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.

The 5600 series adopts the technologies of its big brothers like ATI Stream and ATI Eyefinity. Here are AMD’s own words about their new “ATI Stream” technology:

ATI Stream technology is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPUs), working in concert with the system’s central processors (CPUs), to accelerate enabled applications beyond traditional graphics and video processing. This enables balanced platforms to run computationally-intensive tasks more efficiently, providing a better application experience to the end user.

The 5600 series also has full support for Microsoft’s DirectX11 API. I guess most people buying a graphics card in the middle range segment don’t really know what the big deal is but anyone interested in the GPU industry knows that if you want to see the latest innovations in gaming you want to be on the latest DirectX train.

AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670, ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS

The test sample I will be reviewing today is a generic AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5. It is a pre production unit which AMD sends out to selected publications before other outfitters’ versions hit the store shelves. I am actually a bit late out with my review, but hey, what’s the hurry anyway?

Here are the specifications for the HD5670 512MB GDDR5:

IN DETAIL: AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670 512MB GDDR5

I’m not going to spend too much time rambling about what the card looks like since most outfitters will be mounting their own cooling solutions. In short however, the card has a one slot cooler which is great and expected with a middle range card.

The card is manufactured with a 40nm technology which is great since it will increase its energy efficiency and decrease the generated heat in relation to performance.

A good thing about the fact that this card is fairly small and thin is that it fits in smaller cases suitable for HTPC and media PC projects. The length of the Radeon HD 5670 is 170mm.

The card has no PCI- Express power connector which should be considered as something positive I guess. It means that the card will never draw more power than what the PCI-Express bus can handle.

The 5670 generic card has 3 connectors; a Display Port; a HDMI and a DVI connector. It supports the “ATI Eyefinity” technology which means you can use monitors on each connector simultaneously.

The HMDI connector support s HDMI 1.3a which means full support for Dolby True HD and DTS Audio Masters.

TEST SYSTEM

I used my normal test system for this review, here are the specs:

And here are some screenshots of my configuration:

During my test I set the in-game graphics settings to the highest quality. I set the filter settings to “medium” because of the fact that this card is not intended for people who “must” have the filter settings to max.

For those of you who are not too familiar of how to measure the performance of a graphics card, here’s a table with frame rate numbers and what they actually mean in real life gaming experience:

TEST: BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE

I always do the tests with the benchmarking software first because it often gives a glint of the overall performance of the card. In this case the results tell me that the performance of this card is a bit above what I had expected from a medium range card in the new AMD generation.

As a comparison a Nvidia GT 240 GDDR5 card I have tested in the same system obtained around 7000 points in 3DMark 2006 and in my last review of a GT220 card (a card more towards the lower end segment) it achieved 6700 points. The Radeon HD5670 card came in at 11700 points which exceeds the NVIDIA cards by quite a lot.

As I have experienced with all the DirectX11 compatible cards I have reviewed, the performance diminishes with the jump from DirectX10 to DirectX11. This is strange because “higher performance” is one of the major selling points with the new API from Microsoft.

TEST: GAMES PART 1

The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.

Games like The Last Remnant, Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 actually ran really well no matter what level of graphics quality setting, resolution or filter I set. Even Resident Evil 5 ran OK

TEST: GAMES PART 2

A strange thing about the results above is the case of the games STALKER: Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Prypiat. The first one uses DirectX10 and the second DirectX11. STALKER Clear Sky (DX10) offers a very limited gaming experience while STALKER: Call of Prypiat (DX11) has much better results. I mean, those games are part of the same series. It raises questions like: is DirectX11 more efficient than DirectX10 after all? Or; do these two games have different 3D motors? I am afraid I cannot answer those questions for you, just thought that I’d bring it to your awareness.

There are however clearly two games in this batch which this card cannot handle; Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. The performance of the Radeon HD 5670 in Far Cry 2 at a resolution of 1680×1050 (without filters) at 41.04 FPS just isn’t good enough and far from the results I achieved with the Sapphire HD 5750 (61.57 FPS).

