Browse > Home / Archive by category 'Computers / Computer Hardware'

NVIDIA 9800 GT Gigabyte vs. HD 4850 graphics card

NVIDIA seem to be releasing new graphics cards at a fast rate, this time round they have released two new GPU’s. One such card is the 9800 GT, this has been pitted against the mid-range king, the HD 4850.

The guys over at Tweaktown have pitted the two of them together; here is what their thoughts were on the two graphics cards. “After testing the card I found myself feeling nothing over the 9800 GT. It wasn’t till I actually really sat down and looked at the results here and compared them to the HD 4850 that was I becoming more impressed with what the cheaper 9800 GT had to offer over the HD 4850. Read more

ZEROtherm’s flagship CPU cooler; the Nirvana NV120 Premium

This is the ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium and it’s the brands flagship CPU cooler. The high initial cost and poor acoustics hurt the cooler, but otherwise its another must have since it performs very well. The launch of the ZEN 120 hurts the NV120 since the ZEN actually performs better at lower cost.

Tweak Town has given the Nirvana NV120 Premium a seven page hands-on review and this is what they said in their final thoughts “If this article was a benchmark on build quality, I would put the ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium near the top of the list. Unfortunately build quality is not the only measurement of a good CPU cooler and that leads us to the shortcomings of the NV120.

The first thing most consumers look at when considering a CPU cooler is price. This doesn’t play well with the Nirvana since it costs more than the ZEROtherm ZEN 120 before the rebate and the Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer; our 40 Dollar performance leader.

Performance wise, you can’t go wrong with the Nirvana NV120 Premium, but that can be said about a couple of coolers in this price range. The extras, such as the fan controller and premium thermal paste help sway us to ZEROtherm, but if it were my money it would go for the ZEN and not the Nirvana.

Speaking of fan controllers, you are going to want to play around with yours after installing the Nirvana NV120. The fan is capable of dishing out a hum that you can hear across the room when run at full speed. Luckily, motherboards onboard sensors and fan adjustments are getting better, so as long as you set your BIOS up properly you can pass on using the fan controller and turn full fan speed control over to your motherboard.

The ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium is a mixed bag. Good cooling performance vs. poor acoustics vs. a little higher cost. The 40-50 Dollar market is filled with several great coolers that will satisfy most enthusiasts’ needs. Recommending the Nirvana NV120 over the ZEN 120 or Core-Contact Cooler is just not an option unless it comes down to availability. The NV120 is a really good cooler, but there are better available”.

Read the 7 page review or view more computer hardware news.

Hands-on: Rosewill RX630-S-B Xtreme 630W PSU

This is the Rosewill RX630-S-B Xtreme 630W PSU and it offers a stable performance and price tag that’s at or near the bottom of the price point in this range of power supply. If you are looking for a mid-range PSU and have a limited budget, this one deserves a look.

Tweak town have given the Rosewill RX630 PSU a hands-on review and the test has been spread over four pages, in their final thoughts they said, “Rosewill is in the business of selling quality products at a good price.

This has been their business model for a long while, and the RX630 Xtreme is a worthy addition to their product line. Aimed at gamers, this power supply provided surprisingly good results given the test conditions it was put through. With a performance that was acceptable and a very nice outward appearance, this PSU is worth considering.

You will be limited to either a single high-end video card or a pair of mid-range boards, but this is to be expected with the power level of the product. The cabling harness provides enough connectivity for most systems and the cable lengths were long enough to work in all but the largest of enclosures. Any mid-tower being made should be well suited with the cabling of this PSU.

Pricing for this model has a MSRP of an unsightly $189.99US as posted on the Rosewill web site, but online retailers are selling this power supply for about $80US. At this price point, it is one of the most inexpensive units available in the 600-700 watt range with similar features.

As far as those features are concerned, this model comes with an efficiency rating of about 80-85%, has Active PFC (Power Faction Correction), protection from over-voltage, under-voltage, over-current, over-power and over-temperature. It also features four 12v rails and support for both SLI and Crossfire applications. While not one of the fancier power supplies ever tested, it proved to be both reliable and aesthetically pleasing”.

Read the 4 page review or other news on computer hardware.

Hands-on: ZOTAC 9600 GSO 384MB Graphics Card

This is the ZOTAC 9600 GSO 384MB Graphics Card and while this card is very good, it doesn’t help make buying a graphics card any easier. Only $20 separates the 9600 GSO 384MB / 768MB and the 9600 GT 512MB, making it all very confusing.

