Also, thanks to the GTX 550 Ti being carefully tweaked and tuned for the best performance possible, it should prove to be a relatively cheap and great performing card. Let’s take a closer look…

Design

The overall look of the card is fairly sharp and attractive with a black and dark yellow colour scheme. Obviously, we’ve got the fan in the centre of the card, a single 75mm fan to be exact. The fan is situated just above the heat sink, which is attached to the GPU.

As you can tell from the image below, the GTX 550 Ti does not feature any fancy heat pipes or advanced cooling solutions, but in terms of power to heat ratio, it shouldn’t need as much cooling as some of the more expensive, and even more powerful, graphics cards.

The rear of the card carries on the black and yellow theme with a completely black board. If you look in the top corner, you can also see the 2-way SLI connection.

Now, ZOTAC have slightly modified the design of the NVIDIA GTX550 Ti, on which the AMP! Edition is based, here so that the AMP! Edition also features a port to make Display Port connectivity possible. As you can see, there are two DVI ports, a HDMI port and the Display Port.

Above these, the hot air from the card will be blown out whilst in use. However, due to the size limitation, some hot air could be blown back in to the PC. If you’ve got decent case airflow, this shouldn’t cause too much of a problem though.

Introduction

The Graphics Card market is one which has taken some real beatings in the past year with the economic crisis. Instead of blowing your pay cheque as soon as it lands in your hand, many people are being more cautious about their purchases, making sure it’s not money wasted and that you’ve got the best performance for your hard earned cash. This is great for review websites like us, but for ATI and Nvidia it’s a very different story. Instead of taking a step forward in developing a bigger, better and usually more expensive card, which is normally the case, they’ve taken a leap backwards to provide for the ever-increasing ‘budget market’.

One such graphics card from ATI to enter this market is the HD 4770. Although it’s not the newest of graphics cards on the block and by no means the fastest, for users who are looking to spend under £100 on a video card, its features and specifications mean it’s one of the top candidates when deciding what graphics card to purchase.

Today we have an ATI HD4770 to review from the popular company named HIS. HIS are one of the leading manufacturers of ATI graphics cards. To see how this budget monster performs, we’ll be comparing it to a card just £20 more expensive. Time to see how this RV740 GPU video card performs…

The Technology behind the card…

Whereas most graphics cards feature a 55nm GPU, the 4770 HD from ATI is built with a 40nm chip. The smaller manufacturing process used to create this GPU means that more transistors can be fitted inside the same sized piece of silicon. In fact, to be precise, the RV740 has 826 million in a 143mm chip whereas the RV770 55nm chip has 965 million in a 267mm chip. Quite some size difference! So what does all this mean? The main advantage is significantly reduced power consumption and greater clock speeds, it only takes 80W to power a 4770.

There’s an interesting entry which shows the benefits of increasing transistor count here.

About HIS

“HIS is an internationally acclaimed graphics cards company. Time and time again, HIS were compared and tested by hundreds of worldly renowned critics. The results are phenomena, HIS have proven to offer far superior, cooler, quieter, and faster graphic cards than any other leading rivals. Up to the fourth quarter of 2008, HIS has won over 700 awards with ATI graphic solution from major media worldwide. HIS is being recognized by providing performance leading and award-winning products.”

]]> http://tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/his-ati-radeon-hd4770-graphics-card-review/feed/ 0 http://tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/zotac-gtx285-graphics-card-review/ http://tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/zotac-gtx285-graphics-card-review/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 18:07:05 +0000 Rhys http://tech-reviews.co.uk/?p=724

Introduction

To replace the GTX 280, NVIDIA has released the GTX 285 – a graphics card which sports a 55nm GPU and the same 240 stream processors as the GTX 280. The GTX 285 that we’ll be reviewing today is made by Zotac – a quickly growing company who make some cracking graphics cards and motherboards. Anyway, let’s unleash this beast and see how it performs. Introducing the Zotac GTX 285 AMP! Edition…

About Zotac

ZOTAC with NVIDIA not only means superb quality, it also means high performance, absolute reliability and great value. In the past year, ZOTAC was compared and tested by several influential members in the media and have proven its products are good quality, worth-to-buy graphic cards in the market. With the product features of overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties and unique packaging ZOTAC products definitely exceed users’ expectations.