Still, the Radeon HD 5670 demonstrates a remarkable performance in very demanding games. If we can live with not always running the games in the highest resolutions with filters enabled, then you will not be disappointed.

HD VIDEO

In order to analyze the performance of the Radeon HD 5670 when replaying HD video I measured the average CPU load (%) during a 5 minute period while playing HD content. I did the measurements in two resolutions: 720p (H.261) and 1080p.

The excellent results are really thanks to the ATI Steam technology. It is great to see such a powerful card with such small dimensions. It makes the card ideal for a HTPC.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND CONSUMPTION

Overclocking is always exciting (at least for me) but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about this card since all I had to work with was the ATI Catalyst application. I did however reach a decent 9% increase of the GPU (775 MHz) and a 9.5% increase of the original memory frequency. This was the max numbers I could set in the ATI Catalyst application which leaves some room for other outfitters to unlock a greater overclocking.

The cooling system of this card fulfills its task. We must consider that is just a generic sample of the card so none of the outfitters fancy cooling solutions are present. The temperatures that you see in the graph below at full load are high but they are actually what I usually see with a new reference model AMD ATI card. We will just see what the different outfitters can come up with in terms of cooling solutions for the 5670 chip and what they can do with the temperatures.

The fan is automatically regulated and its rotation speed is around 28% when the card is in idle mode. Below 40% the fan is imperceptible but above 50% it is perfectly audible without ever getting as annoying as fans on high end cards.

The use of the new manufacturing technology at 40nm gives this card a better efficiency ratio than previous generation of graphics cards. In the real world this means an improvement of the performance at the same power consumption levels. Or the other way around; a lower power consumption at the same performance level. According to AMD ATI, the idle mode consumption should be 14W whereas the typical consumption in operation is at 61W.

I measured the total power drainage of my system in idle mode and overclock mode which is illustrated in the graph below. I cannot tell you if AMD ATI’s number are correct or not.

RESULTS OF THE TEST WITH OVERCLOCK

Of course I ran some tests with the overclocked card as well, here are the results:

As you can see the results show a slight increase of the performance. For instance the gain in Crysis Warhead was around 1.5 FPS and in Far Cry 2 the increase was around 3 FPS. In reality this doesn’t mean much.

CONCLUSIONS

OK, so this card is clearly not a high end gaming card, but the big question is if it’s powerful enough to be of any use for us gamers? I would say definitely yes! If you can accept playing FPS games without filters you will be satisfied with this card. Hard core gamers will however have to go for the next price level.

What is great with this card is that AMD has managed to squeeze in all the new technologies which we saw in the 5800 series, like the ATI Steam, DirectX11 and ATI Eyefinity. That fact combined with the fact that this card is quite small makes it ideal for anyone looking for a graphics card for HTPC project.

This card will start to sell around the $100 level which I feel is very affordable considering its capabilities.

Pros:

• OK performance
• Low noise level
• Low power consumption
• Single slot card
• Low price

Cons:

• None really

The final score is 89 out of 100 owls, and we give the “AMD ATI 5670 Radeon HD 512MB GDDR5″ our Recommended Award.

Thanks goes out to AMD ATI for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5600 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

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.

The release of the HD 5800 series brought a couple of new technology innovations with it. The “ATI Eyefinity” is a technology which enables one single card to support up to 6 monitors. “ATI Stream” enables GPU accelerated calculations, OpenCL gives us parallel GPU-CPU processing. However, the most important update is the support for DirectX 11 which in itself incorporates full support of Windows 7. This time around, Microsoft promises that the update of the DirectX API means a direct increase of the ratio between the graphical quality and the use of system resources.

AMD says their new GPU can achieve 2.7 TFLOPS, which really doesn’t say much about what the GPU performs like in real world (gaming) situations, but it does tell us that it is truly a very powerful data processor. The manufacturing technology is now down to 40nm, which should mean less power consumption and heat development.

