If we had an award for the "best bang for the buck", it would require little thinking to give it to ATI's Radeon HD 5850. For the price, it offers incredible power, superb power consumption, and of course, DirectX 11 support. We're taking a look at ASUS' version here, which along with Dirt 2, includes a surprisingly useful overclocking tool.
It's no secret that the Radeon HD 5870 is the fastest GPU on the planet, but what do you get when you take it, toss in a more robust cooler, quieter operation, higher clock speeds and not one, but two free games? You get the Vapor-X, from Sapphire. Despite all that it packs in above the reference version, it modestly carries just a $20 premium.
AMD may have released its first Evergreen GPUs mere weeks ago, but don't think it's slowing down for anybody. The company has followed-up with its first mid-range parts, belonging to the HD 5700 series. Performance is much more modest on these new cards, but no features have been scrapped. It's all here... DirectX 11, Eyefinity and more.
Have just $100 to splurge on a new graphics card? Is having low power consumption and low temperatures important to you? If so, the HD 4770 certainly deserves your attention. This budget card handled each one of our games at 1920x1080 just fine, overclocks like a dream and has power and temp numbers worth drooling over.
Believe it or not, despite the HD 4890's launch last month, the HD 4870 is still totally relevant, thanks to ATI's current pricing structure. There's a card for every budget, and if you're willing to spend around $180, you can get hooked up with a 1GB version of the card we're taking a look at today. It's silent, keeps cool, and still delivers great performance for the money.
| Title | Author | Date | Categories |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATI Radeon HD 4890 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 | Rob Williams | April 3, 2009 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 GDDR4 & HD 4830 | Rob Williams | February 25, 2009 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB | Rob Williams | January 7, 2009 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ATI HD 4870 1GB vs. NVIDIA GTX 260/216 896MB: Follow-Up | Rob Williams | December 8, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ATI HD 4870 1GB vs. NVIDIA GTX 260/216 896MB | Rob Williams | November 24, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition | Rob Williams | October 7, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Palit Radeon HD 4870 512MB | Rob Williams | September 1, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 1GB - AMD Reclaims GPU Supremacy | Rob Williams | August 12, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| AMD Tunes Back In with All-In-Wonder HD | Rob Williams | June 26, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ASUS EAH4850 512MB | Rob Williams | June 25, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ASUS EAH3870 X2 1GB | Rob Williams | February 18, 2008 | AMD-Based GPU |
| Sapphire X1050 and X1550 | Rob Williams | March 5, 2007 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB | Rob Williams | December 12, 2006 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ASUS EAX1650XT 256MB | Rob Williams | December 5, 2006 | AMD-Based GPU |
| PowerColor X1650 PRO | Greg King | November 29, 2006 | AMD-Based GPU |
| ATI Radeon x1950 Pro Preview | Greg King | October 17, 2006 | AMD-Based GPU |
| PowerColor X1600 XT BRAVO Edition | Rob Williams | March 13, 2006 | AMD-Based GPU |