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Hands On: Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card

The HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card has performed much better than anyone had ever imaged from the word go. We are never satisfied with what we have and neither was Palit which is why they have overclocked the Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card.

Like so many gamers you will want to know how much faster this GPU is now that it has received an increase in performance. Tweaktown has decided to put the cars through its paces. Read more

Review: Single HD 4870 X2 vs. Two HD 4870s on P45

What do you get when you put a pair of Sapphire HD 4870s into a P45 board with many tests? Well read on to find out.

So, what we’re going to do today is chuck a pair of Sapphire HD 4870s into a P45 board and do a bunch of tests. We’re then going to pull those two cards out and stick in a single HD 4870 X2. We will run the same tests and proceed to compare. Since we’ve already looked at the cards themselves, we’re just going to get stuck straight into the benchmarking side of things. Let’s begin by taking a quick look at our testbed we’re using today, before getting stuck straight into the benchmarks.

A single HD 4870 X2 thrown into a heavily over-clocked P45 board is going to run like an absolute dream. 3.5GHz + isn’t really all that uncommon these days and here we really get to see the HD 4870 X2 shine, even more so than before.

Compared against the HD 4870 Crossfire solution on the P45 board, we see the HD 4870 X2 either performing similar, like we saw in our older P45 vs. X48 testing, or it manages to get a good 10% jump on the setup.

You would really have to be a bit on the side of crazy to purchase a pair of HD 4870s over a single HD 4870 X2 when looking for some real GPU power. We can see under intensive load situations, the lack of bandwidth going to the Crossfire configuration does have an impact on performance.

Before we finish off, though, let’s have a quick look at some of the results we obtained out of the Smooth Creation 3.9GHz system against our 3GHz testbed.

With the HD 4870 X2, we saw our Vantage performance score move up from 12496 to 14996.

Talking real world, World in Conflict performance is way up. 2560 x 1600 yields a minimum of 24 FPS and an average of 46 FPS on our 3.0GHz testbed. On the heavily overclocked Smooth Creations system, we saw the minimum move to a very important 32 FPS and the average sky rocket to an impressive 62 FPS.

This gives you a real idea of just how CPU bottle necked these cards are. All I can say is, “Bring on i7!”

Read the full 9-page hands-on review over on TweakTown

Hands-on: GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

Now this looks like it could be something special, welcome to the stunning GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, the question is “Is this the card that has put AMD/ATI back on the graphics card map?

The GIGABYTE HD 4850, like every other reference design HD 4850 carries with it good performance and an excellent price to performance ratio. We can see against the mid-range 9600 GT at the lower resolution there isn’t much difference. As we increase the load on the card by upping the resolution or turning on AA and AF, the HD 4850 really begins to shine against the competition.

Inside the package we have everything we need, from a Crossfire bridge to a DVI to HDMI adapter. It would have been nice to have seen a full version game included in the package, but it doesn’t seem to be something that many ATI partners are doing at the moment.

If you’re looking for a good valued HD 4850 that goes fast and doesn’t cost much money, the GIGABYTE HD 4850 is a good choice. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but this helps keep price down and means that you can enjoy high frame rates at a decent resolution for a good price.

Let us know what you think of the GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850.

Read the full 18 page review over on TweakTown

Review: ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card

Ultimately, the 9800 GTX+ is just an overclocked 9800 GTX and an overclocked GTX+ is a 9800 GTX overclocked even more. ASUS’ decision to offer an overclocked GTX+ from the word go seems to be a good idea as it helps it stand out a bit more from just a regular GTX or an overclocked GTX.

There isn’t really a whole lot to say about the card; it’s going to come in at a good price while offering some good performance. It’s going to fill in the gap that’s present between the GTX 260 and 9800 GT since 9800 GTX stock has become quite limited.

The only problem at the moment is the card is quite hard to get a hold of. While there was an official date for the lifting of the NDA, there was never really any word of when the stock was going to be arriving on store shelves. It seems like stock is beginning to show up at places and over the next few weeks we should see more and more stock.

While samples of the card are going to get out to websites around the world, everyone is really beginning to focus on the HD 4870 X2 which is just around the corner. The positive press from the HD 4800 series already on the market means that people are very keen to know what the new HD 4870 X2 is going to offer over the top GTX 280 from NVIDIA.

At the end of it all, the 9800 GTX+ TOP is a good performing card which should show up at a decent price level. It would have been nice to see stock earlier, but that’s not ASUS’ fault. We’re not sure if it was a matter of limited cores or getting rid of the original GTX that slowed the release of the card down, but the good news is it’s coming very soon now.

Let us know what you think of the ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card.

Please visit TweakTown for the 17 page review.

Intel Larrabee Chip Update

We learned yesterday that Intel is to launch something new to the graphics market by 2010. The product is codenamed Larrabee and will be all set to go head to head with some of the other big names in graphics cards.

