The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 comes with a high end dual slot cooler, 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and increased clocks at a price tag of $199. This winning combination gets very close in performance to the much more expensive HD 3870 and can even surpass it when overclocked.
Even though the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS comes with just 96 shaders and 12 ROPs it can easily compete with AMD HD3850 and HD3870. The card offers great price/performance and is very very quiet. With up to 30% overclocking this card is every overclocker's dream being able to surpass the much more expensive 8800 GT when overclocked.
AMD's Radeon HD 3850 Series has been on the market for a while now. Add-in-Board Partners are constantly looking for ways to seperate themselves from the competition and that's why Sapphire has engineered a Radeon HD 3850 with 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory and faster core clock out of the box. But can a card like this really benefit from 1 GB of video memory?
The PowerColor HD 3870 SCS3 Edition is a completely passively cooled Radeon HD 3870. This makes the card an excellent choice for a quiet Media PC computer. What is really amazing is that the passive card runs up to 25°C cooler than the reference design which uses a fan.
The HIS Radeon 3870 X2 combines the power of two ATI RV670 GPUs into one to reach for the performance throne in single card processing power. Even tough the implementation has some minor limitations the overall product is certainly interesting and can maybe bring AMD back in the game.
Sapphire's new HD 3870 Atomic Edition is a special version of the Radeon HD 3870 with a single slot cooler. This is only possible because Sapphire uses a new cooling technology called Vapor-X cooling that improves cooling performance considerably while keeping noise down. Another plus of this card is that it comes overclocked out of the box with full warranty.
Diamond has designed their HD 3850 Ruby Edition with additional cooling performance in mind. Their cooler is a custom dual-slot solution which does quite a good job at keeping the card cool. In addition to that the memory has been doubled to 512 MB of GDDR3.
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB which is based on the G92 GPU that has already been used on the GeForce 8800 GT. To our excitement our testing revealed that this $299 card can almost beat the much more expensive GeForce 8800 GTX while generally being quieter and less power hungry.
Sapphire's new HD 3870 card is based on AMD's RV670 GPU which is made in a 55 nm process with 666 million transitors and support for DirectX 10.1 and PCI-Express 2.0. This card that is sold for around $249 is intended to be AMD's new offering for an upper midrange card - but can it beat the GeForce 8800 GT?
PowerColor's new HD3850 Xtreme is full of customization compared to the reference design. Instead of two DVI ports it has one DVI and one HDMI port which supports HD video playback with HDCP and digital audio straight off the GPU. In addition to that a custom cooler by Zerotherm ensures that the card stays cool no matter what you throw at it. Another bonus is that the memory size has been doubled to 512 MB of 1.0 ns GDDR3 memory.
AMD's new Radeon HD 3850 has been a major upgrade in both performance and efficiency. GeCube has taken the reference design and increased the clock speeds. They also doubled the available memory to 512 MB GDDR3 and use a two slot cooler on the card. But can this yield enough performance to warranty a $30 price premium? We compare it to 17 other video cards.
The Zotac GeForce 8800 GT comes equipped with NVIDIA's latest G92 GPU. Unlike the NVIDIA reference design, Zotac's card is running at a higher clock of 660 MHz which gives this card a nice performance boost. With a price point of only $249 and performance that is close to the 8800 GTX, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT is going to be one of the big sellers this year.
VVIKOO is a new videocard manufacturer based in Paris offering both NVIDIA and ATI cards. One of their first products is the GeForce 8600 GT Turbo, which is an overclocked version of NVIDIA's 8600 GT. The card comes equipped with a quiet Zalman cooler and offers great overclocking potential. In our testing we could increase the clocks by more than 40% over NVIDIA's reference clocks.
Matrox has made some waves with their recent release of the DualHead2Go Digital GXM module, but the TripleHead2Go Analog has one great feature which the dual display variant lacks: Surround Gaming. We fire up a classic and a brand new game, to show you what you could be gaming on with the TripleHead2Go GXM module.
Biostar is the first manufacturer to put 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory on a GeForce 8600 GTS card, which usually comes with 256 MB. Since GDDR3 memory is expensive, the card retails for around $50 more than the regular variant. Are 256 MB additional video memory worth the price difference?
Zotac's new GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition is running without any form of active cooling. It also has an audio input which allows you to feed external audio into the HDMI stream which is output via DVI plus an adapter, which is included of course. For a price of $129, or about $10 over a regular 8600 GT you will get several added benefits for very little extra cost.
Matrox made some waves with their GXM (Graphics eXpansion Modules) when they where first released, starting with the DualHead2Go. This module enabled dual monitor use with a single output. Their newest addition is the DualHead2Go Digital, which uses DVI as output method to allow higher resolutions. We try the device in Windows XP and Mac OS X using two 19 inch DVI based LCD montors.
ATI's new Radeon HD 2400 XT comes with the RV610 GPU which is built in 65nm. This means the GPU is cheap to make and consumes very little power. AMD has also added several new power savings features which makes this card one of the least power hungry on the market. For a price of only $79 you will be able to play back HD videos on almost any CPU using an HDMI + HDCP + Audio link with the UVD HD video acceleration hardware.
Powercolor's Radeon HD 2400 Pro uses AMD's new RV610 GPU with 256 MB of DDR2 memory. With its special video acceleration features and low-profile PCB design the card seems to be a good choice for small form factor media PC systems.
The HD 2600 XT is AMD's new midrange flagship card which is based on the RV630 GPU. This is the first time that a midrange card comes equipped with GDDR4 memory - 256 MB in our case. AMD's new card comes with features such as DirectX 10 support and full HD video acceleration by dedicated hardware called UVD. But is this enough to beat NVIDIA's new products?
Zotac's new GeForce 8800 GTX OC Edition comes factory overclocked with clocks of 630 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory. This is a nice increase over the standard NVIDIA clocks, especially if you consider the small $20 premium and that you don't lose your warranty. For users who are not willing to spend a lot of money for a GeForce 8800 Ultra this card seems to be a viable alternative.
AMD's new flagship video card is the Radeon HD 2900 XT which is based on the brand-new R600 GPU. It comes at an amazing $399 price point and offers many unique features. While performance may not be as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX, its price will definitely make this card a good choice for users who are looking for the best price/performance ratio.
Twintech's new GeForce 8600 GTS is based on the NVIDIA reference design using the G84 GPU. It comes with 256 MB of fast GDDR3 memory clocked at 1 GHz, the graphics processor runs at 675 MHz. This is the first DirectX 10 card for the midrange segment with its price tag of around $210.
Zotac is a new player in the NVIDIA video card business and one of their first new cards is the GeForce 8500 GT which is based on NVIDIA's brand-new G86 graphics processor. Unlike the reference design Zotac's card is factory overclocked to a GPU clock of 700 MHz which gives the card a healthy performance boost for a price increase of about $10.
