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| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Jun 18th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GeForce GTX 770 Lightning uses a completely re-engineered PCB design with a large dual-fan cooler. The card is also overclocked out of the box, which gives it an additional performance advantage.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Jun 12th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
With the GTX 780 DirectCU II OC, ASUS introduces a new cooler design with upgraded heatpipes capable of carrying even more heat and two new fans that optimize airflow. The card is also overclocked out of the box and comes with a 10-phase power design.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Jun 1st 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, Intel released their new Haswell processors which include improvements to the integrated graphics core. We test 17 of the latest games to investigate whether the Intel HD Graphics 4600 is of any use for serious PC gaming.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GTX 770 employs the company's well-known DirectCU II thermal solution using heatpipes that directly touch the GPU surface for optimum heat transfer. The card is also overclocked out of the box.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit has equipped their GTX 770 JetStream with a 2.5-slot cooler that promises lower temperatures and improved fan noise. The card also comes with a large 100 MHz overclock, which is amongst the highest available.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 770 features the company's new WindForce 3X cooler with three fans to keep the card cool. The card is also overclocked out of the box for an extra performance boost.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 770, which is based on an improved GTX 680 design. The card features higher clocks and the new Boost 2.0 algorithm. It also comes with shiny new 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory, which is a first for a graphics card.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | May 28th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 7850 SCS3 is a fanless implementation of the HD 7850, which means that it does not emit any noise while offering enough performance for serious gaming in full HD. With a price increase of $25 over the reference design, it's not too expensive either.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | May 24th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
EVGA has engineered a new cooler for their GeForce GTX 780 called ACX--Active Cooling Xtreme. This dual-fan design delivers temperatures and noise levels that match the quiet NVIDIA reference design. The GTX 780 SC ACX is also overclocked, which yields performance higher than the Titan.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | May 23rd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Gigabyte's GTX 780 WindForce OC introduces a brand-new triple-slot cooler design that uses improved heatpipe technology. Thanks to a large overclock out of the box and clever thermal engineering, the card ends up faster than the GeForce GTX Titan.
| Date: | May 23rd 2013 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 780 delivers impressive performance. We put two of them into an SLI configuration to see what you can expect when doubling down on the GTX 780.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | May 23rd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 780, which is based on the GK110 GPU - just like the GTX Titan. The new card not only inherits the fantastic looks of the Titan, but is also very close to it in overall performance. NVIDIA's pricing is certainly not cheap at $649.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | May 21st 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GTX Titan AMP! Edition comes with increased GPU and memory clocks for an extra performance boost. The package also includes three Assassin's Creed games and a Metro: Last Light coupon. But with pricing of $1139 is it worth it?
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | May 11th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Gaming uses the company's famous TwinFrozr dual-fan cooler. In our testing, we see fantastic noise levels that make the card almost inaudible even during heavy gaming. The card is overclocked, too, which makes it a great buy, being just $5 more expensive than the reference design.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Apr 30th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Inno3D has engineered a unique GTX 650 Ti Boost using the company's iChill triple-slot, dual-fan cooler. It provides amazing noise levels, which makes the card almost inaudible during gameplay. Temperatures are also much improved, so the triple-slot design certainly paid off. The card is also overclocked and comes at a reasonable $190 price-point.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 24th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, AMD releases their highly anticipated HD 7990 dual-GPU flagship. It is based on two full Tahiti GPUs running at 1000 MHz. AMD has also worked hard to keep power draw and noise in check, but can this $1000 card compete with NVIDIA's GTX 690 and GTX Titan?
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Apr 22nd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
XFX has completely revamped the HD 7790 reference design, optimizing it around their requirements. The R7790 Black Edition OC 2 GB comes at the reference design price of $150, yet is overclocked out of the box and provides twice the video memory. But can its extra memory make a difference?
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Apr 12th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
EVGA's GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost SuperClocked comes with a large overclock of 92 MHz out of the box which gives it a significant performance boost over the reference design. Since it's only $10 more expensive than the reference GTX 650 Ti Boost, the card actually offers a better price/performance ratio than the original.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Apr 4th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini promises to revolutionize the small-form-factor gaming market. It finally enables you to build a powerful mini-ITX gaming rig that can handle all the latest titles in full HD at highest settings. Our testing shows that there are no compromises to be made in terms of noise and performance.
| Date: | Apr 3rd 2013 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
With GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost having just been released last week, at amazing pricing, we were curious to see how two of these cards in SLI handle our test suite of 17 games. Scaling worked very well and performance easily matched the GTX 680 and HD 7970 GHz Edition, with a much better price/performance ratio.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 29th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS has equipped their GTX 650 Ti Boost with a silent Direct CU II cooler and a small GPU overclock out of the box. They also changed the voltage regulation circuity, which results in a 5% efficiency improvement. Pricing is up by a reasonable $10, resulting in a price of $179.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Mar 27th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost uses a compact dual-fan cooler to significantly improve noise levels and temperatures over the GTX 650 Ti reference design. The card comes at the reference design price of $169, which makes it a great choice for anyone looking for a card in the sub-$200 market.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 26th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost offering a large performance increase thanks to the added Boost algorithm and wider bus interface. With a price of only $169, it is the new price/performance king in the sub-$200 segment.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Mar 22nd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD 7790 is a custom design, overclocked implementation of the HD 7790. It uses a dual-fan cooler and comes at $149, so there is no price premium for a better cooler or an overclock out-of-the-box.
| Date: | Mar 22nd 2013 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's newly released HD 7790 provides great price/performance in the sub-$200 segment and supports CrossFire. So we wondered: Can you build a powerful and cost-efficient gaming rig with two HD 7790 cards in CrossFire configuration?
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Mar 22nd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new Radeon HD 7790 Dual-X improves on the reference design with a dual-fan cooler and large overclock out of the box. The highlight of our review is certainly the large overclocking potential of the card.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Mar 22nd 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, AMD released their new Radeon HD 7790 to provide a competitively priced option to gamers. The ASUS HD 7790 DC II comes overclocked out of the box for an even smoother experience. In our testing, we also see amazing noise levels.
| Date: | Feb 21st 2013 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
We compare one, two, and three GeForce TITAN cards in our multi-GPU comparison on X79. The cards will have to fight against three HD 7970 GHz Editions, two GTX 690s, and three GTX 680s to settle the argument: what is the fastest graphics solution you can buy today?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 21st 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Announced earlier this week, NVIDIA's $1000 GeForce GTX TITAN set out to claim the single-GPU performance throne. The new card offers not only performance improvements but also comes with a new GPU Boost 2.0 algorithm that helps keep temperature and noise levels down.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Feb 13th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today we have on our testbench the EVGA GTX 650 Ti SSC with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. The card runs at 1072 MHz GPU clock, which is higher than any other GTX 650 Ti available at this time. Using manual overclocking we could even increase memory clocks by 40%!
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Jan 28th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS releases their ARES II dual-GPU HD 7990 today. Using two full Tahiti GPUs with clock speeds beyond the HD 7970 GHz Edition, it provides plenty of performance for even the most demanding titles at their highest settings. But does it provide enough to warrant a price of $1599?
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Jan 24th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
EVGA's new GeForce GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 comes with a brand-new dual-fan cooler providing a very quiet experience. Performance is also great thanks to an overclock out of the box that matches GTX 680 clock frequencies.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Jan 15th 2013 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The VTX3D HD 7870 Black is based on AMD's recent Tahiti LE GPU. It comes with 1536 shaders and very decent clock speeds. As a result, the card is 8% faster than the HD 7870 and almost as fast as the HD 7950 that costs significantly more.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Dec 7th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Club3D is the first one to release a Tahiti LE based HD 7870. Their jokerCard runs 1536 shaders with very decent clock speeds, which results in an 8% performance improvement over HD 7870 - just 2% shy of matching HD 7950. This performance increase does come at the cost of increased power draw, though.
| Date: | Nov 28th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ X² Boost comes with a large overclock, which increases its out of the box performance to GTX 670 levels. Thanks to a large dual fan cooler we also see great temperature and massive overclocking potential: +20% real life performance from overclocking.
| Date: | Nov 19th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS HD 7970 X Turbo is the company's entry into the super high-end HD 7970 market. It comes with a massively overclocked GPU which provides a 6% performance boost over the GHz Edition. Also included are six monitor outputs that can be used at the same time without breaking dual-link DVI functionality.
| Date: | Nov 6th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS HD 7750 IceQ X Turbo is a custom design, overclocked HD 7750. A separate 6-pin PCI-Express power connector has been added to the card, which improves power delivery and might have an effect on overclocking potential. In our testing, we saw over 25% real-life performance gain from overclocking.
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new GeForce GTX 660 HAWK is a fully customized, overclocked GTX 660. It comes with the company's signature TwinFrozr cooler and includes goodlies like dual BIOS and voltage measurements points.
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD announced a new game bundle for their Radeon graphics cards and the new Catalyst 12.11 driver which brings performance improvements across the board. We test each card of the HD 7000 lineup in 20 games and benchmarks to verify what the new driver offers.
| Date: | Oct 16th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum is the company's new card geared towards enthusiasts and hardware overclockers. It comes with many features for the extreme crowd, but also caters to more normal users. One unique feature is buttons on the card that let you adjust voltage on the fly.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Oct 11th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 650 Ti AMP! Edition comes with a large overclock on both GPU and memory. Having 2 GB GDDR5, it also features twice the memory capacity than most other GTX 650 Ti cards. Will these improvements provide enough performance and is pricing low enough to make the card competitive?
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Oct 9th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The new ASUS GeForce GTX 650 Ti DirectCu II TOP comes with a 100 MHz clock increase out of the box, which gives the card an extra performance boost. It also features a DC II thermal solution that is ultra-quiet, despite its two fans.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Oct 9th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today MSI launches their new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition. This card comes overclocked out of the box, runs extremely quiet and has one of the lowest power consumptions we've ever seen. Especially Blu-ray power is ultra-low which might make it a candidate for a media PC.
| Date: | Sep 21st 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II is one of the highest clocked HD 7870 cards available today, in our testing we see it match HD 7950 performance. PowerColor also engineered a special feature that lets you adjust the fan's distance from the card, promising improved cooling performance.
| Date: | Sep 17th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The MSI GeForce GTX 650 Power Edition OC is a fully customized, overclocked, GTX 650 design which comes with a unique cooler. Depending on your cooling requirements you can add a second fan in two possible configurations to reduce temperatures.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Sep 17th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The KFA² GTX 650 EX OC uses NVIDIA's new GK107 graphics processor. Despite its reference design pricing it comes with a small overclock out of the box with gives the card a 5% performance advantage over the normal GeForce GTX 650.
| Date: | Sep 13th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI has equipped their latest GeForce graphics card with its signature Twin Frozr III dual-fan cooler. Despite having two fans the card is quiet in both idle and load and also comes with a nice performance boost thanks to the overclock out of the box.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Sep 13th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's new GTX 660 comes with just a small overclock out of the box, but is offered at reference design pricing. Unlike the other cards tested today it uses a very compact form factor thanks to a shorter cooler, which makes it an attractive choice for a powerful small form factor gaming rig.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Sep 13th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II uses the cooling solution which we love most for its low noise in both idle and load. ASUS has also overclocked their board, which provides enough extra performance to match the AMD Radeon HD 7870.
| Date: | Sep 13th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launched their new GTX 660. Gigabyte has sent us their overclocked GTX 660 Windforce OC which also comes with a large dual-fan cooler that provides extremely low temperatures in both idle and load. The overclock out of the box helps to gain some performance on the HD 7870.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Sep 6th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 7950 Vapor-X comes overclocked out of the box. Thanks to clever use of the dual BIOS feature you can also activate a second "Lethal Boost" BIOS which runs even higher clocks. Cooling is provided by a large dual fan vapor chamber cooler which keeps the card cool and provides low noise operation.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Aug 30th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 7990 Devil 13 is the first dual-GPU HD 7990 that reaches our labs. This huge triple slot, triple fan card comes with fully enabled Tahiti XT GPUs, running in an internal CrossFire configuration. As a result the Devil 13 is the fastest AMD-based graphics card we ever tested.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Aug 29th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Club3D has just released the fastest single-slot low-profile graphics card, based on the HD 7750. This means that full HD gaming on your compact media PC might just be a possibility. In our review we will take a close look at gaming capabilities, but also look at power consumption and noise.
| Date: | Aug 23rd 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 7970 Toxic comes with 6 GB GDDR5 memory, a large clock speed increase out of the box, a "Lethal Boost" button to increase performance even further, and a large dual-fan cooler. In our testing this monster delivered the highest single-GPU performance we've ever seen, overclocking worked well, too.
| Date: | Aug 21st 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Microsoft's latest operating system is ready! We took a closer look at gaming performance using NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 and AMD's Radeon HD 7970 in 19 games at resolutions from 1280x800 to 2560x1600.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Aug 16th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 660 Ti JetStream comes with a large dual-fan triple slot cooler which promises better cooling performance than other GTX 660 Ti cards. We also see great FPS numbers thanks to the factory overclock.
