by Veridian3 on 09/02/2010
Today we will be taking a look at Sapphires 5570 to see where the new GPU fits into the market in a selection of real world gaming tests, GPU computing tasks and high definition playback. In addition to this we will also take a look back at two other products in the value area, the XFX 5670 and HIS 5450...
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by Veridian3 on 04/02/2010
Today we will be running Sapphires version of the card through a selection of real world gaming scenarios as well as GPU computing tasks and media playback tests. Read on to find out how the card compares to the main competitor in the same price range.
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by Veridian3 on 26/01/2010
Today we have two different models of the 5770 on our review bench. Each offers enhanced performance and aftermarket cooling and we will be running them through a selection of real world benchmarks in both gaming and GPU computing tasks.
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by Veridian3 on 14/01/2010
Today ATI/AMD are launching the first sub $100 (512MB) and $120 (1GB) DirectX 11 capable products in the shape of the Radeon 5670.
We will be running the latest addition to the Radeon range through a selection of real world gaming and media tests to find out how it fits into a very competitive marketplace which includes the GT 240, GTS 250 and Radeon 5750.
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by Zardon on 05/12/2009
Our sister site Gamingheaven reviewed Dirt 2 a short while ago and today we have a look at the performance of the PC version in DX11 mode when paired up with the stunning new range of ATI Series 5 graphics cards. I have been playing the PC version of Dirt 2 for the last week or so and it really is a stunning racing game, with state of the art graphics combined with the same fantastic gameplay we experienced on the console version.
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by Veridian3 on 29/11/2009
Today we have the latest model in the Sapphire Vapor-X family on our test bench, the 5750. We will be taking a look at how it compares to the reference model in areas such as thermal performance, overclocking, GPU computing and real world gameplay. Can the Vapor-X 5750 live up to the reputation of the previous models?
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by Zardon on 20/11/2009
Today we will be taking a look at the new HIS and Sapphire 5970's and as they sent us two of the cards apiece we felt it would be a good time to to cover Crossfire X configurations - for those of you rich enough to be able to afford two of these monster graphics cards. We also overclock our watercooled Core i7 processor to 4.1 ghz and the memory to 1800mhz to mirror a real life environment for a potential customer of two of these high end boards - we want CPU limiting at a minimum.
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by Veridian3 on 18/11/2009
Today we will be taking a look at the Powercolor Radeon HD 5970 2GB and putting it through its paces in a selection of real world gaming tests, including the recently released Modern Warfare 2. In addition to this we will cover GPU computing and high definition playback as well as having a play with the surprise inclusion of an official voltage tweaking tool. This little application may well make this product a favourite with enthusiasts who want to get the most from their purchase.
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by Veridian3 on 04/11/2009
Today we look at the new AMD processors - the revised Phenom II 965 Black Edition and the Athlon II X3 435. We also look at the DFI DK-790FXB-M3H5 and the stunning new Sapphire Vapor X 5870 and watercooled Powercolor 5870 LCS.
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by Veridian3 on 26/10/2009
Today we have Gigabytes GTX 275 Super Overclock in our labs which takes nVidias GTX275 to a whole new level. To make things even more interesting we have paired this impressive card with Nvidias 3D Vision kit, today we see if the latest development in display technology is ready for the mainstream market.
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by Veridian3 on 13/10/2009
These two products are priced to target (and undercut) the GTS 250 and GTX 260. Can ATI take control of the mainstream graphics market? Read on to find out as we put all of these cards through their paces in a selection of the latest games as well as high definition media playback and GPU computing tasks.
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by Veridian3 on 12/10/2009
Despite Nvidia having a strong product catalogue rumours have been rife in the last week or so about the future of their mid and high range products. It is business as usual in the budget range today however as we see the launch of a new card in the sub $79 price range. This isnt just a cut down version of a different card though; for once we have a budget model which brings something a little different to Nvidias product range.
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by Veridian3 on 10/10/2009
A couple of weeks ago on launch day we looked at the Radeon 5870 and found it to be a very impressive card. Today we have a follow-up article where we will look at the 5870 offerings from a selection of ATIs partners as well as the 5850 to see which cards are worth your hard earned cash. In addition to this full CrossFire results for both cards will be provided as well as GPU computing and media playback performance figures.
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by Veridian3 on 23/09/2009
In order to take full advantage of Microsofts latest DirectX we require hardware which supports features such as Shader Model 5 and today we bring you the launch of the worlds first publically available DX 11 hardware, the Radeon 5870.
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by Zardon on 28/08/2009
Today we look at a higher price bracket for those who demand a little extra than our recent 4890 roundup and there is no better card to focus on than the massively successful, and extremely powerful 285 GTX from Nvidia. We have been noticing the prices of these cards dropping recently and rather than focus on a plethora of 1gb versions we thought it would be interesting to focus on possibly the cheapest 2gb 285 GTX available from lesser known manufacturer Sparkle.
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by Veridian3 on 26/08/2009
Asus have just rewritten the Nvidia rulebook with the release of their 1 grand video card - the Asus MARS. Its basically two 285's on one board with 4GB of high performance ram. Asus sent us TWO of these limited edition boards and we put them in a watercooled system to see just how many frames they can deliver with all the modern gaming titles.
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by Zardon on 21/08/2009
Today not only are we testing three of the hottest new overclocked 4890 ATI graphics cards but we are building a high performance system with the focus on value for money. We base the system around the powerful, yet extremely affordable Phenom II 965 Black Edition and the very capable Asus Crosshair III Formula motherboard.
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by Veridian3 on 31/07/2009
Today we have one product from each of the mainstream and high-end GeForce families on our test bench to see what performance each offers for its price point. Read on to find out what can be achieved through a simple upgrade as we test each in a selection of the latest games and GPU computing applications.
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by Nathan Marks on 19/06/2009
Today we are looking at two cards, the XFX HD 4890 Black Edition and Zotacs GTX285 Infinity. Both are each respective manufacturers fastest single core offerings and bring several improved features to the table.
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by Nathan Marks on 17/06/2009
Recently we tested the Sapphire 4890 Vapor-X which offers a slight improvement over the reference model with a modest overclock and a custom cooling solution. Today however we will be taking a look at the real powerhouse that Sapphire have on offer, the HD 4890 Atomic.
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by Nathan Marks on 12/06/2009
Today were going to be testing the Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X. This specific model of the 4890 slots in just above the basic card and below the Toxic edition which is clocked at slightly higher speeds.
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by Nathan Marks on 21/05/2009
Today were going to be looking at the Asus ENGTX260 Matrix graphics card. The card is complete with a custom cooler and a comprehensive software application which allows for overvolting and overclocking of the card. The card is available for about £160 and these features could easily give it a strong advantage over competing products.
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by Veridian3 on 07/05/2009
There has been a steady stream of processor releases from AMD in recent times. Whether it is revisions of triple and quad core models or the addition of DDR3 parts to the product line there has always been something new to look at regularly. Two weeks ago we took a look at the latest high end Phenom 2, the 955 and now AMD have another release for us to cover. The Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition.
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by Nathan Marks on 27/04/2009
High end graphics cards such as Nvidias GTX295 and ATIs 4870x2 are the stuff of dreams for most of us. With the current economic climate and tightening budgets it is important we focus on some of the more affordable solutions and today we are doing just that by looking at two cards available from the current Nvidia lineup, Gigabytes 1GB 9600 GT and a 9400 GT from PNY.
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by Veridian3 on 17/04/2009
Today we take a look at several of the cards based on the GT200 core as well as a GTS 250 to see which offer the best value for gaming and GPU computing tasks. For anyone considering the purchase of a GeForce product in the next few months this article is essential reading.
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by Veridian3 on 02/04/2009
Today we will be putting a selection of 4890s up against the GTX 275 in the latest games at resolutions up to 2560x1600. We will also run each of the cards through a selection of GPU computing tasks as well as completing our test suite with some CrossFire tests and overclocking/thermal performance.
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by Veridian3 on 19/03/2009
Today Sapphire becomes the first GPU manufacturer to attach 2 GB of DDR5 to their Radeon 4870 making it one of the most impressive models available in terms of paper specifications. They have their own PCB design and a cooler based on the Vapor-X technology which we have seen on a few of their previous cards. We are lucky enough to have one of these new cards on our test bench and have run it through a number of real world tests so be sure to read our review !
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by Nathan Marks on 09/03/2009
As our readers already know, XFX are new to the ATI game however we have already had the chance to look at a range of their new products and today we are going to take a look at their 4830 and 4350 alongside Sapphires 4670 Ultimate.
