If there's one thing that's more true today than ever, it's that you can get some incredible gaming performance for not too much money. Taking a look at a GPU like a GeForce 9600 GT can prove that. At about $80, it's affordable for almost anyone, yet can handle some games with modest settings just fine at super high resolutions. There's definite value in GPU's today, and it's great to see. The next step-up from the previously mentioned card is of course the GeForce 9800 GT, which features a slower core and shader frequencies, but almost doubles the number of cores, effectively giving us a card that's close to being equivalent to the original GeForce 9800 GTX, save for higher frequencies. - Techgage
NVIDIA's GT200 series has had quite a rough ride since its introduction several months ago. First of all, it failed to hold its ground against ATI's RV770 based products. The GeForce GTX 260 with 192 shaders was slower than a Radeon HD 4870, while the GeForce GTX 280 couldn't match the performance of ATI's dual GPU based Radeon HD 4870 X2. Apart from less than stellar performance, there was the question of the rather high price. And just weeks after launch NVIDIA dropped prices significantly, but a bitter taste still remained, especially if you were one of the early adopters. In the meantime some things have changed for the better with NVIDIA stepping up for a new battle ahead. - FudZilla
NVIDIA is launching today their newest version of GeForce GTX 260 with 216 processors instead of 192 to better compete with the Radeon HD 4870. In fact NVIDIA is pitching to websites that this new GeForce GTX 260 is faster than the Radeon HD 4870 for the top latest games released recently. This refresh as we can somehow call it, comes right in time for the shopping period and brings back great performance to the NVIDIA camp to gain the hearts the gamers. And of course NVIDIA wants to show that with the newest games that are just released in combination with their new GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics card which will bump the gaming experience and performance. - Hardware Secrets
Even as the market for graphics boards heats up this holiday season we do see companies like ASUS making an attempt to stand out from the crowded retail shelves. Trying to get away from the standard reference design graphics boards, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix offers quite a bit above the rest including a custom cooler, overclocked specifications and software that will let users push the card even further. The GeForce 9800 GT edition from NVIDIA's line is actually a reincarnated GeForce 8800 GT. And it is a very confusing lineage that lends itself to a daytime soap opera. Though you can't argue with the results, their G92 based GeForce 9800 GT is a great performer for the price. - PC Perspective
XFX always had nice treats to offer, and its GeForce line-up was always packed with super fast cards. Overclocking is not only a thing for enthusiasts and those who increase speeds to see what their hardware can take. Many would surely like that, but there's always a risk of damaging your card. XFX realized that most users don't know how to overclock their graphics board, and that finding the optimum speed where the card will run stable but provide noticeable performance gain is not easy at all. Though this time XFX has taken that out of your hands by providing an already overclocked version. So today, we check out their GeForce 9600 GSO XXX edition, the fastest one in its series. - FudZilla
So we have heard that there is a big possibility that NVIDIA's dual GT200 55nm card that we mentioned before might slip to the first quarted of 2009 and launch in January. The graphics card was originally planned for December, but it looks like NVIDIA might not make it. Whenever such a card comes out, it will take the Radeon HD 4870 X2's performance crown, which is something that NVIDIA needs to operate under its parameters. The new board is likely to end up faster than the fastest ATI and NVIDIA will also bet on its better SLI optimisation, all in order to return the performance crown that it needs back so badly. And it has been quite some time now that NVIDIA is not figuring at the top of the chain. - FudZilla
If the GeForce 8800 GT was the gaming board made for the PC gaming masses everyman in 2007, well in 2008 it would be the Radeon HD 4850. The Radeon HD 4850 was the flagship initial release of the Radeon HD 4800 series, marking the a new resurgence of AMD in the discrete graphics card market. And it was the Radeon HD 4870 that wowed gamers by being able to keep up with the much more expensive GeForce GTX 280, and blew away even many more gamers with its impressive anti-aliasing ability. Though released at virtually the same time, the Radeon HD 4870's little brother was the product that offered some great high-end performance at a price point that was affordable by most. - NeoSeeker
With ATI continuing to dominate the top end graphics cards market, they are releasing boards left, right and centre, to get even a firmer grasp on the top end of the industry. And indeed since their Radeon HD 3800 series the tables turned a bit in favor of ATI when it comes to the price to performance ratio. Now that is even more so with their Radeon HD 4800 series which offer even a better ratio, and can take on the competition easily. On that aspect AMD has swiftly moved their strategy and been able to regain again their part of the market share they had lost before. Now today we're looking at their Radeon HD 4830 card, which promises some top performance with a reasonable price tag. - XSReviews
NVIDIA has stopped producing their 65nm based GeForce GTX 260 with 192 shaders and all the GeForce GTX 260 that are coming from now on are 55nm and have 216 shaders. These cards will be available in early December and we are quite sure that they will overclock much better than the old ones. NVIDIA doesn't want to let ATI walk away without a fight and it's preparing a surprise or two for this month. The old GeForce GTX 260 with 192 shaders, the one that is clearly slower than Radeon HD 4870, is going for retirement and it will be replaced by the new GeForce GTX 260 with 216 shaders and most of these cards will end up with 55nm chips which will bring some extra performance. - FudZilla
