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Reviews Around The Web
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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Today we are looking at the brand new XFX GTX 280 video card. This is now the top end video card from XFX pushing the 9800 GX2 down a notch in the NVIDIA line. The XFX GTX 280 is a high performance video card by anyone's standards. It is bested slightly in 3DMark 06 and some gaming tests by the highly overclocked 9800 GX2 video cards like the XFX 9800 GX2 Black Edition and ASUS EN9800GX2 Top. I can't wait to see what the XFX GTX 280 can do in SLI and 3-way SLI, the latter is something the 9800 GX2 couldn't do.
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Today's review is brought to you by the letters W, T, Q, and the number 3. W is for Wolf, that's me; T is for Thermaltake, who sent me the review sample for today; and Q is for QFan, a specially designed fan that Thermaltake believes will decrease fan noise in your standard power supply while maintaining efficient cooling. While the Q in QFan could stand for many things, like Quality or Quigley: Down Under, the Q actually stands for Quiet. We'll have to see if this fabled QFan of yore can be heard over the yowling, screaming exhaust fan in the old load tester, won't we?
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Overall the GeForce GTX 280 graphics card was a winner in our books and it made a difference while gaming, which is the most important thing. The game we noticed the performance gains the most was actually Age of Conan when we cranked up the image quality at a resolution of 1920x1200 . Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures passed the astounding 'One Million Copies Shipped' milestone in less than three weeks after the game's launch, so that is a huge potential market in the months to come...
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The new Zotac NVIDIA 280GTX (AMP Edition) arrived Technic3D. The High-End "Single" Graphic Card with a Silent Dual Slot Heatsink better than all the other Graphic Cards and the reference at the moment? Technic3D will see the G200 Chip in the following Review with 2560x1600 up to 1280x1024 against the 9800GX2, HD3870X2 CrossfireX and many more.
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NVIDIA unleashes GeForce GTX 280 hell. A beast from the Underworld or a mere shadow of G80? We tell you.
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Hot on the heels of a rapid-succession GeForce 9800 GX2 and GeForce 9800 GTX launch only two short months ago, NVIDIA now officially unveils the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 video cards. Using the fastest and most-powerful graphics processor NVIDIA has ever developed, both new GeForce products are constructed from a freshly-minted GT200 graphics processor. Both the GTX 280 and GTX 260 products position themselves at the very highest segment of the GeForce product line. NVIDIA Estimates that the GeForce GTX 280 will be introduced at $649, while the similarly powerful GeForce GTX 260 will enter the $399 price point. If the competition ever had a very good reason to be concerned with their future, it would be right now.
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With the release of nVidia's latest GTX 200 platform today, we see a possibility of tremendous change one more time- although its more on the lines of evolutionary than revolutionary. The GPU continues its war against the CPU with nVidia delivering the CUDA platform that allows your graphics card to offload a lot more stuff from the CPU in a much easier fashion. And its bitchin fast for gaming as well. Lets say hello to the two lovely ladies- the nVidia GeForce GTX 260 and the GTX 280.
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Currently the fastest performing dual GPU product is the 9800 GX2 and in the single GPU arena the 8800 Ultra still leads the way, even if availability is very limited. Despite having the fastest cards available Nvidia are not content to wait on the competition catching them and today we have the release of new high end and mainstream products, the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280. We have two of these new products in our test labs today. The first is Zotacs GTX 280 AMP! Edition, a factory overclocked sample of the high end model and the other is a reference design GTX 260. We will be testing with a selection of the latest games at resolutions up to 2560x1600 as well as delving into some Blu-Ray playback and card overclocking in order to establish how much of an improvement they are, if any, over the last generation of Nvidia hardware.
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Today NVIDIA launches their new GTX 280 graphics cards. Zotac as one of NVIDIA's premier partners has engineered a factory overclocked version of the GTX 280 which offers additional performance. Overall the Zotac GTX 280 Amp Edition is the fastest graphics card on the planet today, but also the most expensive.
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Feeling a little underwhelmed with the initial GTX 280 results, I took the time to make my way over to the IBuyPower Australia bunker to let the card have a bit more breathing room. While our 3GHz test bed is quite modest and a good indication of performance for the everyman or woman, there is of course people out there who are a bit more hardcore and do have a few more dollars to splash about. Since the card has just been released, we thought it was the perfect time to really see what the card was capable of in a very nicely overclocked QX9650 rig carrying with it a 10 x 400MHz FSB combination. At this speed we had a Swiftech water cooling setup attached which caused the CPU to stay below 47c on all four cores. We had found our rig, and now it was time to see what kind of performance increase we get when we move to something that carries with it faster RAM, a faster HDD and of course a faster CPU.
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GeForce GTX 280, which is being released today, is the new high-end graphics processing unit from nVidia. In this review we are going to compare its performance with other high-end video cards we had available, namely the GeForce 9800 GX2, the GeForce 9800 GTX, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the Radeon HD 3870. Is this new video card really the fastest in the market today? Check it out.
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Monday, June 16, 2008
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I recently received the newest Coolmax power supply entitled CUG-950B. The CUG-950B is near the top end of their power supply line next to the CUQ line. The CUG-950 is aimed at the gamer that want max frame rate from their video games. Being compatible of running multi-GPU systems the CUG-950 does it with good cooling and quietness. There isn't much more you can ask from a power supply except for stability. But it is that stable? We will try and find out for you.
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Gigabyte being no stranger to graphic cards has sent us their variant of the 8800GT. The GV-NX88T512HP takes the 8800GT to a whole new level being overclocked from the factory. And to tame all the speed the card has to offer Gigabyte consulted Zalman for providing the necessary cooling. When you introduce a major player in motherboards and a major player in cooling chances are you will get an awesome product in the end.
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The latest release from Asus see's the Crosshair II blessed with Nvidia's 780a chipset. We strip the board past its copper clothes to see if it's a worthy upgrade.
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The Asrock X48TurboTwins-WiFi is the highest price motherboard from the company. But is cheaper than others sporting the same chipset. Spending $300 plus on a motherboard may be painless for some but many of us would be ill for some time even thinking about spending that much money on a motherboard. So in this class the X48TurboTwins would be considered the value board at $240. We will put it thru the test and see if it is worth the asking price.
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