Nvidia GeForce GTX 285

Nvidia GeForce GTX 285

2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture

• Second generation architecture delivers 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 240 enhanced processor cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.
• 3-way SLI Technology¹
  Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI® technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s premier gaming solution under Windows Vista® with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• DirectX 10 Support
  Microsoft® DirectX® 10 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects for today’s hottest games.
• CUDA Technology²
  NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks - such as video transcoding - delivering up to 20x performance over traditional CPUs.
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
  Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.
• SLI Multi-Monitor support
  Switch seamlessly between multi-display desktop mode and full screen 3D gaming with SLI. And enjoy full multi-GPU support for dual-display capable 3D games such as World in Conflict, Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and Flight Simulator X.
• GigaThread™ Technology
  Massively multi-threaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next-generation shader programs.
• NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
  Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates.
• 16x Anti-aliasing Technology
  Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.
• 128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting
  Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects—now with support for anti-aliasing.
• OpenGL 2.1 Optimization and Support
  Provides top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.
• Dual Dual-link DVI Support
  Able to drive the industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 and with support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).³
• HDMI Output⁴
  Support for HDMI output enables sending both high-definition video and audio signals to an HDTV via a single cable.
• NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology⁵
  The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• Discrete, Programmable Video Processor
  PureVideo is a discrete programmable processing core in NVIDIA GPUs that provides superb picture quality and ultra-smooth movies with 100% offload of H.264 video decoding from the CPU and significantly reduced power consumption.
• Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
  Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray movie experience.
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
  Dynamically provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies for spectacular picture clarity.

ATI Radeon HD 4870

ATI Radeon HD 4870

RADEON HD 4870

• Codename: RV770-2
• Process technology: 55 nm
• 956 million transistors
• Unified architecture with an array of common processors for streaming processing of vertices and pixels, as well as other data
• Hardware support for DirectX 10.1, including new Shader Model 4.1, geometry generation, and stream output
• 256-bit memory bus: four 64-bit controllers supporting GDDR3/GDDR5
• Core clock: 750 MHz
• 10 SIMD cores, including 800 scalar floating-point ALUs (integer and floating-point formats, support for FP32 and FP64 in compliance with IEEE 754)
• 10 enlarged texture units supporting FP16 and FP32 formats
• 40 texture address units
• 160 texture fetch units
• 40 bilinear filtering units that can filter FP16 textures at full speed, trilinear and anisotropic filtering for all texture formats
• Dynamic branching in pixel and vertex shaders
• 16 ROPs supporting antialiasing with programmable sample patterns (over 16 samples per pixel), including FP16 or FP32 formats of the frame buffer. Peak performance is up to 16 samples per cycle (including MSAA 2x/4x and FP16 buffers), 64 samples per cycle in Z only mode
• Writing results up to eight frame buffers simultaneously (MRT)
• Integrated support for two RAMDACs, two Dual Link DVIs, HDMI, HDTV, DisplayPort

RADEON HD 4870 Specifications

• Core clock: 750 MHz
• Unified processors: 800
• 40 texture units, 16 blending units
• Effective memory frequency: 3600 MHz (4*900 MHz)
• Memory type: GDDR5
• Memory: 512 MB
• Memory bandwidth: 115 GB/sec
• Maximum theoretical fillrate: 12.0 gigapixel per second
• Theoretical texture sampling rate: 30.0 gigatexel per second
• 2 x CrossFireX connectors
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus
• 2 x DVI-I Dual Link, 2560x1600 video output
• TV-Out, HDTV-Out, support for HDCP, HDMI, DisplayPort
• Power consumption: up to 160 W (two 6-pin connectors)
• Two-slot design
• Recommended price: $299

As you may have noticed, we publish articles related to 48xx series with much delay, for which AMD is to be blamed. Inviting mass media five days prior to the announcement and then shifting the event is pure disrespect to IT reviewers. To all appearances, the marketing department forgot that users and retailers do have to read mass media publications to learn about new products. They changed the announcement date only because HD 4850 based products have already leaked into retail channel.

This actually ruined our review schedule. Alexey Berillo brought a sample from the event only on June 20 - the day this series was announced. With HD 4870 it was even worse: cards got stuck at the customs somewhere in Europe and were delivered to Russia already too late - only to be stuck at the local customs. What a pity. As you can see, that's not our bias in any way, that's just the way it is.