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by Veridian3 on 02/03/2009
Over the last week or two there has been heated debate online regarding the latest graphics card from Nvidia. This kind of discussion is usually reserved for the latest high end product but in this case it is a mainstream model, the GTS 250.
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by Nathan Marks on 17/02/2009
Today we are going to look at a £75 offering from Sapphire, the HD 4670. We looked at a similar model a few months ago from Sapphire and at the time we were impressed by the value it offered to the mainstream customer. Sapphire has completely revisited the card, adding GDDR4 memory and a brand new cooler to this mid-range card.
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by Veridian3 on 10/02/2009
In the second of todays XFX articles we take a look at the Radeon HD 4650. Those reading who have already seen our 4870 XXX article will know that XFX have already made a good impression with that product in their new ATI range. We will find out if this winning streak continues as we run the card through a selection of tests including gaming, Overclocking and Blu-Ray playback.
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by Veridian3 on 10/02/2009
Not content with being known for great Nvidia based products XFX recently announced a range of Radeon graphics cards and Intel motherboards, all of which are designed to take on the best products in their marketplace. Today we have the first of their cards on our test bench, the Radeon HD 4870 1 GB XXX which is a factory overclocked model.
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by Veridian3 on 28/01/2009
During CES 2009 Nvidia launched the latest cards in their GeForce range, the GTX 285 and 295. The 285 is essentially a refresh of the existing GTX 280 with a reduction in the core size and reduced power requirements. The GTX 295 is their latest dual GPU design, the first card since the 9800 GX2 to support Quad SLI. Rather than rush out a half assed review to meet Nvidias tight timescales for this launch, we opted to delay our article and ensure it was as informative as we could make it.
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by Nathan Marks on 21/01/2009
The Radeon HD 4870 was ATIs answer to the powerful GTX260, so after the release of the MaxCore GTX260 ATIs partners got to work on overclocked versions of their 1gb 4870s to compete in the market. Weve already looked at the Gainward and Sapphire overclocked variations and today were going to look at an offering from HIS, the HD4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo.
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by Nathan Marks on 07/01/2009
Today were looking at a new offering from Sapphire based on the original 4870 Toxic. This edition now brings 1GB of memory to the table to combine with the pre-overclocked frequencies.
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by Nathan Marks on 30/12/2008
Zotac was established as a Nvidia partner in 2006 and have been producing quality VGA and motherboard solutions since then. Today we're going to look at the Zotac Nitro, an overclocking tool unlike anything we've seen before. This USB device allows you to overclock your video card on the fly, setup profiles and monitor fan speed and temperature. Overclocking is very much an enthusiast hobby, but Zotac hope the Nitro will encourage more users to try and get the most out of their graphics cards.
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by Veridian3 on 17/12/2008
It comes as no surprise to us that there are also versions of the 4870X2 hitting the market with extreme cooling solutions in addition to enhanced speeds. Today we will run two of the most interesting through a selection of real world tests, including gaming at 2560x1600 and Blu-Ray playback to find out how good the 4870 X2 can get.
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by Veridian3 on 27/11/2008
In the Radeon HD 4870 family there have been numerous overclocked models released in the last few months but few go to the extreme shown by todays review product, the PowerColor Liquid Cooling Solution HD4870.
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by Nathan Marks on 26/11/2008
Last month we looked at a 4550 sample from ATI, it proved to be a great budget card and earned our top award. Now weve got our hands on another 4550 from Sapphire, along with their 4650 model.
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by Nathan Marks on 25/11/2008
AMDs partners have been busy producing overclocked cards with custom cooling solutions to help improve core cooling and noise levels. Today were going to look at two of those offerings, the HIS 4850 IceQ 4 and the Club3d 4850 Overclocked Edition.
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by Veridian3 on 21/11/2008
Unless someone wants to spend considerable money there are really only two options for gaming enthusiasts, two cards which provide performance high enough to play the latest games at high detail without requiring a bank loan, the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 1Gb. The question is, which is the fastest now that many driver revisions have passed since release?
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by Nathan Marks on 03/11/2008
Today we are looking at a hot new graphics card from Sapphire. This is an impressive design comprising two fans on a very attractive blue PCB. How does it perform against the single core 4850 as well as GTX 260 and GTX 280 hardware from Nvidia? Read on to find out ...
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by Veridian3 on 31/10/2008
Just over a week ago ATI launched the Radeon HD 4830 which is the latest card in the 4800 series range and hits the market at around £99/$130. Unfortunately, due to a BIOS issue on the first batch of review sample cards (reference models and some retail branded) the full number of unified shaders was not available and performance was therefore negatively impacted (some reviews you have already read on other publications are actually wrong).
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by Zardon on 30/10/2008
XFX are bundling Far Cry 2 with a wide range of their hardware so when we approached them for this article they sent us over a great cross section of hardware for our analysis. We also compare against leading hardware from ATI to see which will give you the best gaming experience for your money.
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by Veridian3 on 07/10/2008
On our test bench today is Gainwards Golden Sample version of the latest high end video card to be released by ATI, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Rumours and news about this particular model have been around since before the 512MB version made it to launch but it has taken some time for the 1GB model to reach the marketplace and it enters into a slightly more crowded segment than it would have three months ago.
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by Veridian3 on 06/10/2008
Today's review subject, the Radeon HD 4550, which sits nicely between the 3450 and 4650 in ATIs product catalogue and competes directly against the GeForce 9400 GT. In this review we will be comparing those two cards in a selection of the latest games as well as seeing how each fairs in some high definition playback tests.
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by Veridian3 on 25/09/2008
The new GeForce GTX 260 increases the number of shader processors and should provide a very competitive alternative to the Radeon 4870. Today we will be finding out how well it compares in a selection of the latest games, including Crysis Warhead as well as demonstrating how well it handles Blu-Ray acceleration and PhysX processing.
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by Veridian3 on 22/09/2008
Today we will be throwing a few of the latest and greatest gaming titles at the 9500 GT XXX as well as some PhysX processing and media playback to ascertain whether this product really is the card of dreams for a budget minded consumer.
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by Veridian3 on 19/09/2008
This card retails for £60/$80 and so should be well within the price range of most consumers, but is it worth buying if you are a gamer? It is our job today to find out, and we will also test them in Crossfire to see the possible gains if you upgraded at a later date.
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by Veridian3 on 16/09/2008
So what do R&D guys do to unwind and what do they get up to in those rare times when they do not have deadlines to meet? Well, they have some fun creating new products which are not necessarily aimed at being launched, just a test of what can be done... and that brings us to todays product.
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by Veridian3 on 09/09/2008
Palit are one of a growing number of companies who now sell Nvidia and ATI products which means that in the same price range they can often have several competing products. In the case of the sub $200 market two such products are their 9800GT and 4850 Sonic graphics cards.
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by Zardon on 06/09/2008
Today we are taking a look at the new Asus 4870 X2 which is set to push the performance boundaries even further, these preoverclocked cards are lovingly referred to by Asus as the "TOP" versions. This card has enhanced clocks with the cores increased from 750 to 790mhz and the GDDR5 modules increased from 3600 to 3660mhz (900 to 915).
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by Veridian3 on 05/09/2008
Today we have the GTX 280 OCX on our test bench and will be comparing it to a reference model in a selection of the latest games as well as running it through some high definition playback tests, we will even throw in a few compares to the GTX 260 for those having trouble deciding which card best suits them.
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by Veridian3 on 11/08/2008
Today we have the opportunity to test the card in its shipping form with a driver which is much closer to the version consumers will receive. We will be running the card through a selection of the latest and greatest games at resolutions up to 2560x1600 as well as testing Blu-Ray acceleration and CrossFireX performance. The big question that needs answered ..... are ATI back at the top of their game?
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by Grace on 08/08/2008
Today we will have a look at the gaming performance of seven different budget graphics card products from various manufacturers. The products on test today are all priced between £20 and £70, yet the performance differences between them are vast, making some usable only for HTPC use and 2D gaming while others can be used to power a relatively decent gaming machine.
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by Veridian3 on 25/07/2008
Today in the first of a two part article we will be looking at some of the Nvidia cards that are on offer in the £70-£150 ($120-$190) range to demonstrate how much performance each provides. In the near future we will be following up with a look at cards in the £30-£70 range.
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by Veridian3 on 11/07/2008
So what of a product to compete with the GTX 280? Well that is why we are here today, in the last day or so ATI supplied us with an early sample of the R700 giving us the opportunity to see how it compares to cards which are already on the market. We should however state that ATI have placed some limitations on what we can and cannot say about the R700 at this time and therefore a full outline of the card and performance analysis will be published at a later date.