Not much is known at the moment about Larrabee however: Intel will address that at SIGGRAPH 2008 on 12th August. Intel will give us an update and more details about Larrabee, while there they will describe some of the features and its capabilities.

Many are saying that it is a mistake to say that Larrabee is a GPU, but Intel does claim that it can do it all. We will just have to wait until Intel gives us more information and show off Larrabee.

Intel will find it hard to make a dent in ATI and NVIDIA’s market place, as they own about 98 percent of the graphics market. Intel does have something going for them though, deep pockets and great resources.

What do you think we should call Larrabee, a GPU or a GCPU? That stands for capable processing unit, bit of a mouthful though.

Source

Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB Graphics Card

When it comes to some gamers they tend to spend a lot of money upgrading their computers, from motherboards to CPU’s just so that they can get the latest PCI-e cards. Well some go for the cheaper route and that is to purchase the latest and fastest AGP solution available.

One such solution is the Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB, this card also has AGP support.

The GPU has a lot of life in it, so is perfect for future gamers. If funds are limited, then this is a cheap alternative to getting the ultimate gaming experience.

When you first unpack the Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB, you will find it is a little on the heavy side. The main reason for this is the oversized fully copper heatsink which has been mounted to the board. Hopefully this should keep things running cool.

The normal price for this graphics card is $300, but Woot have it for the special price of just $79.99 + $5 shipping.

Palit GeForce 9800 GT: Overclocked 512MB Sonic Version

This is an overclocked 512MB Sonic version of the Palit GeForce 9800 GT. The new 9800 GT from NVIDIA is basically the old 8800 GT. The names changed but the product is the same.

The Palit GeForce 9800 GT has aftermarket cooling, out of the box overclock, a full version game and an excellent price. There isn’t much that’s not to like about the card.

Tweak Town have given this graphics card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said “Palits decision to come straight out of the gate with an overclocked model is good news as it helps compete against the HD 4850 at stock clocks a bit better. It is very often we see it right on the tail of the HD 4850, or even passing it.

While the cooler Palit are using these days is probably becoming a bit dated, it still does an excellent job of keeping the card at a reasonable temperature, be it a bit louder than a lot of other aftermarket coolers.

It’s also nice to see that Palit have chosen to include a game in the package, which is good news for people who want to install the card and get into something that doesn’t look too bad straight off the bat.

Like we’ve already said, while the 9800 GT might be nothing more than an 8800 GT, the aggressive pricing of the card, the overclocking capability and the availability of the product make it a very strong competitor against the HD 4850. Then you add in the fact that out of the box the card is able to pass the performance of the HD 4850 in a lot of situations and it does become quite appealing.

Palit have done a good job with the 9800 GT and there’s no doubt it’s going to quickly become a popular card thanks to the aforementioned pros”.

Read the 18 page review or view other computer hardware news.

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

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 the Inno3D GeForce 9600GT iChill Hurricane graphics card

This is the Inno3D GeForce 9600GT iChill Hurricane graphics card and it’s a good cooler with a nice package, excellent performance and just generally a great card. The Inno3D GeForce 9600GT ticks all the right boxes. Tweak Town have given this graphics card a full hands-on review and covered the results over 17 pages, in their final thoughts they said “I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the iChill series from Inno3D; they’ve always offered coolers that we don’t really see on other cards. The 9600GT we have today is no different, but we do have to wonder about this whole build-it-yourself process. While the experience was kind of cool and a bit fun, it’s not something that we would want to get used too.

The design behind the cooler is also very good in that you can have it run silently while still keeping the overclocked speeds, making it an excellent choice for people who want a silent 9600GT that comes overclocked out of the box.

On the topic of the overclock, the speeds that Inno3D offer out of the box, while not being the fastest we’ve seen to date, are definitely above the standard overclock that we get from a lot of companies.

There isn’t an iChill product we haven’t been impressed with, and we can’t see that changing any time soon. We’ve got some good, fast cards on the market from them that have unique coolers that help them stand out from the pack.

Availability on the card is good and the price isn’t something we would complain about. There’s no reason to be wary of installing the cooler, as it’s an absolute breeze with no tools needed. So if you’re looking for a 9600GT that’s a little different, this could be one that’s worth buying”.

Read the 17 page review.

Hands-on with MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer Graphics Card

If you need to keep a graphics card really cool that will certainly get hot, then why not stick a freezer on it. This is the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer graphics card and looking at the card you notice the cooler right away and just how smart it looks. Tweak Town have given this latest addition from MSI a full review and in their final thoughts they said, “Since the card isn’t really of final specification, we won’t give it a rating. But we have to admit that the Hybrid Freezer technology MSI has on offer is looking pretty impressive. The cooler alone looks very cool and the design on a whole seems excellent. Hopefully it’s something we see more of in the MSI design.

