Today AMD launches their new cards based on the RV730 graphics processor. The Powercolor PCS HD 4670 we have on our testbench today comes with a dual slot heatsink which offers excellent cooling and low noise. Together with the serious gaming performance of this card, AMD has managed to successfully position their product in the sub-$100 segment.
Powercolor's latest HD 4850 PCS graphics card is based on the AMD HD 4850 reference design but comes with an improved cooler and slightly increased core clocks. While the overclock makes only a small performance difference, the cooler substantially improves the product. Even under load the PCS 4850 is barely audible which makes it the quietest graphics card ever tested - of all performance classes.
The new TV Wonder 600 PCIe TV tuner card is the PCI-Express x1 entry level model of the new series. This is also the first time that the TV Wonder series is available in Europe with the PAL standard. It can be used for analog or DVB-T signals and manages MPEG encoding by software. The card is built on a fancy purple PCB, comes with an extremely stylish IR receiver along with a remote and PowerCinema 5.
AMD has moved the launch date of the HD 4850 forward, launching it today. The cards are positioned in the $200 range and offer several new features and performance improvements. According to our benchmark results AMD has found a winner with this card that offers excellent price/performance and energy efficiency.
AMD's new HD 3650 is basically an improved version of the 2600 XT without any major technological advances other than a smaller die size resulting in cheaper cards. PowerColor's HD 3650 Extreme comes equipped with 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and runs at higher clocks than the AMD reference design.
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.
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.
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.
ATI's Radeon X1650 was introduced with the X1950 XTX and the X1300 XT. Just what is this card? As the name suggests, it is a little step up from the X1600 XT. With the same amount of pipelines, and slightly higher clocks, is there anything to look forward to with the X1650 Pro? No doubt, this card at least runs cooler - insured by a smaller manufacturing process. Does it bring balanced performance at a fair price? How does it fair compared to the X1300 XT? Most importantly, is it worth buying?
The X1800 GTO cards use regular X1800XL chips with just 12 rasterizing pipelines instead of 16. Clocks are still at 500 MHz for both memory and core. We tested this card and found it is an overclocker's dream. Even though we could not unlock the extra pipelines, the card still overclocks very well, in our case to over 700 MHz on air cooling.
Powercolor (Tul's graphic card division) is no newcomer to the graphic card segment. Over the years, it has built up a strong reputation, which it is constantly improving. In the past weeks, we were all able to notice that Powercolor started offering a "lifetime" guarantee on their X1900 series cards. Today, we take a look at the opposite side of the X1000 spectrum - the low end X1300. But perhaps low end is not the correct word. The card comes pre-overclocked to a massive 600 MHz compared to ATI's default of 450 MHz. Using HyperMemory technology the VGA memory can be expanded from 128 MB to 512 MB.