Anyway, HIS has kindly provided us with a sample of HD 4870, so we can finally publish our test results.

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

3: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

Speeds and Feeds, Dual-GPU Tradeoffs

Here's a look at some of the specs of current high-end graphics cards. This is Nvidia's top two GPUs, and the top two from ATI.

	GeForce GTX 280	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870 X2	Radeon HD 4870
Price	~$450	~$300	~$550	~$300
GPU	GT 200	GT 200	RV770 x2	RV770
Manufacturing Process	65nm	65nm	55nm	55nm
Transistor Count	1.4 B	1.4 B	1.9 B	956 M
Core Clock	602 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	750 MHz
Stream Processor Clock	1.29 GHz	1.24 GHz	750 MHz	750 MHz
Memory Clock	2.2 GHz DDR	2.0 GHz DDR	3.6 GHz DDR	3.6 GHz DDR
Stream Processors	240	192	1600	800
Texture Units	80	64	80	40
Render back end (ROPs)	32	28	32	16
Frame Buffer	1024 MB	896 MB	2 GB	512MB
Memory Interface	512 bits	448 bits	2x 256 bits	256 bits
Memory Bandwidth	141.7 GB/sec	111.9 GB/sec	230.4 GB/sec	115.2 GB/sec

Those are some mighty impressive numbers in the 4870 X2 column, but that's just because it's really two 4870s crammed onto a single board. In fact, it's two 1GB 4870s, for a grand total of 2 gigs of graphics memory. Note ATI's aggressive pricing: It's more expensive than the GeForce GTX 280, but it's less than twice the price of a Radeon HD 4870, despite having four times the GDDR5 memory.

Addressing the high-end of the market with a dual-GPU board carries with it a series of tradeoffs—positive and negative aspects that are inherent to the process in today's graphics landscape. Here's a short list of pros and cons of having two GPUs on a stick approach:

Pro:

• It's cheaper to put two small GPUs on a card than on one big one. Defects increase at a non-linear rate when chip size increases, and economies of scale kick in when you can address a bigger range of products with the same chip.
• It's easier to cool two smaller chips than one big one. Heat production is spread out to two areas.
• Whenever your driver team makes one of your single-GPU cards go faster, odds are that it'll make the dual-GPU card faster. Work to improve dual-GPU scaling also pays off. In short, there are more avenues of attack for software optimization.
• Two chips with their own memory controllers is an economical way to achieve really high memory bandwidth.
• You get the performance of two GPUs, but don't need a CrossFire/SLI capable motherboard. Just one PCIe x16 slot is all you need.

Con:

• Not every game scales well to multiple GPUs, so in some titles you pay a lot more but don't get much more performance.
• Twice as much memory is needed on the card because most graphics data has to be duplicated in the memory attached to each GPU.
• Multi-GPU rendering doesn't work in a window, so all your players that prefer windowed mode get the performance of a single GPU even though you paid for two.
• Multi-monitor setups don't like multi-GPU rendering, either. ATI manages this better than Nvidia by shutting off the secondary display and running dual-GPU on the primary, but it's still less than ideal. Especially if you want to run the game on both monitors at once.
• Dual-GPU cards tend to have higher power utilization, both at idle and under load.
• Dual-GPU cards are almost always long (10.5-inch for the 4870 X2) and won't fit in smaller PC cases.

The above tradeoffs are true for both Nvidia and ATI dual-GPU products, and it's true of two-card solutions, too. The RV770 GPU includes a "CrossFire X Sideport" that makes for more efficient communication between GPUs, and which ATI says should help improve scaling from one GPU to two. But neither ATI nor Nvidia has really come up with solutions to the common dual-GPU problems.

If "two GPUs on a stick" is going to be the way ATI addresses the high end of the market from now on (and the company confirms that is the case), it needs to work hard on three major areas in addition to the ongoing battle to improve performance scaling:

1. Make multi-GPU rendering work just as well as a single GPU in windowed mode and on multi-monitor setups.
2. Allow each GPU to read from the other's memory efficiently, so graphics data doesn't have to be duplicated in each memory bank and twice as much memory isn't needed on a dual-GPU card.
3. Reduce power consumption, especially at idle, to be in line with single large GPUs.

