Value Meets Performance: HD 4890 Cards from Gigabyte and MSI

With ATI’s 5000-series releases coming fast and furious as of late, it seems like everyone is more than anxious to totally forget about the venerable 4800-series. Believe it or not, even amidst the dizzying number of 5800 and 5700 cards on the market the HD 4890 1GB has fit perfectly into ATI’s new lineup at a price of around $200. We all know by now that it doesn’t have the latest compatibility for DX11 but there won’t be any worthwhile next-generation games on the market for the next few months at least. It is also worthwhile remembering that DX11 games will be backwards compatible with DX10 hardware which means the purchase of a HD 4890 now won’t mean you will be totally shut out of playing upcoming games either. So, while everyone is drooling over the latest, greatest and expensive cards, we’re going towards a different end of the spectrum because we believe that there is still a strong and healthy market out there for a $200 DX10 / DX10.1 card. ATI and their board partners must be thinking the same thing since the HD 4890 won’t be discontinued until at least the second quarter of 2010 and supposedly the boards are selling better than ever. This is why we have decided to feature a pair of custom cooled, mildly overclocked yet highly affordable HD 4890 1GB cards in this review. Even though it has been out for a while, the MSI HD 4890 1GB Cyclone OC (yes, it’s a mouthful) looks like a product that everyone has been asking for: a high performance ATI card that doesn’t pump out noise akin to a dust buster. There are other HD 4890 cards in the MSI Cyclone stable as well, namely a stock-clocked card that retails for about $200 and one that has its core overclocked to a stratospheric 1GHz. The latter is nearly impossible to find in North America but our OC edition sporting a mostly pointless 30Mhz overclock is readily available at a number of retailers throughout Canada and the US. Gigabyte on the other hand sent us a HD 4890 OC card which carries their Ultra Durable VGA moniker as well as slightly increased clock speeds. Supposedly, Ultra Durable series of cards carry higher quality components than their reference brethren meaning longer component life, decreased power consumption and increased overclocking capabilities. This card also carries Gigabyte’s custom cooling solution. Interestingly enough, all of these features don’t carry with them a huge price premium since the GV-R489OC-1GD commands a mere $15 price premium over a reference-based card. Even though we won’t be considering this a head-to-head competition, these cards share remarkably similar clock speeds, prices and features. If anything, it should be apparent that the $200 price bracket is now even more hotly contested than it was a month ago and the competition between board partners is translating into some great deals for potential customers.

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Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 Review

The Intel socket 1156 processors have been out for about a month and a half now and have proven to be capable performers with some pretty decent overclocking credentials. Both the Core i5 750 and the Core i7 8 series processors have seen the far side of 4GHz with regularity when overclocked. Sure, the socket 1366 processors can do this, but there is a cost to enter that hardware level with not as many breaking that 4GHz clock speed stably. Cost is a big concern in our still troubled economy, so the option to go with a socket 1156 system offers a way to get comparable performance at a lower price. Cost for the i7 860 is roughly the same as the socket 1366 i7 920, and with the 860 offering a higher operating clock speed, processor cost is comparable, therefore savings savings can be found primarily on the motherboard and memory. You can find a great 4GB set of memory for around $100 and a motherboard from $110 to $250 for a full featured board. The range of prices for the X58 Socket 1366 chips and motherboards start and end noticeably higher. So there is the cost savings!

While Gigabyte offers boards for both socket types, the fact is that they have a full line of motherboards (eleven total) based on Intel's P55 Express chipset to fit just any price or performance point. The GA-P55-UD6 is at the top of the food chain and is the full featured board in the line up. This board is built using Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 construction that all starts with the PCB that uses 2-oz copper ground and power layers for lower impedance, better efficiency and lower operating temperatures. Add lower RDS(on) MOSFETs, Japanese solid capacitors and a 24-phase VRM circuit and it looks like the enthusiasts are well taken care of. But there are others that can use the features this board has, such as the Smart Dual BIOS, Smart Dual LAN, High Definition sound, a combination of eSATA and USB I/O panel connections, and Smart TPM so you can protect your data. Couple that with comprehensive list of software utilities, such as Easy Tune 6, Smart 6, and DES2 and you really do have a full featured board for the masses. The question is whether the 24-phase VRM design will offer any increase in clock speed over designs with fewer phases when not on the edge with LN₂ or a cascade! Let's see what she's got!

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Intel Core i7 / LGA1366 CPU Cooler Roundup

