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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 20 August 2015 09:00
So yesterday I had the chance to check out the R7 370, AMD’s current budget video card. Well today Nvidia is officially announcing and releasing the GTX 950. The GTX 950 falls in between the GTX 960 and the GTX 750 Ti. This fills in a gap in the Nvidia lineup and should compete directly with the R7 370. Like I mentioned yesterday, this isn’t a price point that enthusiasts who are building high end PCs would be looking at but it does fall right into the sweet spot for budget gaming builds around the $600 price point. So with that in mind today we are going to see what the GTX 950 is all about, find out how it fits in between the 960 and 750 Ti in both performance and specifications, then find out if it is the right option for people looking at building their new $600 gaming PCs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 19 August 2015 21:24
While it is fun to get excited about the $1000 CPUs and video cards, PCI Express SSD’s, and all of the other cutting edge tech that we see coming through the office from time to time. The reality of life is that when you are building your new gaming PC you will move likely set a realistic budget and you have to work around that. A lot of people ask for feedback on their builds for helping putting together a parts list and a lot of those people are looking at a budget of around $600 for their new PCs. So at that price point typically an ideal video card is the main purchase as everything else is as cheap as you can get but the card budget comes in around $175 to $200. So today I wanted to take a look at what AMD and more specifically Sapphire has to offer at that price point. That is their new Nitro series R7 370.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 17:45
Last week I had the chance to check out our first R9 390 with the Sapphire Nitro. Well today we get to take a look at what XFX has to offer. This gives us a great chance to compare the cards against each other along with all of the cards previous tested. This helps put more perspective on their individual performance to find out what card is best for your specific build. So today I’m going to run the XFX R9 390 Double Dissipation Core Edition through all of our in-game, compute, and synthetic performance tests as well as the more specific per card tests like noise and cooling performance. In the past the XFX cards have performed well, but it might have its hand full with the triple fan cooler on the Sapphire.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 24 July 2015 17:59
While the move from the 200 series to the 300 series was mostly just a bump in clock speed and memory capacities, Sapphire made even bigger changes in their product line. Even though their 200 Series cards were very popular they still redesigned their cooling design and even introduced a new line that they call Nitro. Today I’m going to take a look at the Sapphire Nitro R9 390 and see what has changed in the product line as well as get a look at the performance of the R9 390 to see how it compares to the R9 290 that it replaced.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 29 June 2015 18:58
So last week we had our first peak at the kind of new R9 380. Well it just so happens that card was only a 2GB model. Lucky for us PowerColor sent over their PCS+ R9 380 and it has a 4GB frame buffer. So today I’m going to check out the card from PowerColor and see what they have going on and along with that we can see if having the additional frame buffer is worth it in our benchmark suite. With these cards not exactly being focused towards higher resolution gameplay I’m not sure if we will see too much at 1080p but given the 1440p numbers we saw before I bet we see some improvement there!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 24 June 2015 12:58
At this year’s E3 AMD announced its long awaited next generation of cards. While most of the eyes are on the Fury cards they also introduced the 300 Series. For the most part the 200 Series cards were rebranded but most of the cards did see some tweaks to clock speeds, memory capacity, and memory bus. To start off our coverage of the new cards today I am going to take a look at the R9 380 Gaming 2G from MSI. The R9 380 is a Tonga GPU card, the same GPU that was used in the R9 285 launched last fall. The R9 380 did see a boost clock speed increase over the R9 285 and the MSI I am testing today has a slight overclock over the stock R9 380 clock as well.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Sunday, 31 May 2015 18:00