Talking about the power consumption, AMD now promises that the max consumption will not exceed 190W in full load and in idle mode the card will not surpass 27W. If this is correct it would be a big improvement compared to their previous generation of cards.

ASUS EAH5850 SPECIFICATIONS

OK, enough rambling about all the new technologies and promises of the new AMD series, here are the hard facts of the Asus HD 5850 card:

Asus hasn’t added any physical alternations on this card; it is basically Asus’ version of the generic AMD 5850. However Asus has a series of software tools which help us overclockers to reach the maximum potential of this card; the “Gamer OSD” and “Smart Doctor”. This last application will be most useful since it allows us to play with the voltage of the core.

ASUS EAH5850, FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The card comes in a nice looking card board box with loads of aggressive printing on it. As is customary with graphics cards, ASUS pushes a lot on the overclocking tools. Also, the bundle (EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5) includes the game DIRT 2.

When I opened the box, I almost got a little Apple feeling for a moment when I saw the black cover with the Asus logo in gold. Underneath the cover I found two boxes. The bigger box contained the graphics card itself, enfolded by a standard anti static plastic bag and protected by a white foam plastic material. The other box contained the accessories.

Except for the DIRT 2 game (digital download, no DVD), I wasn’t overly impressed by the accessories; CDs with drivers and applications; a printed manual; a power adapter (2 molex to 1 x 6 pin PCIe), a DVI-VGA adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

ASUS EAH5850 IN DETAIL

My first impression was that it really looks powerful with its red and black finish.

The card faithfully follows the AMD reference card in all aspects. This is a big card, the length is 240 mm and it takes up two slots.

The fan is a 70mm and I hope it will not bee too noisy, but looking at the rather small air exhaust in the back of card, I don’t feel overly positive.

The front of the card holds two 6 pin PCIe connectors which would theoretically provide 150W to the card.

Although I wanted to take the cooler off and have a closer look at the PCB I decided to let go of that intention since I would have to loosen a multitude of screws and it was impossible to remove only the housing without also clearing the cooler itself, which felt a little too risky.

A great thing about AMDs new cards is their connectivity. They include two DVI-I, a HDMI and a DisplayPort. With the ATI Eyefinity technology, it is possible to use 3 monitors simultaneously with this card, not bad.

MY TEST SYSTEM

OK, so here comes the list of the hardware components I used for this test:

And here’s the screenshots of my configuration:

The main changes in my test setup are that I have included the benchmark software “Unigine Heaven” and removed Lightsmark 2008. The main reason for this is that it enables me to compare the difference in performance between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11.

BENCHMARKING RESULTS

I will not compare these results to the result I have received in previous graphics cards reviews since my test system has been updated.

I was very interested in what the performance comparison between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 would produce. As you can see from the graphs above the results were opposite of what I had expected, the performance was actually lower with DirectX 11 than with DirectX 10.

GAMING TESTS I

It is interesting to note that the performance remains high even when adding filters. This is something that AMD has corrected from their previous series which really suffered when filters were added. Otherwise, same here; the performance is very good but I will not make any direct comparisons to previous reviews.

GAMING TESTS II

The second batch of games includes more demanding games as usual. This test clearly shows that the EAH5850 has a lot of power under the hood and it was only in two games where the FPS rate didn’t hold steady above 30 FPS with the highest possible settings.

OVERCLOCKING, REFRIGERATION AND CONSUMPTION

On the packaging, Asus emphasized the “Voltage Tweaking” which is done with the Asus Smart Doctor software which also lets us modify the frequencies of both the core and memories.

It’s a dream to work with Asus’ tool for overclocking the card and it is impressive just how far this card can be clocked.

The cooling system of the card is very effective. The fan is noisy at full power but mostly it didn’t bother me too much.