ZOTAC’s commitment to our user is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Doubtless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who require high-quality graphic solutions.

Features

• 2nd Generation NVIDIA unified architecture
• Full Microsoft DirectX 10 support
• NVIDIA SLI- Ready
• NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology
• NVIDIA PhysX technology
• NVIDIA CUDA technology
• PCI Express 2.0 support
• Two dual-link DVI-I and one HDMI output
• Dual-link HDCP-Capable
• OpenGL 2.1 support

Specifications

The specifications for this graphics card are fairly extensive so please click here to take a look.

Introduction

nVidia’s 8th series of next generation graphics cards have been going for about a year and a half now. When released, they dominated the market heavily being the card which offered the most ‘bang for the buck’. Today we’re going to take a step back from the future and have a look at one of nVidia’s most successful cards, introducing the 8800GT…

The flavour of card we’ll be looking at is the MSI model, which features a Zalman GPU cooler cooling the popular G92 chipset…

About MSI

Founded in August 1986, MSI has continued to uphold a business philosophy that stresses “Award-winning product quality and outstanding customer service.” MSI specializes in the design and manufacture of motherboards, add-on cards, servers/workstations, barebones, optical storage devices, communication devices and IA accessories. Overcoming a challenging industry environment, MSI have raced to the head of the pack and are now ranked among Taiwan’s Top 3 and the World’s Top 5 motherboard manufacturer. Besides, our VGA production has been on the No. 1 position in the world for four consecutive years.

Specifications

• Graphics Bus Technology: PCI Express
• Memory Amount: 512MB
• Memory Interface: 256-bit
• Core Clock (MHz): 660
• Shader Clock (MHz): 1650
• Memory Clock (MHz): 1900
• Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 57.6
• Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec): 33.6
• RAMDACs (MHz): 400

Features

Link to features.

Packaging

The MSI NX8800GT Zilent arrives in MSI’s usual graphical packaging featuring a computer generated image of a Chinese girl on the front. Listed on the front are plenty of features which the 8800GT entails.

The rear of the box has multilingual specifications and features, a system requirements list and information about the technologies which the card uses. The MSI exclusive technology which this graphics features is a ‘Mazarine’ – a DVI to HDMI adapter which can also send audio.

Inside the box is a whole bunch of accessories, all of which are in polythene bags – help save the environment MSI.

• DVI – VGA Adapter
• DVI- HDMI Adapter
• S-Video Cable
• S-Video Splitter
• Twin Molex to PCI-E Power Adapter
• Sound cable for HDMI
• Sound cable for S-Video
• Quick User Guide
• User Guide
• Driver CD

Unfortunately there were no freebie games in the package. A bit unfortunate as including a game or two is a good way to perk up a product.

MSI NX8800GT Zilent

Aesthetically the card is very striking. The Zalman cooler and copper heat-pipes stand out against the card’s red PCB. The capacitors on the PCB seem to be the higher quality aluminium shielded ones which don’t get damaged as easily.

Oddly, as well as the usual connectors on the front of the card, there is also a two-pin adapter. This connects to two of the pins on your soundcard / motherboard (via the cable supplied) which allows for sound to be sent along with the video signal through a HDMI cable using the DVI to HDMI converter supplied.

Common in most cards, the PCI-E power connectors are located at the rear of the card – this is the same for the NX8800GT Zilent. The Zilent only needs one 6-pin PCI-connector to power it, unlike some of the newer cards which require two.

The rear of the card features low profile spring loaded screws securing the cooler in place.

The Cooler

The GPU cooler is a Zalman branded cooler with an MSI sticker at the centre of the fan. The fins on the cooler are thin aluminium whilst the four heat-pipes are copper. Zalman are well known for their quiet GPU cooling solutions so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s the same case for this cooler.

The RAM chips do not feature heat sinks unlike most graphics cards – however the Zalman should cool the RAM well enough.

The Zalman fan is powered by a 4-pin adapter allowing it to be temperature controlled.