| Date: | Aug 16th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GTX 660 Ti Direct CU II TOP uses the same wonderful cooler we've seen first on the company's GTX 670, which means it is by far the quietest high-performance card you can find on the market - in both idle and load. The card is also overclocked out of the box, which gives it a 5% performance advantage.
| Date: | Aug 16th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 660 Ti Power Edition is one of the fastest GTX 660 Ti cards we tested today because it comes with some secret BIOS sauce that enables it to run faster than other cards at lower clocks. This is also confirmed by our overclocking tests where it reaches the highest overclocked performance of all GTX 660 Ti cards.
| Date: | Aug 16th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition comes with a compact footprint, that enables high-performance gaming for smaller cases. Thanks to an overclock out of the box, the card runs around 5% faster than the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti reference design.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Aug 15th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Point of View's GeForce GTX 680 TGT Ultra Charged is the first 4 GB GeForce GTX 680 we review, so we took a close look at what the extra memory brings. The card also has an extremely low noise profile thanks to its triple slot cooler.
| Date: | Aug 14th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD just released a free BIOS upgrade for the Radeon HD 7950, which provides an extra speed boost by updating the company's PowerTune algorithm. We will thoroughly test this update and not only look at performance but also power consumption and heat.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Aug 2nd 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
KFA² has revamped the GTX 680 PCB design, picked a sexy white PCB color and added a large triple fan cooler to their GTX 680 LTD OC. As the name suggests, the card is heavily overclocked, which gives it a real-life performance boost of 8% over the GTX 680 reference design.
| Date: | Jul 31st 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Gigabyte's HD 7970 SOC introduces a new cooling concept. Instead of placing the fan(s) on the large surface of the heatsink like on all recent graphics cards, the company chose to position five small fans along the top edge of the card. Our review will investigate whether the card will be too noisy and too big, or if it can truly provide some benefit.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 26th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Club3D's HD 7850 RoyalQueen comes with a modest 1 GB of memory, which is half that of a typical HD 7850. Nevertheless we got some interesting results in our testing. The card is just as fast as the 2 GB HD 7850, at full HD resolutions and below. Coming at a more than reasonable $195, the card is also one of the most affordable choices on the market.
| Date: | Jul 17th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 7950 Flex adds the capability to run three DVI monitors without active DisplayPort adapter. It also comes with increased clock speeds out of the box, which gives the card a 6% performance advantage over the reference design.
| Date: | Jul 11th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 7870 Flex adds comes with the capability to run three HDMI/DVI monitors without active DisplayPort adapter. Something that's not possible on reference design cards. This means that many EyeFinity users will be able to save $30, because they don't have to buy an active DP adapter. But what else does the Flex offer?
| Date: | Jul 2nd 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GT 640 is based on NVIDIA's new Kepler architecture. Thanks to its energy efficient design, ZOTAC managed to release a single-slot graphics card that will be interesting to many media PC builders. It also comes with HDMI and 2x DVI outputs, adding to the card's versatility.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Jun 27th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 670 Power Edition comes with a large overclock out of the box, which enables the card to provide GTX 680 performance out of the box at much lower pricing. Thanks to the large Twin Frozr IV cooler the card keeps its cool, overclocking works well, too.
| Date: | Jun 21st 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches the HD 7970 GHz Edition, in a move to take away the performance crown from NVIDIA. The new card boasts clock speeds of 1050 MHz GPU and 1500 MHz memory. Price-wise the card is on the same level as the GTX 680, but is that enough to defeat NVIDIA's single GPU flagship?
| Date: | Jun 20th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 680 Lightning combines the outstanding performance of the GTX 680 with the unique heritage of MSI's Lightning series. The card brings many features geared toward overclockers and advanced users, but even for gamers it's a good choice thanks to the overclock out of the box.
| 9.8 | |
| Date: | Jun 11th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
GIGABYTE's overclocked GTX 670 Windforce OC comes with a large and silent triple fan cooler and a full GTX 680 reference design PCB. This helps the card deliver out of the box performance comparable to the GTX 680, at a much lower price. Actually GIGABYTE is charging no price premium for their improvements, the card comes at reference design pricing of $399.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | May 31st 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 7770 Vapor-X uses the company's exclusive cooling solution paired with a large overclock out of the box. As result the card is whisper quiet in both idle and load, yet temperatures are comfortably low too. The card also comes at reasonable pricing of $150, an HDMI cable is included, too.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | May 29th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 7850 PCS+ is the highest clocked HD 7850 card you can buy at this time. Thanks to its GPU clock speed of 1 GHz it provides excellent performance and the PCS+ cooler keeps everything cool and quiet. With just $20 over the AMD reference design, the price increase is also reasonable.
| Date: | May 25th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI has taken the powerful TwinFrozr IV cooler from the MSI Lightning and put a shrunk down version on their HD 7850 Power Edition. Thanks to an overclock out of the box the card can match last generation's HD 6950 in performance, without a significant increase in power consumption.
| Date: | May 21st 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
VTX3D's HD 7970 X-Edition uses the proven AMD reference design PCB with a custom dual fan cooler and massively increased clock speeds out of the box. Thanks to a large variety of included adapters that will help getting EyeFinity up and running, the card effectively comes at reference design pricing.
| Date: | May 14th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 680 Twin Frozr III uses the company's large dual-fan signature cooler, which provides excellent temperatures in both idle and load. Fan noise is reduced too, and the card is overclocked out of the box, which makes it easier for less experienced users to get the maximum out of their card.
| Date: | May 10th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 670 which caught the enthusiast market by surprise, bringing outstanding performance and decent pricing to this segment. Now we put two of these cards in a dual card SLI configuration on our shiny new Ivy Bridge PCI-Express 3.0 setup to investigate whether it has the potential to be used in ultra-high end killer gaming rigs.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | May 10th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GTX 670 AMP! Edition is built around an unmodified NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 PCB which provides a great foundation, on top of which ZOTAC is using a large triple slot cooler. GPU clock has been bumped by well over 100 MHz, which lets the card surpass GTX 680 in our testing, with a 3% performance lead.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | May 10th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 670 JetStream comes with a decent overclock out of the box and uses the company's dual fan JetStream cooler which provides improved temperatures despite the overclock out of the box. With a price increase of only $20 over the reference design, the card seems a good choice if you want just a bit more.
| 10.0 | |
| Date: | May 10th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS has taken the great GTX 670 and improved it by putting their DirectCU II cooler on it, which provides whisper quiet cooling. The card is also overclocked out of the box and uses a custom PCB supporting software voltage control. Overall the card received a perfect ten score!
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | May 10th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTX 670 which aims to bring incredible performance levels at more affordable pricing. We see the new $399 card cruise past HD 7970 in many of our tests which will put additional pressure on AMD. Even against NVIDIA's own GTX 680 the performance difference is relatively small.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | May 8th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's new GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition comes with a huge overclock out of the box, base clock is 1111 MHz. The card uses a large triple slot, dual fan cooler to provide stable gaming at these high clocks, but noise levels are also reduced.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | May 7th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler is a close to reference implementation of the HD 7770. Coming at reference design price and clocks, its biggest innovation is its cooler, which is exceedingly quiet. It is actually the quietest HD 7770 we tested so far.
| Date: | May 7th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today's latest graphics cards come with support for PCI-Express 3.0, which promises twice the bandwidth, while still being compatible with older motherboards and graphics cards. In our article we analyze differences in PCIe performance on Intel's Ivy Bridge with GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, using 20 games at five resolutions, each at all three PCIe generations and x4, x8 and x16 link width.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | May 3rd 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 690 flagship. The $999 card is based on two GK104 graphics processors that have their full potential enabled. The new card has one of the most extravagant designs, making heavy use of metal which adds to the experience. Performance is outstanding, being neck to neck with a dual GTX 680 SLI setup.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | May 1st 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 7870 HAWK is the company's mid-range equivalent of the Lightning Series. The card uses a Twin Frozr dual-fan cooler and features increased clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1200 MHz. It also includes triple voltage control via MSI Afterburner.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Apr 30th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 680 JetStream offers several enhancements compared the NVIDIA reference design, like a quiet triple fan cooler, overclock out of the box and reduced power consumption. The best improvement is certainly that it comes at no price increase compared to the reference design.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Apr 26th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
This week saw the release of Intel's new 22 nanometer Ivy Bridge processors. The new CPUs also feature a beefed up graphics core that is faster and includes support for DirectX 11. In our review we test 18 games to investigate whether HD Graphics 4000 can provide a decent gaming experience.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 25th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is a heavily customized implementation of the HD 7970 with focus on performance and overclocking. The card uses a beefed up voltage regulation circuitry and massive dual-fan heatsink to ensure stable operation at MSI's clocks of 1070 MHz core and 1400 MHz memory.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Apr 20th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GeForce GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP uses the company's famous triple slot cooler to bring low temperatures and low noise to the GeForce GTX 680. ASUS has also increased the clocks of the card significantly, which gives it a healthy performance boost, for a reasonable $20 price premium.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Apr 3rd 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 7870 TwinFrozr III improves on the AMD reference design by adding the company's dual-fan cooling solution to the card. It also comes with increased clock speeds of 1050 MHz core and 1200 MHz memory out of the box. In our testing we saw great additional overclocking potential, well into the 1200 MHz range.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Mar 30th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS Radeon HD 7870 Direct CU II is a highly overclocked custom version of the Radeon HD 7870. Coming at clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1250 MHz memory, it is a good deal faster than the AMD reference design. Thanks to aggressive pricing, the card retails at $360, which means there is no price increase for overclocking.
| Date: | Mar 23rd 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Yesterday NVIDIA introduced their new groundbreaking GeForce GTX 680, which was very well received. Today we bring you testing of a $1000 dual card SLI setup. We also use the latest WHQL driver to provide up-to-date performance numbers.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 22nd 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 680 which is based on the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. The card comes with massively improved performance per Watt. It also introduces an automatic dynamic overclocking method which gives the card the leading edge, making it the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Gigabyte's HD 7770 OC comes with a massive clock improvement over the AMD reference design. Operating at 1100 MHz ensures that the card has a healthy performance advantage over other boards. Memory clock is also increased at 1250 MHz.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Mar 4th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 7800 Series, which is based on their new 28 nm Pitcairn graphics processor. The HD 7850 and HD 7870 offer a significant performance increase over the previous generation - up to 40% faster in our testing. Power consumption is also at a new record low, putting these cards in the leading performance per Watt spot.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 29th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS Radeon HD 7750 OC is a custom implementation of the HD 7750 design from ASUS. It comes at reference pricing, yet features slightly increased clock speeds out of the box. We have seen its cooling solution before on other cards from the company so it is a tested design that works well and delivers low temperatures and low noise levels.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The XFX HD 7770 Black Edition Super Overclock is the company's flagship HD 7770. It comes with a massively improved heatsink, dual fan and large overclock out of the box. In our testing we are impressed by the ultra low noise and great performance improvement it delivers.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD introduces their new Radeon HD 7700 Series. While the spotlight is on the HD 7770, HIS has sent us their HD 7750, which will come at a more attractive pricing than the HD 7770. In our testing the card can claim the title "most power efficient card ever tested" - 3x more power efficient than NVIDIA's GTX 480.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS is using their well-proven DirectCU thermal solution on the new HD 7770 DirectCU. The card also comes with a large overclock out of the box, yet stays cool and runs at super low noise levels. ASUS has chosen to follow the AMD pricing, so no price increase for cooler and overclocking.
