PC Zenith v4

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

Unshackle your PC’s performance from the coin in your pocket as the SAPPHIRE HD 3870 liberates your inner gamer without compromising your wallet. Hard pressed to find a comparable product on the market for the price, the SAPPHIRE HD 3870 extinguishes all doubt that the Radeon HD 3870 core is a mid-range performing product. With features such as: DirectX® 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 support, integrated HDMI and HDCP support for Blu-ray™/HD DVD decoding and for the extreme enthusiast, CrossFire X™ support, the SAPPHIRE incarnation of the HD 3870 will own your imagination and accelerate your performance on the virtual battlefield of your desktop!  The Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3870 is currently going for about $249.99 US @ NewEgg, which puts it right inline with the lower end 8800 cards. This is about the ideal spot for the pricing seeing that the card performs at about the same level. Read full review plus many more expert and user reviews @ Testfreaks.

With the release of the Radeon HD 4870 1GB ATI is addressing a change in the marketplace created by the recent launch of the GeForce GTX 260 with 216 unified shaders. The Nvidia card was able to outperform the existing 512mb 4870 by a significant margin which the 1GB version closes and on occasion overturns.
The question of which card is better really comes down to the individual and the tasks they will be performing. In our test ATI had the edge when gaming at higher resolutions with anti-aliasing enabled, additionally the video related functionality such as Blu-Ray acceleration and HDMI solution is far better on the Radeon. The GTX however runs cooler and is more flexible for other desktop and gaming tasks such as video encoding and PhysX calculations. Read more @ DriverHeaven.

Stranica C&VG je objavila minimalnu, preporučljivu i optimalnu konfiguraciju potrebnu za nadolazeću 3D strategiju Starcraft 2. Premda neslužbeni podaci, iz specifikacija se da zaključiti da će Pixel Shared 2.0 kartica biti uvjet za ikakvo igranje.

Read the rest of this entry »