Who can knock the monstrous NVidia off the king of the video market throne? I would say S3, but their newest card, the Chrome 430 GT, is made to be low powered and run cool (not a Geforce 9800 killer).
The card is made to compete with the current Radeon HD 3450 and the NV 8400 GS, and features sweet DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1 support. In tests (3DMark 06) it creams both competing card by at least 20%. It does this with a low power 65nm fabrication technology from Fujitsu (and slow DDR2 memory).
It is refreshing (can you feel it?) to hear of a competitor to the big two, that can actually outperform them. S3 can do it, and it will only cost you $US59 for the privilege (to tell your friends you can’t run SLI or Crossfire).
For more info, click Fareast Gizmos.
One of the things that is always using more and more power as time goes on is your video card. There are even dedicated power supplies made especially for the purpose of powering your behemoth configurations. Didn’t the graphics card industry get the memo? We are suppose to be aiming to use less power!
That is exactly what ATI aim to do with a new Hybrid Crossfire system. The concept is very simple, when you don’t need high end gaming graphics, the top end card will be disabled, therefore saving power. When you need that power again it is there for the taking.
This concept has been done previously on Sony Vaio notebooks, with the ability to disable the addon Nvidia video card, and use the onboard Intel card. Difference this time, is it seems it is made for desktops and more focused at the people who want to lower the power bill for those PC’s (like mine) that are left on all the time.
ATI has shown off its capability to PC Perspective, with a test system containing a 2.2GHz Phenom processor, a RS780 (never heard of it) integrated graphics chipset and a RV620-based card labeled HD Radeon 3450. The configuration was quite impressive with frame rates of 30-35fps for Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, which then jumped to around 55fps when hybrid mode was enabled.
AMD are aiming for a 2008 release, with the initial batch of hybrid CrossFire-capable cards to be priced around $50. It is not yet known whether it will be available in notebooks, but my magic 8 ball says the chances are good.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
The Register really like the ATI 3850, especially in Crossfire mode. They have done a fantastic and in depth review with lots of taste benchmarks comparing it to its older sibling (2600) and its bigger brother (3870), and decided that, for its price can’t be beaten. The Register gave it a 90% mark and said “AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 3850 sets an incredibly high standard for £100 graphics cards and that has to be good news for the casual gamer who demands value for money.” Sounds good enough for me.
For the complete review, click over to The Register Website.