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Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:09:43 -0600

The 260 GTX chip pushed to its limit

It’s easy to be seduced by the latest and greatest graphics cards, but you can sometimes find excellent deals in older-generation cards that can still keep up with today’s shader-heavy PC games. Gigabyte’s 260 GTX SuperOC is a good example.

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory. Then it clocks the GPUs at 680MHz, more than 100MHz faster than the standard 576MHz. Similarly, the SuperOC pushes the shader clock to 1,466MHz, instead of the stock 1,350MHz. Rounding off the performance push is 896MB of GDDR3 running at 1.25GHz instead of 1GHz. Gigabyte delivers these rarefied clock rates at slightly less than $200.

It’s true that the SuperOC won’t deliver Radeon HD 5850 levels of performance—but it also costs $60–$80 less. You should get good performance from the card if you’re willing to run without antialiasing in current games. Note, however, that pushing the card this hard takes power; our system idle power was 160W (compared to 141–142W for the Radeon HD 5000 series cards), and power at full bore was 316W—the same as the much more powerful Radeon HD 5870.

The Gigabyte 260 SuperOC supports Nvidia’s PhysX hardware physics acceleration in games that can take advantage of it, as well as 3DVision, Nvidia’s take on 3D stereoscopic gaming (a 120Hz display is required). The card is currently bundled with Far Cry 2.

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Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:59:42 -0600

Great performance at a midrange price

As with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870, the company’s HD 5850 card ships with coupons for two games: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Sapphire’s HD 5850 delivers a stock Radeon HD 5850, with its 1,440 stream processors, 72 texture units, and DirectX 11 support.

In our power-usage testing, Sapphire’s power draw was about average for an HD 5850. Our system power averaged 140W at idle, while pushing 260W at full throttle. Fan noise was fairly loud at full bore, but that was generally true of all the cards. At idle, overall noise levels were low enough to blend into the background of CPU, power supply, and case cooling.

We put the card through its paces in our gaming benchmark suite and found it to be an able performer, easily besting Nvidia’s last-generation best single-GPU card. There were no benchmark standouts, but given that we were running with 4x AA throughout, overall performance was robust. The Sapphire card kept pace with other HD 5850s in our roundup, but lacks the overclocking software tools Asus includes with its card.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 seems readily available, and the best prices we found hovered around $270. The company offers a two-year warranty, but you need to return it to the retailer for replacement cards. There’s no provision for transferring the warranty if you resell the card.

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Diamond Radeon HD 5850

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:49:01 -0600

Performs well, but is pricier than the competition

We admit to mixed feelings about Diamond’s Radeon HD 5850. On one hand, it offers the same strong performance as other Radeon HD 5850 cards—second only to their big-brother HD 5870 cards. But unlike other manufacturers, you don’t get a coupon for Dirt 2 in the box. Instead, you need to register the card at Diamond’s website to get the perk. You also won’t get the two-year warranty unless you register the card.

The other puzzling bit is the price. The card seems to be priced higher than other HD 5850s in our survey of online sites, though only by a few dollars.

Built on the cut-down Cypress chip, with 1,440 shader units and 1GB of 1,000MHz GDDR5 memory, Diamond’s card certainly offers terrific performance at a generally sub-$300 price point that’s sure to please, hitting 30fps in the demanding STALKER: Clear Skies test and pushing past 60fps in the Far Cry 2 ranch scene. But Diamond’s warranty, pricing, and bundle policy seem a little consumer unfriendly, so you might want to consider other HD 5850 cards if you’re in the market.

Review Roundup:

Asus EAH5850

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:43:43 -0600

Asus beefs up its stock Radeon HD 5850 for better overclocking

All of the Radeon cards tested here are based on AMD’s reference design, including this Asus card. However, Asus includes Smart Doctor software, which allows you to easily overclock its card.

You can use the app to auto-tune the clock speeds, though this typically gives you a conservative up-clock that results in a relatively modest performance gain. When we used the auto-overclock feature, we saw gains of 8 percent in 3DMark Vantage, and a couple of frames per second in STALKER and Far Cry 2. If you have the patience, you can tweak voltage settings, core clocks, and memory clocks manually, which could boost performance more substantially.

The Asus EAH5850 is a double-wide card, and is 9.5 inches long. It will fit comfortably in most PC cases, although it requires a second slot. This is a more power-efficient card than the higher-end Radeon HD 5870s; our system idled at 138W, and maxed out under load at 260W—that’s about 55W less than the Radeon HD 5870 cards. If you use Smart Doctor to push up the voltage on the card, you’ll consume more power, so make sure you have a robust power supply in your system.

At stock clock speeds, performance was on par with the other Radeon HD 5850 cards in the roundup, but the addition of Smart Doctor is a definite distinguishing characteristic. The $260 Asus card was even with or better than the fastest last-generation card, EVGA’s 285 GTX SSC.

Asus offers a three-year warranty, better than all other manufacturers except XFX.

Review Roundup:

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:39:19 -0600

Sapphire’s take on the Radeon HD 5870 is pretty much middle-of-the-road

As with all Radeon HD 5870s, Sapphire’s version offers superlative performance, making it one of the fastest single-GPU cards available today. At its core is AMD’s 2.15 billion transistor Cypress chip, coupled with 1GB of 1,200MHz GDDR5 memory. Two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connection allow for flexible monitor attachment.

Sapphire is bundling two games with this card: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Dirt 2 is one of the first titles to support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 graphics API, so it should show off the visual chops of the new GPU. As with all HD 5870 cards, the Sapphire HD 5870 is just over 10.5 inches long, so be sure the card will fit in your case before buying.

Sapphire’s two-year warranty is a little different than most others’; rather than returning the card to Sapphire, the company prefers you return it to the original retailer.

In the end, Sapphire’s take on AMD’s hot new GPU is pretty much like all the others—the fastest card you can get for the money, modest power use when it’s not running a game, and a cost below $400. Overall, it’s a combination that’s hard to beat.

Review Roundup:

HIS Radeon HD 5870

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:25 -0600

It even comes with the tools to install it

HIS is based in Hong Kong, but its cards are readily available in U.S. outlets. They often cost slightly less than the competition, but that’s not the case with the company’s Radeon HD 5870, which is priced the same as its competitors. When we first unpacked the card, we thought it was the lesser HD 5850 model, due to its relatively compact packaging.

In our benchmarks, the HIS HD 5870 turned out excellent scores across the board, easily beating the fastest previous single-GPU champ, the EVGA 285 GTX SSC. It also pumped out the highest score in the 3DMark Vantage Performance test, although, again, margins were small.

If you buy the card from online retailer Newegg, it ships with a compact toolkit, which has bits and accessories useful for working on PCs. That, and the somewhat greener packaging, separate HIS from the competition. On the other hand, the two-year warranty looks a little anemic next to the XFX limited lifetime warranty.

Overall, the HIS Radeon HD 5870 is a stock Radeon HD 5870 with that GPU’s impressive performance, a relatively wimpy warranty, and a moderately useful toolkit. If you’re the kind of user who upgrades to the latest graphics cards every year, then this card is worth considering, particularly if the price comes down a bit.

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