I measured the total power consumption of my system in idle mode and in full load, here are the results:

Clearly the difference is enormous and it should be since AMD’s PowerPlay technology has drastically diminished the power consumption in 2D.

OVERCLOCKING RESULTS

OK, so here are the results from the overclocking tests:

The increase in the 3D Mark Vantage was truly impressive and this is also confirmed by the increase of 6 FPS in Far Cry 2 and the increase is there with filters enabled as well.

CONCLUSIONS

I must first praise AMD for the work they have done with this card. It is both energy efficient and a high performer, very impressive. Asus has taken AMDs reference design and added a lot of value to it with their smart technologies and software tools.

The main advantage with this Asus card is of course its overclocking abilities which are nothing short of fantastic.

ASUS EAH5850 is already on sale at a price that oscillates between the $270 and $300, which is very competitive given its performance, overclocking abilities and the fact that it includes DIRT 2.

Pros:

• Bundle
• General quality
• Supported technologies
• Adequate cooling solution
• Overclocking abilities
• Price

Cons:

• None

The final score is 97.5 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Asus EAH5850 1GB GDDR5″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Asus for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5800 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

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.

For a long time the HD 40xx series from AMD was topped out with the HD 4870 model, but as nVidia pushed on, AMD decided to put out a boosted version of that card and call it 4890. Besides the increase of the card’s memory frequency, the HD 4890 also has some extra memory, 1GB GDDR5 instead of the 512MB with 4870 (standard model).

OK, before we take a look at the specifications you should know that Sapphire has released many different versions of the HD 4890. The one which I will review here is the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCIe 21150-00-40R ”:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The card comes in a rather big cardboard box with a lot of attractive graphics on it, as is customary with all retail graphics card boxes.

Inside the box I found the card in an antistatic plastic bag which was placed between some black foam plastic protecting the card. The accessories were placed in a box below the graphics card containing; a printed documentation; CDs with drivers; 3D Mark Vantage; PowerDVD; DVD Suite etc; some video adapters and adapters for molex to PCI-E 6 pin and lastly a CrossFireX bridge.

SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 4890 IN DETAIL

The card is really more or less the same as AMD ATI’s reference card, it has the same heatsink/cooling solution and the frequencies of the memory and GPU are the ones recommended by AMD. Sapphire also has customized models with a greater amount of memory, specialized cooling solutions and overclocked memory and GPUs.

The card is thick, it occupies 2 slots, basically because of the great size of the heatsink/fan which is made of copper and incorporates several heat pipes to secure a better cooling performance. The fan has a diameter of 70 mm, which is common with AMD cards.

The length (240mm) of the card is also considerable which is pretty normal these days with high en cards. This can of course be a problem depending on the space inside your case so measure the available space before purchasing is my advice.

The voluminous cooling solution leaves very few details in view, but we can see that Sapphire uses solid condensers, which should assure stable power feeding and a long lived card. The card has 2 6 pin PCIe connectors, reason why along with the power from the PCI-Express port, the card can get to consume up to 225W (in theory).

The bracket with the connectors consists of a metal grid on the upper part, to favor the air flow. The lower part holds two DVI connectors and one HDTV exit.

INSTALLING THE TEST EQUIPMENT

OK, so for this review I used the following test system:

The below images shows screenshots of the hardware and the configuration:

In all tests I used the highest possible graphics setting. I did tests with filters both on and off.

BENCHMARKING TEST RESULTS

The results are a little confusing to me because in 3D Mark 06 the result is about the same which I obtained in my review of the Gigabyte GTX 285, whereas the results from Lightmark and Furmark are clearly below the results obtained with the GTX 285 card.

GAMING TEST RESULTS

The results from the test with the first group of games clearly shows that the 4890 isn’t able to reach the high results which I had with the GTX 285 but considering the price difference the result is still very competitive.