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by Veridian3 on 08/07/2008
Today we have factory overclocked cards from each of these manufacturers and we will be putting them head to head in a variety of tests including gaming at 2560x1600, high definition playback and ‘PhysX calculations. In addition to this we will also take a look at how each of the cards compares to various other products which are available on the market, including the Geforce GTX 260, and Radeon 4870.
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by Veridian3 on 08/07/2008
Today's review product, the Radeon HD 4870, goes some way to rectifying AMD's hole in the market as it is priced to challenge the GTX 260. We will be running the products through a variety of tests including gaming at 2560x1600, CrossFire and high definition playback to find out which company is most deserving of your hard earned cash.
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by Veridian3 on 25/06/2008
Today we will be running the two new products through a selection of the latest games at resolutions up to 2560x1600 as well as delving into some Blu-Ray playback testing and overclocking in order to establish how well they perform.
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by Veridian3 on 20/06/2008
When most manufacturers design an enhanced specification graphics card they tend to increase the core and memory speed, others might do this and add a fancy cooler. Visiontek have on the other hand gone above and beyond this by doing both as well as completely redesigning the PCB to improve the size of the product and the features available to their customers. Today we are looking at the Visiontek Radeon HD 3870 X2 Overclocked Edition.
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by Veridian3 on 16/06/2008
We have two of the hot new Nvidia products in our test labs today ... The first is Zotac's 280 GTX AMP! Edition, a factory overclocked sample of the high end model and the other is a reference design 260 GTX. We will be testing with a selection of the latest games at resolutions up to 2560x1600 as well as delving into some Blu-Ray playback and card overclocking in order to establish how much of an improvement they are, if any, over the last generation of Nvidia hardware.
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by Veridian3 on 12/06/2008
The Geforce 9800 GTX has been around for some time now and the maturing of the product brings with it a selection of cards which look to improve on the reference specification or design. We have one such card on our test bench today, XFXs 9800 GTX Black Edition from a handpicked range of cards which feature enhanced core and memory speeds for exceptional performance and stability.
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by Veridian3 on 11/04/2008
Today we take a look at a plethora of mid range graphics cards available to you, the consumer. The cards in the lineup today are: Zotac 9600 GT Amp! Edition, Gainward Bliss 9600 GT, Asus EN9600GT, XFX 9600 GT XXX, Palit 9600GT Sonic, Gainward 8800 GTS Golden Sample (Goes Like Hell), Zotac 8800 GT 1GB, Asus 3850 OC Gear. Which one is worth your money?
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by Veridian3 on 31/03/2008
No, its not an April's fools joke, today we have yet another launch from Nvidia, the new 9800 GTX which is set to replace the 8800 GTX of old. Not content with just reviewing the new GTX however we have several new GX2's as well as a kick ass new Asus 3870 X2 in our test labs today.
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by Veridian3 on 24/03/2008
Within last weeks nForce 790i SLI and 9800 GX2 article we would have liked to include benchmarks of the GX2 in an SLI Quad configuration but due to a rather bizarre decision by Nvidia they asked all partners to withhold Quad performance until today.
Anyway, today we can tell you how Quad SLI performs but we want to do more than that so we will be taking our first look at 3-Way SLI using three 8800 Ultras ...
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by Veridian3 on 17/03/2008
Today is the launch of two high end Nvidia products. The 790i motherboard which supports DDR3 right up to 2000mhz and the 9800 GX2 the latest in the G9x range of GPU's.
Are they worth your hard earned cash? read our 29 page indepth analysis to find out.
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by Veridian3 on 12/02/2008
With the recent release of the Radeon 3850 and GeForce 8800 GS there is a new battle taking place for consumers with a budget of £100-£140 and today we have two such cards on our test bench, the XFX 8800 GS XXX 384Mb and the Sapphire 3850 256Mb. Which deserves your money?
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by WhO_KnOwS on 07/02/2008
If you take a look at the upcoming Force Unleashed trailers you will see that things are moving forward at blazing speeds and as a result only the fastest CPUs can be sure of handling the increased load.
The graphics industry faced a similar situation back in the days of 3dfx, when something had to be done to offload some of the work from the CPU and allow games to develop. Back then 3D acceleration was introduced and right now AGEIA is trying to do the same for the world of physics.
With Nvidia having just purchased Ageia we decided to take a look at their PhysX.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 06/02/2008
Right now things are looking up for AMD. The HD3870 X2 is a great card, performing on a par with similarly priced cards from nVidia. This makes it an excellent choice for enthusiasts who require the ultimate performance at all times. Equally so, it also puts the card out of reach for gamers who don't want to spend a fortune on their gaming machines.
AMD's answer is the HD3850. The card has all the features it's two faster brothers (the HD3870 and the HD3870 X2) offers and only falls behind in performance due to slightly lower GPU speeds and slower memory. But while no features were cut in the process of making the HD3850, its price experienced a significant reduction. The question on everybody's lips is – did the performance drop suffer to a similar degree?
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by Veridian3 on 28/01/2008
It has been a boring state of affairs in the graphics card industry with Nvidia ruling the roost for a long time. Today we take a look at ATI's new HD 3870 X2 card, do they finally have an answer to Nvidia's high end dominance? We think you might be surprised ....
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by Veridian3 on 23/01/2008
With a new graphics card launch the initial batch of cards is followed by a flurry of enhanced models and the 8800 GT and GTS are no different. In today's review we will be taking a look at some of the more impressive enhanced models that are available, the first two products are supplied by XFX and Zotac and are factory overclocked GTS models.
XFX are highly experienced in this area and while Zotac are relatively new to this sector this has not stopped them impressing us with previous overclocked models. In fact their 8800 GT AMP! Edition is still the fastest GT branded card we have tested. The third product in this review is Gainward's 8800 GT Golden Sample. Gainward have enhanced clock speeds on this particular card and have chosen to attach an impressive looking cooler and one gigabyte of memory. The heat is on ...
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by Veridian3 on 08/01/2008
There are a plethora of Radeon HD 2600 series cards available to buy and many manufacturers have applied different customisations to their specific models. Some are supplied with silent coolers, others with factory overclocked settings and then there is the product we are reviewing today.
Visiontek have taken the 2600 XT 256Mb and redesigned it to perfectly suit low profile PCs or Media Centres. Part of this redesign is a native HDMI port which when added to full high definition video support could make the card an essential purchase. In this article we will be putting the card through a number of gaming and media tests to find out if media centre enthusiasts have a new must have purchase.
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by Veridian3 on 02/01/2008
A few weeks ago Sapphire launched the Atomic homepage with content aimed at the enthusiast market.
Driver Heaven now have the first of their enhanced products, the Atomic HD 3870. With this card Sapphire have done all they can to improve on the reference design and in addition to this the overall package has also been enhanced. Let us take a look at what makes this particular 3870 so special.
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by Veridian3 on 11/12/2007
Today we are taking a look at Nvidia’s refresh of the 8800 GTS which is designed to bring the performance and specifications up to where they should be for the suggested price range.
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by Veridian3 on 27/11/2007
As always in such a short space of time, the marketplace has changed and the direct competition to the 8800GT is no longer the 2900XT/Pro, it is the Radeon HD 3870. There is still a gap in the ATI product line-up with no single card flagship enthusiast product; instead ATI's stance is to crossfire the 3870's and with a recommended price of $219/£160 each that is not too outrageous.
Our review will be covering comparisons between the 8800GT XXX, 3870, 2900 XT and stock 8800 GT using the latest games and high definition movies. We will also cover 3870 CrossFire, overclocking, image quality and whether it is possible to connect a 3870 and 2900 XT in a working CrossFire system.
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by Veridian3 on 29/10/2007
Today we have not one, but four new 8800GT's in our test labs from some of the leading manufacturer's. We will be giving the card a thorough analysis in all the leading DX9 and DX10 games, including Crysis.
The big question on everyones lips? Is the 8800GT the new class leader as the best "bang for buck"?
Read our review and find out.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 21/10/2007
It has been a good year for nVidia and its partners. The 8800 series has seen little competition, and even when it has, the 8800GTX and Ultra have emerged as the clear winners every time.
Being almost a year old the 8800GTX could well start reaching its limits in the newest games at high resolutions, making it a less than stellar purchase. Aiming to find out we fired up all the latest and greatest titles at the Zotac 8800GTX AMP! Edition, giving you a chance to see just how well the card can cope with them.
To top it off, we threw a few standard games in the mix as well, hoping to find how much the faster clocks of the AMP! Edition actually help.
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by Veridian3 on 03/10/2007
XFX 8800 GTS 320Mb Fatal1ty and Gainward Bliss 8800 GTS 640Mb.