After a small hiatus from our CPU cooling reviews, we are back with a vengeance and a brand new testing methodology to boot. In keeping with our new methodologies, we’ve decided to go for broke and do a roundup of no less than seven of the latest CPU coolers. By now you should all know that the CPU heatsink market is as cut-throat as they come with new technologies or methods being few and far between. There are plenty of people out there who have claimed again and again that air cooling just can’t get any better. However, it seems that as every year passes, we see air coolers taking new strides towards thermal efficiency. If anything, this roundup will be divided into two separate categories: the high end air coolers that cost more than a budget CPU and the products that don’t cost and arm and a testicle but nonetheless promise performance that is equal to or better than their big brothers. First up in the heavy weight division and looking to take the crown away from ProlimaTech we have the ZALMAN CNPS10X Extreme cooler. Not to be outdone or be accused of sitting back on their laurels we have ANOTHER Prolimatech cooler with the Mega Shadow Deluxe Edition which looks to be even more impressive than its predecessor. If that isn’t interesting enough for you, the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme is also looking for the crown. Rounding out the big boys is our dark horse contender: the ZeroTherm Nirvana 120. With the top of the fight card filled with uncompromising behemoths, we are going to set our sights on the other crown (and the one that many people think is more interesting AND important): the best bang for your buck cooling. In this arena, we feel the Cooler Master 212+ already reigns supreme with its combination of a kick ass stock fan, awesome base finish and its amazing ability to cool hot systems. Challenging this cooler we have the Cogage TRUE Spirit, the Kingwin XT-1264, and the Spire TherMax 2. If you are a fan of mixed fighting styles this head to head should be right up your alley. We not only have a “lite” version of the venerable TRUE 120 (with its solid base design) but two HDT coolers both with their own unique take on what a HDT cooler should look like. As with the big boys we have questions about the noise of the fan each of these companies have selected and their cooling ability, but to us the really important question with these CPU cooling solution is: are they not only worth their asking price? This is certainly going to be one heck of a ride. While this is a major undertaking, we promise that we will give you a clear and concise picture of these coolers and that this will NOT be the case of “too much of a good thing”. If all this is not enough of a challenge we will also be introducing noise measurements to the fan section so you can get an even more accurate idea of a given product’s true colours long before spending any of your hard earned money. So without further ado lets get things rolling by introducing in a bit more detail the seven coolers that comprise this round-up.

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MSI P55-GD80 LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

Back in July we reviewed our very first MSI motherboard, the 790FX-GD70, and we were quite impressed with it. That motherboard represented a new direction for MSI. No more gaudy bright red PCB, pink memory slots, or acid-trip inspired chipset coolers (*cough* P45 Platinum). Instead we had a conservative black & blue theme, a low-key but capable cooling system, terrific features, and solid overclocking capabilities. MSI had finally figured how to tug at our enthusiast heart strings. Thankfully, that same philosophy applies to the motherboard that we are reviewing today, except they have kicked things up a few notches. As the Top of the Line model in MSI's LGA1156 roster, the P55-GD80 has been designed to surpass the best that the competition has to offer, and it's got one heck of specs list. It supports all current Lynnfield LGA1156 processors, has an advanced DrMOS 8+2 phase power design, four DDR3 memory slots with frequency support up to DDR3-2133 (O.C), three mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, CrossFire and SLI support, dual Gigabit LAN ports and a host of other features. It also comes with MSI's new OC Genie real-time overclocking processor with accompanying OC Genie & DirectOC buttons and even touch-sensitive onboard power/reset switches. For that bit of added "bling" MSI uses phase LEDs for every major component, a post code debug display and quite a bit more. Our Canuck readers will also be glad to know that all Canadian RMAs are processed through MSI's facility in Ontario, which should mean quick replacements and no customs worries. Even though the P55 lineup was only brought into the limelight a few short months ago, manufacturers have been extremely quick to jump onto the bandwagon and release full board lineups. Even though the P55-GD80 represents the pinnacle of their current offerings, MSI has priced this board extremely well considering the current market climate. It caters to enthusiasts with a bucket load of features and some great overclocking potential but retails for far under that of Gigabyte's flagship P55-UD6 or ASUS' own P7P55D Premium and Maximus III. Indeed, its primary competition is the ASUS P7P55D Deluxe and the Gigabyte P55-UD5 which are in the same price bracket and offer similar features. Now it's time to see whether the P55-GD80 lives up to its promise, and surprise us the way the 790FX-GD70 did. Let's find out!

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Sapphire HD 5850 Review

ATI dropped a bomb on the graphics card world with the Sapphire HD 5870 so it would only be a short while before the follow-up came out in the form of the Sapphire HD 5850. Based on the same "Cypress" RV870 core the HD 5850 should offer performance that scales well in games and some much needed shoring up of the performance in the $250 price range. The Sapphire HD 5850 is built using the same 40nm process and comes equipped with the same 2.15 Billion transistors and 1GB of GDDR5 memory as the HD 5870. Clock speeds come in at a reasonable 1000MHz on the memory and 725MHz on the core giving up a hefty amount of speed to the 5870 in the clock speed department. As the second DX 11 video card to market ATI is ramping up a full DX 11 lineup for the future of gaming even though the DX 11 titles have not made it to market yet. The HD 5850 has more in store as ATI is making the move to compete with Nvidia in the GPU compute market while offering improved graphics performance in DX9/10/10.1 titles.

Let's find out if the Sapphire HD 5850 has the same thoroughbred heritage as the HD 5870 and how well it competes against the latest video cards from Nvidia and the last generation of ATI video cards. If performance is close to that delivered by the 5870, then ATI and its partners including the biggest of them all, Sapphire, has delivered a one / two punch that currently puts the cards at the top of the performance ladder! Let's get to it!

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Sapphire HD 5770 and 5750 Review

ATI had just dropped a bomb on the boys in green with the release of the HD 5870 that usurped the single GPU performance crown that nVidia has had a stranglehold on for the last few years and the company has now quickly followed up with the Juniper based HD 5770 and HD 5750 to fill a gap in the price/performance wars. The latest cards form Sapphire are DirectX 11 ready, support Windows 7 and are built on a 40nm fabrication process to both reduce costs and provide lower energy consumption. The HD 5770 features exactly half the stream processors (800), texture units (40) and ROPs(16) that its big brother, the HD 5870, carries into battle. The HD 5750 is built much the same way but the card itself has half the parts of the HD 5850. So just where will these cards fall when it comes time to start fraggin zombies or beginning the move to using your GPU as a computing tool? Based on the specifications, the HD 5770 and HD 5750 should offer up either half the performance of the HD 5870 and HD 5850, respectively. Let's hop to it and find out!

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