Tweak town have given the 9600 GSO 384MB card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said:

The 9600GT and 9600 GSO continue to remain extremely close in pricing. The thing is that while the 9600 GT is 20% more expensive than the GSO, it’s only $20 AUD more. However, the 9600GT for the most part is really only 10% faster than the 9600 GT.

The 9600GT does have the added advantage of extra memory, but you could get the 768MB version of the GSO that has more memory than the 9600GT and for roughly the same price; give or take $5.

It’s all very confusing really. If you throw overclocking into the mix, the 9600 GSO is able to outperform the 9600GT for the most part. So what do you buy? - On a whole, the 9600 GSO is actually a pretty good buy. Like we said, it’s 20% cheaper and only 10% slower than the 9600GT. If you feel like spending some extra dollars, however, you could go the 9600GT or even the 9600 GSO 768MB if you love lots of memory.

All in all, the 9600 GSO ZOTAC card is a good card and represents some excellent value for money. Performance on the most part is only just behind the 9600GT and availability on the model is good as well. If you want to do a bit of mid-res gaming and don’t have a load of money to spend, the 9600 GSO is going to be a good choice.

Read the 18 page review.

Intel Core 2 Duo Processors: Big drop in price

When looking at new laptops my processor choice has been Intel Core 2 Duo for a while now and also the best battery life you can get.

Today we hear things are about to get much cheaper for buyers of Core 2 Duo products, Intel announced big price cuts last week and this worked out at a 31% price drop on the top-end E8500.

With money getting tight for a lot of people around the world, its good news to hear that Core 2 Duo processors have got cheaper and lets hope we see this discount passed onto the laptops that house them.

The Core 2 Duo E7200’s will now cost $113; the E8400 is priced at $183 and the E8500 at $183. Another reason we are seeing these price cuts would be to make room for the new Core 2 Quad series.

Do you prefer to get value for money when buying new laptops and processors or do you like getting the best technology, i.e. Core 2 Quad series?

Read the latest Intel news or computer hardware news.

Hands-on Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit

The world of DRAM production is a cut throat business and Kingston has become one of the best memory technologies out there, this is the Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit.

The performance of this 1600MHZ DDR3 Kit has allowed overclocking to get a lot easier since the memory speeds aren’t the bottleneck.

Tweak Town have given Kingston’s memory kit a hands-on review and in their final thoughts they had this to say:

DDR3 memory is now starting to show its true colors. Yes, at this stage it’s more expensive, but for the ultimate system experience, for those who want top performance and overclocking, then DDR3 based systems are the way to go. DDR2 based systems just can’t clock as high due to a bottleneck in the DDR2 bus; 1200MHz is the limit, and unless something happens (die shrinks or super high yields) DDR3 is set to take over quite convincingly as the overclocking memory of choice.

Kingston’s HyperX memory range has really come of age; its performance is extremely impressive, as well as its ability to overclock. After all, it may be rated for 1800MHz, but remember that 1333MHz is the official speed recognized by JEDEC. NVIDIA has its SLI ready recommendations that are overclocked profiles, so beyond 1333MHz is an overclock. With that said, 1800MHz is a quite a massive jump.

Kingston already has its 2000MHz line coming soon, so stay tuned for a review of this up against the SLI-ready memory. How well it performs may impact your buying decision.

Read the 7 page hands-on review.

Corsair 4GB DDR3 kit

Just what can Corsair’s 4GB DDR3 kit do and can this memory give you the performance you’re looking for? Well the short answer is yes with size; performance and overclocking are all in abundance.

The Corsair XMS3 DHX 1600MHz 4GB Memory Kit has been given a hands-on review by Tweak Town; in their final thoughts they said “Corsair has been one of the biggest overclocking memory companies for nearly eight years now.

In fact, it may be longer as Corsair memory was some of the highest clocking back when PC-133 memory for the 440BX chipset was around, allowing bus speeds to 150MHz. What an achievement that was. Moving into the 21st century, Corsair still holds its own.

The XMS series of memory is the cream of the crop; hand picked and designed to overclock for the enthusiasts. You’re going to be hard pressed for find a better module, XMS3 continues this tradition.

The larger size, while not showing a huge benefit today in our gaming tests, it really does help Windows XP multi-task. While only 3.5GB of it was used under our 32-bit OS, it still loaded the games up slightly quicker than the 2GB setup, and for 64-bit OS users, you will get the full benefit”.

Read the 7 page hands-on review.

