlling the GPU voltage. This option may not be very valuable for a card with a passive cooler, but anyway. You don’t have to overclock if you don’t want to whereas an overclocker will accelerate his graphics card in spite of all the limitations and restrictions.

The full-featured version of Gamer HUD looks like follows:

The control utility’s interface is questionable, but not overloaded with useless design elements. Its functionality is high because you can control the voltage of both GPU and memory. You can also keep track of the GPU load. Gamer HUD technology has a hardware part as we will describe shortly.

Besides the graphics card proper, the box contains the following accessories:

• DVI-I → D-Sub adapter;
• 2x4-pin Molex → 1x6-pin PCIe adapter;
• CrossFire bridge;
• Multi-lingual user’s manual;
• CD disk with drivers and utilities.

That’s just a basic set of things you need to run a graphics card but we guess a HDMI → DVI-I adapter might have been included for owners of two monitors with digital inputs. The disc does not contain a software player of high-definition video, but that’s a common practice among graphics card makers. Such software costs a lot and is included with select products only. It would have affected the retail price of a Radeon HD 4850 too much, repelling some of potential customers. After all, the GV-R485MC-1GI has other advantages of its own.

Summing this section up, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI has good packaging and accessories yet that’s not its key feature. Let’s discuss its technical specs now.