Page 4 of 4
Overclocking
Using a combination of AMD's in-built driver Auto Tune, some manual adjustment and Enemy Territory Quake Wars (at highest playable settings) Timedemo, we tested to see just how far we could push things. To begin with, Auto Tune took the GPU to a rather nice 690 and the memory to 1070, however this proved to be way too much and the system locked up while trying to adjust 3D settings in the drivers. Using that as a starting point, we backed things down until it was stable. 665 / 1048 were the final stable settings, and this resulted in a GPU temperature under load of only 58C. Obviously, it's going to be different for everyone, but I would expect given the cooling that there will be some much higher stable overclocks with the MSI R4850-T2D512 512MB out there.
Final Words
The has really impressed me. I'll admit I would have liked to test 's highest end card (who wouldn't?) but after seeing what this card can do I'm more than happy, overjoyed even.
I have a Dell 20” Widescreen monitor, and since I try to aim for the middle ground with my hardware, I usually have to wait a few years for the hardware to catch up to the games for some high resolution gaming. However many of the games I've tried with the have been playable at or near to maximums for resolution and graphic settings. The sweet spot for this card is certainly at 1680x1050, 4xMSAA with each specific game dictating the actual settings, but compare this with the 8600GT or even the 9600GT from previous generations where 1280x800 2xMSAA was the norm and it's a pretty big step up. Also consider that while time separates these cards, they are/were aimed at the same middle range market.
Pretty much any game you play will allow for a minimum of 2xMSAA with virtually no hit to the FPS so graphical quality has a good start to begin with. The quad-pipe cooling setup does very well, keeping things cool and quiet; we saw a maximum load temperature of only 58C when overclocked and while we could hear the card, we had to stop to listen for it specifically among the other sounds of our watercooled test system. At idle the card is silent. The cooling solution also looks great in an industrial fashion and the pipework and clear plastic approach makes it a great accessory in a watercooled setup even if the card itself isn't watercooled.
With 7.1 Audio via HDMI, UVD-2 for dual stream decoding, and the aforementioned high performance, this an ideal choice for large screen TV gaming. It's pretty cheap too; not quite budget gaming but when you consider the performance it really is good value for money, and with CrossfireX support you can update to two or more cards as time goes on for even higher performance.
Overall I really like the card for middle of the road systems and even higher end systems with lower resolution LCD's like mine, you will be very happy with what you get.
Questions? Comments? Hit us up in the Forums .
|