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by Veridian3 on 01/10/2007
ne of the latest graphics cards to be released by Visiontek is a Radeon 2600XT model. Bored already? then fear not........ this is no ordinary XT, this video card features one gigabyte of DDR2 memory and two GPUs on a single PCB.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 21/09/2007
This generation of graphics cards seems to be all about nVidia, at least for the time being. On most forums users will call you a fool for even considering an AMD graphics card, claiming that nVidia can wipe the floor with AMD any day of the week.
Facts speak differently however. Yes, nVidia’s solutions are a bit faster in certain games, but AMD has a fair share of games that run faster on their hardware as well. And most importantly, when somebody buys a graphics card, they tend to use it for more than just gaming. HD video playback is getting more popular by the day, so having a card that is capable of accelerating playback on computers that aren’t exactly high-end is an important feature. And what do you know, AMD is faring a great deal better here than their competition.
So you see, things aren’t as black and white as some would have you believe and because of that, we decided to turn the spotlight to AMD’s camp, and showcase the performance of their budget and middle end graphics cards.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 05/09/2007
One of the eternal debates of computer graphics is whether the speed of the card is more important than the amount of memory it has. If both are similar, how can a user choose between the two based on his needs as a gamer?
When Gainward sent us two of their newest Bliss 8600GT products we knew that finding an answer was only a matter of time. With one card being extremely fast (for a 8600GT) and the other equipped with 1024Mb of memory, we decided to find the answer to the question with one of the most popular GPUs of this generation.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 27/08/2007
We have previously pitted the 8400 cards again the HD2400 and the 8600 against the HD2600. While these reviews delivered plenty of information to people who already settled on a price range and were only looking for which card to get from that segment, they didn’t offer much to users who were unsure which price range was right for them.
To help such users we decided to look at how the different middle and low-end boards from nVidia compared to each other. To top it off, all of the cards on test today are passively cooled, making them all prime candidates for multimedia PCs.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 16/07/2007
It is time to see how the newly released HD2600XT can compete against manufacturer improved versions of the GT and GTS 8600 cards. Judging from what we saw in the HD2400/8400 roundup this could end up to be a bloody battle with no survivors left behind.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 09/07/2007
While enthusiasts care only about the middle and high end computer parts market, it is the low end cards that bring in the most money for the manufacturers. All those desktop machines that are only used to browse the internet and write the occasional document don’t really need a GeForce 8800 Ultra, but considering that more and more people want to watch videos on their PCs an integrated graphics card doesn’t cut it either.
Because of that cards like the GeForce 7300 and ATI X1300 were such a success. They offered a lot for a very low price. But times change and with Vista becoming the OS of choice for many, cards like that are having trouble displaying the Aero desktop environment without slowdowns. But the aforementioned cards weren’t designed with Vista in mind. Their successors however are.
The GeForce 8400GS and the ATI X2400XT are the latest entries into the budget market and judging by their price you shouldn’t expect much from them, especially in terms of gaming. But as always we shouldn’t judge the book by the cover, so let us take a closer look at these newest offerings.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 26/06/2007
What about gamers that aren’t interested in when nVidia will release the next series and don’t care who is winning the graphics card war? As far as they are concerned higher shader clocks mean nothing and their graphics card is perfect for them for as long as they can enjoy their games at reasonable resolutions.
This is where Fatal1ty steps in, with his series of products aimed at gamers. They usually aren’t the fastest or most feature packed items on the market, but they still stick out because of their exceptional quality and eye-catching design. The fact that the most famous professional gamer stands behind them doesn’t hurt either. Couple that with XFX, one of the best graphics cards manufacturers out there and you have (in theory) a very capable partnership.
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by Veridian3 on 20/05/2007
Nvidia have held the GFX performance crown for quite some time with the extremely impressive 8800 GTX, so when they announced the “Ultra” a few weeks ago the general consensus was they had yet again pushed the envelope further, albeit with a huge price premium.
Everything considered, there will always be a market for these high end cards and with this in mind XFX sent us their new “XXX” Ultra for review, with further improvements on the core, memory and shader clocks. As AMD’s graphics card division are yet unable to supply an answer to the older GTX, the Ultra is certain to push the two companies high end products even further apart.
With such a high price tag on the Ultra our graphics card guru Stuart “Veridian3” Davidson will not only measure the cards real world gaming performance on XP and Vista, but will ascertain if the card is ultimately worth the money.
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by Veridian3 on 14/05/2007
With AMD's acquisition of ATI for vast amounts of money, it would be fair to say there have been high hopes for the long awaited and by now almost mythical R600. If hype and rumour could sell product, then the cards we have in front of us today would guarantee AMD several hundred million in the first week of launch. However, in the internet age we are all all way too savvy to part with money before reading reviews and opinions, this is a luxury in 2007 we should never take for granted. Educated decisions mean we end up buying the product we need, not what companies say we should buy.
It has been a quiet six months for ATI, not only have Nvidia been ruling the roost with their excellent 8800 series, but with AMD getting trounced by Intel in the processor sector, every sane enthusiast is praying that their graphics division can finally deliver a competiing product which gives us all good value for money as well as a stellar gaming experience.
So, the question is, can the R600 take on the huge success story that is the Nvidia 8800? Today our UK Editor and graphics card specialist Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson is going to answer all your questions with real world gaming performance on multiple operating systems against 8800 counterparts, as well as delving into Image Quality concerns and Video Acceleration. We are sure by the end of this review you will know if it is money worth spending...
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by WhO_KnOwS on 20/04/2007
Much like the GTS which we reviewed on launch day the 8600GT is aimed at the price-conscious consumer who still wants to play today’s games at reasonable resolutions. Just like its bigger brother the GT fully supports the DirectX 10 standard and has an impressive array of video decoding features under the hood. But whereas the GTS has two HDCP enabled DUAL-DVI connectors by default, it was left up to the individual card manufacturers to decide whether they would add HDCP support to the GT or not.
A reference 8600GT is otherwise more or less a downclocked version of the GTS (the reduced power consumption lead to the removal of the PCI power connector), as both cards have the same amount of stream processors, are fabricated with 80nm technology and have a 128bit memory interface. Just like the GTS the 8600 GT is also very effective at handling textures (in certain situations even better than the 8800 series). By default the 8600GT cores are running at 540Mhz while the memory is set to 700Mhz (1400Mhz DDR). The shader clock runs at a high 1,19Ghz. All in all a very impressive board, especially considering its price starts at $150.
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by Veridian3 on 17/04/2007
The product(s) that Nvidia and its partners are launching today is designed to bring DirectX 10 features to the mainstream market, in addition to this – this range introduce some quite astounding new video features which are not present on even the top end 8800 series. Top all this with an updated driver which features over 400 bug fixes since the 98 series driver and we have an interesting review ahead of us. So, furnished with overclocked edition GTS cards from MSI and BFG (with more coming this week from other makers) let’s see if the 8600 can deliver the goods.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 21/03/2007
nVidia’s latest graphics card series took everybody by surprise. Not only are the 8800 cards the only DX10 capable cards available, but even the slowest 320Mb GTS models can’t be beaten by anything even remotely in the same price range. While the 320Mb version of the card is likely to run out of breath once true DX10 games start showing up, this will more than likely not be the case with the 8800GTS 640Mb.
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by Veridian3 on 07/03/2007
The 8800GTS 320Mb is a popular product amongst Nvidia’s partners and as a result there is a hugely varied range of cards currently available which differ greatly in specification, all trying to attract customers in what is a very lucrative segment of the graphics card market. Two manufacturers known for making variants of Nvidia cards which exceed reference specifications are BFG and XFX. Today we have a card from each manufacturer, both of these feature enhanced clock speeds, let’s see if these are good value to the end user.