NVIDIA spokeman said it during the last conference call, which was confirmed afterwards, and we still had to go out and try to find if the 55nm production process they mentioned was about G92b or GT200 chips. Well now, we can finally say that in the last quarter of this year NVIDIA plans to ship many GT200 55nm GPU's and it looks like they will silently replace the old 65nm parts. Most new GeForce GTX 260 with 216 shaders and upcoming GeForce GTX 280 will be based on the new 55nm chips but it looks that NVIDIA does have a plan to increase the speed on the new products. Retail products based on 55nm chips are yet to be ship but we expect them in early December. - FudZilla
The lucrative high-end video card market is one that is hotly contested between the graphics juggernauts at AMD and NVIDIA. Both companies have continually outperformed one another at different times, and the constant struggle has lead to different philosophies in graphics chip manufacturing and even graphics card design. While NVIDIA has focused on making larger, and more powerful single graphics processors, AMD has taken the approach of adding two GPU's onto a single graphics card. Of course NVIDIA has done that in the past as well with a certain success. We will be looking at one of these dual GPU cards today which is made by ASUS, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 TOP version. - PCStats
Being king of the hill is such a fleeting thing most of the time. The battle to get there is often arduous, and the taste of victory is sweet, but it is usually short lived, succumbing to the one behind you in their quest to reach the top. And so it goes, and the cycle extends to graphics cards to be sure, ATI and NVIDIA forever battling like two Titans. And titans they are since a while now with great and powerful products. Today we'll be looking at the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card. It has been out for a while now, but it still certainly appears to be a card worthy to sit atop the mountain. Indeed, it features two GPU's on one card, and is gigantic, in more ways than one. - PureOC
Just like any other industry, computer hardware has its trends and fashions, and at the moment it well and truly seems that black is the new black. Ever since AMD launched their multiplier unlocked Black edition Phenom CPU's, there seem to be more companies looking to get in on that particular trend. The latest company to make use of this Black edition moniker is XFX, and today we'll be taking a look at a board boasting just such a name. The subject of our article is the GeForce 9800 GTX+ Black edition, which makes use of the latest, die shrunk version of NVIDIA's now well entrenched G92 chipset, throws in some factory overclocks and ships with a bundled copy of Far Cry 2 game. - Elite Bastards
The Rampage 700 is surely Gainward's rather unorthodox version of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card. The main thing that sets it apart from the reference card is its cooler. The reference design relies on a large dual slot cooler which covers the entire length of the card. It manages to keep GPU temperatures under 90°C, and although it's not too loud, it's not something we'd characterize as quiet either. Its biggest drawback is relatively low overclocking potential which results from the rather high core temperatures. Gainward's Rampage 700 on the other hand, manages to stay cooler although it's overclocked. There's a price to pay for better cooling performance and it's obvious at first glance, it's an immense card which takes up three slots on your motherboard. - FudZilla
Indeed today we are looking at the Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics card from Sapphire. Odds are that when you think ATI you think Sapphire as they are the number one maker of graphics cards for ATI. The Radeon HD 4850 is based upon the same RV770 chipset as also used on the faster Radeon HD 4870, but comes at lower clock settings. Sapphire is ver well known and actually the best partner of ATI to bring their graphics solution on the market. With the Radeon HD 4800 series they are ready to take on NVIDIA and this with a price tag that is really going to make some difference. And this is actually the new policy at ATI, great products with good gaming performance at nice pricing. - XtremeComputing
The past year or so has been quite an exciting one in the graphics card industry. Exactly one year ago, NVIDIA released the G92 graphic processing unit, a die shrink of their flagship processor, G80. This one had held the performance crown for well over a year, but with ATI getting back on track they needed something cheaper to compete in the middle end segment. The GeForce 8800 GT admirably accomplished this role back then. Fast forward to the end of this past summer, the green team ended up, once again in the same situation. Now they needed something to counter the surprisingly affordable Radeon HD 4850 as well as the new Radeon HD 4830 and it had to be rolled out quickly. - Overclockers Club
Only days ago we heard of an announcement by Palit that they will soon release their own Radeon HD 4870 X2 version. Today we bring you the full view. The Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe as it is called is the first graphics card to feature a triple slot cooling solution, at least as far as we know. Now Palit has also increased the clock speed on the memory to offset their new product even further from the competition's offerings. And another exclusive feature is the output configuration, which has a quite unique setup which can please each and every end-user. This is a very nice innovation which we certainly can appreciate. It is surely something to have a closer look at, and find out the difference. - techPowerUp