Now that we know what the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is and what it can and can't do, it's time to see where the rubber meets the road: performance.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 260

Nvidia GeForce GTX 260

Experience high definition worlds, lifelike characters, and forces of nature so powerful that your palms sweat and your heart races with every frame. Beyond games, watch Blu-ray movies and transcode video up to 7X faster than traditional CPUs¹.

GEFORCE GTX 200 GPUs		GAMING BEYOND		BEYOND GAMING
View Video Clip		View Video Clip		View Video Clip
Introducing NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 NVIDIA talks with developers about GeForce GTX 200 performance for their games		NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs take gaming and effects beyond levels previously seen before Medusa demo by NVIDIA and NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology, and NaturalMotion.		More than just games - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs accelerate the latest consumer applications Video transcoding from Elemental Technologies and the Stanford Folding@home project

Gaming that shakes you to the core With more gaming horsepower than ever before and 896 MB of memory, the GeForce GTX 260 GPU’s 192 processing cores make games such as Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and Bionic Commando® feel like the real thing. Its powerful NVIDIA PhysX™ technology creates rich, immersive physical effects with stunningly accurate realism. Experience absolute immersion and a 50% pure performance boost than prior generation GPUs with the GeForce GTX 260 GPU.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. © 2008 Funcom, All rights Reserved, © 2008 Conan Properties International LLC. CONAN®, CONAN THE BARBARIAN® and related logos, characters, names, and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Conan Properties International LLC unless otherwise noted.

PicLens. © 2008 Cooliris, Inc.

The power to take you beyond Beyond the field of play, GeForce GTX 260 seamlessly shifts tasks from the CPU to the GPU, allowing you to dive into the latest Blu-ray movie, surf the web in 3D, or transcode video to a personal video player up to 7x faster than traditional CPUs1. Now you can work and play at full speed.

¹ Requires application support for CUDA technology.

• 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture: Second generation architecture delivers up to 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 192 enhanced processing cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.
• NVIDIA PhysX™-Ready¹: GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology²: Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s fastest gaming solution under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology³: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks – such as video encoding – delivering up to 7x performance over traditional CPUs.
• NVIDIA PureVideo® HD Technology⁴ The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• NVIDIA HybridPower™ Technology⁵ Lets you switch from the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a quiet, low power PC experience.

ATI Radeon HD 4850

ATI Radeon HD 4850

High-end performance at an unbelievable price he past few weeks have seen Nvidia raise the graphical stakes repeatedly, first with its new GeForce GTX 280 and then with the announcement of the beefed-up 9800 GTX+. But almost instantly its rival ATI is hitting back with a new Radeon HD 4000 series of cards.

Full technical details will have to wait for a formal announcement, expected next week, but PC Pro has been given a preview of the Radeon HD 4850, already available to order online from a handful of suppliers.

AMD has yet to officially confirm details of other cards, but the 4850's model number suggests it will occupy a mid-range position similar to the current HD 3850's place in the current line-up. Online prices confirm that impression, coming in at around £120 exc VAT.

But for a mid-range card, the 4850's performance is outstanding. In our medium-detail Crysis benchmark, the HD 4850 easily outperformed its predecessor, scoring 63fps against the HD 3850's 47fps.

It beat the Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT too - that card only achieved 50fps - and even slightly outpaced the significantly more expensive GeForce 9800 GTX,which managed 60fps. Only the GeForce GTX 280 beat it, scoring a mammoth 84fps, and that card will cost you three times the price.

When we switched to high settings, the 9600 GT dropped to jerky frame rates of around 20fps, but the 4850 kept up a perfectly playable 32fps - effectively on a par with the 9800 GTX's 33fps. Again, though, the GTX 280 won out convincingly, averaging 45fps.

Our Call of Duty 4 benchmarks told the same story, with the Radeon HD 4850 achieving scores almost exactly on a par with the 9800 GTX, mid-way between Nvidia's 9600 GT and the GTX 280.

Finally, the Call of Juarez benchmark gave the 4850 its best result: its average of 42fps in the medium test was just a whisker behind the GTX 280's 46fps, and well ahead of the 9800 GTX's 32fps. Switching to high detail caused scores to drop, but the 4850's 31fps was closer to the 37fps of the GTX 280 than to the 21fps averaged by the 9800 GTX.

