TG Roundup: Radeon HD 5000 Series, Modern Warfare 2, Travel Router

To help continue the tradition of shilling our own content, let’s take another gander at our content of the past two weeks, shall we? If there’s one thing I’m pleased with, it’s that we caught up to ATI’s current HD 5000 releases and have posted reviews for the HD 5750, HD 5850 and also the HD 5870, and yes, it’s about time. We’re still behind on the HD 5970, but that was just released last week, so cut us some slack!

The most impressive of ATI’s first four cards of the HD 5000 series is of course the HD 5870 1GB. We took a look at Sapphire’s Vapor-X model, which pre-overclocks both the GPU core and Memory clock by just a smidgen. That’s not what makes the card interesting, though, but rather it’s the superb air-cooler which proved itself to be highly efficient. For any gamer who both has a real passion for gaming, and the $400 to spare, the HD 5870 is hands-down, the best choice in graphics today.

Not everyone wants to spend $400 for a graphics card though, and it’s understandable. The next best thing would be HD 5850, and we took a look at ASUS’ offering. That card proved to be quite the contender, and beat out NVIDIA’s closest competitor in almost all tests (and costs $70 less!). The performance was so good, that it’d be outright impossible to not recommend it for someone willing to spend near $300, but not more. You sure wouldn’t be disappointed.

The HD 5750 is currently the lowest-end offering of the HD 5000 series, and from that fact alone, I didn’t expect too much out of it performance-wise. It did prove itself to be a capable card, but it didn’t perform quite as well as I thought it would, when compared to NVIDIA’s slightly lower-priced GTS 250. It’s a tough one, but read the review if you are considering the card, since by the end, you should have a clear idea of what you want, and need.

What good is a graphics card without a game? We posted a review just last Friday of Infinity Ward’s latest offering, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and if you’re not one of the near 10 million who pre-ordered or purchased the game at launch, it’s well worth a read. Given the controversy that surrounded the game well before launch, it’s a hard game to sum-up in one or two sentences. Despite all the downsides of the game, though, I still have to give it… well… one and a half thumbs up. I’m not that easy.

Looking for a P55-based motherboard? Well, we have tested two recently that are worth a look, ASUS’ P7P55D Pro and Gigabyte’s P55A-UD4P. Both have their pros and cons, but both prove to be ample overclockers, allowing for 4GHz speeds on our Core i7-870 with absolute ease. Both also have a robust feature-set, and a similar price, so it’s hard to outright recommend one or the other. If USB 3.0 and S-ATA 3.0 is in the cards, then the Gigabyte board is the right option for you, but don’t run out and purchase it until you read our review, as we have a few words of warning.

Finally, there was one product that I didn’t think much of when I received it, but by the end, I was stoked. Of all things that I could be talking about, I’m talking about… a router. A travel router, at that. Sure, it sounds mundane, but TRENDnet’s TEW-654TR kicks some serious ass. Not only is it unbelievably small, but it offers the user three different modes (including one where it acts as a wireless card, for PCs without wireless access), along with a slew of features… and all for under $60. It’s sure hard to beat that!

We have some great content on queue for the next couple of weeks, but I won’t talk about any of it right now, except to say that some of it involves cool products, and some of it might involve a how-to. I’ll also add that we’ve been working on getting some contests up that I’ve been meaning iron out the details for, and I promise, some cool product is just begging to be won!