Sapphire HD 4770 PCIe Graphics Card Review
May 22, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 OC Graphics Card Review
May 21, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The funny thing about the GTX 275 is that it does kill a bit of the value for the GTX 285, which ultimately means that it’s not the best model for NVIDIA. For the user, however, it’s a different story. What you’re able to get is performance similar to the GTX 285 without having to spend GTX 285 money.
Today we’re going to be looking at a GTX 275 from Inno3D which has that lovely overclocked word printed on the front of the box. What we’ll do before we have a closer look at the card and its performance is see what Inno3D have done with the package and bundle.
Let’s not delay any longer and get straight into it and see if Inno3D are able to make a GTX 275 which stands out from the pack. Considering we’ve seen a few it’s going to be a tough fight, but hopefully there’s something that helps the card stand out.
EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Review
May 21, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
I remember a neighbour of mine, many moons ago, trying to convince me to upgrade my car’s engine. I had a little 4-banger student car and he had a 302 sitting in his garage. A 302…..V8……and he wanted to drop it into my Chevette. After listening to him explain how he’d redo the transmission, rear end, tires, and chop the mounts to make it fit, I politely declined his offer, and his reply was, “But you’ll have the biggest sleeper car in town!”. True enough, he was right–my little Chevette would literally have smoked the tires off just about anything else, and the funny thing was that you’d never have known it to look at it (had I gone through with it). There’s something rather satisfying about knowing what’s under the hood is what separates the men from the boys, and you have the rest of the guys hoodwinked.
Yes, that was many moons ago, but I still relish the thought of having some bragging rights that can take someone aback. While my passion of choice may have changed from metal to electronics, the same drive is still there. And so it goes, believe it or not, with graphics cards, the engines that provide the horsepower we crave in our electronic hotrods. And there’s nothing quite like looking at a graphics card that may seem just like the others, yet packs some serious punch under the hood.
EVGA’s GTX 275 is one such card that may very well do just that. It looks awfully similar to the other 200-series cards, but this one is a bit different under the hood, promising a bunch of horsepower for today’s hottest games in what looks to be a rather unassuming exterior. We’ll be testing driving it today on a slew of games to see if can live up to the claims when the rubber hits the road.
MSI R4770 T2D512 Radeon HD 4770 Video Card Review
May 20, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The recent economic downturn has affected all aspects of the computer industry including the CPU and video card industry. While in previous years the hardcore enthusiast have been willing to shell out a lot of bucks for the high-end video cards that market has dried up. NVIDIA’s margins for their video cards have gone way down and they have lost money for the last two quarters. AMD is barely hanging in there financially, with losses every quarter. Today’s video card buyer is looking for the best bang-for the buck in their pricing category.
ATI launched the Radeon HD 4770 last month to a lot of fanfare for a video card that performs near the level of its bigger brother the HD 4870 with a price point of around $99 online. This card seems to pave the way with high performance and great feature sets that can’t be met by NVIDIA’s solution. ATI has delivered in a big way, outstripping the intended competition and bringing the first 45 nanometer process video cards to the desktop market, just like they were the first to deliver the first 40 nanometer mobile parts. Today’s review is on the MSI R4770 T2D512 video card, the latest card from MSI.
ASUS ENGTX260 MATRIX Video Card Review
May 18, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
NVIDIA has launched many video chips over the years competing with companies like ATI, 3DFX, and many others who are no longer in the business. Today they are the last independent video card company with ATI competing for the video card dollar. NVIDIA last quarter lost over 200 million dollars before GAAP and both companies have been hurt by the economic recession.
ASUS is the number one manufacturer of video cards in the world with a full array of cards based upon both NVIDIA and ATI chipsets. ASUS video cards are like their motherboards, full of performance and features that users want. Today I’m reviewing the latest card to come out of their labs the ASUS ENGTX260MATRIX card. This is not the latest video chip from NVIDIA but is the latest card from ASUS.
Gigabyte GV-R477D5-512H-B Radeon HD 4770 Videocard Review
May 13, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
If you missed the launch of ATI’s Radeon HD 4770 GPU you’re in for a special treat today. PCSTATS is testing out Gigabyte’s GV-R477D5-512H-B Radeon HD 4770 videocard alone, and in Crossfire mode so you’ll know exactly what two of these mainstream cards can do for you! We already know one Radeon HD 4770 graphics card offers great performance for under a hundred bucks, the real question is what level of gaming performance will two 4770’s teamed up under Crossfire deliver? Mainstream videocards often scale faster and farther than pricey flagship videocards, so it’ll be interesting to see where two Radeon HD 4770’s stand against videocards several times their price.
First the basics. ATI’s Radeon HD 4770 (code name RV740) is derived from the venerable Radeon RV770 GPU. The Gigabyte GV-R477D5-512H-B videocard has its GPU clocked at 750MHz and is equipped with 512MB GDDR5 memory running at 800MHz, giving it a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The memory bus is 128-bit wide, which should make for an interesting comparison between it and the mainstream Radeon HD 4850. PCSTATS will breakdown all the numbers in a moment, including benchmarks with the GV-R477D5 card running in Crossfire, but first let’s introduce you to Gigabyte’s GV-R477D5-512H-B PCI Express 2.0 x16 graphics card.
ASUS ENGTX260 Matrix GeForce GTX 260 896MB Video Card Review
May 6, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The current graphics card market is a little confusing and hard to keep up with what’s going on. Both ATI and nVidia are releasing modified versions of their successful GPUs from last year to fill in gaps between models and both have released beefed up versions of their top GPUs to create new top end models for their lineups. At the same time, some nVidia and ATI partners are adding new features to last year’s popular cards to generate new interest in them.