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by Veridian3 on 05/03/2007
Nvidia’s 8800GTX has been a great success since it was released and currently holds the high end performance crown while we wait for ATI to unleash their forthcoming DX10 card. That said, the 8800GTX is sold around the £375/$500 mark putting it clearly out of the price range of many enthusiast users. There is therefore a need to release a product which will appeal to a more widespread market - those users who want great speed and features but at a more affordable price. That is where today's review product from Foxconn fits in. Retailing at £230/$300 with a feature set matching the higher priced GTS and GTX models, the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC or “8800GTS 320Mb Overclocked” looks, on paper, to be a very attractive purchase.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 26/02/2007
We recently reviewed the X1650XT, ATI's best middle-range graphics card solution, intended for people on a tight budget that would still like to enjoy some of the newest games on the market. The X1650XT makes the Pro version of the card somewhat redundant, as its performance is substantially less. This is not the case with Sapphires Ultimate card though, as this card is targeted at users who above all prioritize noiseless operation. This trait is especially important to people looking for a good card for their living room multimedia PC. While it would certainly be nice if the card was capable of playing the newest games, it is far more important how it deals with HD video and how much noise it creates.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 20/02/2007
To cope with the ever-increasing details in today’s games the graphics card manufacturers look for all kinds of solutions. The most obvious one is making the cards faster, but such an approach has negative consequences in the shape of overheating. So if you decided to go all out and overclock your card beyond all limits the amount of heat generated would rise as well. Sapphire decided to do just that and follow the old saying “Drastic situations call for drastic measures” to the letter. The end result is an overclocked, water-cooled X1950XTX (which was a fast card to begin with) that every enthusiast will want to own.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 09/02/2007
About a month ago we reviewed the Sapphire AGP version of the X1950Pro. The focus of the review was on how well the card compared to a PCI-E version of the same card. The results were surprising as there was literally no difference between the two bus types. This time around we'll be focusing more on how far we can actually push the AGP card. While 1600x1200 is enough for most, it can't hurt to see if an AGP card can handle a game running at 1920x1200. After all, one of the main arguments against AGP is the (so called) limited bandwidth.
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by Kombatant on 07/02/2007
The battle for supremacy in the graphics card arena is as fierce as ever these days, and both companies (nVIDIA and ATI - yes, we'll continue to call it that) are keen to point out their advantages and try to grab as much market share as possible. nVIDIA has stolen the thunder recently with the introduction of the all-powerful 8800 line of cards, but it's the midrange market segment where the battle is usually won or lost for the two companies. The reason is quite simple: although the super high-end cards earn bragging rights, it's the £100 cards and lower that are the best sellers, and in this category both companies want to be able to claim victory. When was the last time a friend approached you because you know more about computers, and asked: "Hey, I would like to buy a new graphics card to play all the latest games with great speeds, and I am prepared to pay good money; up to £100!" I bet that has happened more than once!
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by Veridian3 on 23/01/2007
We’re sure that many of you who are reading will have seen the performance of 8800’s in SLI already and so we are going to add a little bit of a twist to our review. As well as benchmarks at stock settings combined with an Intel QX6700 we are also going to take a look at how the product performs when paired with the Core2 Quad Core at 4 GHz and if that wasn’t enough, we’re going to show how the 8800 in SLI performs when overclocked and combined with the 4 GHz quad core. We also have over half a gigabyte of high definition content so you can see it all for yourself.
As we found when originally testing the GTX in single card configurations, at 1920x1200 with AA and AF the GTX can be the bottleneck to a QX6700 system so adding a second card will make for some interesting results.
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by Asmoday on 17/01/2007
A while back we reviewed the Power Color X1950 Pro Extreme card at Driver Heaven, which proved to be a very good performing mid-sector card with quiet and efficient cooling.
Now the time has come to its Sapphire counter part The Sapphire Ultimate X1950 Pro. We will see if this card lives up to the “ultimate” moniker.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 24/12/2006
The industries shift to the PCI-Express platform left many enthusiasts lacking the ability to update their graphics card. Because of that they were forced to either change their motherboard (often requiring they replace the CPU as well) or to keep their current hardware and hope that some day a quality AGP card would come out. Those who have been unable to afford the upgrade to PCIe have had very slim pickings this year, however Sapphire have announced the AGP version of one of the best cards of 2006 – the X1950Pro.
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by Veridian3 on 04/12/2006
Much has been written recently about DirectX 10 technology and the hardware to power it, however until the retail launch of Windows Vista, and more importantly the launch of the first DirectX 10 titles there are still a number of DirectX 9 cards which warrant some serious consideration if you want the ultimate gaming experience today. One such product is the X1950XTX which along with a CrossFire master card can provide some incredible performance in the latest games.
Today we have a rather special XTX in for review from MSI and luckily enough we have their CrossFire master card too...
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by WhO_KnOwS on 01/12/2006
»Bigger is better« holds true practically everywhere except in electronics. A smaller manufacturing process benefits both the manufacturer as well as the consumer. The first enjoys lower costs of production while we see this improvement in the form of reduced power usage and lower work temperatures. Behold the ATI X1950 PRO, a rejuvenated version of the crowd favorite X1900GT. With higher clocks, a similar price and native internal crossfire support the card may become even more popular than the X1900GT was.
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by Veridian3 on 08/11/2006
As well as designing a GPU which is capable of excelling in DirectX 10 situations Nvidia had to accommodate existing technology and ensure that not only did their card have the ability to play catch-up with ATI in areas such as the ability to do HDR and AA the ideal scenario would be a product which also outperformed existing competitor solutions in titles from the past few years.
Could all this be done successfully? and would there be any downsides to the approach?
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by WhO_KnOwS on 30/10/2006
When a certain game proves to be too much for a graphics card to handle, the cheapest solution is to try and overclock the board. This process is getting easier as the years pass with ATI supporting it “out of the box” on most of their cards and nVidia only requiring a small registry tweak to access their overclocking features (via coolbits). It comes as no surprise that card manufacturers like to use the same tactic to gain an edge over the competition by building the increased clock speeds into their bioses. The Palit 7900GS Sonic we are reviewing is one such product. While an overclocked card in itself doesn't have any real advantage over a reference one (after all you can overclock it yourself) a good cooler included in the package might just be enough to tip the scales in favour of the faster board.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 20/10/2006
SLI and Crossfire powered gaming systems are something most of us can only dream about. The same thing is true for cards like the dual-GPU GeForce 7950GX2. The majority of us have to look at single-card solutions, and even then the pricier models can be rather expensive. For that reason both ATI and nVidia offer several cards that can still be considered high-end, but with their price being set at a far more reasonable level. Today we look at offerings from both ATI and nVidia, namely the Radeon X1900GT HDCP by Connect3D and the GeForce 7900GS by Foxconn. To spice things up we will compare the results from both cards with a representative of the last generation of nVidias 7x00 series – the 7800GT. The card is getting rather difficult to buy, since it is no longer being manufactured, but its price is similar to that of both the other cards. Cards in this price range are likely to be partnered with a midrange TFT screen running at around 1280x1024, so we will be running tests at this resolution with as much eye candy enabled as possible.
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by Zardon on 08/10/2006
My colleague Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson has been singing the praises of Crossfire for the last year and he seems very happy with the overall package. Fortunately for ATI I didn't handle the launch review as I still think their claims have not rang true on many levels. When I was at the original Crossfire press launch I was told that the ATI solution would be superior to SLI as they don't rely on a driver profile to support dual card rendering for your favourite game. One year on, I think most of us know that was perhaps a slight exaggeration on ATI's behalf.
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by WhO_KnOwS on 04/10/2006
Not everyone can afford a Conroe X6800 and an SLI system, so today we are covering the Sapphire X1650 pro card which is very reasonably priced at the low to mid range sector. Only question is, can this card power the newest games at a reasonable resolution?
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by Veridian3 on 14/09/2006
Since the release of Nvidia's 7800 and ATI's X1800 series the graphics card market has seen a deluge of product refreshes to the current generation which bring to market enhanced specifications and claims of improved performance. The product Nvidia are launching today is the 7950GT, as of 9AM PST it will be possible to buy the cards online and in some conventional stores, so lets take a look at Nvidia' reference design, and more importantly a retail branded version in the form of Palit's 7950GT 512mb.
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by Veridian3 on 02/09/2006
A long time ago someone came up with the phrase “Never judge a book by its cover” and that has gone on to become a well used and understood part of the English language. We all know the meaning behind the phrase and obviously that it doesn't just apply to books.
Today’s review product is Palit's 7900GT however as is obvious from the first few lines of this introduction there is a lot more going on with this card than the model name suggests. Let’s take a look at what Palit have done to make their card stand out from the crowd.
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by Veridian3 on 23/08/2006
ATI's latest refresh is upon us, and we have an indepth analysis ready for your enjoyment, we know what hardcore gamers want at Driver Heaven!
We have tested ATI's latest with a good cross section of games ranging from current first person shooters such as PREY to Microsoft's upcoming Flight Simulator X and we also pit the board against current ATI and Nvidia hardware to see if its worth an upgrade. We also have information on mixed crossfire configurations, CPU scaling (with a vapochill cooled extreme edition conroe running at 4ghz), as well as game tests running at resolutions up to 2560x1600 on a 30 inch Dell screen. We look at how the card handles against competing boards with optimisations off/HQ enabled. We also overclock the card to see what headroom you can expect.
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by Veridian3 on 05/08/2006
It has been some time since Nvidia's 7900 GTX made its way to retail and whilst newer and faster products have been released, this means prices of the older cards drop. Obviously the lower the prices fall the more attractive the card becomes and so today we are going to take a look at two of the best 7900 GTX packages to see how well they perform with the latest games.