REAL RESULTS OF TEST II

The second group holds the most demanding games on the market today. As expected the results dropped somewhat with these games. Generally, all games were perfectly playable in the highest resolutions even when applying filters, except for Weapon 2 and Far Cry 2 in which I had to lower the resolution or graphic quality settings to make the games enjoyable to play.

OVERCLOCKING AND COOLING

Finally, it’s time to see what this card is really capable of. One must consider that the HD 4890 is really an overclocked 4870 card to begin with.

It was with a bit of a disappointment that I had to conclude that the most I could overclock this card was a meager 30MHz for the GPU core and 15MHz for the memories.

In order to measure the temperatures of the card I resorted to push the card to the max for a session of 30 minutes with Furmark.  I compared this to another measurement when the computer had been in idle mode for 30 minutes.

As you can see from the image above, there’s a rather big difference between idle mode and full load, which should be expected. In full mode the card is quite noisy, but I still feel there’s been an improvement compared to other high end cards I have tested recently. In idle mode the noise doesn’t bother me at all.

RESULTS OF OVERCLOCKING

The very small increase in GPU and memory frequencies which I received in my over clocking attempts resulted in an improvement of 1 or 2 fps in real life gaming situations. In 3D Mark 06, I got a 300 point improvement which is a rather big improvement considering how little it was possible to overclock the card.

CONCLUSIONS

At present, the Radeon HD 4890 is no longer is the most powerful graphics-GPU from AMD ATI. With the release of the HD 5800 series, the prices of the HD 4800 series models have been reduced considerably, reason why it is a wonderful opportunity to acquire one of these cards.

With this card, Sapphire demonstrates why they are considered as one of the top graphic cards assemblers. I am mostly impressed by the card’s bundle and its price/performance ratio. The card is sold for around 150 Euros ()

Pros:

• General quality
• Rich bundle
• Good price/performance ratio
• Rather cool and silent

Cons:

• Almost no overclocking possible

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4890″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Sapphire for letting me review this card.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Summary: Gigabyte sent us one of their newest cards with interesting technologies such as “Ultra Durable VGA” and their passive cooler solution “Silent Cell”.

A couple of weeks back, we reviewed the GV-N285OC-2GI (NVIDIA GTX 285), a card placed at the “high end” extreme of the very wide range of GPUs available in the market.  Just last week we looked at a middle segment card from Zotac, the “Zotac GTS 250 AMP! 1GB“. The time has come to look at another middle segment card, this time with a GPU from AMD ATI.

INTRODUCTION

I am very excited to start working on this review, mainly because it features two exciting technologies which are unique to some of Gigabyte’s cards, the “Silent Cell” passive cooling technology and the “Ultra Durable VGA” (UDV) technology. Let’s take a look at the specifications:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Gigabyte has clearly put in a little extra effort on the retail box for this card. They are flirting with us consumers with their aggressive graphics silk printed on the box. As you can see they have placed a small window on top of the front side of the box, where you can preview the Silent Cell heatsink.

When opening the box, we found the graphics card itself secured tightly in dampening foam as you can see from the image above. The accessories are found below the white dampening foam and we were not disapointed by the bundle Gigabyte provides with this package. Aside from the graphics card, Gigabyte have included a CrossFire bridge, a power adapter for feeding double molex to PCI-E pin (6 pins), a VGA-DVI adapter, a composite video adapter and of course the manual and CDs with drivers and applications.

GIGABYTE GV-R485SL-1GI IN DETAIL

Without a doubt, the most interesting thing about this card is its “Silent Cell” heatsink. It’s based on three 3 heatpipes of pure copper. The base of the heatsink is also based on copper but the heatsink itself is made of aluminum. One curious think we noted about this heatsink was its robustness, normally these kind of heatsinks are very fragile, but the Silent Cell is quite robust.

As you can see from the images, the heatsink covers the PCB almost completely, but it is actually only attached to the GPU chip and not the memory modules. Altogether we have 8 modules of 128MB to make the total of 1GB. The memories are Samsung 1ns, which offers a nominal frequency of up to 1GHz, although Gigabyte don’t run them at that speed which means we have a little margin for improvements.