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launched their all new Radeon HD 7770 and HD 7750. In our CrossFire review we take both new cards, put them in a dual GPU CrossFire configuration each, and see where they end up on the performance leaderboard. We will also focus on whether two cards can serve as a replacement for a high-end single GPU card.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 7770 OC Edition is a custom design HD 7770 with improved dual fan cooler and overclock out of the box. Compared to the reference design, the overclock is small, but the price increase is also reasonable.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's Radeon HD 7770 is a close-to-reference implementation of the AMD HD 7770. It comes at the reference design price, yet offers excellent overclocking capabilities and low power consumption.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches the new Radeon HD 7770 which is the first affordable card based on AMD's new 28 nm GCN Architecture. AMD's reference design HD 7770 offers amazing performance per Watt and a significant performance improvement over the previous generation.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Feb 10th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new HD 7950 Twin Frozr III is a fully customized implementation of AMD's latest 28 nm card. For cooling the card uses the same large dual-fan TwinFrozr III heatsink that we have seen on many other MSI products before. The card also features an overclock out of the box for a bit of extra performance.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jan 30th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 7950 PCS+ is a fully customized version of the HD 7950 with changed PCB and large dual fan cooler. It also comes with an 80 MHz overclock out of the box - at a price premium of $15. Its strongest feat is certainly the greatly reduced noise output when compared to the AMD reference design, making this an excellent low noise high performance solution.
| Date: | Jan 30th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this review we put two Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards in a dual-GPU CrossFire configuration and test whether this $900 setup is worth its money and how it fares against other alternatives.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jan 30th 2012 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 7950, the second card to be based on AMD's GCN shader architecture. Compared to its bigger brother, the HD 7970, the card comes with less shaders and reduced clock speeds. Other features have remained the same, like 3 GB memory, improved power consumption and support for EyeFinity.
| Date: | Jan 8th 2012 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's Radeon HD 7970 has quickly established itself as the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world. In our ASUS HD 7970 CrossFire review we take two of these beasts for a spin to see what benefit they offer. One of the highlights is reduced power consumption thanks to AMD's new ZeroCore power technology.
| Date: | Dec 29th 2011 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In our CPU scaling article we investigate gaming performance of AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 flagship. The processors in our test group have been selected to match popular CPUs used by gamers and enthusiasts: AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer, Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge and Intel Core i7-920 Nehalem.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 21st 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 7970. The card is based on brand-new 28 nanometer silicon which promises reduced power consumption. Another important change is AMD's move to a new shader architecture, enabling increased performance, easier design of future products and more efficient rendering.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 29th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores comes with some of the highest overclocks out of the box, compared to other GTX 560 Ti 448 cards released today. The card also uses a more compact form factor, which should help it fit smaller cases or compact media PCs.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 29th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores DCII is the only GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores released today that comes with a massive triple slot cooling solution. It promises less noise, lower temperatures and better overclocking potential.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Nov 29th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Twin Frozr III uses the company's well established TF III cooler which we have seen on other products before. The two fans and the massive heatsink easily keep the card cool. MSI's card is also overclocked out of the box for that little extra performance boost.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Nov 28th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's new GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo is a custom design, dual fan GTX 560 Ti that comes overclocked out of the box and features LED lit fans which add a smooth glow to the card. Despite having two fans, the card is actually one of the quietest GTX 560 Tis that we tested so far - in both idle and load.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 9th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 6970 Devil 13 is a brand-new premium class Radeon HD 6970 which comes with the highest clocks available on any HD 6970 card. The Devil 13 also includes voltage monitoring points for voltmodders and a high quality power conversion system. But is that enough to justify a price of $549?
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Aug 18th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS MARS II is a monster graphics card consisting of two GeForce GTX 580 GPUs on a single PCB using triple slot cooling. Unlike the NVIDIA GTX 590, the MARS II comes with full GTX 580 clock speeds which give the card an almost 20% performance advantage over the GTX 590, making the card the fastest graphics card in the world, but also the most expensive at $1500.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Jul 19th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new A-Series processors promise high performance integrated graphics that works well for productivity and gaming. In our article we take a closer look at 3D performance of the A8-3850 processor, test it in Dual Graphics mode and investigate the effect of memory clock, memory timings, UMA memory size and overclocking.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jul 8th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's exclusive HD 6870 X2 unifies two HD 6870 graphics processors on a single card. This approach offers performance that can compete with other high-end cards like GTX 580. In our testing we saw nice results that make this card a worthy alternative in today's high-end graphics card market.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Jun 28th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 6450 comes with a low-profile design, passive heatsink and native full-size HDMI. Together with AMD's UVD 3 video encode acceleration that provides excellent video decode capabilities this could well be your next HTPC card.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Jun 17th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's Radeon HD 6850 SCS3 is the first completely passive cooled Radeon HD 6850. This makes it the fastest zero-noise graphics card available today. Instead of the fairly compact heatsink of the reference design, PowerColor is using a massive triple slot cooler which provides the cooling required for the HD 6850 SCS3.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jun 9th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
First seen at Computex this year, the ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum is an overclocker's dream. It offers multiple voltage control via both software and hardware, a quiet running, powerful triple slot, dual fan thermal solution and easy to reach voltage measurement points. This card is also the first to be supported by ASUS' new GPU Tweak software.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI has upgraded their GTX 580 Lightning and calls it "Xtreme Edition" now. The biggest change is certainly the inclusion of 3 GB of GDDR5 memory. Other new features are a dust removal system and a fan that indicates overheating by color change.
| 8.1 | |
| Date: | May 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 6670 uses a full-height dual-slot thermal solution to deliver outstanding idle and load temperatures. The reference clocked card with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory offers decent performance for the budget oriented gamer at resolutions up to 1680x1050.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | May 20th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS has taken the AMD HD 6790 reference design, increased its clock speeds and slapped their new IceQ X thermal solution on it. The result is a solid HD 6790 card that is about 5% faster than the AMD version, which delivers awesome temperatures and good overclocking potential.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | May 17th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 TOP Direct CU II is a close to perfect implementation of NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti. The card comes with increased clock speeds out of the box which results in the same performance as the GTX 560 Ti. ASUS' thermal solution manages to impress too. It is whisper quiet, has tons of OC potential and temperatures under load are around 70°C.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | May 17th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's implementation of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti is the only card that features 2 GB of GDDR5 memory instead of 1 GB on the reference design. Will the additional memory be enough to make a difference?
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | May 17th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti. The GPU comes with a reduced shader count of 336 and is targeted at the $199 segment. MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II is an overclocked version of the GTX 560 reference design which also features MSI's prominent Twin Frozr II thermal solution.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | May 5th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD 6950 Vortex II comes with a seriously improved thermal solution compared to the AMD reference design. It also offers two adjustable fans that can be configured to make maximum use of available space. Clock speeds have been increased too, and the card was able to be modded to a HD 6970 in our testing.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 18th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD releases their HD 6670 which is priced at $100. The card is based on a brand-new graphics processor called "Turks" with 480 shaders and GDDR5 memory. Like all recent cards from AMD the card supports EyeFinity, DirectX 11 and full HD video acceleration.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 18th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 6450 sets out to compete in the lowest end performance segment. It offers twice the shading power as the aging HD 5450 which results in a solid performance increase in gaming. With a price of $55 it doesn't break the bank, but does it have enough performance for the latest games?
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 18th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Last week NVIDIA quietly released their GeForce GT 520 which offers DirectX 11 support and comes with a low-profile that can fit into compact media PC systems. Will this $60 card be good enough for gaming, or is the gamer's money better spent on more powerful cards?
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Apr 12th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's Radeon HD 6970 Lightning is the company's new flagship single-GPU card for AMD. It offers plenty of overclocking features like triple voltage software control, voltage measurement points, a powerful cooling solution and increased clock speeds out of the box. What is even better is that those features are available at a small price premium of only $10 over the AMD reference design.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Apr 7th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD 6870 PCS++ comes with massively increased clocks out of the box which makes it roughly as fast as GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950. With a reasonable price increase of only $10 over the reference design, the card does not break the bank either, it is actually a worthy opponent to NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti considering price/performance.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 5th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD is releasing their new Radeon HD 6790 which is targeted at the $150 segment that recently saw some love from NVIDIA in form of their GTX 550 Ti. AMD's new card uses the same GPU as the more powerful HD 6850 and HD 6870, so it will be interesting to see where it stands and whether it can defeat NVIDIA's latest offering.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Mar 31st 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI has engineered their own version of the GeForce GTX 580 called "Lightning", which is geared toward enthusiasts and overclockers. The card brings several exciting features like advanced voltage control and on-board DIP switches for tuning. A dual-BIOS feature with a special liquid nitrogen BIOS is also available.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Mar 29th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In order to complete their lineup in the $250 segment, AMD has released a 1 GB version of the HD 6950. This makes the card $40 cheaper, yet does not impact performance in any way as our testing shows. We also saw great overclocking potential on our card which makes this card a tweaker's dream combined with the HD 6950 to HD 6970 modding potential.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Mar 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new HD 6950 Twin Frozr III introduces the third version of MSI's exclusive cooling solution. Thanks to two fans and five heatpipes the card runs at excellent temperatures. Tweakers will also love this card as they can adjust three voltages using MSI Afterburner. Another plus is that this card is able to be modded to a HD 6970 by BIOS flash.
| 7.0 | |
| Date: | Mar 24th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 590 flagship which is based on two GTX 580 GPUs working on a single card. AMD released their dual-GPU HD 6990 design just two weeks ago, with power and heat being the decisive limit on performance it will be a tough fight between those cards.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 15th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today ASUS released their new GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The card is based around NVIDIA's new GeForce GF116 GPU which promises more performance and less power draw compared to the GPU of the GTS 450. In our testing we see superior power consumption when compared to other GTX 550 Ti models.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 15th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce GTX 550 Ti Series. ZOTAC's AMP! Edition comes with increased clocks out of the box. It is also the only card that features a full size HDMI output and a full size DisplayPort output in addition to two dual-link DVI ports which make the AMP! Edition the connectivity champ.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 15th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new factory overclocked GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II uses an improved version of MSI's Cyclone cooler which increases air flow without increasing noise. As a result the card's temperatures never exceed 60°C - no matter what you throw at it.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 15th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 550 Ti comes with leading clocks of 1000 MHz out of the box which helps gain some performance to the GTX 460. In our testing the card emits super low noise levels which makes it a good choice for a silent media PC.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Mar 7th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD unleashed their new monster: Radeon HD 6990. This dual-GPU card, which is based on two HD 6970 GPUs took the gaming performance crown without beating a sweat. So, this card has tons of performance, but what about power consumption, heat and noise? And last but not least, is it worth the $699 price tag?
| Date: | Mar 7th 2011 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 6990 is the fastest graphics card in the world. We take TWO of those cards for a spin and check if this combination is worth $1,400 of your hard earned Dollars or if it only serves as a hot air blowing e-penis extension.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Mar 3rd 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II comes with MSI's own cooling solution, which does a great job at keeping the card cool. Even with heavy voltage increases, the temperatures never rose above 80°C. For maximum performance MSI has overclocked the card out of the box - at no price increase compared to the reference design.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 1st 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD 6970 PCS+ comes overclocked to the highest clock speeds of any Radeon HD 6970 card that is available at the market right now. It also uses a dual-fan heatsink which will help give you that edge during overclocking and overvolting. With a price increase of just $10, pricing is right, too.
| Date: | Feb 22nd 2011 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to the public. We wanted to check if there are some gaming performance gains included the upgrade, so we ran NVIDIA's and ATI's flagship graphics cards through our VGA benchmarking suite.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Feb 18th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS has designed a new cooler called IceQ X. It comes with a light blue transparent plastic shell that conveys an "ice block" feeling. In our testing we saw low idle and load temperatures, evidence that the cooler does a good job. The card also comes with increased clock speeds out of the box to gain some extra advantage over the reference design.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Feb 17th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS is expanding their triple-slot cooler graphics card lineup. Their GeForce GTX 570 Direct CU II offers amazingly low noise levels as well as low operating temperatures in both idle and 3D. ASUS has also increased to clock speeds out of the box, even though the increase is only minimal. But with a price increase of just $10 there is not much to complain about.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Feb 15th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP! Edition is the highest-clocked GTX 560 money can buy at the moment. Its blazing clocks of 950 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory give it a 12% real-life performance advantage over the reference design, which is quite impressive for the $279 it's coming at. With additional overclocking we could reach 998 MHz, and almost broke the 1 GHz barrier!