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by Veridian3 on 11/07/2006
he past few generations of graphics products have seen both ATI and Nvidia locked in a battle to get sales from the discerning buyer. This has obviously benefited the consumer and the state of the market today is exceptionally healthy from low end to high end. A popular card falling into the mid to high end sector is Nvidia's 7900 GT and today we are taking a look at the MSI version . ATI's competiting product is the X1900GT and we have two retail X1900 GT's in for testing today, first up is Connect3D's and we'll also take a look at Powercolors
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by Veridian3 on 19/06/2006
Sometimes products are released which are variations on a theme, these products can usually be looked at in a few days and then our opinions passed on to you. On other occasions products are released which are unique and interesting enough to warrant much more in-depth testing and analysis. The Geforce 7950 GX2 is one such product. A graphics card unlike any other available to gaming enthusiasts, the GX2 combines two 7950 cores on two separate PCB’s with 1Gb of video memory in an attempt to make the fastest graphics card available on a single PCIe slot.
In this review Driver Heaven will be taking a look at how well the product performs in all of the usual gaming titles. In addition to this there will be in-depth testing at widescreen and ultra high resolutions, including advanced AA and AF settings and if that isn’t enough to answer any performance questions we will then take a look at the cards video playback performance of high definition content when compared to competitor part’s. Finally we will throw in a little overclocking to ensure that the benefits and downsides of the card are fully explored.
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by Kombatant on 25/05/2006
They say numbers don't lie, and I believe that includes benchmarks as well: the card is wicked fast, and its owners are going to enjoy extreme speeds coupled with extreme image quality. What we liked about the card is the minimum performance penalty we got as we upped the Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering levels; a “feature” that characterizes the entire X1000 series of cards by ATI, and is attributed to the advanced memory controller these cards have. Club3D has got a winner in their hands, since as we saw from the benchmarks, the card certainly delivers.
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by Zardon on 16/05/2006
How high end can a prebuilt get? How about partnering up a few nVidia 7900GTX 512 MB cards in SLI with a FX60 and several hard drives including a half a terrabyte file drive with a Raptor X for boot up? Then wrap it all up in foam soundproofing.....
Im going to benchmark this machine in all the modern titles at 1920x1200 with eye candy maxed to the hilt, to see if it performs as well at it sounds.
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by Veridian3 on 02/05/2006
Undoubtedly many sales are generated by having the fastest card on the planet, that’s one of the reasons ATI and Nvidia put so much money into R&D. Where they make the most money isn’t in this market segment however, it’s mainstream and budget cards that generate the big sales figures for both companies and having a killer product in each area at a great price can make or break your whole product range. The current mainstream attempts at killer products come in the shape of the X1800GTO and the 7600GT. We’re taking a look at both today to ascertain which gives you the best value and performance.
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by Chaos on 19/04/2006
With all the new high quality video options available today, ATI's AVIVO technology is a truly exciting experience for home media enthusiasts. ATI claim AVIVO will revolutionize the quality of multi media and how it is incorporated into a home Media Center PC. To be more specific AVIVO specifically targets high definition formats like HDTV, Blu-ray and HD-DV and ATI’s new cards with AVIVO technology strive to give end users the best, most vibrant video quality available.
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by Veridian3 on 12/04/2006
Those of you who remember back to the time of the Geforce 3 and Radeon 8500 may remember the Matrox Parhelia which allowed users to connect three displays while the competition were only offering dualhead. Now Matrox have come up with a clever way of utilizing a similar technology for the gaming community who use non Matrox graphics cards.
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by Veridian3 on 03/04/2006
Our review on the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe was held off for a while, as our regulars will know we were working closely with Asus in fixing some rather major clock issues and due to our intervention Asus allowed us to host and release a beta bios last week. So while other sites published reviews with the faulty bios, we waited until we could deliver an accurate and indepth look at this rather impressive board from Asus. This review is a double whammy as we are also testing a HIS X1900 Crossfire setup.
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by Veridian3 on 24/02/2006
It’s not often as a reviewer that you receive a product which doesn’t have a major competitor from another manufacturer. This is one such product though and so allows us to say quite easily that the AIW X1900 is the best product of its type that money can buy. This doesn’t tell the whole story though.
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by Kombatant on 27/01/2006
So, with a new taking the world by storm, why focus on a soon-to-be-previous generation model? The reason is simple, and it’s the reason that drives a great volume of cards in the market: the price – performance ratio. The Radeon X1800 XL is an often underappreciated but still great card, with a great feature set, and even greater performance. Its price will probably drop in coming weeks as the new cards arrive in stores, making it an even greater value – and here we are, to explore its overclocking potential, so as to see whether we can get even more value from this card.
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by Veridian3 on 24/01/2006
The front of the X1900 Crossfire Edition is very similar to the X1800XT Crossfire Edition, you have ATI's now standard Dual Slot cooler featuring a Ruby graphic. The PCIe power connector is also featured as normal and the passive heatsink running down the right side of the card remains. Specification wise the X1900 Crossfire Edition uses a R580 core (featuring 48 pixel shader units) clocked at 621mhz Core and 720mhz Memory ( 512mb GDDR3). To allow you to compare the X1800's Crossfire Master used a R520 core clocked at 625mhz coupled with 512mb of GDDR3 running at 720mhz (16 pixel shader units)
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by Veridian3 on 02/01/2006
Now with the launch of Crossfire for the X1800 series ATI effectively have a second generation of Crossfire coming to market which allows them to even the playing field again. So will things be more successful for ATI this time round?"
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by Kombatant on 26/11/2005
Our latest review is online, and it takes a closer look in one of ATI's best selling cards, the ATI Radeon X800 GTO. Forums around the internet are full with reports that this particular card can overlock very well, and we wanted to see what speed increases one would witness after such an overclock. Are 12 pipelines enough for today's games?
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by Zardon on 21/11/2005
The Radeon All-In-Wonder is one of those unique products that comes to market with no real competition. You could certainly place it against other gaming cards in the same price range however that wouldn’t do it's multimedia features justice.
You could also compare it to a TV card with roughly the same features, however there really isn’t any direct competition ... there no other product which does the same thing (a compliment to how well ATI have done in the design and performance of previous models). So whilst the release of this card should excite the gamer's and multimedia enthusiasts amongst you it’s a real headache for us reviewers who have to write about it and give you an indication of just how good…or bad… it is.
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by Veridian3 on 07/11/2005
There have been a lot of rumours recently about a new 512mb Nvidia part being launched at the beginning of November…what there haven’t been though are numerous rumours of a new mainstream product from the guys in California. So with that in mind you would be forgiven for visiting the site today to be presented with a review of one such part. That’s right, Nvidia have chosen today to launch their newest mainstream part in the form of the Geforce 6800GS 256mb. So what’s the main competitor for this new part? Well its no less than ATIs new X1600XT 256 which we haven’t reviewed yet…so what better reason to take a first look at that now…
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by Veridian3 on 16/10/2005
We’re always happy to look at Asus products at Driverheaven, time after time we receive things from them which really are top quality so when they offered us their 7800GTX we immediately accepted. Thinking back to excellent products such as the V9999 Gamer Edition or the Extreme AX800XT it was clear that this product had a lot to live up to, did it manage? Lets see…
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by Veridian3 on 05/10/2005
Product launches are like buses, you wait ages for an ATI product launch and then two come along almost at the same time. Whilst those of the Nvidia persuasion have happily been playing with their SLI and 7800 series those people holding on for the new ATI products have had quite a wait. ATI went some way to resolving that over the last month when they sent out crossfire reviewer kits to journalists … and in a move I can only assume is meant to ensure we’re kept on our toes here today we have the successor to the X850XT – the ATI Radeon X1800XT.
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by Veridian3 on 26/09/2005
Considering how fast paced the PC industry moves you would have thought that a delay of over a year since SLI was introduced would have given Nvidia such a massive market segment share that it would be unbeatable. Unfortunately though, despite SLI being available it was far from the perfect solution at the time of launch with issues such as lack of game compatibility and having to use matched cards being factors that made the purchase undesirable for many hardware enthusiasts. It has to be said however that Nvidia have improved SLI game support in recent months and their hardware will take some beating, we aim to not only test crossfire but to show you some comparisons against Nvidia in both single and dual configurations.
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by Veridian3 on 26/08/2005
ATI’s All-In-Wonder X800XT is the must have card for multimedia and gaming enthusiasts still on the AGP platform, not many people would argue that. If gaming isn’t a primary concern you also have various other AIW versions to choose from. If you happen to be a PCI-Express user the choice of AIW products until now was limited to the X600 version which is hardly ideal for high resolution gaming.