Rear

At the back of the graphics card there are two DVI connectors and an S-Video port. Like most high-end cards, the MSI takes up 2x PCI slots. One of the PCI-Plates serves as a vent for the 8800GT to extract hot air out of.

nVidia’s G92

Compared to the G80, the G92 is a little larger in size (although the die is slightly smaller) and features an aluminium surround to allow the cooler to sit flush.

Installation

Installing the 8800GT was fairly simple. If you’ve never installed or upgraded a graphics card before, here is the process: uninstall old graphic’s card drivers, install new graphics card’s drivers, remove old graphics card from system, install new card. The same process was carried out with this card and fortunately went very well.

Vista automatically recognised the new MSI NX 8800GT and installed the drivers from the disk straight away – without me having to do anything. This meant that installation was incredibly simple.

However, as the card uses up two PCI slots, some users may need to relocate PCI cards to install the card.

Unlike the 8800GTX cards, the card isn’t too long and should fit in most cases with ease. The card was only slightly longer than my old XFX 7900GS card….and that’s old, heh.

Testing

To test GPU’s we use 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage to calculate a synthetic benchmark score which is then compared to other graphics cards. This test is carried out with the card at stock speeds and at over clocked speeds. 3DMark Vantage uses DirectX 10 and 3DMark 06 used DirectX 9.

When overclocking the graphics card we increase the values by 10 each time. The over clocked speed we achieve is based on the card being at its highest possible stable speed in game.

Unfortunately we don’t have the equipment to measure sound levels (dBA). Therefore, all noise tests are based on the results from my very own human ear.

All performance tests are carried out three times. An average value is then calculated from the three results.

All results are calculated from the setup below:

Overclocking

Using nTune I maxed out the fan speed and then managed to overclock the memory from 660 to 740MHz and the GPU core from 950 to 1050MHz.

3DMark06

3DMark is a computer benchmark by Futuremark Corporation which is used to determine the DirectX performance of a graphics card. The score is calculated from testing the graphics card and processor – so when comparing results, the same CPU needs to be used.

3DMark 06 is a synthetic measure of real-world performance which features the following:

• HDR rendering.
• Complex HDR Video post-processing.
• Dynamic soft shadows for all objects.
• Water shader with HDR refraction, HDR reflection, depth fog and Gerstner wave functions.
• Heterogeneous fog.
• Atmospheric light scattering.
• Realistic sky model with cloud blending.
• Strauss lighting model for most materials.
• Subsurface scattering shader for some objects (not visible in the shot).
• Texture & normal map sizes: 1024 x 1024 to 2048 x 2048.
• Approximately 5.4 million triangles and 8.8 million vertices.

Results- Futuremark 3DMark 06

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is Futuremark’s latest benchmark. It requires DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista. The graphics tests in Vantage use DX10 exclusive features, such as, parallax mapping. The CPU tests sport AI and physics modelling. Just like 3DMark 06 the score is a combined total with the processor, so the same CPU needs to be used when comparing results.

Results – Futuremark Vantage

As Futuremark Vantage is DX10 only, we cannot compare the results with that of our 7900GS as it’s unfortunately DX9 only. However, when we start receiving more graphics cards we will update the results.

Noise

The MSI 8800GT Zilent really is silent. Any fan speeds below medium cannot be heard, however, if you intend to over clock the card; you may have to suffer with high fan speeds – which are slightly loud.

Cost

At £150 the MSI is quite pricey considering faster models such as the ones from EVGA are around £120. However, the MSI’s GPU can be over clocked very easily and the memory has got plenty of overclocking headroom. Furthermore, the Zilent comes with a Zalman cooler – that alone will set you back £30 or so.

Conclusion

If you’re after a quiet graphics card which performs well, the MSI 8800GT Zilent is a good choice. In our DX9 tests (3DMark 06) it performed very well and doubled the performance of our 7900GS. In DX10 the card was lacking, it averaged at around 16fps throughout the benchmark and 18fps when over clocked. Therefore when in highly detailed DX10 games like Crysis, the graphics settings may need to be lowered to play at a decent frame rate.

That said the 8800GT is a still a great card, which offers plenty of ‘silent bang’ for DX9 gaming. It would be a wise investment for anyone not wanting to make the jump to DX10 just yet.

Thanks MSI and QuietPC