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.
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.
A while ago, AMD released their last generation of graphics cards, the 5800 series. Asus is one of the top assemblers of AMD Radeon equipped cards so it’s a pleasure to review the Asus EAH5850 1GB DDR5 which promises to be a good alternative for overclockers.
INTRODUCTION
As usual when a new generation of graphics cards are is released, the first cards out on the market are the high end cards. In this case the HD 5870 and HD 5850. Later these have been followed by the 5770 and 5750 and we will soon see some lower end versions coming out too.
Summary: Can the price reduced AMD RV790 GPU (Radeon HD 4890) be an interesting alternative now when all focus is on AMD’s recently launched HD 5800 series?.
INTRODUCTION
At the time being, all the spotlights on the market for graphics cards are pointed towards AMD ATI who is in the process of launching a new generation of cards supporting the new DirectX 11 standard. One of these cards is the AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 which we have loads of reviews of at testseek.com, go and check out.
However, when a new generation of cards is introduced, one can often make a bargain on a high end graphics card from the previous generation. Therefore I decided to take a look at the Radeon HD 4890 which has drastically dropped in price since the 5890 was introduced.
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