Quiet gaming with ASUS EN9600GT SILENT graphics card

This is the ASUS EN9600GT SILENT graphics card and if your after quiet gaming, then you should know that this card is one of the best silent cards money can buy.

The massive fan-less heatsink is the feature that separates this card from many others and Tweak Town has given it a hands-on over 17 pages to find out how good it really is, in their final thoughts they said, “The ASUS EN9600GT SILENT as far as performance goes isn’t something we haven’t seen before; it performs like it should.

What was surprising though was just how efficient the silent cooler is when compared to the stock active cooling solution. The design ASUS has opted for is nothing short of excellent.

While the card doesn’t come with a huge bundle, we get a HDMI convertor along with the loop back cable and all other standard cables and paperwork provided. The card is a good option for people who are looking for an extremely efficient silently cooled card.

If you’re looking for a stock clocked card that doesn’t heat up massively with a passive heatsink, the ASUS EN9600GT SILENT could well be the card for you”.

Read the 17 page review.

NVIDIA’s biggest partners releases an 790i Ultra SLI motherboard

This is the XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard and with XFX being one of NVIDIA’s biggest partners, expectations are high for this board.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be another NVIDIA reference clone; this makes the choice of which board to get an easier one. The features and extras bundled with the XFX offering also make it a prime mover.

Tweak Town have given this motherboard a full hands-on review and this is what they said in their final thoughts “One thing is for sure, NVIDIA has done a fantastic job on its reference design. Not only have they managed to fit just about every possible expansion option into their boards, but also 3-Way SLI is standard, it overclocks quite well and it supports the latest generation of CPUs.

Having said that, when companies just sell NVIDIA reference boards, this is where things get a bit boring. When two or more companies have identical looking and performing boards, it’s hard to recommend one over the other. In fact, there is no way to do it; this is where real motherboard makers like MSI, ASUS and GIGABYTE come in with their own styles and designs that do make a difference; in all, a better looking board.

XFX has simply slapped their sticker on the NVIDIA reference board, which is the same as what ZOTAC has done with theirs. So if you’re tossing up between these two, either will do as there are no differences to speak of”.

Read the 14 page review.

New AMD 780G chipset oriented motherboard

This is the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort Motherboard and while it performs as well as the ASUS 780G motherboard, its lack of HDMI and bad placement of onboard connectors make it a little hard to recommend over the other 780G Micro-ATX boards.

With AMD’s 780G chipset getting a lot of good press Tweak Town thought they would give the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort Motherboard a hands-on review and the results have been covered over 13 pages.

In their final thoughts they said, “ASRock’s latest series of boards have been reasonably impressive, however we still have a few issues with the layout of this particular board. First, the locations of the power connectors need a bit of work. Even for a cheap board, it’s still not acceptable.

ASRock has managed to bring some good prices to the market with their latest series of boards; while we didn’t get the full retail package with this board, we aren’t expecting a huge amount of additional features in the box. What was disappointing was not having the DisplayPort card included, which eliminated this from testing.

Overall, the board has good potential for a HTPC as long as you’re not after 5.1 audio or HDMI”

Read the 13 page review.

Nvidia Stock Drops Around 25 Percent

There were many reasons why Nvidia issued a profit warning and these included a price war in the industry, a delay in new products being launched and weak demand.

The moment Nvidia announced expectations of lower revenues; their stocks plummeted as much as 25 percent. To make matters worse they have also said to expect a charge of around $200 million to cover the costs of defected Nvidia chips.

This charge will cover returns and repairs that have affected some laptop GPUs to overheat and fail. The lower profit has been predicted due to all the different factors and does not look like a long-term problem for Nvidia.

At first the Nvidia chipmaker was expected to make $1 billion in its second-quarter but this figure has now been taken down to around $875 million. Still not bad considering the current market and problems.

Source: Read

3 Radeon HD 4870 cards in IBP’s 4GHz rig

This is the Radeon HD 4870 In CrossfireX at 4GHz, Tweak Town were impressed with the Radeon HD 4870 graphics card so they thought about putting three of them in IBP’s 4GHz rig. The results have been covered over 11 pages and in their final thoughts they said “The first thing I have to say is that it’s nice to see CrossfireX with the HD 4870s not having the same issues as we experienced with the HD 4850 setup. Adding three cards into the system, while for the most part did nothing, it didn’t offer horrendously backwards performance, bar one or two tests.

The numbers here today do have a big up on our 3GHz test bed, and it shows that you do begin to hit CPU limitation in some areas with such a massive amount of GPU power. At 3GHz we find 3DMark06 sits around the 16k mark; here today our CrossfireX configuration scored over 22k.