Another outstanding feature of this card is its PCB, which is built upon the “Ultra Durable VGA” principles. The UDV technology uses almost double the normal amount of copper, which helps better lead the electricity and also improves on the cooling and general stability of the card. On the PCB we also find the 6 pin PCI-E  power connector and the connector for CrossFire mode.

Other connectors on this card are the VGA connector, the DVI connector and the HDMI connector. These three covers all you can think of both now and for the future. Of course it’s a question of saving money but it’s my opinion that all graphics cards should come with this setup of connectors.

THE TEST EQUIPMENT

OK, enough about the specs, let’s get this test going. But first, here’s the test setup we used:

We used three different resolutions, as well as 2 different configurations, one without filters and another with filters. In all scenarios we set the graphics quality setting to max. We also overclocked the CPU to 3,5GHz (250×14) and left the memory to 1000MHz.

You can view screen shots from our settings above.

BENCHMARK RESULTS

Just to get a grip of what the above graphs actually tells us, we can compare it to the result we had in our Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 review. As you can see the HD 4770 is a clear winner in 3D Mark 06, whereas in Furmark and Lightsmark Gigabyte HD 4850 has an advantage. We will just have to see what happens in the real gaming scenarios below.

GAME TESTING PART 1

In this first part of the game testing, it becomes obvious that Gigabyte GV-R485SL-1GI is superior to the HD 4770. This might also indicate that the 1GB of RAM on the Gigabyte card is more important for the performance than the GDDR5 memory on the HD 4770 card.

GAME TESTING PART 2

The second part of the game testing includes more demanding games which really puts the card to the test. Just as we noted in the part 1, the amount of memory proves important and gives the HD 4850 a slight advantage. But overall these two cards are more or less equals in these games.

As a general conclusion we have to say that Gigabyte was right to equip the HD 4850 with 1GB of memory. In very demanding games and when using filters, the extra performance is needed. I therefore conclude that with a tighter budget, if you have to choose, then go with the Radeon HD 4850 with 1GB of memory rather than a Radeon HD 4770 with 512MB of GDDR5.

RESULTS OF THE OVERCLOCKING IN GAMES AND BENCHMARKS

Today we will be taking a closer look at one of ZOTAC’s medium range graphics cards, the “ZOTAC GTS 250 AMP!”. It comes overclocked directly from the factory and has a rather interesting price/performance ratio.

The graphics card industry has always been a jungle for most consumers. There are just so many models and manufacturers to choose from and it can be overwhelming to try to get a grip of the market. And graphics cards don’t come cheap. For a high end graphics card you will have to put up more cash than for a complete gaming console like Playstation 3. Therefore we decided to take a look at what we can expect in terms of performance and value from a card in the midrange segment.

INTRODUCTION

So let’s take a look at the specification of ZOTAC’s overclocked version of the NVIDIA GTS 250 chip:

The specifications of this GTS 250 remain far from the top models of the NVIDIA 200 series. Still, it is from the most recent generation of NVIDIA graphics cards. ZOTAC has not put too much work on this card, it is basically the same as NVIDIA:s reference model except for the increase of frequency of the GPU clock and memory speed.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

ZOTAC presents the GTS 250 AMP! in a big yellow box with a small window that allows us to see the cooler mounted on the card. On the box they let us know the specifications and that the card is from the AMP! series, which means that it’s factory overclocked. It also states that the game “XIII Century: Death or Glory” is incuded in the bundle. An extra point to ZOTAC for offering extended support and guarantee for five years, just by registering at their website.

On the back of the box, ZOTAC explains to us how the technologies of the NVIDIA GPU improve gaming experience and how the built in GPU accelleration helps performance in diverse applications. All the specifications are found at the sides of the box as well as the operating systems that it supports.

