AMD is back with a new medium range card which promises a good price/performance ratio, the Radeon HD 5670.
INTRODUCTION
The first member of the Evergreen family hit the market back in September (2009). AMD has since then not said much about what would follow.
AMD chose to release the 5670 card at last week’s CES 2010 event. The 5600 series chip is called Redwood and currently only includes the Radeon HD 5650 and 5670 chips. The 5600 series is clearly directed to the mid range segment of the market as illustrated in AMD’s release strategy below. AMD has release two versions of the HD 5670 card, one with 1GB GDDR5 and another with 512MB GDDR5. This review covers the latter one.
ZOTAC GeForce 220 with 1GB GDDR3 is a new card targeted towards the low end market. It has a customized cooling system and should satisfy most consumers looking for a card with good High Definition capabilities.
INTRODUCTION
In July 2009, NVIDIA began the transition to a 40nm manufacturing technology with two new models destined for the low end market: the GeForce GT 210 and GT 220. They were actually never destined to be sold as full retail cards but as the market has developed, NVIDIA now has full retail version of both of them.
The basic model (GT 210) has the “gt218” GPU which has 16 “CUDA cores”; a 64-bits interface; 512MB GDDR2 memory; 1 D-Sub, 1 DVI and 1 HDMI exit. The reference model runs on the following frequencies: 589MHz, 1402MHz and 790MHz (GPU/Shader/Memory). It replaces the old 9400 GT in NVIDIAS lineup.
The NVIDIA GT 220 reference card is based upon the “GT216” GPU which has 48 “CUDA cores”; a 128-bits interface; 1024MB GDDR3 memory; 1 D-Sub; 1 DVI and 1 HDMI exit. The reference model runs on the following frequencies: 625MHz, 1360MHz and 790MHz (GPU/Shader/Memory). It sells at around $60-$80 and it replaces the old 9600 GT and 9500 GT cards.
The Lian-Li PC-8N is a high quality medium range aluminum case with a sober design at an interesting price level.
INTRODUCTION
Just a couple of weeks back I had the immense pleasure to review the LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58 case and as I mentioned in the introduction to that review, LanCool is a member Lian-Li family of brands.
The Lian-Li PC-8N is a medium tower case without too many “extra” features. It is a sober looking case made in aluminum that should attract anyone looking for a high quality case at a reasonable price level.
Sapphire is back with a new exciting series of graphics cards called “Vapor-X” which has a very special cooling solution. In this review I will be taking a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 card.
INTRODUCTION
The Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards were rather recently released by AMD/ATI and for the very first time in a couple of years, AMD/ATI (hereafter referred to as only AMD) is back in the performance lead. NVIDEA will release their next generation of graphics cards rather soon but no date is set and very little information about it has leaked to the press.
Just a couple of weeks back AMD released the 5850 and the 5870 graphics cards which were very well received in reviews and by consumers. I did a review of an Asus 5850 card myself.
When one looks for a case for a new high end PC building project, Lian Li always comes up among the interesting manufacturers. It is my opinion that Lian Li is synonymous with quality; design; elegance and exclusive features. This time I will be looking at a case which has all those features but also a reasonable price tag.
The LanCool is really more a brand of itself than just a Lian Li product series. Lian Li is by most considered as a high end brand, so to diversify into the medium range consumer market without negatively affecting the Lian Li brand, they started the LanCool brand. It is in some places sold without the “Lian Li” in the product name. Anyhow, what really matters is that Lian Li targets lower price level market with the LanCool brand/series.
One of the differences that I have noted about Lian Li versus LanCool cases is that Lian Li mostly uses aluminum while LanCool uses SECC steel for the construction of their models.
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