In light of the current global economic situation, I think that this is probably the best way for the two GPU manufacturers and their partners to go. In these uncertain times, releasing a new generation of VGA cards probably wouldn’t be in their best interest. I have no inside information whatsoever, I do watch what is going on in the financial world, and pay attention to the indicators such as unemployment statistics, and use a little common sense, I wouldn’t expect to see a new generation of GPUs from either company until maybe late this year, depending on what happens for the next couple of quarters.
Our friends at Asus have been at work improving some of last year’s popular cards with upgraded heatpipe coolers and intelligent hardware/software technology. Marketed under their Republic of Gamers line as the “Matrix” series, Asus calls them “The world’s most intelligent graphics cards.” With the ability of overclocking and overvolting GPU, memory, and shaders on the fly for 3D graphics, and underclocking for 2D mode, along with different cooling setups for each mode, they very well may be. Read on to find out about Asus’ Matrix version of the geForce GTX 260!
Leadtek WinFast GTS 250 Review
May 6, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
If you’re anything like I am, it’s time to upgrade your PC, again. I know this because if you’re anything like me, it’s ALWAYS time to upgrade your computer. The current economic slump has hampered the market somewhat because most of us can’t afford to spend anywhere between $400 and $600 on a new video card these days. Well, Nvidia identified the problem and has presented us with the GTS 250 as the solution.
The GTS 250 is the latest addition to the Performance class of Nvidia GPUs. It is no secret that this particular GPU is a direct descendant of the 9800GTX series of cards. The core is a G92b. The G92 has gone through a die-shrink to 55nm as opposed to the older 65nm, and thereby reduced the energy consumption and cut back on the heat a little.
Nvidia was hammered the last time they offered a rebranded card with a different name, and this time they have avoided that by being completely up-front with their customers. This card was named the GTS 250 in order to help eliminate confusion at the consumer’s end by simply having a higher numbered card perform better.
In addition to making things easier for the consumer, Nvidia offers two versions of the card, a 512MB version which is a rebranded 9800GTX+, and a 1GB version, the one we are testing today. Nvidia has stated that the 512MB version will SLI with a 9800GTX, while the 1GB version will not.
As for price, Nvidia has set the MSRP for the 512MB at $129.99, and the 1GB at $149.99. What this means to you, is that you can get the 512MB for less than a new 9800GTX+ would cost you, and a 1GB version for about the same price.
Faster Graphics For Lower Prices: ATI Radeon HD 4770
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
First things first: the Radeon HD 4770 is faster than existing 4800 series hardware (namely the 4830). Yes, this is by design.
We hate to start another article complaining about naming (there seems to be some sort of pervasive renaissance of poor naming this year), but let’s talk about why exactly we are in this situation with a look back at something from our RV670 coverage:
At least it’s ironic.
Yes, the problem is born out of AMD’s attempt at sensible, appropriate naming. The problem is that AMD seems to want to associate that “family” number with the physical GPU than with the a performance class. This is despite the fact that they generally use increasing numbers for “families” that are generally faster. Thus, the 40nm RV740 needs a new family name, and they can’t really choose 49xx presumably (by us) because people would be more upset if they saw a high number and got lower performance than if they saw a lower number and got higher performance. So Radeon HD 4770 it is.
When we brought up our issues with the naming scheme, AMD was quick to respond that naming is one of the most contentious things that go on in bringing a graphics card to market. People get passionate about the issue. Passion is great, but not if it confuses, misleads, or distracts the end user. And that’s what a decision like this does. There is no practical reason that this card shouldn’t be named 4840 to reflect where it’s performance falls. After all, the recently released 4890 is host to quite a few tweaks to the physical layout of the chip and it isn’t called the 4970.
At the same time, that trailing zero is doing nothing on all AMD hardware. There is an extra number in there that could allow AMD to shift some things around in their naming scheme to retain all the information they want to reflect about architecture generation, processes revision, performance class and specific performance within that class. If we are going to have a model number system, in order to have real value to both the informed and casual graphics card user it needs to be built to properly represent the underlying hardware AND be strictly related to performance. With this move, AMD joins NVIDIA in taking too many liberties with naming to the detriment of the end user.
Now that that’s taken care of, what we have today is a 40nm GPU (the first) paired with 512MB of RAM on a $110 card. The package delivers performance at a level between the 4830 and the 4850. First indications were that this would be a $99 part and the performance we see with this card at the “magic” price would be terrific. It’s still not bad at a 10% higher price. AMD had indicated that there should be some $10 mail in rebates available for those who are interested in the extra bonus hassle and upfront cost to get the cash.
GIGABYTE HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 Graphics Card Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The frequency of graphics card releases now compared to two years ago is just jaw dropping. There used to be three models; a low, mid and high-end model. And while we still have that base structure today, there are so many models that fit into each category. These days we have high mid range cards and low high end cards amongst the main three categories; the reason for this is because of the amount of power these cards offer.
The latest card to hit the market is the HD 4770 which expands upon the HD 4700 series from ATI. The weird thing is that it’s a series that we haven’t heard about a whole lot leading up to its release, especially in the new model market. What we’ve seen from ATI lately are models in the HD 4800 series, HD 4890, HD 4870, HD 4850 and more.
With the GIGABYTE HD 4770 in hand we’ll find out if the model is jut ATI getting some attention or a model that’s actually worth checking out in today’s market. Let’s have a look at what GIGABYTE has done with the package and bundle before having a closer look at the card. From there we’ll find out just how it performs.