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Feb 14th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 6870 HAWK is the company's premium overclocking HD 6870 model. The card comes with support for software control of three voltages, voltage measurement points and OCP disable support. MSI has also included a nice overclock out of the box and adopted the dual BIOS feature that we have seen on the AMD HD 6900 Series.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 11th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor is bringing an exciting new HD 6950 to the market. Their HD 6950 PCS++ includes a feature to unlock additional shaders, resulting in the same shader count as the HD 6970 - a nice performance increase, for free. Since the feature is enabled by the flick of a button even novices will be able to use it.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Feb 10th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS' new GeForce GTX 580 DC2 uses a massive triple slot Direct CU II heatsink that increases cooling performance significantly. As a result the card is extremely quiet in both idle and load - quieter than many midrange cards. ASUS has also increased the operating clocks of their design, all this for a small price increase of $5.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 1st 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce GT 440 sets out to deliver acceptable performance in the low-end segment around $100. ASUS GT 440 comes with a custom designed, black PCB and a stylish heatsink. The card also comes with higher clocks out of the box to gain an extra performance advantage.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Jan 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic Edition comes with increased clock speeds of 900 MHz core and 1050 MHz memory out of the box, which translates into a 7% real-life performance improvement. Its $20 price premium also gives you improved display connectivity: full-size HDMI and analog VGA.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jan 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 uses reference clock speeds, but comes with a custom cooling solution by ZOTAC. The card is also one of the few that uses full-size HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and comes with a bundle of Assassin's Creed Hermand.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Jan 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 560 Ti is priced at the sweet spot of $249. It comes with a redesigned graphics processor that enables higher clock speeds and lower power consumption. NVIDIA's reference design board excels with nice overclocking potential and low fan noise.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jan 25th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce GTX 560 Ti Series. ASUS designed a custom PCB and cooling solution around the new graphics processor. The factory overclocking ASUS GTX 560 Ti Direct CU II sets out to deliver maximum cooling power for improved overclocking and reduced temperatures.
| Date: | Jan 25th 2011 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GTX 560 Ti delivers excellent price/performance in the $250 market segment. We take two of these cards for a spin to investigate whether it makes sense to buy two of them for use in SLI.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Jan 21st 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 6950 Twin Frozr II is the first custom design HD 6950 to reach our labs. It comes with a small overclock out of the box and MSI's well established Twin Frozr II heatsink to keep the card cool.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jan 20th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 6850 Cyclone Power Edition comes at 860 MHz, which is the largest overclock out of the box of any HD 6850 available. The card also features a little switch to enable a silent BIOS which reduces fan noise considerably and makes the card a virtually noiseless experience to use, in both idle and 3D.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 13th 2011 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition comes at a massive core clock of 815 MHz. During our testing we also noticed that the card could overclock consistently higher than other reference designs, which seems to be thanks to a special binning process in the ZOTAC factory.
| Date: | Dec 21st 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this article we will investigate how much the HD 4870, HD 5870, GTX 285 and GTX 480 have gained over the lifetime of their driver releases. We also put this in contrast to what the latest AMD Catalyst 10.12 driver update can deliver.
| Date: | Dec 14th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this review we will look at the performance of two Radeon HD 6950 cards running in CrossFire. This delivers a massively powerful graphics solution that is over 25% faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 and also beats AMD HD 5970. At $600, this setup also manages to deliver maximum price/performance when looked at from a high-end graphics angle.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 14th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 6970 comes with an improved shader architecture that promises more performance with less transistors, consuming less power. Another interesting aspect is the inclusion of a power limitation system that ensures maximum performance when needed and avoids damage to the graphics cards.
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Dec 14th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS Radeon HD 6950 is a new option in the $300 upper midrange graphics card segment. It has enough power to play the latest titles in Full HD resolution. Thanks to improved geometry and tesselation engines it also promises to deliver increased performance in latest titles compared to the Radeon HD 5870.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 7th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTX 570 graphics card which is based on the new more power efficient Fermi technology that we saw on the GTX 580, too. ASUS' GTX 570 is a full reference design implementation, the only difference is a small clock speed increase of 10 MHz.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 7th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 570 complements the GTX 580 at more affordable price levels. It offers the same reduced power consumption as its big brother without compromising performance. Palit's GTX 570 is a custom design with a unique thermal solution and substantially increased clock speeds out of the box.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Nov 29th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 6870 PCS+ comes with some of the highest out of the box clock speeds of all HD 6870 cards available today. It also comes with a unique thermal solution that offers extremely low noise levels in both idle and load. Another improvement is that power consumption is slightly lower than AMD's reference design - despite the higher clock speed.
| 7.6 | |
| Date: | Nov 23rd 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Last week NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 460 SE which is designed to give a good price/performance level without compromising on memory amount. But is this enough to compete with the full GTX 460 variants that have 768 MB or 1 GB of memory?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 18th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 480 Super Overclock sets out to deliver affordable high-end overclocking for NVIDIA users. The card features dual voltage software control, voltage measurement points, a powerful but quiet triple fan cooler and Gigabyte's OC Guru overclocking software. Best of all, it comes at a reasonable $469 which is not much more than the reference design. But is that enough to hold off the GeForce GTX 580 ?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 15th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Last week NVIDIA released their new flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX 580. Today we have on our testbench the ASUS ENGTX580 which is an almost full implementation of the reference design. The only exception is that the clock speed has been slightly increased - at no price premium.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 9th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 580 which is based on their Fermi architecture. The card is 20% faster than the GTX 480, yet requires less power. NVIDIA has also optimized fan noise making this the quietest highest-end card on the market today.
| Date: | Nov 9th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 has claimed the single GPU performance throne today. We take two of these cards for a spin to see what performance users can expect from this $1000 GPU combination. The review will also give insight into potential performance numbers for 3D Vision Surround.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Nov 4th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 6850 PCS+ is an overclocked variant of the HD 6850. But the changes do not stop here. PowerColor also includes their own cooling solution and has done extensive changes to the voltage regulation circuitry on the card. But is this enough to compete with the excellent AMD reference design?
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Oct 28th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 6870 Turbo is a factory overclocked variant of the HD 6870 that builds heavily on the AMD reference design. This means that PCB, components and cooler are unchanged from the original AMD card - which is a good thing. The increased clock speeds give the card a 4% performance advantage.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Oct 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 6870. The card brings new features like HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 which allow up to six displays to be connected to a single card. Performance has also been substantially increased and power draw reduced. But is this enough to defeat NVIDIA's latest offerings ?
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Oct 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The new ASUS Radeon HD 6850 Direct CU aims to be the king of the sub-$200 segment. It offers plenty of performance for the latest DirectX 11 titles, overclocks very well and comes with improvements to the display output configuration. Instead of an AMD reference heatsink the card uses an ASUS Direct Touch heatpipe solution.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 6850 comes at an extremely affordable $179 price point. This poses the question whether it can become the new weapon of choice for budget oriented gamers. In our testing we see excellent performance which enables full HD resolution gaming in DirectX 11.
| Date: | Oct 21st 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this review we will put the dual card CrossFire configuration of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 in the spotlight. It promises higher performance than a Radeon HD 5970 at only a fraction of the price. But is this enough to make CF a recommendation?
| Date: | Oct 21st 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 6850 is priced at an extremely affordable $179. This poses the question whether two cards in CrossFire can manage to claim the price/performance sweet spot in the $360 segment or if other alternatives are better.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Oct 20th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GeForce GTX 480 Lightning promises to be an overclocker's dream. It is build around a completely redesigned PCB and thermal solution with overclockers in mind. The card offers unique features like control for up to three voltages, dual BIOS with liquid nitrogen support and easy to reach voltage measurement points.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 13th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Colorful's iGame GTX 460 uses a massive triple slot cooler with two fans to keep the card cool. It also offers overclocker-friendly features like a Turbo button or voltage measurement points. Out of the box the card runs at clocks of 820 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory making it one of the faster GTX 460 variants out there.
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Oct 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new low-end GeForce GT 430 Series. The cards which are supposed to replace the GT 220 bring full DirectX 11 support to the table. Power consumption is also low which enables its use in media PC systems.
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTS 450. We take two of these cards for a spin and check whether SLI is an option worth pursuing. In addition to testing at the reference design clocks we also test at 875/1000 which represents two factory overclocked cards in SLI.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS ENGTS450 TOP DirectCU is a factory overclocked version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450. It comes with a custom cooling solution called DirectCU which uses heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU core. In our testing we saw excellent overclocking up to 973 MHz.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The MSI N450GTS Cyclone OC uses MSI's popular Cyclone cooler. The card is factory overclocked which provides a nice performance boost over the NVIDIA reference design. During testing we were impressed by how quiet MSI's cooler can work while also keeping temperatures low.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum comes with 1 GB of fast GDDR5 memory and offers the highest clock rates of the GTS 450 cards we tested today. Running at 932 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory it is able to deliver performance higher than the AMD Radeon HD 5770.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AXLE's GeForce GTS 450 OC is a rock-solid implementation of the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450. It uses both a custom PCB and cooling solution to deliver the maximum for your hard earned cash. The cooler is running quiet and offers low temperatures which make an excellent foundation for additional overclocking.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Sep 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC has a long history of releasing overclocked cards that provide extra performance at low cost. Coming at clocks of 873 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory, the card manages to offer 10% extra performance over the NVIDIA reference design, without being noisy or running hot.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Sep 10th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The cards for Point of View's GTX 460 TGT Beast are pre-selected based on their overclocking potential. This allows them to run the high clock speed of 855 MHz core and 1005 MHz memory. We take a closer look at this card that is just as fast as the much more expensive GeForce GTX 470.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Sep 9th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
As the names suggests, the ASUS ENGTX460 DirectCU comes with an ASUS DirectCu thermal solution. It also features increased clock speeds of 775 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory which result in about 10% real life improvement. What makes this card really attractive is the low price of $229 which is the same as you would pay for the plain NVIDIA reference design.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Sep 7th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 5750 Low Profile is the first HD 5700 Series low-profile card on the market. This seems to be a godsend for compact media PC systems that can also handle the latest games at decent resolution and settings. We take this card for a spin to see if it can hold its promise.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Sep 1st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GTX 460 HAWK is the flagship GeForce GTX 460 from MSI. It comes with a quiet Twin Frozr II cooler, 1 GB of memory and 781 MHz core clock out of the box. MSI has also expanded on the voltmodding capability of the card which supports software control for three voltages.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Aug 29th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AXLE's GeForce GTX 460 ACE is the first GTX 460 to come with a triple slot cooling solution, by Arctic Cooling in this case. The card also comes pre-overclocked out of the box which results in a healthy performance boost over the reference design.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Aug 17th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's new GTX 460 Amp! Edition is the highest clocked GTX 460 version available right now. Its clock speeds of 810 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory ensure it delivers substantially improved performance over the GTX 460 reference design. ZOTAC is also using a custom cooling solution and includes a full version of Prince of Persia with their card.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Aug 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Running at 800 MHz GPU and 1000 MHz memory, Palit's GTX 460 Sonic Platinum is one of the highest clocked GTX 460 cards out there. It also comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory which can provide a performance boost over the 768 MB variants too. Being priced at reasonable $249 this card looks like a good alternative to a reference design purchase.
| Date: | Jul 12th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 has been released today with big success. The cards improve on power and noise, offering great performance considering the price. This brings up the obvious question: how do these cards handle SLI? At $460 total the 2-way SLI config is cheaper than NVIDIA's flagship GTX 480, but is it worth it?
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's GeForce GTX Cyclone OC uses NVIDIA's latest graphics processor, the GF104. But MSI has not stopped there, they use their own "Cyclone" cooling solution and have increased the cards operating clock to 728 MHz. As a result this 768 MB card is faster than the 1 GB version of the reference design.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new GTX 460 Series. Axle is following the reference design implementation to the letter which means the card shows all the new improvements like low power, less fan noise and massive overclocking potential. Thanks to the memory choice of 768 MB it is also more cost effective than the 1 GB variant.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jul 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's GeForce GTX 460 is equipped with 1 GB of video memory and also brings in small improvements like an additional DisplayPort connector and better bundle at $229 which is no price increase from the price of other cards.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's 1 GB version of the GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone uses 1024 MB of fast GDDR5 memory and clock speeds of 728 MHz to make it the fastest GTX 460 variant out there today. With a price of $239, it is only $10 more expensive than the reference design.
| Date: | Jul 7th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ARES is ASUS' latest graphics card monster creation. The card is based on two HD 5870 GPUs running in an internal CrossFire configuration. ASUS has also be generous with the video memory, a total of 4 GB is available on the card. Thanks to a custom heatsink design the card manages to handle the heat well, but can you handle the price of $1000 a piece?
| Date: | Jul 7th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this review we test two ASUS ARES cards in a 4-GPU CrossFire combination. With a total price of $2000 for those cards this is certainly not for everybody. For additional reference we also combined the ARES with a HD 5970 and a HD 5870.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 5th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 5550 is based on the HD 5550 design but comes equipped with fast GDDR5 memory and a passive cooling solution. This allows for high-quality HD movie playback and playing most games at Xbox-360 like 720p resolution.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Jun 26th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Axle's Radeon HD 5670 comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, which is twice that of the reference design. The thermal solution has also been changed to one that runs cool and quiet, thanks to a fan design by Arctic Cooling.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Jun 23rd 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI is the first board partner to release a custom designed GeForce GTX 465 card. The original GTX 465 design's fan noise made it very clear that a Fermi GPU is running under the hood. Not with the GTX 465 Twin Frozr II, the card is whisper quiet in both idle and load, and manages considerably better temperatures than the reference design.
| Date: | Jun 16th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
High-Definition content is available everywhere nowadays. We take a close look at what the drivers from AMD and NVIDIA offer in order to improve the quality of video playback. HQV Benchmark 2.0 uses 39 different tests that put the available image enhancement features in the spot light.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | May 31st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 465. The cards are based on the same GF100 Fermi GPU as the GTX 470 and GTX 480. In order to create this $279 product, NVIDIA has disabled a large number of units inside the GF100. Did they do it right? What about power consumption and heat?
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | May 26th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Edition comes with a mighty Zalman VF3000 cooler strapped to it which reduces the card's temperatures by 20°C. Thanks to the new cooling solution, the card has no problems running at higher clock speeds out of the box. But is that enough to declare this triple slot card a winner?