Sapphire is a familiar face throughout the PC industry. Just last month we had the opportunity to look at their Radeon HD 4850 Toxic edition, and while the top end ATI cards have received a good bit of attention, some of the entry cards bring a lot to the table as well. Today we have the opportunity to check out one of these entry level cards, the Radeon HD 4550. While not as powerful as its older siblings, the Radeon HD 4550 carries a much smaller price tag at around $60. While it obviously won't be a record breaker, it has all of the makings of a great value for those home theatre PC's. And that is exactly where this graphics card will play a great role and show its strength. - Overclockers Online
The release of the new generation of AMD cards in the form of Radeon HD 4800 series and the GT200 for NVIDIA was rather interesting event, since the both companies were preparing new cores for their cards, cores promising ultra high performance and even better price to performance ratios. The competing models were released almost simultaneously, thus raising many eyebrows with the obvious question behind this act. How do they compare to each other? Since they are interesting to the end users even by themselves alone, they are also destined to determine how much would the price of the older, very successful models so far drop as well as the performance difference. - ModReactor
Galaxy is a familiar brand to many gamers, but it is certainly not one of the best known. Galaxy also operates in America under the name of video card vendor KFA². This is somehow done for the reason that Galaxy is already known in their region, though the name doesn't sound good enough for the US market. To get a better grip on the market they have reinvented themselves and will hit hard to their rightful place. Though for us Galaxy isn't really a stranger at all and have already a good reputation which they can present us. The GeForce GTX 260+ Overclock edition adds a nice entry to Galaxy's modest product lineup, but does it add value to an already crowded performance video card market? - HardOCP
We have all had our pockets first picked by rising gas prices, then have received a swift kick in the balls by gutted investments and finally getting a slap to the face by the rising prices of damn near everything. This beatdown has led nearly every industry to the realization that the average consumer either can't or just doesn't want to afford the best of the best anymore. We see this playing out quite well in the computer component industry with falling prices and more value oriented products. Gone are the days of the $800 GPU, they have been replaced by efficient, lower cost products which appeal to a broader market while still achieving performance numbers to be proud of. - Hardware Canucks
The bionic frog is back again, only this time with a few tricks up his metallic sleeve. This new version of our frobot commando features dual BIOS, which enables the smart switch to shift between stock and turbo speeds. Also onboard are dual DVI heads, HDMI and a DisplayPort. This video card is actually based upon the reference Radeon HD 4870 reference design though features a different cooling solution. We take not one, but two of these bad boys out for a spin in a CrossFireX setup and tell you whether or not the smart switch is worth your time. Find out with us whether or not this card has just what it takes to leap forward to crush the competition, or will just run at a cooler pace. - Techware Labs
AMD recently unleashed the new mid-range video cards of the Radeon HD 4600 series of the Radeon family. Unlike NVIDIA, who started their GeForce 9 series at the mid-range level, AMD is following the success of the higher-end Radeon HD 4800 cards with several mainstream cards, including the Radeon HD 4650 and HD 4550 versions. The folks at Sapphire were recently kind enough to send us an overclocked sample of one of these mid-range cards, the Radeon HD 4650. It will be interesting to see what difference it can make on game play. We will look at how this video card fairs against its older brothers, as well as NVIDIA's mainstream offerings from the GeForce 9 family. - BIOSLevel
We have checked out ATI's Radeon HD 4550 low-end graphics card already and found it to be a nice solution for Linux users on a budget, but how does NVIDIA's competitor contend? Well in this article we are looking at the NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT from Sparkle. This graphics card has 1GB of DDR2 memory along with DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. This is a low-end card that comes with good features to replace those on-board graphics cards, providing some extra performance at a very nice price tag. It should be able to play games but don't expect too much, though it will be silent and good for multimedia applications and as such very useful for making a home theatre box. - Phonorix
Today we get to play with something interesting, its ECS's new SLI water cooled setup, the ECS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra version. And this is a package that contains two GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics cards that are water cooled with an easy radiator setup is all set to blow you away. This means that this Hydra pack, is actually an SLI solution, that gives you two cards with the appropriate cooling to enjoy greater performance at low temps and noise. This is a special pack, since you are not just buying one card alone, but two which means you need to have an SLI capable mainboard to enjoy its power. So just keep that in mind, if else you will be investing in something useless. - t-break
Sapphire is back again with another specialty graphics card based on a high-end ATI Radeon GPU version. The newly released Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB graphics card incorporates a pair of Radeon HD 4850 graphics processors and 2GB of GDDR3 memory on a custom PCB to create one serious looking piece of equipment. The core and memory clock speeds are both set to the reference Radeon HD 4850 settings, but the most obviously appeal is that you have the horsepower of two cards on a single PCB. Each graphics processor has 1GB of memory to work with, and the theoretical bandwidth is double what you would get with just one graphics card, which is a damn nice feature. - BigBruin
ASUS 9800GTX+ (DK) PCIe 512MB - Rev 01
