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Visiontek Radeon HD 4850

Will Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Last month, we spent a ton of time talking about the efficiency and overall pixel-pushing prowess of ATI’s new GPU, so we won’t waste much ink on the subject here. Suffice it to say, the 4850 delivers enough power to drive your sweet, new 22-inch monitor at its native resolution.

The card’s silicon is equivalent to that of previous-gen high-end cards. It’s equipped with 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993MHz. Unlike the Radeon HD 4870 boards (which cost $100 more), the 4850 doesn’t sport GDDR5 (GDDR5 transfers twice as much data per clock cycle as GDDR3). The upshot? The HD 4850 has the slowest memory interface of any card in the current generation, and benchmarks show that—especially at high AA/anisotropic filtering levels.

Full review after the jump!

BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC 1GB

Will Smith — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:17:23 -0500

Sporting almost the same configuration as the reference design we previewed last month, BFG’s GeForce GTX 280 delivers amazing performance with the second-generation DirectX 10 chipset from Nvidia. It soundly spanks ATI’s new 4870, as well as all but the dual-GPU graphics solutions from the previous generation—and even against those, the GTX 280 wins all but a few benchmarks. The real question we’re asking is, Do we need this much power?

PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX

Michael Brown — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:44:20 -0500

If you’re already gaming with a G92-based 8800 GTS, there’s very little reason to move up to a G92-based 9800 GTX such as PNY’s XLR8. The architecture in both GPUs is nearly the same, with 128 stream processors, a 256-bit interface, and 512MB of GDDR3. Slightly faster clock speeds yield only a modest bump in performance. That’s not to say the 9800 brings nothing to the table, but you’ll have to decide for yourself whether its offerings are worth the price.

Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GX2

Michael Brown — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:20:57 -0500

Compared to AMD’s gracefully engineered Radeon 3870 X2, Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GX2 (represented here by Gigabyte’s implementation) is something of a kludge. But when we consider the performance that Nvidia’s design delivers, it’s hard to complain about elegance.

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EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC Edition

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:06:23 -0500

There’s never been a better time to be in the market for a new videocard. Nvidia’s GeForce 9600 GT, represented here by EVGA’s overclocked SSC Edition, is one reason this is true.

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MSI R3870 X2 T2DIG

Michael Brown — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:54:01 -0600

AMD’s Radeon HD 3870 is a fine GPU for the money. It doesn’t outperform Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GTX, and it lags far behind the extravagant 8800 Ultra, but it does deliver a phenom— er, make that a tremendous price/performance ratio.

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HIS Radeon HD 3870

Michael Brown — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:04:13 -0600

This is the second Radeon HD 3870 we’ve reviewed, and we like it just
as much as the first. It doesn’t outrun Nvidia’s G92-based 8800 GTS 512
(reviewed above), but it’s a great value among midrange videocards.

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Asus EN8800 GTS 512MB

Michael Brown — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:25:09 -0600

Nvidia’s introduction of the GeForce 8800 GT left us wondering what would happen to the slightly older 8800 GTS—the model coupled with a 320MB frame buffer more so than the one paired with 640MB of memory. Nvidia cleared it all up by introducing the GeForce 8800 GTS, which has a 512MB frame buffer. Confused? We can’t blame you.

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