It's impressive to see such scores from a single-height card, but our sample used the same cooling as a stock HD 3850 and ran incredibly hot.

While blasting through our demanding Crysis benchmarks, the HD 4850 hit a searing 84 degrees Celsius - almost 20 degrees hotter than the GTX 280. Thankfully, there's nothing stopping third-party vendors beefing up the cooling.

If you can take the heat, the Radeon HD 4850 gives the best performance you'll find at anywhere near this price-point. It can't quite see off the GTX 280, but it keeps pace with the 9800 GTX at a significantly lower price.

In all, the HD 4850 is a fantastic bargain, and gives us very high hopes for the rest of the range when it materialises. Watch this space for further reviews.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology¹

• The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
  Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies.
• Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
  Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD movie experience.
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
  Provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies on a scene-by- scene basis for spectacular picture clarity.
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology²
  Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• NVIDIA HybridPower™ Technology³
  Lets you switch from the GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a silent, low power PC experience.
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
  Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.

Posted by ©Unreachable Faraz at 12:13 AM 0 comments

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

Nvidia has been under rare pressure recently, with ATi's launch of the Radeon HD 3800-series finally giving it a route back into the PCs of mainstream gamers.

The cards were eminently affordable, yet fast enough to run the latest games - a boast that Nvidia's mid-range GeForce 8600 cards couldn't match.

But ATi's success was always going to spur Nvidia into action, and its riposte is suitably hard-hitting: the next-generation Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT.

It's a longer card than the old 8600 GT, looking more like an 8800 GT. Like the 8800 series the GPU is a 65nm part, with 64 stream processors - twice that of the 8600's - and it also boasts 512MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory.

It's the first mainstream Nvidia card to boast a 256-bit memory bus, and with a core clock of 650MHz, it's actually very similar overall to the 8800 GTS 512MB - perhaps it's not so next-gen after all.

We were eager to see whether the 9600 GT would be fast enough to wipe out ATi's recent gains in one fell swoop, so we slotted it into our test rig - an X48-chipset motherboard, with a 3GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 processor and 4GB of DDR3 RAM - and put it through our demanding set of 3D benchmarks.

Crysis is the game of the moment, and the 9600 GT coasted through the first test: it achieved an average of 50fps at 1,280 x 1,024 and Medium settings, which puts it ahead of the 8800 GS, was almost on a par with the 8800 GT, and it nearly doubled the framerate achieved by the 8600 GTS.

Bumping the resolution up to 1,600 x 1,200 still produced a playable 38fps, and only when we also lifted the quality settings to High did it drop to a shaky 21fps.

In the slightly less demanding Call of Duty 4 it performed just as impressively. At 1,600 x 1,200 with the quality settings at their highest, it managed 50fps in our benchmark; again, that's more than double that of the 8600 GTS, and around 25% faster than an ATi Radeon HD 3870.

It's a huge increase in performance over the old 8600 cards, and massively repositions Nvidia's mid-range. What once was only achievable by the upper-mid-range cards - the 8800 GT, for example, which currently retails at around £150 (inc VAT) - is now within reach of the affordable mainstream, even if it's not the huge architectural leap forward we might have hoped for.

Initial pricing for the 9600 GT puts it at around £130 (inc VAT) at various retailers. This would put it below the £135 (inc VAT) typical price of the HD 3870, and way below the 8800 GT, making it an absolute steal.

It's a bold move by Nvidia, one which will surely kill off several of its existing 8-series cards in one fell swoop. But it will also put a dent in ATi's recent resurgence, and right now that's exactly what Nvidia needs.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT

He GeForce 9800 GT is quite a recent addition to the graphics segment but it has hardly generated any excitement among enthusiasts. "Why?" You might wonder. You'll know the reason once you take a look at the specifications of the "new" GeForce 9800 GT and compare it with the older 8800 GT. Don't panic. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you and there are no typographical errors here.

The truth is, this is all an elaborate marketing ploy by NVIDIA to resell some of their older cards, because the simple fact of the matter is this: the 9800 GT is really an 8800 GT. Honest. The only difference is in the name.