You might be wondering what I’m doing posting on a Sunday night but with Computex starting in Taiwan there are a ton of things getting announced or about to get announced. You see a lot of people think that CES is the big event each year for PC hardware but CES is really for consumer electronics where Computex has more of a focus on PC hardware. So with that Nvidia has stepped up and is introducing their GTX 980 Ti. While the launch is exciting, it is a little surprising to see them launch now, before AMD launches their 300 Series cards. Typically companies leave an ace in the hole so Nvidia must be really confident that AMD doesn’t have what it takes to outperform the GTX 980 Ti. While we won’t know that until AMD launches their cards, what we can do today is run the GTX 980 Ti through our benchmark suite and see just how it compares to what is available today.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 27 May 2015 21:04
After taking a look at the Titan X last week it really got me thinking. Currently you can pick up two GTX 980s for the price of one Titan X. That leaves me wondering how well two GTX 980s would perform in SLI compared to the Titan X. Well it just so happens I had two GTX 980’s in use in the office so I put them to the test. Today I’m going to take a quick look at their performance and see if they are a better buy than a single Titan X.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 19:47
Sometimes you can’t explain it but you need the biggest and best. When it comes to video cards from Nvidia the GTX 980 is a beast, hell I have GTX 980’s in both my main PC and my LAN rig, but with 4 giga of ram I don’t think you can really consider it to be the end all be all video card. This is where Nvidia comes in with their Titan cards. In the past they have had the original Titan as well as the Titan Z with its dual GPUs and the Titan Black. Well the latest Titan is the Titan X. Nvidia launched it this past March and we were a little slow to get one in but today I finally have one to run through our benchmark suite. Let’s find out if it really is godlike like the name implies.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 11 March 2015 20:13
Of all of the 900 series cards we have covered recently. Oddly enough, we haven’t really gotten any 970’s in. The same can be said for of coverage of Zotac cards, we haven’t heard much from them for a while now. Lucky for us they sent over a GTX 970 so not only do we get the chance to see how well the 970 performs, but I also can see what Zotac has been doing with their cards. This should be especially interesting because the GTX 970 they sent over to review is their AMP! Omega model with its HUGE cooler and a few overclocking specific features that I am excited to check out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:09
We all have our own style preferences and this is no different when it comes to video cards. So when Gigabyte wanted to send out their GTX 960 I wasn’t about to turn it down enough though we have already covered a few other GTX 960’s. I wanted to see how Gigabytes offering compares to the competition, both with its performance and also with its styling. If we didn’t have variety we would all be running the exact same PC configuration and that wouldn’t be any fun. So today I’m going to put the Gigabyte GTX 960 through our standard benchmark suite as well as take a closer look at what makes it tick to find out if this is the best GTX 960 to pick up for your new budget build.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 11 February 2015 19:18
With the launch of the 900 series of cards MSI also launched their new Twin Frozr V cooling. Sadly up until now we haven’t had the chance to actually check out one. With the GTX 960 launch setting down MSI sent over their GTX 960 Gaming 2G for us to check out. This gives us a great chance to see what their new cooling is capable of and to be able to compare it to some of the competition. My expectations are high because MSI has done a great job on the cooling front for a long time now. So let’s put the GTX 960 Gaming 2G to the test and see how it performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 09 February 2015 10:28
While Nvidia now has their latest GPU out, AMD is still relying on their 290X to lead the pack. Asus sent over their R9 290X Matrix Platinum so that we could finally put it through our benchmark suite and find out if AMDs flagship card with a healthy overclock can keep up with the latest and greatest from Nvidia. I’m especially curious to see how it performs compared to the competition in some of our higher resolution testing. With all of the fuss about memory issues on the GTX 970 it will be great to see how AMDs current flagship card is holding up.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 06 February 2015 12:25
The final piece needed to get our In Win D-Frame Mini build together was a powerful video card that runs cool, quiet, and matches the red and black theme of the build. For a short while I ran a reference GTX 980 but quickly switched to the Asus GTX 980 Strix. Well today I’m going to take a closer look at the card to see what it Is all about, how it performs, and how well it overclocks. Going off previous Strix reviews we can expect it to run well and stand out in the noise department as well assuming the Strix cooler can keep the GTX 980 running cool.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 22 January 2015 09:01
