Thursday Reviews

Quote

nVidia sent us their FX6800 reference card clocked at 325/700 which they say will be priced around $350. Along with other cards, we’ll compare this card against its main competitor- the Radeon x800 PRO which is ATI’s lowest end card in their new line-up as well. Coming back to the price, it would be interesting to see how this card compares to the high-end older generation of nVidia and ATI cards as well as they are somewhat similarly priced.

Quote

Chaintech's Apogee 5700UA is without a doubt an excellent mid-range graphics card featuring excellent cooling, great overclocking utility, the latest technology with DDR3 SDRAM, and a nice software bundle. In the race for the high-end cards, ATI seems to have the lead with the X800 Pro and X800 XT Platinum Edition but not everyone has $400-500 laying around to burn through and that much power is simply overkill for the vast majority of users out there. In the mid-range market with the 5700 Ultra against ATI's Radeon 9600XT, Nvidia seems to be the one to come out on top in the vast majority of cases. In addition to that we were able to find Chaintech's Apogee 5700UA for $188 at the very respected dealer Newegg with free shipping, which considering all of the features of the Chaintech card is an excellent deal. To sum it up, if you're looking for a mid-range graphics card and want something that can handle most of today's games and more target towards a gamer this is a great card to go with.

Quote

Hightech Information System Ltd better known as HIS has released some great graphics cards in the past. In and effort to keep up with the competitors inroads in lucrative low-end market a new video card was brought to the market bearing the moniker "9550". In this case it happens to be the HIS 9550 VIVO model. So come on along as we check it out and see just how well it performs as we benchmark it.

Quote

There are many reasons why system integrators love motherboards built with nVIDIA's nForce2 chipset as much as they do; it's an extremely powerful and totally loaded core logic, and it boasts many features too. Until recently though, there wasn't a Pentium 4 chipset that offered a similar level of versatility, that is until ATi released their Radeon 9100 IGP Northbridge. Like the nVidia nForce2, the ATI Radeon 9100 IGP is no slouch when it comes to integrated chipset performance, and easily puts Intel's integrated solution, the i865G to shame on the graphics front. Definitely not too shabby for ATi's first stab at a core logic chipset! The Radeon 9100 IGP is especially good for those of us who are looking to build a lean machine. The integrated DX8 Radeon 9100 IGP is not the fastest thing we've ever used, but it does deliver playable frame rates at 640x480 in most games. That's a feat that no other integrated videocard can do.