PC Zenith v4

As far as our benchmarks go, the new NVIDIA flagship, the GeForce GTX 295 looks very promising. Sure, skeptics from the ATI camp will say that these handpicked games may favor NVIDIA cards, and while that’s for debate, there’s no denying that the differences in performance are still rather drastic. Remember, we are not looking at minor 5% to 10% increases, but quite significant ones, ranging from 20% to over 50%.
However, what impressed even more was the suggested retail price as positioned by NVIDIA. Set to be launched at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 8, the GeForce GTX 295 will be available for US$499. While that is by no means cheap, it is quite a bargain considering it’ll cost less than a Radeon HD 4870 X2, which when we last checked recently, was going for around US$529. Will this force ATI into a price-drop? That looks likely and if so, then it will be sweet revenge for NVIDIA, won’t it? And of course that will bring more cheer to enthusiasts shopping for an ultra high-end graphics card. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 (Preview) @ HardwareZone

One can’t criticise much witch the nVidias revised GTX 260. The card on average works four to six percent faster then it’s predecessor and in pretty much the half the card is faster then AMD/ATIs Radeon HD 4870. Also the cooling solution isn’t to noisy. Overall the card gives you a lot of gaming performance and you can play games at high resolutions even with activated filtering options. The only problem is that with AMD/ATIs Radeon HD 4870 you get more frames per second for your money. On average the GTX 260 Core 216 is about CHF 50.- more expensive then it’s strongest rival. nVidia GeForce GTX260 @ OCaholic.ch (de)

While ATI has been releasing a constant stream of new GPUs based on their new RV770 foundation chip, NVIDIA has instead chosen the path of the dark side, taking the easy way out and renaming and rehashing old products. At the time of writing, we’ve just received a working sample of ATI’s soon-to-be-released Radeon HD 4830 that we suspect will go head-to-head with the GeForce 9800 GT. As of now, the gap between the HD 4850 and HD 4670 is simply too wide, leaving NVIDIA free rein that area with their 9800 GT and 9600 GSO models. In view of that, in order to stand up to the oncoming onslaught that is the Radeon HD 4830, ASUS needs their EN9800GT Matrix to be something special, but sadly, it isn’t. It showed a lot of promise, with some very nifty features such as the automatic throttling of GPU clockspeeds and memory voltages, but we discovered, much to our dismay, that it didn’t work as well as it should. More puzzling however is the disappointing performance put in by the card. Admittedly a 12MHz overclock might not be much, but we were taken aback by how it time and time again was bettered by the reference clocked Gigabyte 9800 GT. We expected it to be at least on par. ASUS EN9800GT Matrix @ HardwareZone

While the card is yet to appear on our local shores, local pricing in the states puts the card at around the $60 mark. How’s that compare against the 9500 GT which for the most part performs at twice the speed? Not great, since an extra 50% is going to literally yield you double the performance. And considering our thoughts on the 9500 GT, it doesn’t look good for the HD 4550. This is where it becomes hazy, though; is there anyone out there who’s really going to buy a HD 4550 for gaming? Well, we hope not, because the chances are you’re going to be severely disappointed, which means that the card isn’t exactly aimed for that particular market. The performance isn’t the only give away, though; the inclusion of the low profile bracket caters for a cliental that doesn’t game and the inclusion of the HDMI adapter means it’s an option for HT enthusiasts who want something that offers hardware decoding. Sapphire HD 4550 @ Tweaktown