Another area in which ATI have recently excelled is the PCIe version of the X800GT. Rave reviews are surfacing all over the web and as far as the price bracket goes the GT should be certainly on your shortlist.
So to spice things up a little, what if ATI were to combine the excellent multimedia features of the X800XT AGP with the great value and performance of a PCIe X800GT and then, just for good measure throw in some excellent new features… do we have your attention now?
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by Veridian3 on 19/08/2005
The MyCinema is a stand-alone PCI TV tuner that uses the Philips dual format silicon tuner. The use of said tuner means the product is capable of receiving both Digital Terrestrial (DVB-T) and Analog TV signals. The audio/video decoder chip used on the My Cinema is the SAA1731E, again from Philips.
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by Veridian3 on 07/08/2005
Let’s face it, video cassettes suck for both playback and recording. There have been so many technical advancements with time that when I made the decision to bin my VCR, I optioned for ATI’s AIW 9800SE. The card was an almost flawless product for watching and recording live television aside from the fact that it did not have a SCART output (important for our European readers). The AIW accomplished everything I needed it to in my media system, but of course, in more recent games, it was starting to show its age and it really isn’t much fun witnessing jerky game playback on low resolutions via a 40” TV. When I saw ATI’s announcement for the AIW X800XT with a SCART output, and needless to say, higher graphical prowess for gaming, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one. That day has finally come; let us see what it’s all about…
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by Veridian3 on 25/06/2005
The mainstream market segment is where ATI and Nvidia (and their partners) make most of their sales, due to this we have a wealth of products in this price range. Two of the newest, and therefore most desirable, are the Radeon X700 and Geforce 6600. Both are aimed at the user who wants the latest features and to use them at reasonable resolutions like 1280x960 but doesn’t have the finances to spend more on their graphics card than the family’s monthly food budget. Today we have one of each product in for review, lets see how each card performs and find out which gets the best performance/price ratio.
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by Veridian3 on 16/05/2005
Not everyone is in the financial position to purchase a top of the range graphics card and chances are if you’ve clicked the link to read this article you are one of those people. Both ATI and Nvidia have begun to take a different approach to the cards aimed at this sector, whilst all previous low end cards came with similar volumes of memory to the mainstream and high end cards there are now cards which come with enough video memory for basic tasks and when needed share some of your system memory.
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by Veridian3 on 04/05/2005
Going into this article I have to admit I was more than sceptical on the benefits of adding an extra 256mb to the XL…I wondered if the mainstream clocks of the XL would give the card enough oomph to utilise the full 512mb and if an X850XTPE with 512mb would be a better fit… lets see if ATI made the right decision.
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by Veridian3 on 23/04/2005
For a while now the 6800 Ultra and X800 XTPE have been batting it out for the performance crown at the top of the AGP card market, until now neither ATI or Nvidia have released a product to move their AGP lines forward and due to this users of PCI Express have found their performance is slightly higher than those using AGP parts. With the development of Rialto, ATI’s PCI express to AGP conversion technology ATI began moving lower spec PCI Express products to AGP a few months ago. Today we have a look at their first move to convert a high end product…the highest infact, the X850 XTPE.
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by Zardon on 23/03/2005
The last time we looked at an Alienware system was February of last year and my colleague Stuart came away with a warm fuzzy feeling as that particular system performed exceptionally well considering the limitations of the mobile sector. Today we have the opportunity to test one of the new Alienware area 51m gaming systems. As some of you might know when you order a machine from Alienware you custom build it on their website. So with a budget of £3000 we decided to go "balls out" and put as much top end hardware into the rig as possible. Ive been reviewing and testing so much ATI hardware lately I went the Nvidia route for the graphics, its a 256 GDDR3 megabyte, 12 pipe design running at 330 core and 1000mhz. The CPU is the hot running Intel based Prescott, id first looked at a Prescott based laptop in a Dell Inspirion machine mid 2004, as you would expect these need serious cooling, ill be dwelling on that later in the article.
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by Veridian3 on 16/03/2005
Until ATI released the X800XL the Geforce 6800 GT was unchallenged as the best bang buck for buck card available. With a 16 pipeline design the GT only differs from the Ultra model in clock speeds. When you consider that many of the GT’s on the market will overclock to Ultra specifications and beyond its clear why its sold in huge volumes. Asus are a company who always impress us with their releases and so we were more than happy to accept their 6800GT as a review product…so much so in fact we accepted two…
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by Zardon on 27/02/2005
The last time we reviewed a Visiontek product was the X800XT in November of last year, since then we have looked at the majority of models coming from the ATI/partner stable. The ATI PCIexpress range is technically very strong across the board, but many people are disgruntled with availability, especially when we look at the Platinium Edition models.
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by Veridian3 on 15/02/2005
When ATI launched the X800 series of graphics cards it consisted of the X800 Pro, X800XT and X800 XTPE. Back in November ATI released some updates to that range, those being the X800XL and X800 standard. We had our first look at the X800XL a couple of weeks back and were very impressed and now we’ve received our first retail X800 sample in for review. The X800 (£175) is priced in between the X700Pro (£140) and X800XL (£220) Radeons so it’s those cards we are testing against today.
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by Veridian3 on 13/01/2005
Last month when ATI launched the Radeon X850 they also launched some new X800 series cards, at that time there were no samples available to the public or reviewers. As of the beginning of January the X800XL is making its way into the hands of the public and so we have a sample here for review. With an expected retail price of $299 it sits around $100 less than a 6800GT and so a performance comparison with the 6800GT is what we have here today.
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by Veridian3 on 12/12/2004
The card we have in for review today is an interesting beast. Not full GT, Nor 6800 Non Ultra, rather 6800 Ultra toned down to somewhere between GT and Non Ultra. You’ll not have seen many reviews of cards with the GTo suffix floating about however they may well be worth a look, certainly from a price perspective it could well be a winner so let’s see how it performs against the more expensive 6800 Ultra…
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by Chaos on 12/12/2004
The 5900 Siluro is ABIT’s latest foray into today’s leading edge computer components.
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by Veridian3 on 30/11/2004
Its that time again, product refresh season and today’s new and improved product is the Radeon X850 XTPE from ATI. The X850 is entering the market at an interesting time, over the past few months the two fastest 3d cards have been the 6800 Ultra and X800 XTPE.
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by Veridian3 on 25/11/2004
We have been a fan of Asus products for quite some time now and it’s always with great anticipation that we await the next of their products to be sitting on our review bench. Our anticipation was further increased by the moniker that Asus have given this model, "Extreme"… regularly companies give marketing names to their products like "Golden Sample" however the product usually fails to out-do their rivals. Let’s find out if the Extreme Asus X700 Pro can live up to is marketing promise…
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by Zardon on 21/11/2004
Visiontek offer a lifetime warranty. The vanilla XT is clocked at 500 core and 500/1000 memory which is slightly slower than the PE edition (520 core 560/1120memory) but in my experience I have found most of these cards overclock to PE speeds via software overclocking with a tool like Powerstrip or ATItool.
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by Zardon on 07/10/2004
When you think of Asus, the word "quality" immediately comes to mind, and this is just reaffirmed with today's newest review piece, their new PCI express top of the range graphics card the AX800XT.
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by Veridian3 on 22/09/2004
Today we will look at the card in detail through varying resolutions, aa/af settings, with and without driver optimisations and when overclocked to really put the card through its paces. We’ll also be running it through some of the latest game engines such as MOH: Pacific Assault and Shellshock: Nam67 to see what those users who always buy the latest games will experience.
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by Zardon on 20/09/2004
The graphics sector is undoubtedly one of the most hotly contested areas of computer hardware with the two giants Nvidia and ATI seemingly alone in the battle for market domination. Its been another good year so far from ATI with the X800XT PE being arguably the fastest card available to the consumer, with Nvidia's 6800 Ultra right on its heels. So here we have the new X700XT from ATI, an eight pixel pipe card aimed at the lucrative mid range sector. This card is being marketed by ATI as a more powerful "replacement" for the 9800XT, their successful high end board of last year.
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by Veridian3 on 28/08/2004
Over the past few months we’ve had a fair amount of 6800GT’s and Ultras come into Driverheaven however no 6800 non ultras, fortunately this has changed and we now have the chance to look at the Asus branded version of the 6800. This card is quite unique in its specification and comes with a massive amount of add-ins to the bundle. Its certainly no normal 6800 non ultra, more about that later. Around the same time the 6800 arrived we also received Sapphire’s take on the X800Pro, a competitively priced product to the Asus 6800 so it makes sense to look at them both in the same article.