Before we ramble on about all the great features of the card, the choice to currently restrict the cooler to the 1GB model is a bit disappointing. While it’s good the option is there at all, the decision to place it on the 512MB model will represent better value for money. The 9600GT is an excellent performing card, but in all fairness it really isn’t up they’re with the likes of some of the higher end models that are actually able to make use of the extra memory on board.

With that said though, we can understand why MSI has the cooler on the 1GB model. It doesn’t matter that the performance increase is really non-existent; people just like to say that they have 1GB of graphics card memory on hand.

The main thing I can’t get over however is the look of the cooler; it’s simply awesome with everything looking great, from the mesh over the fan to the plastic that covers the fins. We would have liked to have heard the fan spin up just to see what its noise levels are like, but we’re not exactly going to complain about the fact that under all the benchmarks we threw at it the fan didn’t once have the need to spin up.

Now we just have to hope that MSI go for a decent overclock, which we’re sure they will if past experience is anything to go by. The current crop of 9600GT OC cards from MSI comes with a 700MHz core and 1900MHz DDR memory clock. Hopefully we see at least 2000MHz DDR on the memory clock with this new model, and maybe another 20MHz on the core to really make the card stand out.

Hopefully we see more cards in the MSI family pick up on the Hybrid Freezer technology soon, because it really has the ability to impress.”

Read full 17 page review.

The Very Fast Chaintech GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB Graphics Card

This is the Chaintech GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB Graphics Card and although the 9600GT has been reviewed in many forms, its always interesting to see what another company can do with the card to make it stand out from the rest. Tweak Town have covered a hands-on review of the Chaintech 512MB GeForce 9600GT OC and posted the results over seventeen pages, they simply summed the graphics card up as “Very Fast”, in their final thoughts they said “The Chaintech 9600GT is a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Pulling it out of the box, it doesn’t look like much more than a standard 9600GT. Even with the mention of OC on the box, you don’t expect too much; 650/675MHz on the core, maybe.

Upon firing the card up and running 3DMark06, we had to make sure we weren’t dealing with an 8800GT here. The card absolutely flies along with the 735MHz core, which is the highest out of the box core clock we’ve seen to date.

Chaintech could quickly become a strong competitor in the graphics card market for people looking at out of the box performance. At the moment, if you want a big OC you’re best to look at the TOP series of cards from ASUS, the AMP! Edition series from Zotac and OC2 or OCX cards from BFG Tech.

The bundle is a bit on the light side in the games department, but the inclusion of the HDMI adapter is always a nice touch. The only thing Chaintech need now is a cool naming scheme for their OC line-up.

If you’re looking for an ultra fast 9600GT out of the box, the Chaintech offering could be the one to get. The only problem we have with the Chaintech card is that it’s not available in Australia; fortunately if you’re over in the U.S. you’re going to have a bit more luck in getting one.”

Read the 17 page review.

Hands-on with MSI GeForce 9600GT 1GB OC Graphics Card

This is the MSI GeForce 9600GT 1GB OC graphics card, just how does it weigh up compared to similar 512MB versions, does the extra RAM give enough increase in performance to justify paying extra for it. The MSI 9600GT 1GB OC is a good card, but after Tweak Town gave the card a full hands-on review they found that the increase was limited and doubling the memory did not give what was expected after taking into account the price hike, if your looking for value for money, then this card does not seem to be it.

In the final thoughts of a 20 page hands-on, Tweak Town said, “We’re really beginning to see more and more 1GB 9600GT cards come to the market, but we continue to see that they offer no real performance increase when compared to their 512MB counterpart.

With the 1GB offering and 512MB model offering the same overclock and the same excellent performing cooler, it’s going to be hard to spend the extra money on a 1GB card when the 512MB offering is going to perform almost identically.

With that said though, if you find yourself needing a 1GB card the MSI offering is a good choice for a few reasons; the included HDMI adapter is good which is capable of carrying sound, and the cooler on it, while being dual slot does an excellent job of cooling the card at a reasonable noise level.

The extra $50 - $70AUD that you would spend by moving to the 1GB model could be spent on faster RAM, more RAM, a faster CPU or a number of other things.

The MSI 9600GT 1GB is a good card, but it doesn’t represent the best value for money. With that said though, there is no doubt that people out there feel they must have 1GB of graphics card RAM, and if that’s the case then MSI could have the card for you here”.

Read the full 20 page review.

DIAMOND Radeon HD 3650 1GB: its place in the graphics card market

This is the new DIAMOND Radeon HD 3650 1GB which needs to find its place in the graphics card market, the decision to include a HDMI port was a good one and means it’s a decent option for HTPC users. The 1GB of RAM does seem a bit pointless, though, as performance on a whole is not what you would expect.

