Audio, Video, Misc

Not content with the performance/price edge the Radeon HD 4830 currently enjoys over the GeForce 9800GT, ATI has decided to hammer the $100 graphics market further with the new Radeon HD 4770 released today. Built using a 40nm manufacturing process, ATI positions it as a better performing, more energy efficient replacement for the HD 4830.

The HD 4890 is ATI's newest GPU, on step beyond the HD 4870. It is the fastest single GPU graphics card produced by ATI. We're most interested in seeing if power consumption and noise level has improved over the 4870.

The Samsung YP-S3 is a small, slick, touch-sensitive portable audio/video media player priced at $100. SPCR's first Short Take article.

The GTS 250 shares the same GPU core as the 9800 GTX+, a midrange gaming graphics card. Though the core is unchanged, the PCB has undergone some revision, perhaps to reduce power consumption. That could be one explanation for the smaller heatsink atop Sparkle's 1GB version of the GTS 250.

The Asus EN9400GT Silent edition is a passively cooled PCI-E graphics card based on nVidia's GeForce 9400 processor. If GeForce 9 was an office hierarchy, the 9400 would be its star mail boy. To differentiate itself from the other mail boys, it only has to be silent and power efficient.

The Asus Radeon HD 4870 Matrix features two fans without a restrictive shroud, giving the heatsink more room to "breathe", and providing direct airflow to the GPU and board components. By sharing the cooling work between two fans, it should be a quieter, cooler card. We pit the Asus Matrix against ATI's reference design.

Xonar's top-of-the-line sound card tries to do everything, including a few things that, strictly speaking, it shouldn't have to. It's the first audio card to support HDCP and PAP, which means it can stream high resolution audio formats like Dolby Digital TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio without downsampling. It also boasts high quality analogue circuitry, including Burr Brown DACs and replaceable op-amps from National Semiconductor. It designed to make audiophiles and home theater nuts excited about audio. The only question is, can it make them shell out over 200 bucks?

The Radeon HD 4650 is a slightly cut-down version of the HD 4670, but still retains much of the performance of its bigger brother. The SCS is PowerColor's fanless version of the HD 4650, featuring a simple heatpipe cooler reminiscent of the Arctic Cooling Accelero series. Does it perform well, or is it simply adequate?

Asus carries seven different GeForce 9800GT models; we chose to look at the Matrix Edition, which features a rear-exhaust cooler and numerous "Hybrid" themed features designed to appeal to a greener audience. Most intriguing is "Super Hybrid Engine" which purports to offer lower power consumption in idle and better performance and stability under load.

The high pitched noise from many LCD monitors when their brightness is reduced can be utterly distracting. Here's a simple workaround that can work quite well with most monitors for many users. Also, please participate in our Quiet / Noisy Monitor Survey!

The 4000 series video cards is one of ATI's most successful, and also one of the most wide-ranging. There's the HD 4870 X2 at the top — widely lauded as the current performance graphics champ — followed by the 4870 and 4850. With the HD 4670 at $80 and the HD 4850 at $170, it was logical for ATI to fill the price gap. At $130, the HD 4830 looks to follow in the tradition of its brethren and represent very good value.

The recently released HD 4670 graphics card offers a modern gaming experience with good eye candy support even at high resolution. We examine a reference card straight from ATI, one equipped with dual DisplayPorts.

It's huge, draws over 120W at load, ridiculously overpackaged, and illustrated lavishly when no one will ever see it once installed. But it has a secret card up its sleeve: The Asus nForce 260 based ENGTX260 could be the quietest stock high end gaming video card ever.

The Diamond Radeon HD 4850 uses a cooling solution that looks virtually identical to the reference design, which is widely used by many card makers. This suggests that the acoustic, power and thermal performance of the Diamond, which we examine in detail, applies to many models featuring the HD 4850, already considered the best bang-for-the-money video card available today.