If no one had to worry about money we would all be running crazy high end PCs with 3 or 4 GTX 980’s or R9 290X’s. The reality is that most people can’t afford to do that and even when they can it’s hard to justify spending that much money on just one part of their PC. The fact is even just one of those cards can cost more than a budget PC and 4 of them can be more than some cars. Because of that we have to try to find a balance between price and performance and along with that make sure there is a card for every price point along the way. Nvidia launched their Maxwell based GTX 980 and GTX 970 back in September, they are now starting to fill in a little more of the 900 Series product line with the introduction of the GTX 960 today. So today I’m going to see how the GTX 960 performs by taking a look at the overclocked Asus GTX 960 Strix.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 09 January 2015 11:11
I think one of the most interesting things about video cards is that the performance you see from the cards is always changing. The cards are staying the same obviously, but after a launch we will see numerous driver updates, some of those include updates that improve and optimize in game performance both across the board and sometimes just with specific games. AMD recently introduced their Omega driver that included speed improvements and a LONG list of usability fixes. Well today I just happened to have an R9 280 from Gigabyte on hand. I’m going to see what sets their card apart from the competition and we will also have the chance to see how the new drivers perform as well. Along with that I am introducing a few new benchmarks into our 2015 benchmark suite, enjoy!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 13 October 2014 15:33
These days even a lot of the low power cards still require dual PCI slots. So if you have a setup that requires a single slot video card solution it can be a little hard to find something that performs well and will also fit in your case. I don’t think people realize it, but XFX does a great job of creating a wide selection of cards to cover special uses like this. In the past we have seen models from them for people who need half height cards and even silent models. So it wasn’t a big shock when they sent over their R7 250 Core Edition single slot card. Really, the only question is how does it compare to the dual slot cards. If it’s anything like their past cards it should perform well, but the only way to find out for sure it to run it through our benchmark suite and see how it performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 06 October 2014 13:55
Even now that the GTX 750 Ti isn’t the only Maxwell cards on the market, I still find them an interesting GPU. Some of you may remember from our launch coverage of the GTX 750 Ti that it packed a punch without ever needing an extra power connection. Well that was the reference design; many of the other models on the market sadly required a 6-pin power connection for their overclocked models. Well Asus sent over their Strix OC Edition of the GTX 750 Ti and low and behold, it has the same low power requirements as the reference design. Today I’m going to put it through our test suite and see what a little overclock does for the Maxwell powered GTX 750 Ti.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 18 September 2014 22:30
Nvidia may have officially launched Maxwell with the GTX 750 Ti launch back in February, but I think we can all agree that things don’t get really serious until they refresh their flagship card with the new architecture. Well the wait is over, Nvidia is taking the cover off of their new cards as you read this at their Game24 event. The new card is the GTX 980, this may come as a surprise seeing that the last generation of cards was the 700 series. Nvidia needed to sync their mobile and desktop GPUs, skipping 800 and jumping to the 900 series was the way to go about doing this. Before we dig into the changes moving to the GTX 980, everyone should check out our original Maxwell article HERE to see how well it performed.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 12 September 2014 19:34
I absolutely love building Mini-ITX gaming rigs. Every time I build a new Lunchbox (what I call our LAN rigs), I try to make them smaller and faster. Either of those along can be a challenge, but trying to constantly pack a faster rig into a small can be a huge challenge. Thankfully recently motherboard manufactures, video card manufactures, and heatsink manufactures have taken notice and have started to make things easier. With the launch of the R9 285 Sapphire jumped into that same market with their first Mini-ITX focused video card. With their focus on attending LANs this wasn’t a huge shock. What was surprising was the fact they went with the new R9 285 when MSI has the R9 270 and GTX 760. I have no doubt that the ITX Compact R9 285 will outperform the other Mini-TX cards, heck we proved that live at our LAN last weekend. Power usage and heat are also important in small form factor builds, I can’t wait to see how well it will perform.
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