This AMD based HD 3650 graphics card was given a hands-on review by Tweak Town and covered over 15 pages, they summed up by saying “the last time we looked at a Diamond graphics card we were quite impressed, but this HD 3650 is a bit lack luster with poor performance and a very limited package. Personally I think that Diamond should have chosen to include a HDMI cable with the bundle and market it as more of a HTPC card.

Its single slot design and decent noise levels mean it would be a good addition for a HTPC.

The Diamond HD 3650 1GB isn’t a bad card, it’s just nothing all that great. These amounts of memory should really be reserved for only the highest end of cards. Dropping back to 512MB and adding a bit more of a bundle could have meant that the price would be similar and performance almost identical.

The higher end Diamond stuff is exciting, but unfortunately a card like this one with a minimal bundle doesn’t have a lot to offer people”.

Read the 15-page review.

Hands-on with 1GB ASUS EN8800GT Graphics Card

This is the 1GB ASUS EN8800GT Graphics Card and while ASUS are known for making video cards that are great value for money, what difference does the massive 1GB of memory make on this card. Tweak Town have gave the 1GB ASUS EN8800GT a hands-on to find out if this boost in memory makes any real difference and they run a multitude of tests which the details have been posted in a 20 page report.

The 8800GT from Asus has some good features, but the extra 512MB of memory should be reserved for the ultra high-end cards. However, there’s no denying that some people are going to want 1GB of memory, no matter what.

They summed up by saying “An OC 8800GT and a 1GB 8800GT sit at around the same price level. The one to buy is really going to come down to personal preference. I’m not a huge fan of large amounts of memory on cards that aren’t at the very top of the high-end scale. Really, what the extra memory gives you is a bit of bragging rights, but most of the time if you’re talking to somebody who knows their tech they will know that you’re simply paying more for no real benefit.

What the ASUS 8800GT 1GB does offer over the overclocked card here today is an extra 12 months warranty, an aftermarket cooler that does a better job of keeping the core cool along with a funky little CD Wallet.

Performance on the card is of course good, it performs like an 8800GT should, but it doesn’t offer the increase that you might think it will.

Fortunately, with the other bits and pieces that ASUS has strapped on to the card make the justification for buying the 1GB 8800GT from them not too difficult. You’re getting a better quality cooler, and there’s no denying that more memory isn’t going to hurt you. Of course, you could then fire up something like Rivatuner and start messing around with the clock speeds.”

Read the 20-page review.

Hands on with the ASUS EN9800 GTX 512MB Graphics Card

This is the ASUS EN9800 GTX 512MB graphics card that is very good card, although it does not offer anything too out of the ordinary. The card does represent some decent value for money when compared against some of the dual GPU offerings; this card comes with extras like an extra year warranty and a CD Wallet.

Tweak Town have got their hands on the retail 9800 GTX from ASUS and have gave it a good going over with the results spread over 20 pages. They said, “The 9800 GTX looks good as always, but with word coming that NVIDIA are already talking about the 9900 series, you have to wonder how many people are going to jump on the bandwagon.

As usual, the ASUS offerings carry with them a slight premium over other models, but the extra year warranty, CD Wallet and other pieces of software that ASUS include might be enough for you to spend the extra few dollars.

Dual GPU cards are good, but they still aren’t the most practical solution. This is especially the case when you compare a card like the GTX that comes in at about 30% cheaper and its ability to stay on the tail or outperform the dual GPU based cards in some situations.

Hopefully ASUS decide to mix it up in the near future with the release of a TOP model, which will not only carry with it higher clocks speeds but hopefully a full version game as well”.

Read the 20 page hands-on.

First reviews of the Nvidia 9600 GT Graphics Card: is it any good?

Well the wait is finally over as today will see the first reviews of the Nvidia 9600 GT Graphics Card, and the one thing that gamers would like to know is, is it any good? The GPU will use Nvidia’s G92 technology, and for the first time Read more

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 not official revealed but set for launch March 11th

The all new NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 launch has been pushed back by a few weeks with a set launch now of March 11th, even though NVIDIA has not Read more

Dell M1730 Gets Upgrade: dual NVIDIA 8800M GTX graphics

Dell’s 17-inch XPM M1730 laptop is a powerful machine that just got an upgrade to make it even better; the M1730 will now feature dual NVIDIA 8800M GTX graphics.

Although Dell is not the first to include this video card, it is certainly a good upgrade to the notebook, which will give a 49% performance gain Read more

GECUBE Radeon HD 3870 X2 Graphics Card

The GECUBE Radeon HD 3870 X2 is one of those cards we’ve heard about quite a bit, but often when it comes to these dual GPU models they’re nothing more than a bit of a prototype. Sometimes they manage to also hit the media and on the rare occasion they actually go into mass production for all to get their hands on it Read more