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | May 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce GTX 470 is one of the GTX 470 versions that comes with a custom PCB design and non-reference thermal solution. Since the card is $20 cheaper than the reference design we take a close look to find out whether Palit cheaped out on their card or if it's worthy for consideration.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | May 17th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ASUS HD 5870 Matrix Platinum is clearly engineered for maximum overclocking. It has 2 GB of fast GDDR5 memory and features software voltage control for three voltages. One unique feature is that the ASUS iTracker 2 sofware can put your changed settings into the BIOS so you won't have to worry about OC software anymore.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | May 3rd 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 5770 PCS++ could be described as an evolutionary step from the HD 5770 PCS+, targeted at overclockers. It is the first HD 5770 that comes with a Volterra voltage regulator which allows software voltage control. This enables tweakers to get higher overclocks out of their card without complicated modding.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Apr 22nd 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS HD 5850 iCooler V Turbo is a fully customized HD 5870 that uses a non-reference PCB and heatsink. Instead of the standard clocks it comes at frequencies of 765 MHz core and 1125 MHz memory. Another highlight is the included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game which is clearly one of the top games of the last months.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's HD 5570 is a small compact card that consumes very little power, yet should offer decent performance for most gaming up to 1280x1024. Another possible use is in a media PC, which is supported by the native HDMI output.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Apr 19th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 was announced a few weeks back - now we got the first production sample of the card from ASUS. Compared to the GTX 480 we saw much more reasonable power consumption numbers as well as fan noise and heat.
| Date: | Apr 13th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today we have on our testbench two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 accelerators. Just the graphics cards alone will cost you $1000. Is this something that can be justified? Performance aside, what's going on with power and heat when running two of these cards?
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Apr 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS sends their HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo into the race for the best custom designed HD 5870. In addition to the new iCooler V heatsink you get improved clock speeds over the AMD reference design and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as game bundle.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Apr 9th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 5830 Twin Frozr II uses a shiny metal heatsink that comes with two fans to keep the card cool. In our testing we see nice overclocking potential of around 20% which can easily bring the card to new performance levels.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Apr 8th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS recently released its entry-level Radeon HD 5450 silent, low-profile graphics card targeted at those looking for a simple step-up from integrated graphics, packing all the essentials of this generation's GPUs. The model we're looking at has double the onboard memory at 1GB, native HDMI with 7.1 audio, and examining what it brings to the table with its added costs.
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Mar 26th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today marks the release of NVIDIA's new GeForce Fermi architecture. After excruciating months of delays, NVIDIA has finally given the green light for their new products. The GeForce GTX 480 offers all the latest features like DirectX 11, Tesselation, gaming on multiple monitors and GPU computation. Did NVIDIA's new card manage to claim the throne?
| Date: | Mar 26th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's latest beast offers unprecedented performance to the enthusiast gamer. But it also requires massive amounts of data being fed to it to perform. That's why it is commonly expected that high-end graphics cards are crippled if the PCI-Express interface does not offer the maximum speed of x16 2.0. We test four different PCI-E configurations and their performance to shine light on this question.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Mar 13th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor has engineered a unique HD 5750. Their Go! Green Edition is completely fanless using a big passive heatsink, it also works without additional PCI-Express power connector, a configuration which limits the card to 75W maximum power draw. Considering that the AMD reference design requires 92W, PowerColor had quite a way to go. Did they succeed?
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 11th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new R5870 Lightning is designed with the hardcore overclocker in mind. It comes with more PWM phases, noise free coils, voltage measurement points, an overclock out of the box and software voltage change support via Afterburner. But is that enough to satisfy the demanding enthusiast crowd?
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Mar 9th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS has released what seems to be one of the best custom designed HD 5850s. The card which supports DirectX 11 and Eyefinity is extremely quiet, offers better price/performance than the AMD reference design, comes with an overclock out of the box and supports voltage control via SmartDoctor.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Feb 24th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today we have with us the ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCu 1024 MB, a premium non-reference implementation of the Radeon HD 5830. The way its cooler is designed, and going by ASUS' choice of components, the EAH 5830 DirectCu is catered to the value performance enthusiast who can squeeze the last ounce of performance out of it by overclocking.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Feb 19th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 5450 seems to be the dream come true for all media PC users. It is passively cooled, which means no noise, can be turned into a single slot low-profile card and includes native HDMI and all the HD audio improvements of the Radeon HD 5000 Series. But is that enough to win over the enthusiasts?
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 12th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 5570 is set out to deliver decent gaming performance for casual gaming and also best-in-class media playback capabilities. Thanks to its compact design and the included low-profile bracket it seems to be able to achieve that.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Feb 9th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's brand new HD 5870 PCS+ comes with an overclock out of the box and an amazing cooling solution that makes the card quieter than any other card in this performance segment. For a price increase of only $10-$20 over the reference design this seems like a great deal.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 5th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new HD 5770 Hawk is designed to deliver extra features to overclockers. Its TwinFrozr dual fan offers plenty of cooling power to keep the card cool during overclocking, yet runs extremely quiet. As added bonus for tweakers, MSI has included easy to use V-Check voltage measurement points on their PCB and an overclock out of the box.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 3rd 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 5770 Vapor-X features their exclusive cooling solution which promises to reduce temperature, fan noise and increase overclocking potential. In our testing we confirmed that the card does indeed run quiet, cool and offers the highest overclocks we saw on a HD 5770 so far.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Jan 26th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's new R5670-PMD1G is one of the few HD 5670 cards that come with 1 GB of video memory, as opposed to 512 MB on most other designs. This review will answer whether there is any point in 1 GB of memory on a card like the HD 5670 or if 512 MB is enough.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 21st 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor has sent us their new Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ which is an overclocked version of the HD 5770, featuring a custom PCB design and thermal solution by PowerColor. Thanks to PowerColor's changes, the card can manage a reduced power consumption, which is even lower than the AMD reference design, resulting in a leading performance per Watt score.
| Date: | Jan 17th 2010 |
|---|---|
| Author: | btarunr |
| In: | Video Cards |
After months-long DirectX 11 extravaganza by AMD, it seems to be time when NVIDIA declares itself to have a competing GPU, based on its spanking-new Fermi GPU architecture. The GeForce Fermi 100 (GF100) is promising to take over the legacy built by its ancestors, the G80 and GT200, to become yet another monster high-performance silicon which will reignite competition in the upper-quadrant of the market. We look at what NVIDIA is putting on offer, before we get to test NVIDIA's assertions.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Jan 14th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD announced the availability of their Radeon HD 5670 Series. HIS has chosen to design a custom PCB and uses an Arctic Cooling thermal solution to keep their card cool. Even though it uses an active fan, the card is easily one of the quietest cards on the market, underlining its potential media PC use.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Jan 5th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor is the first add-in-board manufacturer to release a completely custom designed Radeon HD 5850. The HD 5850 PCS+ features a revamped cooling solution that offers extremely low temperatures and comfortable noise levels. It also comes with higher clocks out of the box that should give the card an extra performance boost.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 4th 2010 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Intel's latest Clarkdale processors are the first to integrate a GPU and CPU inside a single processor package. This can lead to large cost savings and simplifications for motherboard vendors and system integrators. But does the Core i5 661 have enough GPU steam to play current games?
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Dec 11th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA recently launched their first GDDR5 graphics cards. The new GeForce GT 240 is based on NVIDIA's brand-new 40 nm G215 graphics processor and features 96 shaders. Axle has chosen to use an Arctic Cooling heatsink on their GT 240 design.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Dec 8th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
While Axle is not the most well-known graphics card manufacturer, their GeForce GT 220 can score. It comes with a silent Arctic Cooling heatsink making it the quietest GT 220 we tested so far - great for HTPCs. It also offers low temperature levels which means overclocking is easy to do. We saw an 31% overclock on the GPU core clock and 18% on the memory.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Nov 28th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS designed a Radeon HD 5750 that uses a nearly silent cooler by Arctic Cooling which makes this card a premium choice for HTPC or quiet gaming PC. Even though the cooler is quiet, the temperatures are low, which means you can get some nice overclocking out of your card. In our case around 20% free extra performance.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Nov 24th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor's new HD 5750 PCS relies on a copper cooling solution by Zerotherm to keep the card cool. It does so without much fan noise and while being twice as energy efficient as the HD 4850 which is comparable in performance.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Nov 20th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their first GDDR5 graphics card. The new GeForce GT 240 is based on NVIDIA's brand-new 40 nm G215 graphics processor and features 96 shaders. Palit has built an overclocked "Sonic" Edition card that comes with high clock speeds out of the box and features a sensible temperature based fan control mechanism.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Nov 18th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today marks the day that AMD takes back the graphics card performance crown from NVIDIA. The new AMD Radeon HD 5970 comes with two fast Cypress GPUs on a single PCB. Using their latest power saving features, AMD achieved a very modest power consumption for this card which right now is the fastest money can buy.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Nov 18th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
With the release of AMD's latest Radeon HD 5970, the question comes up "What can be gained by going CrossFire?" We investigate the quad GPU performance of the HIS Radeon HD 5970. Even though the setup rip a $1200 hole in your wallet, performance will make you smile.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Nov 17th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their first GDDR5 graphics card. The new GeForce GT 240 is based on NVIDIA's brand-new 40 nm G215 graphics processor and features 96 shaders. It also includes several new features like support for DirectX 10.1, HDMI audio enhancements and extremely low power draw. But is that enough to justify a price of $100 ?
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Nov 11th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Inno3D's GeForce GT 220 uses NVIDIA's latest 40 nm graphics processor. It offers extremely low power consumption, especially in idle and has support for DirectX 10.1. It also features NVIDIA's new HDMI audio improvements, so you no longer need to route an SPDIF cable to the graphics card.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Nov 5th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 5750 is priced competitively below $150 and offers all the new features like DirectX 11, AMD Eyefinity, native HDMI & DP and more. Even though the cooler does not look like it, it works extremely well and keeps the card cool and very quiet. We were also able to overclock our sample by more than 20% which essentialy brings the HD 5750's performance to levels of the HD 5770.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce 210 is set out to conquer the low-end graphics card market. It comes with native HDMI output, improvements to HDMI audio and a low profile form factor. While it also supports DirectX 10.1 and PhysX, it is definitely not made for gaming. However, it does score big in overclocking and power consumption.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Oct 12th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's next step in their Radeon HD 5000 release strategy is the Radeon HD 5770 which is based on the new 40 nm Juniper core. It features 800 shaders and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. Essentially this makes the card perform like a HD 4870 but adds new features like DirectX 11, ATI Eyefinity and reduced power consumption.
| 8.1 | |
| Date: | Oct 12th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's new GeForce GT 220 is based on NVIDIA's new GT 216 GPU which features 48 shader processors. While this is certainly not enough to play games at high resolutions it is sure fine for casual gaming. Windows desktop use and HD video playback is what this card is really targeted at and here it shines with extremely low power consumption and good feature set.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Oct 12th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce GT 220 is built around the new GT216 graphics processor, which is NVIDIA's first chip to be made in a 40 nm process. Another novelty is support for DirectX 10.1. Palit's Sonic Edition comes with higher clocks out of the box and an extremely well optimized low-noise fan.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Oct 2nd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 5850 is based on AMD's reference design and delivers amazing rendering performance at a much more affordable price than the HD 5870. It comes with an impressing low power consumption and the lack of fan noise is also very enjoyable. Overall it seems like this will be the best high end card available this year.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Sep 23rd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
We pair two AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB accelerators for some CrossFire action, and see how viable it proves as a high-end graphics setup.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Sep 22nd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 5800 Series of graphics cards. They are powered by a brand new graphics processor called "Cypress". Our review goes into all the detail about the new HD 5870 flagship, but we also have HD 5850 scores so you can get an idea what to expect.
| Date: | Sep 22nd 2009 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's latest generation of graphics cards offers unprecedented single GPU performance levels. Such performance requires an optimum environment, especially important is PCI-Express bandwidth. We investigate if these cards can still deliver on a PCI-E x8, x4 or even x1 link.
| Date: | Sep 16th 2009 |
|---|---|
| Author: | btarunr |
| In: | Video Cards |
A compilation of all plausible information about the Radeon HD 5000 series graphics processors found on the web, stitched into a collage.
| Date: | Sep 14th 2009 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
If any graphics card has been hyped in the past months it's the ASUS MARS Dual GTX 285. It is the first and only graphics card featuring two GTX 285 GPUs with 4 GB VRAM. The card is set out to dominate every other card on the market delivering amazing performance - at a breathtaking price of USD 1200 per card.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Sep 8th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Mushkin's GeForce GTX 295 comes in a very stylish wooden box that radiates "premium product" as soon as you have it in your hands. Other than that the card follows NVIDIA's single PCB GTX 295 reference specifications to the letter, but also comes at an attractive price point of $499.