The good news is that 4GHz isn’t exactly out of reach for a lot of people these days; it’s one thing to turn around and test Crossfire on a 5.7GHz LN2 cooled system, but that doesn’t help 99.9% of computer users out there. 4GHz shouldn’t be too much of an effort with the right CPU and extremely good air-cooling, or some decent water-cooling like we used here today would certainly suffice.

The HD 4870 is an impressive piece of kit and does a good job of outperforming the GTX 280 when in Crossfire configuration, providing the game makes use of the technology, that is. Ultimately, the GTX 280 is the fastest single core GPU on the market at the moment; but that’s not the be all and end all these days. Sure, if you’ve got money to burn, buy one; buy two! – But truth be told; the everyman and women who wants a good gaming experience and doesn’t want to break the bank is going to be looking at the HD 4870 priced at 1/2 of the GTX 280. If they really feel like indulging and the games they play make use of CF technology, purchasing a second will put them at the same price as a GTX 280, and mostly with better performance.

AMD are now offering extreme performance at a very good price; NVIDIA on the other hand offer extremer (is that even a word?) performance at a higher price. Is the extra cost justified? - That’s really up to you. Which route you go is going to come down to how much money you’re willing to burn. Throw in the cost of a 780i or 790i over an X48 and going SLI becomes very expensive, very fast. But we’re not naïve; the ultimate gamer with no budget is still no doubt going to be looking at SLI, as it’s ultimately the fastest solution”.

Read the 11 page review.

Hands-on with ZOTAC NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard

This is the ZOTAC NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard and it shows that ZOTAC are back with a board featuring the socket 775 platform; this board may not be in Australia yet but it has a lot of potential. The added wireless Ethernet is a great feature that we don’t normally see on 790i motherboards, this gives ZOTAC’s version of the NVIDIA 790i Ultra chipset board a leg up.

Tweak Town have given ZOTAC’s motherboard a full hands-on review, the results have been covered over 15 pages and in their final thoughts they said “ZOTAC has definitely made its mark with us. While our first board we received from them that was based on the GeForce 8300 chipset failed to impress, the 790i SLI Ultra board really got us going. While it’s a great feat of engineering as to how it’s laid out, ZOTAC isn’t to thank for that since it’s based right off the NVIDIA reference design. But it’s good to see ZOTAC not trying to modify it too much.

The performance of the board was right up there with the likes of the X48 chipset, so if you’re planning on an SLI setup for your NVIDIA chipset, the 790i isn’t going to disappoint as much as the 780i does.

Overall, the ZOTAC board is definitely worth your dollar. With a good software bundle as well as a few added extras like the wireless networking, you’re not going to be disappointed”.

Hit the read link below to see the full specifications, what’s inside the box, BIOS and overclocking, benchmarks and a lot more.

Read the 15 page review.

XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition: Bargain compared to the GTX 280

This is the awesome XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition which has good performance and great value, the question is the GTX 280 XXX Edition which was posted yesterday is a good card also and choosing out of the two I would have to say the XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition is the one for me, this is down to great performance and at a fantastic price.

TweakTown have given this graphics card a hands-on review with 18 pages and in their final thoughts are as follows. I do have to say that it’s surprising to see just how close the GTX 260 performs to the GTX 280 in resolutions up to 2560 x 1600. Only at 2560 x 1600 does the GTX 280 begin to show clear signs of a performance increase. Considering the price of the GTX 260 compared to the GTX 280, it could be considered quite the bargain.

There are a few things we have to wonder though; the HD 4870 is just around the corner which is going to come in cheaper again, and the 9800 GTX+ should also begin to show up in the next few weeks. While the GTX 260 looks like an attractive buy at the moment, NVIDIA could be making a mistake by releasing the GTX+ at a cheaper price which may offer extremely similar performance once again. XFX has done a good job with the card; the price is alright, availability is growing, performance is attractive and the bundle is pretty good with a full version copy of Assassin’s Creed in the package.

As of this second, the GTX 260 does look like quite the card to buy. The thing is though; will the next 24 – 48 hours change this as we get samples of the HD 4870? – Well, we can’t see into the future so we won’t know ‘till tomorrow. For the most part though, the XFX does seem like a very good value card with some good performance to boot. For that reason we will give it the “Value” Editor’s Choice Award because compared to the GTX 280 it does offer very good value.
TweakTown have given this product a rating of 93%

Read the 18 page review here.