When opening the box we found we found two seperated sections, one for the card and a second for all the accessories that ZOTAC has included; DVI-HDMI adapter, DVI-VGA adapter and a 6 PCI-E pin adapter. Below these two sections we found all the manuals and the CDs with drives and applications.

ZOTAC GEFORCE GTS 250 AMP! IN DETAIL

The first thing we noticed with the card is that it carries the standard reference cooler from NVIDIA which covers the entire PCB and has a 80mm fan which blows in fresh air which makes its way across the entire PCB and finally dissapates out of the grid above the DVI connectors. The heatsink itself is made of aluminum and covers the GPU as well as the memory chips.

Something we find a bit annoying with all cards of the last generations is their size, especially their length. Because of it, these cards are often incompatible with smaller cases suited for HTPC use. The ZOTAC GTS 250 AMP! is no exception but it is still shorter than many other cards we have seen and this is also the reason why we used a little smaller case for this review.

When we removed the heatsink and took a closer look at the components mounted on the PCB we were happy to see that ZOTAC has included quality capacitors which should vouch for stability and long life length. We also noted that the 250 AMP! needs only one extra power connector attached to it to complete the 150W that it consumers (the rest is taken directly from the PCI-Express slot).

GAMES TESTING, PART 1

GAMES TESTING, PART 2

OVERCLOCKING RESULTS

Summary: AMD’s mid-range graphics cards are having great success. The AMD Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 is an example of this. It’s an excellent graphics card with a very inviting price.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the chance to take a look at a graphics card. So, we thought it was time now to end that drought and examine one of the new models that have flooded the market in recent months.

INTRODUCTION

Sapphire looked favorably upon our request and sent us one of today’s mid-range models with the best price/performance ratio: the HD 4770. AMD is doing well with its powerful HD 4000 series. After launching high-range and mid-range cards, it has introduced various intermediate models, starting with the HD 4830 and then the HD 4770. This completes a well-populated range of cards and makes it harder for buyers to choose a particular model.

The main difference between the HD 4770 and other models just above and below it on the performance scale (the HD 4850, HD 4830, and HD 4670 respectively), is that this card uses GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) memory to provide better bandwidth. This should let the HD 4770 obtain excellent results without having a wider bus, which would make it much more expensive. It also doesn’t need to operate at stratospheric speeds, which allows for better temperature control. Here’s a summary of the card’s technical specs:

Admittedly, the HD 4770 doesn’t have any really new feature that we haven’t already seen in other cards in the HD 4000 range. Its most interesting point is something we pointed out earlier, its good price/performance ratio. But maybe we’ve gotten a little ahead of ourselves. So we’ll need to see what it can offer in our tests.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Sapphire sent us a Radeon HD 4770 in its retail configuration, just like you’d find it in a store. The box’s serigraphy is very striking. The front lists many of the card’s features, the most outstanding of which is its 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. Another item that stands out is that the card is accompanied by various Cyberlink programs for digital leisure.

On the back, Sapphire details what it feels are the Radeon’s outstanding features. It also gives a brief explanation of the advantages of each of its technologies. And it lists prizes that make it one of the industry’s biggest award winners.

The first thing you find on opening the box is the card itself, perfectly protected in an antistatic plastic bag. The accessories are in a separate compartment. They include 3 CDs with drivers and software, a manual, a CrossFireX bridge and several adaptors: DVI to HDMI, DVI to VGA, Molex to PCI 6-pin connector, and S-Video to RGB. We can’t complain about the bundle that Sapphire has given its Radeon HD 4770!

A DETAILED LOOK AT THE SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 4770

As we mentioned in the introduction, Sapphire has given the Radeon HD 4770 a customized cooling system. In this case, it’s dual slot, and made of aluminum. It also added an 80 mm (3.15″) fan, which should make it run quietly. To complete the cooling system, it put an aluminum plate in the in the power regulation system to get better heat dissipation without having the unit cover the entire PCB.