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Aug 28th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's HD 4890 Cyclone SOC is the fastest model of the Cyclone Series. It comes with clocks of 1000 MHz / 1000 MHz out of the box and uses a huge heatpipe cooler to keep the card cool. As an extra feature a native HDMI connector has been added in case you want to connect the card to your big TV screen.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Aug 18th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor's new HD 4770 PCS comes with a cooling solution designed by Artic Cooling and a custom PCB design by Powercolor. This should result in improved thermal performance, less noise and better overclocking. Thanks to decisive product design, Powercolor manages to offer the card at no extra price over other HD 4770 cards.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Aug 14th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
MSI's latest addition to their Lightning Series is the N275GTX Lightning with 1792 MB memory and a new Twin Frozr II dual 80 mm fan cooler. Being targeted at overclockers it is overclocked out of the box of course. All this sounds like a noisy card? Nope, on the contrary, the card is actually the quietest card in its performance class, by far.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Jun 30th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 4730 is based on the RV770 GPU which is used on the HD 48xx Series. Such a choice had to be made because the availability of the HD4770 GPU is extremely limited at this time - while customer demand is up. Sapphire offers their card with 640 shaders and 512 MB GDDR5 memory at an extremely competitive price point of only $79. But is that enough to take over that market segment?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jun 28th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA has silently introduced a new revision of their GeForce GTX 295. The new version crams everything onto a single PCB. While the performance characteristics have not changed, thermals, fan noise and power consumption did change indeed. Is the new single PCB GTX 295 a success or just an unimportant product revision?
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Jun 12th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 4890 Toxic uses their exclusive Vapor-X cooling technology. This results in a card that delivers considerably more performance than the HD 4890 reference, yet does so without any excess noise. Actually the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic is the quietest HD 4890 we ever had in our hands.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | May 27th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Albatron is one of the first companies to come out with a HD 4830 design that does not require an external power connector. Another difference to the HD 4830 is the number of shaders. Instead of 640 like on the reference, Albatron has packed 800 shaders on their card for some extra performance.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | May 6th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ASUS has sent us one of the first samples of their new EAH4890 TOP which uses a SuperML capacitor that is supposed to offer cleaner voltage resulting in better overlocking. Also this is the first card to feature a 6+8 pin PCI-Express power connector for improved voltage delivery. Last but not least, ASUS is now using a dual fan cooler with six thick heatpipes.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 30th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor is one of the first board partners to release an overclocked, custom designed HD 4890. Instead of the AMD reference cooler a solution from Zerotherm is used. The clock speeds have also been bumped to 950 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory. Due to their improved PCB, PowerColor has managed to position their HD 4890 PCS at the price that normal reference cards go for: $249.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 27th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD released the world's first GPU that is produced in a 40 nm process. The HD 4770 is aggressively priced around ~$100 and offers great performance for your hard earned dollars. In our testing realized out that the card performs almost on par with the HD 4850. With the amazing 30%+ memory overclock we got on our sample, the HD 4850 will be surpassed easily.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Apr 14th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Inno3D's latest graphics card release is the GeForce GTX 275 Overclocked. It is based on NVIDIA's P897 design but comes with considerably increased clocks. This results in a nice performance boost over the reference cards and allows the card to beat the much more expensive GeForce GTX 285.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 1st 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD has just announced the availability of their latest HD 4890 graphics card series which is based on the new RV790 GPU. The highlights of RV790 are considerably higher clocks speeds and 1 GB of fast GDDR5 memory on all boards.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 1st 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 4890 comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and yet unseen clock speeds offering much better performance at a competitive price. Will that be enough to beat NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 275 ?
| Date: | Apr 1st 2009 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Our HD 4890 CrossFire review investigates whether running two of these brand-new cards is a viable choice if you need that extra bit of performance or want to run with even more eye candy than what is possible with a single HD 4890 board.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Apr 1st 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 275 Series. While there are no architectural improvements, the new cards offer substantially improved performance at competitive prices. Zotac's Amp! Edition offers higher clocks out of the box - is that enough to combat ATI's new offerings?
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 26th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS HD 4650 iSilence with its passive Zalman cooling solution offers a noise free experience, which is especially important when building a quiet media PC system. On top of that you will also receive a full version of the STALKER Clear Sky game.
| 8.2 | |
| Date: | Mar 24th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In addition to the long and complicated name, the HIS HD 4870 IceQ4+ Turbo features twice the memory compared to the AMD HD 4870 reference design. The clock speeds have also received a boost, now running at 770 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory out of the box. Last but not least, HIS replaced the AMD cooler with their own IceQ cooling system.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 10th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
While NVIDIA's GTS 250 isn't really new technology, Galaxy has chosen to put an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo cooler on their card. Even though it uses two fans, the card is extremely quiet making it an excellent choice for a media PC. The best is that it won't cost you anything extra. Galaxy is offering their cards at NVIDIA's reference design MSRP of $149.
| 7.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 3rd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their GeForce GTS 250 Series which is based on the G92 graphics processor that has already been used on a number of GeForce 8 and GeForce 9 designs. While NVIDIA's reference design comes with 1 GB of memory, Palit has chosen to create a card that comes with 2 GB of VRAM.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 2nd 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
If you are looking for a quiet high performance card, then the factory-overclocked iChill GTX 260 is certainly a great choice for you. Using Arctic Cooling's Accelero XXX cooler it emits less fan noise than most low-end cards, yet offers performance close to the GeForce GTX 280.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 17th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's new GTX 260 Sonic 216 SP is based on NVIDIA's latest GT200b 55 nm graphics processor. Palit has chosen to go with a dual fan design for improved airflow and increased overclocking. Not only the thermal design has been changed but also the PCB design, which features several cost optimizations and comes in an appealing ATI-red.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 12th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's GeForce GTX 295 comes with two NVIDIA GT200b GPUs sandwiched together in one graphics card. The card can successfully defeat ATI's HD 4870 X2 in our benchmarks and offers plenty of overclocking headroom beyond that. Thanks to the 55 nm GPU design and clever power saving methods the card even delivers in the performance per Watt segment.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 19th 2009 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's latest addition to their graphics card lineup is based around the 55 nanometer GT200b. The new card offers more performance, consumes less power and is quieter than the previous model. Yet these improvements cost you a premium of about $70 over the GTX 280. Is that price justified?
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jan 18th 2009 |
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
While many are satisfied with having a single screen, imagine gaming across 3 displays with 180° vision. The Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital overcomes the shortcoming of a single or dual display setup and gives you the possiblity to connect up to three DVI based LCD screens with a total resolution of up to 5040 x 1050 for real surround gaming.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Dec 19th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 4870 X2 Atomic Watercooled is a special edition of the popular dual-RV770 design that comes with a prefilled watercooling kit that also includes a waterbock for your processor. Being delivered in a nice aluminum case there are a load of extra accessories ranging from software to cabling - but the price tag is also outstanding: over $600.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 11th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's new Revolution 700 Deluxe is the first graphics card that occupies three slots in your PC. The massive cooling assembly successfully increases overclocking performance, lowers temperature and reduces fan noise. But is that good enough to beat the AMD reference design?
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Nov 5th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The new Leadtek GeForce GTX 260 Extreme+ comes with an increased shader count of 216 compared to 196 on the regular GTX 260. Leadtek has also overclocked the card for some free extra performance. In our testing the GTX 260 Extreme+ delivers excellent performance per Watt claiming a number one spot in the test group.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Nov 4th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Being priced at reasonable $419, the Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is designed to take some market share from NVIDIA's GTX 280. The card features 2 GB of GDDR3 memory and comes with a custom designed cooling solution. Even though you would expect very little overclocking from a dual-GPU card, we saw an amazing 15% performance increase from overclocking without touching any fan settings.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Nov 3rd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's HD 4650 Overclocked comes with a solid overclock out of the box. But during our own overclocking tests we saw an amazing untapped overclocking potential resulting in more than 20% real world performance increase. Even without overclocking this card, that's in the $70 price range, is an excellent deal considering price/performance.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches their new HD 4830 Series. The cards come with a reduced shader count of 640 and lower clocks to fit into the $100 to $150 segment. In our testing we saw amazing overclocking of over 30% which should bring the card much closer to more expensive solutions.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD 4830 features the same 640 shader pipes as the AMD reference design, but comes with a big dual-slot cooler. Also new is a native HDMI output which supports HDCP and 7.1 channel audio. Thanks to a PowerColor designed PCB the card will retail about $10 cheaper than the reference design from AMD.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 9th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 4550 comes in a passively cooled version without fan. Such a noiseless experience is crucial in media PC designs where you don't want to be distracted by any fan noise. Also included is a native HDMI and DisplayPort output for connection to your big screen. With a price of around $50 the card even offers some potential for casual gaming.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Sep 26th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS' latest HD 4670 card comes equipped with the VGA Silencer made by Arctic Cooling. It also features an extra 30 MHz core clock. Even though it is factory overclocked we saw another 10% overclocking potential on both core and memory.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Sep 17th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire has engineered their own version of the Radeon HD 4850 with cost and cooling in mind. The card's new unconventional heatsink looks good and keeps the card cool - far below reference design temperatures. The best of all is that the card costs only $169.99 online which makes it the cheapest HD 4850 available today.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Sep 16th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their updated GeForce GTX 260 GPUs which come with 24 extra shaders, for a total shader count of 216. Zotac has also overclocked their card beyond the GTX 280 clock speeds which results in a card that is just 1% slower than the regular GTX 280, yet costs over $130 less.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Sep 9th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD launches their new cards based on the RV730 graphics processor. The Powercolor PCS HD 4670 we have on our testbench today comes with a dual slot heatsink which offers excellent cooling and low noise. Together with the serious gaming performance of this card, AMD has managed to successfully position their product in the sub-$100 segment.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Sep 9th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
HIS has just released the IceQ4 version of the AMD Radeon HD 4850. The IceQ4 cooler is a dual-slot solution which ensures low temperatures under both idle and load. Also HIS has overclocked the card which results in a nice performance boost compared to the reference design card.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Sep 8th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce 9400 GT Series is based on the same G96 GPU that is also used on the 9500 GT. The 9400 GT has half the shaders however, which seriously limits the uses of the card in a gaming PC. On the other hand this greatly reduces the heat output which allows a completely passive solution. Point of View differentiates their card by using 1 GB of video memory and bundling a full version of the Wall-E game.
| 7.9 | |
| Date: | Sep 4th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The Chrome 440 GTX is the latest card from S3 Graphics. It features all the main bullet points like DirectX 10.1, PCI-Express 2.0, native HDMI with integrated audio, small form factor and low heat output. But is this enough to compete with the offerings from ATI and NVIDIA?
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Sep 1st 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit is one of the first AMD board partners to release a custom Radeon HD 4870 version. Their new HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition comes with a completely revamped cooling assembly that features two fans to keep the card cool. Also included is a DisplayPort connector and a Turbo switch which lets you select the operating frequencies of the card. The mandatory "overclocked out of the box" is included as well.
| 9.8 | |
| Date: | Aug 14th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor's latest HD 4850 PCS graphics card is based on the AMD HD 4850 reference design but comes with an improved cooler and slightly increased core clocks. While the overclock makes only a small performance difference, the cooler substantially improves the product. Even under load the PCS 4850 is barely audible which makes it the quietest graphics card ever tested - of all performance classes.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Aug 11th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today AMD released their new HD 4870 X2 graphics cards. They are based on two RV770 GPUs on one PCB. With a total of 1600 shaders and 2 GB GDDR5 memory the card has excellent chances to achieve the goal "fastest graphics card in the world".
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Aug 5th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 4850 Toxic graphics card comes with a preinstalled Zalman VF-900 GPU cooler that greatly reduces the operating temperature of the card. Also the operating frequencies have been bumped quite a bit, with some additional overclocking potential left in the card.
| 8.6 | |
| Date: | Aug 4th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce 9800 GTX+ comes with a 55 nm CPU that runs at higher clock speeds, yet consumes less power than the original 65 nm chip. Zotac's Amp! Edition further increases the operating frequencies. Even though the higher clocks make the card faster than the ATI HD 4850, the difference is very small and probably not noticable while gaming.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jul 31st 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA recently launched the GeForce 9500 GT. This low-end card in the GeForce 9 Series is designed to offer acceptable gaming performance for the small wallet. Galaxy has created an overclocked edition which runs at higher clocks and comes with a quiet heatpipe cooling solution. In our testing we saw amazing overclocking potential of over 35% compared to the reference design clocks.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jul 31st 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GeForce 9800 GT Series is not really new. The performance, specification and GPU are identical to that of the GeForce 8800 GT. Only a few minor features like Purevideo HD and Hybrid Power are present. At least Zotac showed a bit of creativity and added a bright orange PCB and higher clocks out of the box.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Jul 3rd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
At this time NVIDIA's new GTX 260 graphics cards are positioned to be quite a bit more expensive than ATI's similar performing HD 4870. However, NVIDIA includes support for CUDA and PhysX. We also saw amazing overclocking potential on our GTX 260 card, even surpassing the $200 more expensive GTX 280.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jun 30th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 4870 is the first graphics card to feature GDDR5 memory. GDDR5 offers twice the memory bandwidth over previous GDDR generations which helps the HD 4870 gain a nice performance advantage over the HD 4850.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jun 23rd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
After AMD's successful launch of the HD 4850 Series, NVIDIA decided to drop the price point of the GeForce 9800 GTX to only $199. At this price the card becomes a very affordable product that offers all the performance you need to play the latest games. An additional plus is the support for PhysX via NVIDIA's CUDA implementation.
| 9.8 | |
| Date: | Jun 19th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD has moved the launch date of the HD 4850 forward, launching it today. The cards are positioned in the $200 range and offer several new features and performance improvements. According to our benchmark results AMD has found a winner with this card that offers excellent price/performance and energy efficiency.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Jun 19th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
After some confusion, AMD has lifted the NDA for their brand-new Radeon HD 4850 Series today. The RV770 on these boards comes with 800 shaders and boasts 956 million transistors. Together with a new AA architecture the card takes the $200 segment in a storm offering leading performance/dollar and performance/watt.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jun 16th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new GTX 280 graphics cards have just been released. Point of View's GeForce GTX 280 is an implementation of the NVIDIA reference design. The GTX 280 offers amazing performance improvements and can even beat the GeForce 9800 GX2. But performance comes at a cost, at $649 you need a fat wallet to be able to afford this card.