XFX GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition: memory bumped way up

This is the XFX version of the GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition and its had it’s memory bumped way up, XFX are known to be one of the aggressive graphics card overclockers and this version may not be the best value for money but the GTX 280 XXX Edition from XFX is still no doubt very fast. You will not be disappointed with its performance.

Tweak Town have given this card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said “XFX has done a good job with finding a very high clock on the memory, but it would have been nice to see the core be bumped to 700MHz out of the box. A little overclocking saw the card had no issue at 700MHz, so it does come as a little surprise that XFX didn’t aim for the 100MHz overclock on the core.

It’s good to see that XFX has also taken the time to include a recent full version game which makes it more appealing; the package on the whole is pretty standard with the normal cables and paperwork, but the little sign to hang off your door knob is a nice extra which we also saw in the XFX 9600GT Alpha Dog.

Unfortunately this all comes at a price, and the XXX edition from XFX is one of the more expensive GTX 280s on the market. That’s no real surprise though, since it’s also one of the highest clocked at the moment, but DIY overclockers will probably find themselves looking for a cheaper option. The good thing about the XFX offering, however, is that you’re guaranteed a 2500MHz memory clock, which is pretty attractive.

XFX has done a good job with the GTX 280 and the massive overclock gives it another speed bump. While we continue to feel disappointed with the fact that we don’t have a huge boost in performance over the last generation 9800 GX2, the fact remains that NVIDIA has been able to place the power of the two cores into a single one while adding new technologies such as CUDA and PhysX.

Hopefully we begin to see some games under NVIDIAs “Way it’s meant to be played” umbrella make use of physics and really begin to offer gamers a completely new gaming experience”.

Read the 18 page review

ATI Catalyst 8.6 driver for Radeon graphics cards: XP and Vista performance

The new ATI Catalyst 8.6 driver for Radeon graphics cards has just been released by AMD and you may want to know how well this driver performs under Microsoft Windows Vista and XP, Tweak Town take a closer look and show the results over 11 pages. They found that the new Catalyst driver has some good performance promises but wanted to give it a run on their mighty test bed.

In the final thoughts, they had this to say “While in the applications we tested there hasn’t been any notable gains with the HD 3870 X2 actually taking a hit in a few cases, the new drivers generally seem to be increasing performance in the promised sections for people.

What’s really interesting about this driver is if you take the time to read the performance improvements, they all revolve around DX10 improvements. It will be interesting to see if this is something we begin to see more of over the coming months; Vista has really picked up momentum in the gamers market with most people jumping onboard.

Considering how hard at work AMD has been on the new HD 4800 series, it’s surprising to see any real gains from this month’s driver, but they’ve managed to do it. No doubt over the coming months AMDs focus will begin to move to the HD 4800 series of cards in a continuing effort to compete against NVIDIA”.

If you want to get a detailed look at the results and how well these drivers perform on different games in XP and Vista then click the read link below.

Read the 11 page review.

Hands-on: Four HD 4850 graphics cards on the trusty 4GHz QX9650

How good would four HD 4850 graphics cards perform on a trusty 4GHz QX9650? This may be a system setup that most people would never dream of having but then there are some who will want to know the results as they are the few that want it. Tweak Town has set to finding out the pros and cons of such a system setup with a hands on review spread over 11 pages.

In their final thoughts they said, “It seems that the Hot Fix driver should simply be called the “Increase your 3DMark score” driver. Apart from the two synthetic benchmarks, the only game to really see an increase in performance was Unreal Tournament 3. Outside of that, most games had a negative affect when adding more cards.

Hopefully this is something that AMD attack over the coming months. With more and more boards offering two or three PCI Express x16 slots, placing a third card into your system at these prices could be more than doable.

Two cards really is the sweet spot for HD 4850s at the moment; we see some good gains over a single card and the cost is still relatively low compared to the competition. Now all we have to do is wait for the HD 4870 so we can see what that can do for us.

AMD have a winner on their hands with the HD 4850; just don’t expect to see the same value for money as you start climbing the ranks with three or four cards. It could still be a while before we see these kinds of setups represent any form of value for money, much like NVIDIA with their Tri SLI GTX 280 setup”.

Read the 11 page review.

X48 Crossfire Performance vs Intel P45 motherboards

X48 Crossfire Performance is already on the market, but the Intel P45 motherboard is not out until later this year however; this does not stop people like TweakTown from putting the pair through their paces. There are a few differences between the two boards, but there is only one thing that matters, and that is with the performance of each board.