This graphics card requires external power. This is supplied by a 6-pin PCI-E connector. It consumes about 125W, receiving up to 75 of additional power. It’s not overly long — about 206 mm (8.1″) — so you shouldn’t have much trouble installing it any kind of box

The card has the usual video outs, 2 DVI and 1 S-Video. In case your monitor doesn’t have DVI or you’re interested in another type of connection, Sapphire includes all the necessary adaptors with the accessories. No matter what, you should be able to have your own way.

The only thing worth mentioning on the back of the card is the light heatsink adaptor, which only needs 4 screws to be properly anchored.

INSTALLING THE TEST SETUP

It’s time to get to the heart of the matter. So, here’s the equipment and software that we used in our tests:

Since the processor sometimes limits the ability to test a graphics card, we decided to overclock it to 3.5 GHz, while lowering the memory speed to 1 GHz. Our Phenom II X4 920 didn’t disappoint us. Here are some results for different components:

In all the games, we used the highest possible resolution, first without filters and then with them. In many cases, we saw low performance figures, but it’s important to remember that we were very demanding in picking such high resolutions.

SYNTHETIC TEST RESULTS

Note: This figure, and others after it, use commas as a decimal point, instead of a period. So, the first result is 341.4.

We limited our synthetic tests to the 3 that we thought were the most representative. We were very satisfied with the results, above all the excellent score in the 3D Mark. Some other cards are more powerful, but if we add in the price variable, the HD 4770 scores very well.

REAL TESTS I

For this analysis and the following ones, we introduced new benchmarks to better reflect the card’s performance with state-of-the art games.

The card performed very well in these game tests. But these aren’t the most demanding ones in our test bench. Frame rates were excellent in all cases, allowing us to enjoy excellent quality play, with no surprises.

REAL TESTS II

We reserved our most demanding tests for this section. Here’s where we must note that the HD 4770 is a mid-range card, which can produce minimal frame rates of over 30. From the data we collected, we believe that especially at lower resolutions, it can let users enjoy games with a high graphic quality, but that it doesn’t have much to boast about in terms of overall game performance.

OVERCLOCKING AND TEMPERATURE

The ability to overclock is one of the most interesting factors when it comes time to choose a specific graphics card, above all when we’re talking about the mid range and are looking for some extra performance. In our case, we used Catalyst for overclocking and got pretty good results:

To measure working temperatures, we used GPU-Z and Furmark. We measured the temperature when the system was at rest, after being in the Windows desktop for 30 minutes without doing anything. For our test under load, we ran a 30-minute Furmark 1.7 session. Here are the results:

The measured temperatures were very good. Leaving the fan in auto mode didn’t cause any problems except at brief moments when its rotational velocity was over 35%.

TEST RESULTS WITH OVERCLOCK

To see the performance gain from overclocking, we used just 3 tests, but the results are definitely representative. The gain didn’t turn out to be too large. The 3D Mark 06 results show that, but with Far Cry 2 we can see that the frame rates increased, making that game run much better. You can’t do much with Crysis, which continues to be the most demanding game. There’s no remedy other than sacrificing graphics quality to play it without jerkiness.

CONCLUSIONS

A mid-range product is always a safe investment. In this range, we usually find products with the best price/performance ratio. That’s what Sapphire has shown with its Radeon HD 4770. Its price ranges from about $125-$140. Given the card’s good performance, it’s a must-buy if your budget is tight and you don’t demand the ultimate in playability.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 offers everything that any mid-range user needs, starting with its good included bundle and continuing with its cooling system. Its cooling is very effective, and except in extreme situations, is quiet. And we can’t forget its overclocking capability. Some of the frequencies it reached were more than acceptable, although we’re completely sure that simply installing some memory heatsinks could enable even higher frequencies.

To sum up, we can definitely recommend this card. As with us, it won’t leave you feeling cheated in any way.

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 Video Card” our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks to Sapphire for loaning us a Radeon HD 4770.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Ed Winograd