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | Jun 16th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new GTX 280 graphics cards. Zotac as one of NVIDIA's premier partners has engineered a factory overclocked version of the GTX 280 which offers additional performance. Overall the Zotac GTX 280 Amp Edition is the fastest graphics card on the planet today, but also the most expensive.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Jun 12th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire HD 3870 X2 Atomic Edition comes with pre-filled, pre-sealed and maintenance free watercooling. This allows Sapphire to ship the card with higher clocks, making the card the fastest HD 3870 X2 on the market today. As you would expect from such a premium product the presentation is outstanding, and so is the price.
| 8.3 | |
| Date: | Jun 11th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Palit's GeForce 9800 GTX follows the specifications of the NVIDIA reference design to the letter. Even then it is one of the fastest cards out there that you can buy, constantly delivering excellent FPS in games. Our sample allowed up to 16% additional overclocking on the GPU for a final clock speed of 784 MHz.
| 7.5 | |
| Date: | Apr 8th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Diamond's latest HD 3650 card features a huge video memory of 1 GB, but uses only slow DDR2. For media PC systems an extra HDMI output has been added which natively supports HDCP and audio. We run this card through our benchmarks and check whether the extra memory can make a performance difference.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Apr 1st 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce 9800 GTX cards. Like many products in the GeForce 8 Series they are based on the G92 graphics processor. This is also the reason why there are no real technological innovations on this $299 card.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Mar 20th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
EVGA's e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC comes at increased clocks compared to the NVIDIA reference design. Also the cooler has been adjusted slightly to match the company's color theme and design. With a price premium of just $10 over the reference card it can can deliver in both performance per Dollar and performance per Watt.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Mar 19th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 3870 IceQ3 uses the proven HIS IceQ3 cooling solution. It also comes with higher clocks out of the box which are among the highest we have seen so far from all manufacturers. The recent price drops from AMD make this card a solid choice for the sub-$200 segment.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Mar 18th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launches their GeForce 9800 GX2 dual GPU card. It comes with two G92 GPUs and uses a new cooling design where a single cooler sits in the middle and cools both GPUs. We have the card from Zotac on our testbench today which follows the reference design specification. Unlike many other publications all our testing was conducted in Windows XP because we think that's what the majority of users still plays on.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 12th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 3870 Toxic is built on the same Vapor-X cooling technology that the HD 3870 Atomic uses. This means that the card comes with a single slot cooling solution making it a premier choice for Quad CrossFire systems. The accessory package also includes an HDMI cable, PowerDVD and a 3DMark license, not bad for a $40 premium.
| 9.4 | |
| Date: | Mar 11th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Even though the GeForce 8800 GT has already been out for a while, it still has the punch to play all the latest games. The VVIKOO 8800 GT Max 1 GB comes with the Zalman VF1000 pre-installed and also features double the video memory. But is there any performance to be gained by going from 512 MB to 1024 MB of memory?
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Mar 7th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new HD 3650 is basically an improved version of the 2600 XT without any major technological advances other than a smaller die size resulting in cheaper cards. PowerColor's HD 3650 Extreme comes equipped with 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and runs at higher clocks than the AMD reference design.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Mar 3rd 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
VVIKOO's GeForce 9600 GT Turbo brings many changes over the NVIDIA reference design. You can see one of the first DisplayPort implementations, an HDMI output, two DVIs and optical SPDIF-in. The card also features the Zalman VF-1000 cooler which makes sure the card stays cool at all times. Since the card runs cooler, the card comes overclocked straight from the factory.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 25th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Biostar's new GeForce 9600 GT follows the specifications of the NVIDIA reference design to the letter. Even the cooler is unchanged. This does not have to be a bad thing. The card should be available earlier than any "special" models and also come without a price premium for overclocking you can do yourself.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Feb 21st 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce 9 Series. The first product is the GeForce 9600 GT, based on the new G94 GPU. Zotac's AMP! Edition comes overclocked straight out of the box for a little bit extra performance. This can bring the card very close to the GeForce 8800 GT in performance.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Feb 19th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 comes with a high end dual slot cooler, 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and increased clocks at a price tag of $199. This winning combination gets very close in performance to the much more expensive HD 3870 and can even surpass it when overclocked.
| 9.8 | |
| Date: | Feb 17th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Even though the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS comes with just 96 shaders and 12 ROPs it can easily compete with AMD HD3850 and HD3870. The card offers great price/performance and is very very quiet. With up to 30% overclocking this card is every overclocker's dream being able to surpass the much more expensive 8800 GT when overclocked.
| 8.4 | |
| Date: | Feb 13th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's Radeon HD 3850 Series has been on the market for a while now. Add-in-Board Partners are constantly looking for ways to seperate themselves from the competition and that's why Sapphire has engineered a Radeon HD 3850 with 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory and faster core clock out of the box. But can a card like this really benefit from 1 GB of video memory?
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 6th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The PowerColor HD 3870 SCS3 Edition is a completely passively cooled Radeon HD 3870. This makes the card an excellent choice for a quiet Media PC computer. What is really amazing is that the passive card runs up to 25°C cooler than the reference design which uses a fan.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 27th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HIS Radeon 3870 X2 combines the power of two ATI RV670 GPUs into one to reach for the performance throne in single card processing power. Even tough the implementation has some minor limitations the overall product is certainly interesting and can maybe bring AMD back in the game.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jan 25th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 3870 Atomic Edition is a special version of the Radeon HD 3870 with a single slot cooler. This is only possible because Sapphire uses a new cooling technology called Vapor-X cooling that improves cooling performance considerably while keeping noise down. Another plus of this card is that it comes overclocked out of the box with full warranty.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jan 17th 2008 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Diamond has designed their HD 3850 Ruby Edition with additional cooling performance in mind. Their cooler is a custom dual-slot solution which does quite a good job at keeping the card cool. In addition to that the memory has been doubled to 512 MB of GDDR3.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 11th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB which is based on the G92 GPU that has already been used on the GeForce 8800 GT. To our excitement our testing revealed that this $299 card can almost beat the much more expensive GeForce 8800 GTX while generally being quieter and less power hungry.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Dec 7th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new HD 3870 card is based on AMD's RV670 GPU which is made in a 55 nm process with 666 million transitors and support for DirectX 10.1 and PCI-Express 2.0. This card that is sold for around $249 is intended to be AMD's new offering for an upper midrange card - but can it beat the GeForce 8800 GT?
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Dec 6th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
PowerColor's new HD3850 Xtreme is full of customization compared to the reference design. Instead of two DVI ports it has one DVI and one HDMI port which supports HD video playback with HDCP and digital audio straight off the GPU. In addition to that a custom cooler by Zerotherm ensures that the card stays cool no matter what you throw at it. Another bonus is that the memory size has been doubled to 512 MB of 1.0 ns GDDR3 memory.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Dec 5th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new Radeon HD 3850 has been a major upgrade in both performance and efficiency. GeCube has taken the reference design and increased the clock speeds. They also doubled the available memory to 512 MB GDDR3 and use a two slot cooler on the card. But can this yield enough performance to warranty a $30 price premium? We compare it to 17 other video cards.
| 9.7 | |
| Date: | Oct 29th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The Zotac GeForce 8800 GT comes equipped with NVIDIA's latest G92 GPU. Unlike the NVIDIA reference design, Zotac's card is running at a higher clock of 660 MHz which gives this card a nice performance boost. With a price point of only $249 and performance that is close to the 8800 GTX, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT is going to be one of the big sellers this year.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 22nd 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
VVIKOO is a new videocard manufacturer based in Paris offering both NVIDIA and ATI cards. One of their first products is the GeForce 8600 GT Turbo, which is an overclocked version of NVIDIA's 8600 GT. The card comes equipped with a quiet Zalman cooler and offers great overclocking potential. In our testing we could increase the clocks by more than 40% over NVIDIA's reference clocks.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Sep 14th 2007 |
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
Matrox has made some waves with their recent release of the DualHead2Go Digital GXM module, but the TripleHead2Go Analog has one great feature which the dual display variant lacks: Surround Gaming. We fire up a classic and a brand new game, to show you what you could be gaming on with the TripleHead2Go GXM module.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Sep 11th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Biostar is the first manufacturer to put 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory on a GeForce 8600 GTS card, which usually comes with 256 MB. Since GDDR3 memory is expensive, the card retails for around $50 more than the regular variant. Are 256 MB additional video memory worth the price difference?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jul 23rd 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's new GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition is running without any form of active cooling. It also has an audio input which allows you to feed external audio into the HDMI stream which is output via DVI plus an adapter, which is included of course. For a price of $129, or about $10 over a regular 8600 GT you will get several added benefits for very little extra cost.
| 9.5 | |
| Date: | Jul 8th 2007 |
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
Matrox made some waves with their GXM (Graphics eXpansion Modules) when they where first released, starting with the DualHead2Go. This module enabled dual monitor use with a single output. Their newest addition is the DualHead2Go Digital, which uses DVI as output method to allow higher resolutions. We try the device in Windows XP and Mac OS X using two 19 inch DVI based LCD montors.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jun 28th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI's new Radeon HD 2400 XT comes with the RV610 GPU which is built in 65nm. This means the GPU is cheap to make and consumes very little power. AMD has also added several new power savings features which makes this card one of the least power hungry on the market. For a price of only $79 you will be able to play back HD videos on almost any CPU using an HDMI + HDCP + Audio link with the UVD HD video acceleration hardware.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Jun 28th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor's Radeon HD 2400 Pro uses AMD's new RV610 GPU with 256 MB of DDR2 memory. With its special video acceleration features and low-profile PCB design the card seems to be a good choice for small form factor media PC systems.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | Jun 28th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The HD 2600 XT is AMD's new midrange flagship card which is based on the RV630 GPU. This is the first time that a midrange card comes equipped with GDDR4 memory - 256 MB in our case. AMD's new card comes with features such as DirectX 10 support and full HD video acceleration by dedicated hardware called UVD. But is this enough to beat NVIDIA's new products?
| 9.2 | |
| Date: | May 30th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac's new GeForce 8800 GTX OC Edition comes factory overclocked with clocks of 630 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory. This is a nice increase over the standard NVIDIA clocks, especially if you consider the small $20 premium and that you don't lose your warranty. For users who are not willing to spend a lot of money for a GeForce 8800 Ultra this card seems to be a viable alternative.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | May 14th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
AMD's new flagship video card is the Radeon HD 2900 XT which is based on the brand-new R600 GPU. It comes at an amazing $399 price point and offers many unique features. While performance may not be as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX, its price will definitely make this card a good choice for users who are looking for the best price/performance ratio.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | May 4th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Twintech's new GeForce 8600 GTS is based on the NVIDIA reference design using the G84 GPU. It comes with 256 MB of fast GDDR3 memory clocked at 1 GHz, the graphics processor runs at 675 MHz. This is the first DirectX 10 card for the midrange segment with its price tag of around $210.
| 8.1 | |
| Date: | Apr 26th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Zotac is a new player in the NVIDIA video card business and one of their first new cards is the GeForce 8500 GT which is based on NVIDIA's brand-new G86 graphics processor. Unlike the reference design Zotac's card is factory overclocked to a GPU clock of 700 MHz which gives the card a healthy performance boost for a price increase of about $10.
| Date: | Apr 17th 2007 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA announced their latest new graphics processors of the GeForce 8 Series. The new cards are called GeForce 8500 GT, 8600 GT and 8600 GTS. In our preview we examine the differences between the products and how they stack up against the last generation GeForce 7 products.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Apr 16th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's X1950 Pro Dual is the world's first video card that uses two ATI RV570 GPUs on a single PCB. The board comes with 2x 512 MB of GDDR3 memory for a price of $349. In our testing the card shows that it has to potential to narrow the performance gap to NVIDIA's lineup until R600 is released.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Mar 27th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Sapphire's new X1950 GT is based on ATI's RV570 GPU. It comes with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory and is cheaper than the Radeon X1900 GT. Of course you can not expect performance wonders from a $140 card, but it is a great way to survive the wait for ATI's next-gen products while being able to play all the latest games.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Feb 21st 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
While most GeForce 8800 GTX cards are all based on the same product, with the exact same specs, EVGA has taken the 8800 GTX a step ahead. They cherry picked cards that can run high GPU and memory speeds and engineered a card that is running at higher clocks right out of the box. In our testing we see about 10% increased performance, especially at high resolutions with demanding games.