Not that we are complaining. You see, the 8800 GT was a particular favorite of ours due to its outstanding performance to price ratio so we can expect more of the same. Still, we had hoped for more. Some have speculated that it will get support for 3-way SLI, but sadly, that didn't happen. Still others have said that the 9800 GT might have a higher clocked core as well as memory and shaders, but that unfortunately didn't happen either.

So has anything changed at all? Well, we are glad you asked and we are somewhat disappointed to report that the only thing that did change was added support for HybridPower. This is a feature found only on GeForce 9 series graphics cards that allows systems running on NVIDIA chipsets to switch to onboard integrated graphics when running less graphic-intensive applications, thus helping you save power and money. Hence it should be a useful feature for the budget and environmental conscious crowd.

Another improvement over the 8800 GT is that NVIDIA plans to eventually have all 9800 GTs manufactured on a 55nm process, which would theoretically lead to greater efficiency and lower power consumption and heat. That however is also still in the works and all the 9800 GTs we have here are currently on the 65nm manufacturing process, as the screenshot below can attest. Having said that, that's just about all the difference there is to the "new" 9800 GT.

As you can see, the Gigabyte 9800 GT we have is completely stock.

For our GeForce 9800 GT round-up today, we have gathered four cards: one from Gigabyte that comes with reference clock speed, and another two overclocked ones from Palit and Zotac, and lastly, a rather unique albeit engineering sample from ASUS. But before we begin, let's take a look at how the GeForce 9800 GT stacks up against the competition.

ATI Radeon HD 4830

ATI Radeon HD 4830

ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series GPUs bring the power of graphics ‘supercomputing’ to gamers, setting a new standard for visual computing. Redefine the way you play and take HD gaming to the extreme with best-in-class performance. With up to 1.2 teraFLOPS on tap, the TeraScale graphics engine delivers an immersive, cinematic gaming experience. Add this graphics card to your PC and watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity or take your experience to another level with new multimedia capabilities. Do it all with break-through efficiency that doesn’t compromise performance.

Redefine HD Gaming
With more than twice the processing power of previous generation AMD discrete graphics cards, ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards deliver a cinematic gaming experience and unprecedented performance.

The new TeraScale graphics engine combines the power of up to 1.2 teraFLOPS, up to 800 stream processors and next generation GDDR5 memory to propel you deep into your gameplay with seamless frame rates and high resolutions.

Enhanced anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering create striking graphics with unparalleled realism so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next-generation games or revitalize your favorite titles.

Play today while preparing for tomorrow with tessellation, support for DirectX® 10.1 and scalable ATI CrossFireX™ technology.

Go Beyond HD Video
Add an ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics card to your PC and watch the latest Blu-ray and HD movies play with incredible fidelity¹ – upscale to nearly twice the display resolution of HD content.² Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.

Sophisticated new features within ATI Avivo™ HD technology give you the freedom and flexibility to edit videos quickly and convert them to H.264 and MPEG-2 formats 1.8x faster than real-time.³

Support for the latest audio visual interconnects ensures you can take advantage of the latest display technology.

Break-through Efficiency
Like their predecessors, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards offer optimal performance and break-through efficiency with platform-independent intelligent power management.

Regardless of platform, these graphics cards deliver the power needed to blaze through even the most intense games while intuitively conserving energy at idle or when demand is low.

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series – Key Features

• TeraScale Graphics Engine - The new TeraScale graphics engine features up to 1.2 teraFLOPS, nearly one billion transistors and up to 800 stream processors so you can enjoy the high resolutions and fast frame rates previously only available with dual-card systems.
• Advanced Memory - GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3.
• Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering - High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
• DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
• ATI CrossFireX™ Technology - ATI CrossFireX™ technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are.
• PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
• Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) - AVT allows you to convert videos to H.264 and MPEG-2 formats up to 19x faster than when using a just CPU.3 Full 1080p files can be converted to H.264 and MPEG-2 up to 1.8x faster than real-time.³
• Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.¹
• Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling. The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
• Dynamic Contrast - Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
• HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.
• Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards deliver high performance when needed and conserve power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.
• More Performance Per Watt - ATI Radeon HD 4800 series delivers up to 2x the performance per watt of AMD’s previous generation GPUs.