Discrete computer graphics are one of the toughest markets to keep current with. New graphics cores are released on a pretty frequent basis from both ATI and NVIDIA and with naming schemes that change nearly as often, it can be difficult to determine where each card stands in relation to others in the same price range.
Today we will be taking a look at the MSI R6850 PE / OC graphics card, a mid-range GPU that was launched at the end of last year. Codenamed Barts, this GPU is built on a 40nm process with support for DirectX 11 & Open GL 4.0. Other notable features include HDMI 1.4a & DisplayPort 1.2 support as well as AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology and CrossfireX support.
To run today’s PC games at high resolutions with all the settings maxed out you need a high end video Card, or two mid/high end video cards in CrossFire/SLI. The best thing about CrossFire/SLI is that you don’t need to buy both cards at once, meaning you can spread out the cost of a system build, or simply wait until prices drop before you make your second purchase. Dual video card scaling has come a long way since its conception, in the early days Crossfire performance wasn’t always what it was made out to be. However, our setups show near 90% scaling in most of our tests, this is great news for us budget enthusiasts out there as not all of us can afford to fork out $600 up front for the latest highest end equipment. In this
article Benchmark Reviews will provide you with our performance and cost analysis of a HD6850 CrossFire setup and a HD6950 CrossFire setup.
The ASUS Matrix GTX580 Platinum is part of the Republic of Gamers line, designed for enthusiasts and hardcore overclockers. The ASUS Matrix GTX580 Platinum is outfitted with a custom cooling solution and equipped with a 19-phase Super Alloy Power technology. Similar to RoG motherboards, the ASUS Matrix GTX 580 Platinum has onboard voltage readout and volt-modding features as well as LED load indicators for the voltage adjustment and GPU load. In case an overclock is unstable, a handy “safe mode” BIOS reset switch can be found at the back that will restore the Matrix GTX 580 Platinum to its factory settings.
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The _Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z motherboard_ is no ‘cut down’ half assed product. As it is a ‘Republic Of Gamers’ product, it brings a wealth of enthusiast grade overclocking and tweaking options to the table. It supports the latest Sandybridge ‘K’ range of processors and officially can support 32gb of DDR3 memory up to a frequency of 2400mhz. It has onboard SupremeFX X-Fi 2 for ultimate sound quality and also supports both CrossfireX and Sli configurations. The Z68 platform is set to give Intel a ‘fresh’ start for Sandybridge.
Llano is the new toy at the moment with lots of speculation flying around about the performance and potential from these new processors and their FM1 socket motherboards so we thought it would be fitting to give you a sneak peak into what is on offer from Asus and their FM1 board; the F1A75-M Pro. The NDA that AMD have in place restricts us in talking about the processor, performance or any other technical details, but what we can do is show you the eye candy behind the board in terms of styling and what connectivity options are available for storage, rear I/O and expansion slots. There are some unique features that Asus have included onto this board to cater for the new Llano technology to get the best performance and efficiency, and whilst we can show you what they are, we will have to be careful in letting on to much about how it effects the processor and the technology involved. Consider this your sneak peak into FM1 and what functionality the boards powering the Llano based APU’s will have included.