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Feb 12th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The Biostar V7603GS21 V-Ranger is based on NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 GS but comes at a higher memory clock. In addition to that Biostar added some changes to the PCB to allow software to change the GPU and memory voltages, which allows much better overclocking of the card. In our testing we could increase the core clock by 63% and the memory clock by 20% which made the card play in a completely different performance league.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Jan 24th 2007 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The Radeon X1950 Pro series is one of the hottest selling video cards at the moment. It is competitively priced and can run all current games without breaking a sweat. Gecube has engineered a special TEC cooled solution for improved overclocking. In our testing we saw amazing clock increases of 20% on both the core and memory for a final clock of 682 MHz / 816 MHz.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Dec 22nd 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Mad Moxx has been providing pre-modded cards to their customers for several years now. Their GeForce 7900 GTO Burstfire is a GeForce 7900 GTO, overclocked to 7900 GTX speeds. In our benchmarks we saw that performance is identical to the 7900 GTX, at a much lower price. What makes the Mad Moxx product special is that you retain your warranty and the GTX overclock is tested and guaranteed.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Nov 30th 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's new G80 GPU is the first to implement DirectX 10 support and Shader Model 4.0. Palit is one of NVIDIA's board partners who is selling the GeForce 8800 GTX. The card comes with 768 MB of video memory and can will run whatever you throw at it at highest resolutions with maximized settings. We test the card against the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, X1900 Crossfire and the Geforce 7900 GTX.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Nov 25th 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
If you are looking for a cheap video card that will keep you running until Windows Vista and DirectX 10 are out you may want to look at the Sapphire X1650 Pro. The card will run most games on high details at 1024x768 without taking a sweat. It comes equipped with fast GDDR3 memory and the fan is temperature controlled to keep the noise levels down.
| Date: | Nov 8th 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA released their highly anticipated GeForce 8800 Series based on their all-new G80 GPU. The first two cards will be the GeForce 8800 GTS and 8800 GTX. We take you through the changes in the GPU design and what's new and great on these cards.
| 9.1 | |
| Date: | Oct 26th 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The new ATI Radeon X1300 XT is based on the RV530 GPU core which is used on the X1600 series. That alone should bring quite a nice performance boost. On top of that Sapphire has added GDDR3 memory and a healthy clock increase. There is no need to run an overclocking software on your system, the increased clocks are stored in the BIOS. In our testing we saw a huge performance difference to the X1300 and almost no difference to the X1600 series.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Oct 24th 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI's new X1900 XT 256 MB is designed to fit into the price range that is bound by the X1900 GT on the lower end and the X1900 XT 512 MB on the upper end. In order to bring the card's price down ATI chose to reduce the total memory size from 512 MB to 256 MB. Also a bit slower memory is used. We test how big the performance difference to the more expensive X1900 XTX with 512 MB is.
| 8.0 | |
| Date: | Oct 23rd 2006 |
| Author: | D_o_S |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI's Radeon X1650 was introduced with the X1950 XTX and the X1300 XT. Just what is this card? As the name suggests, it is a little step up from the X1600 XT. With the same amount of pipelines, and slightly higher clocks, is there anything to look forward to with the X1650 Pro? No doubt, this card at least runs cooler - insured by a smaller manufacturing process. Does it bring balanced performance at a fair price? How does it fair compared to the X1300 XT? Most importantly, is it worth buying?
| 9.0 | |
| Date: | Aug 23rd 2006 |
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX is a refresh of the X1900 series and is the first video card to use GDDR4 memory. Another major change is the new cooling system which was designed to reduce noise while keeping temperatures down. ATI's new flagship card is clocked at 600 MHz GPU and crazy 1000 MHz effective memory clock. Read our review to find out how this card performs.
| 8.8 | |
| Date: | Jul 26th 2006 |
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
The GeForce 7950GX2 is NVIDIA's current high-end offering. While this card is based on the GeForce 7900GX2 used in Quad SLI systems, the 7950GX2 is just as long as a 7900GTX and currently meant to be used as a single card, replacing the 7900GTX. It offers a great performance boost while currently costing just about as much as the 7900GTX at launch. We run it through the benchmarks, to see what the card will deliver.
| 9.3 | |
| Date: | Jul 3rd 2006 |
| Author: | Urlyin |
| In: | Video Cards |
A while ago the Diamond Viper X1900XT was the lowest priced X1900XT card from all manufacturers and is still one of the lowest priced cards available today. Diamond Multimedia has produced modems, sound cards and MP3 players. One of the first consumer MP3 players ever was called the Rio PMP300. They have since sold their MP3 player line, but still offer a range of multimedia products. In this review we'll take a look at this X1900XT offering from Diamond Multimedia along with some basic X1900XT functionality and overclocking tips.
| Date: | Jun 5th 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's Quad-SLI was released only for system integrators. The first retails cards for enthusiasts are showing up now. The new name is 7950GX2 and it means smaller PCB and optimized design for self-builders. In our preview we show what NVIDIA has thought up this time and if it is something that you should look into for your gaming rig.
| Date: | May 23rd 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today NVIDIA launched their nForce 500 Family chipsets for the AMD AM2 Socket. There will be four models to allow a wide range of motherboard products from budget to high-end for enthusiasts. A lot of new features have been introduced like SLI Memory, First Packet, DualNet and Media Shield. Read our preview to find out what the new nForce500 offers.
| 8.9 | |
| Date: | May 11th 2006 |
| Author: | D_o_s |
| In: | Video Cards |
The X1800 GTO cards use regular X1800XL chips with just 12 rasterizing pipelines instead of 16. Clocks are still at 500 MHz for both memory and core. We tested this card and found it is an overclocker's dream. Even though we could not unlock the extra pipelines, the card still overclocks very well, in our case to over 700 MHz on air cooling.
| Date: | Apr 29th 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
At this year's CeBIT the most controversial and most debated new hardware was NVIDIA's Quad-SLI, which was awarded "best product of CES" earlier this year. We had the chance to put two identical retail 7900 GX2 QuadSLI and X1900 XTX CrossFire systems right next to each other and evaluate them. There were quite a bunch of surprises.
| 8.5 | |
| Date: | Apr 21st 2006 |
| Author: | Darksaber |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today we take a look at the Point of View 7900 GTX, which is based on the current high end chip from NVIDIA, the G71. The GeForce 7900 Series was introduced during CeBIT this year, and has replaced the old 7800 Series line up. A major change is the increased clock speed of 650 MHz on the core and 1600 MHz on the GDDR3 memory. While the card is not exactly budget at $499 it is still cheaper than most other 7900 GTX cards from the competition.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Apr 3rd 2006 |
| Author: | Urlyin |
| In: | Video Cards |
With all the attention on the high ends cards being released most people overlook the bargain video cards that are already out by numerous OEM manufactures. It seems everyone is on the band wagon and this includes Diamond Multimedia. With the release of the GTO and GTO² series there are some goods deals to be had. We'll be taking a look at Diamond's Viper X800GTO PCI-E to see it's no X1900 but would take the sting out of finally upgrading to PCI-E.
| Date: | Apr 2nd 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
At this year's CeBIT NVIDIA had a load of new products and was very aggressively marketing them, which made ATI's existing customers feel insecure. In order to level the playing field and reassure distributors that ATI is indeed able to compete, this presentation was created. It quotes several big websites on topics like X1800GTO, 7600 and 7900.
| Date: | Mar 25th 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
In this presentation ATI talks about "The Product Stack" which is one way to measure how much bang you get for your buck. There is a comparison of different price segments against what the competition from NVIDIA has to offer. Also there is a hint of "cable-free CrossFire mode" with upcoming Catalyst 6.5.
| 7.8 | |
| Date: | Mar 7th 2006 |
| Author: | D_o_s |
| In: | Video Cards |
Powercolor (Tul's graphic card division) is no newcomer to the graphic card segment. Over the years, it has built up a strong reputation, which it is constantly improving. In the past weeks, we were all able to notice that Powercolor started offering a "lifetime" guarantee on their X1900 series cards. Today, we take a look at the opposite side of the X1000 spectrum - the low end X1300. But perhaps low end is not the correct word. The card comes pre-overclocked to a massive 600 MHz compared to ATI's default of 450 MHz. Using HyperMemory technology the VGA memory can be expanded from 128 MB to 512 MB.
| 8.7 | |
| Date: | Feb 20th 2006 |
| Author: | D_o_s |
| In: | Video Cards |
German video card specialist Mad Moxx has released a special edition of the Sapphire X800 GTO². The Mad Moxx X800 GTO² Burstfire comes premodded with 16 pipelines out of the box. To improve cooling an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer has been installed on the card. For paying a small premium over the regular Sapphire card you can stay away from BIOS modding, aftermarket cooler installation and voiding your warranty.
| Date: | Feb 10th 2006 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
After ATI's launch of the X1900 Series the people at NVIDIA sat down and took a close look at where the weak points are and where NVIDIA's lineup is superior. This presentation compares X1900 performance against the 7800GTX and in the second part of the presentation tells us why SLI is superior to Crossfire.
| 7.5 | |
| Date: | Feb 1st 2006 |
| Author: | Urlyin |
| In: | Video Cards |
Diamond Multimedia expands its offerings and adds the Stealth X550 to their lineup. This card is aimed at casual users surfing the web or building a HTPC system. The Stealth X550 is a cut above the onboard graphics solution and can overclock to X600 speeds. This entry-level card is good news for those on a low budget, so with card in hand let's take a look at the Diamond Stealth X550.
| 8.1 | |
| Date: | Dec 20th 2005 |
| Author: | D_o_s |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA is successfully filling all the gaps on today's market, offering solutions for both the masses as well as the few "exclusive" people. The 6800GS is NVIDIA's latest product and is aimed at people looking for a compromise between performance and money. Unlike the 6800 Ultra, which is no longer manufactured, the card has only 12 pipelines, but the GPU clock has been bumped up by 25 MHz.
| Date: | Nov 21st 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
After all the good reviews NVIDIA got for their brand-new 7800 GTX 512 MB, ATI had to come up with ideas how to respond to this. Instead of building better products which are available at launch date, their marketing guys sat down and put together this presentation.
| 9.6 | |
| Date: | Nov 3rd 2005 |
| Author: | D_o_s |
| In: | Video Cards |
Today, we will take a look at Sapphire's Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition for AGP. With nForce 4 for AMD and the i9XX chipsets for Intel, it seemed that the long era of AGP was over once and for all. However, about a year later, this is not quite the case, and many people still use AGP. Is there still some life left in the dying standard? Or would you be better off upgrading to PCI-Express right this minute?
| Date: | Oct 10th 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI has created this presentation in which they share with us what they think will be NVIDIA's reactions on the X1000 Series launch.
| Date: | Oct 2nd 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI held a nice press event at Ibiza this weekend, where they showed off their new R5xx series to the press. We weren't there, but we brought you some nice slides from the presentation for your prerelease viewing experience.
| Date: | Sep 19th 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA has set out to bring the ultimate video and HDTV experience to the PC. Their PureVideo technology has exciting features like acceleration of video decoding, HDTV deinterlacing, Inverse Telecine and a high-quality rescaling engine. In the second part of this 35-page presentation NVIDIA's new DualTV technology is shown. It is the "industry's highest quality dual-analog tuner", according to NVIDIA.
| Date: | Sep 18th 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce 7800 GTX has been a huge success, now they bring that platform to the mobile sector. It has double the rendering performance, while having the same power consumption. It also comes in a pin-compatible package making it easy for notebook manufacturers to upgrade their designs. We have a 26 page presentation straight from NVIDIA.
| Date: | Sep 17th 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
ATI's competitor NVIDIA has sat down and put together a presentation dealing with the shortcomings of CrossFire. Problems like limited resolution and game issues are listed. Not only do they cover the CrossFire video cards, but also problems with ATI's dual VGA motherboard chipsets.
| Date: | Sep 16th 2005 |
|---|---|
| Author: | W1zzard |
| In: | Video Cards |
This 26-page presentation from NVIDIA talks about their new nForce4 variants, called GeForce 6150 and GeForce 6100. Both have integrated VGA. The new high-end dual PCI-Express x16 part is also briefly mentioned.