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by Zardon on 14/08/2004
ATI have had a great history with mobility graphics cards and today ill be looking at their newest model recently released, the Mobility Radeon 9800 GPU. Currently DELL are supplying this card with their Inspiron series of laptops with more manufacturers to follow.
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by Veridian3 on 20/07/2004
As this is the second time we’ve looked at the X800 and 6800 products we’re going to mix it up a little in terms of the benchmark settings we use. In the previous article we looked at 1024x768, 1280x960(or 1024) and 1600x1200 followed by 1600x1200 and 4xaa 16xaf. This time we’re going to look at the higher resolutions only and throw in more AA/AF settings such as 2aa/2af and 4aa no-af to give a wider idea of how each card performs under different settings.
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by Zardon on 06/07/2004
In this "low-end" sector of the gaming market you would be hoping to put out some decent framerates at 1024x768, anything above this and you start falling into the zone dominated by the mid range boards such as the NV FX5700 and ATIs 9600 (X600/PCIe) series. Bear in mind the boards on test today cost between 60 and 90 euros, strictly for those on a budget, so compromises have to be made.
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by Zardon on 30/06/2004
X800XT PE AGP 520/560
X800XT PE PCIe 520/560
X800XT PCIe 500/500
X800 PRO AGP 475/450
X600XT PCIe 500/365
X300 PCIe 325/195
9800XT AGP 412/365
9700 AGP 275/270
9600 XT 500/300
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by Zardon on 19/06/2004
The X600 is the "Worlds first PCI Express graphics chip" with native x16 lane PCI Express support, memory bandwidth is increased to 12 gigabytes per second with four extreme parallel 3d rendering pixel pipelines. Its on a 128 bit memory interface which supports 128 MB or 256 MB memory configurations this has full Direct X 9 support. The board we are looking at today is the 128MB version.
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by Zardon on 27/05/2004
The card is a reference ATI board, if you look at the front view picture you can see the video connector just below the molex has been removed and the more astute viewers can also see from the rear pictures that the Rage theatre chip is also removed.
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by Veridian3 on 27/05/2004
The graphics market is as fast moving as any other PC technology area and we’ve now had the chance to get a detailed look at Nvidia and ATI’s upcoming cards, the ATI Radeon X800 Pro and the Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra.
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by Zardon on 04/05/2004
The Radeon X800 series offers 3DC support, ultra fast GDDR3 memory on a 256 bit memory interface, AGP8x with fully Microsoft Direct X 9.0 and Open GL 1.5 support, the boards are single slot cooling with VGA, DVI and VIVO display I/O.
The X800XT is the big brother to the pro and has a 16 pipe architecture and runs at 520mhz core and 1120mhz memory speeds.
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by Veridian3 on 04/04/2004
The Geforce-FX 5900XT is arguably the best value card on the market at the moment. When we looked at our last 5900XT model we were more than impressed by its performance both at stock speeds and when overclocked. As with all Geforce models Gainward have released their take on the 5900XT. Today we take a look at that card and see if Gainward can further improve on the product.
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by Chaos on 21/02/2004
ABIT has announced that they will be marketing the 9600XT and the 9800 XT. Which to me are two of the best ATI has to offer. ABIT has the basics covered for anyone looking for the best mid range performing card and someone who may settle for nothing but the fastest. I have been given the chance to give the ABIT 9800XT a work out.
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by Veridian3 on 15/02/2004
A few months ago we reviewed the Geforce FX 5700 Ultra, at the time it was Nvidia’s direct competitor to the Radeon 9600XT. At that time we were one of the few websites to suggest that the 9600XT was the better card and that the 5700Ultra just wasn’t quite good enough. Today we have our first look at the 5900XT, Nvidia’s new challenger for the mainstream market.
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by Veridian3 on 15/02/2004
The V8 Duo is a dual core (each core at 350mhz) graphics card and that it features 16 pixel pipelines (8 per core) and 256mb of 450mhz ddr2.
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by Veridian3 on 20/12/2003
Back in October when we had our first look at the 9800 XT its competition was the 5900 Ultra. 2 months down the line Nvidia have released their refresh to the 5900 Ultra design, the higher clocked differently cooled 5950 Ultra. Read on to find out how it fares in our benchmarks and also to find out how Sapphires take on the 9800 XT scores.
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by craig5320 on 06/12/2003
The ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro is ATI’s brand new mainstream multimedia card. A combination of an extremely advanced graphics chipset and arguably the best multimedia packages available on the planet smashed together into a single AGP 8x video card.
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by Zardon on 28/11/2003
The 9800 XT is ATI's current jewel in the crown and Visiontek have released their Xtasy 9800 XT.
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by Veridian3 on 24/10/2003
Our series of fall refresh parts continues today as we have a review of the Nvidia Geforce FX 5700 Ultra 128mb formerly known as the NV36. The 5700U is being released to be the top card in Nvidia’s mainstream range and comes with support for DX9/OGL 1.5. We will be putting the 5700U up against its direct competitor – the ATI Radeon 9600XT in a range of custom benchmarks and preset benchmarks available to the public. Can Nvidia reclaim the mainstream performance crown?
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by Veridian3 on 19/10/2003
Recently we had the chance to review the 2 new additions to the Radeon range, the 9600 and 9800 Xt’s. Before the next batch of Geforce cards hit the market we now have a little reminder of what’s available at the lower price point of the enthusiasts market, the 5900 non ultra and the 9800 non pro. With the addition of NV38 and R360 the price points for these cards will surely fall and these cards might just be the best value for money of the range, read on to find out how they perform.
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by Veridian3 on 14/10/2003
On the 30th September ATI announced 2 new products, the Radeon 9800 XT and the 9600 XT. Reviews of the 9800 XT have been available on the web for since the announcement however information on the 9600 XT performance has been scarce. Today we have the opportunity to review the 9600 XT and show you just how much performance the card has.
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by Veridian3 on 29/09/2003
Earlier this year we were sent our first 9800 Pro based card, it was a 128mb card and at the time thoroughly beat every card on the market in games, benchmarks and Image Quality. As the months moved on the 256mb variants were released to give the range that extra speed to convincingly outscore the Geforce FX 5900 Ultra. As with all technology things have continued to move on at an astounding rate and today we have the opportunity to tell you about ATI’s latest card, the ATI RADEON 9800 XT 256mb.
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by Veridian3 on 28/09/2003
Well as you can see above I did manage to hit the 15K mark in 3DMark 2001. Not too shabby for a $200 dollar card I'd say !!
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by Veridian3 on 25/09/2003
A month or so ago we reviewed the Gainward Geforce FX 5900 Ultra 1600 XP Golden Sample and due to various issues it received a less than average rating. Since then we have been in close contact with Gainward and have had the opportunity to test and review the newer revision of the same card.
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by Veridian3 on 08/08/2003
Our recent reviews have concentrated on the high end of the Graphics card market. Today we have the chance to step back into the mainstream area as we review two Radeon 9600 Pros.
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by WyreTheWolf on 26/07/2003
Today I am not reviewing new technology... Today I am going to review a card that is the low man on the totem pole. You may ask why... Well, most people have heard about modifying a Radeon 9500 non pro into a Radeon 9700 non pro by opening the other 4 pipelines that are disabled by default on the 9500. Today not only am I going to show you how to do this... but I am also going to show you the performance increases that you can gain from this.
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by Veridian3 on 25/07/2003
In our last review we looked at the Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 pro 128mb, today we have our first look at ATI ‘s 256mb version of the Radeon 9800 pro. Does the move to DDR-2 in the 256mb version improve performance and overclocking? How does the increased memory speed of the 256mb version affect performance? Read on to find out as we compare the two cards…
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by Veridian3 on 19/07/2003
Back when the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro was launched were privileged to receive and review one of the first samples of the card. It has been a few months since that article and today we have the opportunity to see what one of ATI’s “Powered By” partners has been able to produce based around the Radeon 9800 Pro chipset. Has the chipset improved over time, read on to find out as we review the Hercules 3D PROPHET 9800 PRO.
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by Veridian3 on 26/06/2003
The PNY card ships at approximately £145 and comes with 256mb of RAM making it one of the first cards to bring 256mb to the mainstream market.
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by Zardon on 05/03/2003
So what have ATI got in store for us gamers with the new top of the line 9800 pro, the much awaited R350 core? Is this set to be the nail in FX's coffin or is it just basically an overclocked 9700 pro?
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by craig5320 on 02/03/2003
It boasts DirectX 9 support and a vast array of features such as 128MB DDR memory, an eight pipe, 128bit memory interface, SMARTSHADER™ 2.0 technology which allows users to experience complex, movie-quality effects in next-generation 3D games and applications.
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