Check out what TweakTown has to say, here are their final thoughts “This is really a very interesting article and is something people need to be taking note of. The first thing you need to be checking is if you’re reading a review where Crossfire is being tested. Make sure that the board there using is a x16 / x16 motherboard. The results really do speak for themselves and it’s clear that there is a performance difference between a x16 / x16 configuration which the X48 offers, and the x8/x8 one on the P45.
If you’re really thinking about going down the Crossfire path, we would be highly recommending that you spend the extra money to go to an X38 or X48 based motherboard over the P45. Of course, if you’re not then it doesn’t really matter. With one card the P45 runs at x16, which is exactly what you want.

The thing is, the X48-DQ6 is only about 10% more expensive, so you could easily say that you should just spend the extra money and get that. You may in future go Crossfire without knowing it yet, but admittedly the P45-DQ6 does have some very cool features such as the new ICH10R controller, loads of SATA ports and just some really funky new add-ons like the power buttons on board. Of course, we will cover all these in more detail in our full motherboard review at a later date.

Before you rush out and buy that P45 board thinking that x8 / x8 will be just fine, sit back and have a think if you’re really aiming to go down the Crossfire path in the near future.”

MSI P45 Platinum top of the range motherboard

MSI have launched the P45 Platinum, this is their top of the range motherboard which has been designed to compete with the likes of Asus and Gigabyte, both of which have high-end P45 offerings. TweakTown has one of these motherboards and has been putting it through its paces.

One thing that we have to point out though, is the fact that their MSI P45 Platinum is an early sample. This means that it is not the full retail package, but the board will be the same that will hit the store shelves. Here are TweakTown’s final thoughts about the board “Intel’s 4 series chipsets are now starting to make mass production. With Computex 2008 finished, and Intel’s official launch of the final chipsets to make the 4 series now unveiled, motherboard companies are able to finally release their boards. As expected, we are now beginning to see quite a few offerings surface.

MSI’s first P45 motherboard has impressed us; despite not having a full retail package with the board, the silicon used was retail quality, so we are testing what you will receive on the store shelves, and what we have found to be very impressive.

The P45 chipset has a good overall feel; its overclocking at this early stage is impressive, and while we only managed to hit 504MHz FSB, we only had a few hours to really test the board compared to a full 24 hrs of tweaking. In just 2 hours we managed to make over 500MHz. We can only see a better result if given more time to play.”

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition Overclocked: 50% faster than 9800 GX2

We all know how great the old 9800 GX2 GPU was, but there is now a big boy on the block and that is the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition. This Graphics card has been overclocked and is thought to be at least 50% faster than 9800 GX2. As with all GPU’s that state they are a 50 percent faster than another model, this does not always seem to be the case so the guys at TweakTown have decided to put the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition through its paces, they have even pitted it against the top of the range AMD HD 3870 X2.

TweakTown’s thoughts on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition are “So, that’s the GTX 280. There is no doubt that you’re probably left as underwhelmed as myself at the moment. The rumors that the card was going to be 1.5x faster than the 9800 GX2 were clearly un-true, which is disappointing. But at the same time, it’s probably a bit optimistic.

There are definitely some good things about the card; the performance we got in World in Conflict with AA and AF on is extremely impressive and does show that the card has massive potential.

The other thing that is worth noting is that we still don’t have a PhysX driver for the card, which is a bit of a joke I must say. It seems that NVIDIA these days is so rushed to get the cards out the door that the drivers aren’t yet ready to make full use of the card. This was also seen with the release of the GX2 were the Quad SLI driver wasn’t available at launch.
The other thing is that unlike the 9800 GX2 we tested with today, the GTX 280 is overclocked out of the box from ZOTAC, making the card a little faster than the stock clocked offerings that we will no doubt see.

So what are my actual thoughts on the card? – Okay, yes it’s nice that we’ve got the performance of two GPUs on one card that takes less power, but at the moment an immature driver doesn’t give us the gains that we probably expected to see with a 512-bit memory interface and an increase in stream processors. Do I think that the GTX 280 is going to be performing significantly better in a months’ time? - Absolutely! Will it be too late? - We’re not too sure.

The other thing I have to say before I wrap this all up is that I’ve tested the HD 4850, and I’ve tested it in Crossfire. Now, if I hadn’t tested those cards I may have been more impressed with the GTX 280, but I have. I’ve seen the performance figures the cards put out. We also know the price on a pair of HD 4850s is going to be under $600 AUD, while the new GTX 280 in stock form seems to be launching at the absolute cheapest in Australia in the low $700 AUD area. Ouch.”