AMD’s mainstream GPUs analysed

IT’S BEEN a busy week, with both AMD and Nvidia launching new chips. We’ve covered the G210 and GT220 reviews in yesterday’s Nvidia article, here, so we needn’t rehash the links.

AMD, on the other hand, seems to be intent on not leaving Nvidia with any options as their HD 5770 and 5750 cards reach the market. The cards, intended for the mainstream market ($159~$129), seem to deliver solid performance, low power and a bang-for-buck value (although, quite honestly, we’d rather see them for ourselves – any of you AIB partners are welcome to send in your stuff).

So, here are our findings, review-wise, and just for the heck of it we’ve put it down (up) in reverse alphabetical order:

• Hardware Canucks XFX 5770 and Asus 5770
• TweakTown
• Tom’s Hardware
• TechPowerUp
• Tech Gage
• Rage 3D
• Phoronix
• PC Perspective
• PC Games Hardware
• OCC Sapphire, Powercolor and XFX
• Neoseeker
• Motherboards.org
• Metku Mods
• Legion Hardware
• Inside HW
• HT4U
• Hot Hardware
• Hexus.net
• Hartware.net
• Hardware Zone
• HardOCP
• Guru of 3D
• eTeknix
• Driver Heaven
• Bjorn3D
• Benchmark Reviews
• Anandtech
• AMD Zone

If you can still handle a bit more of graphics overkill, PC Games Hardware is happy to oblige. The new 5870 series is crossfired and faced-off with the GTX 285 SLI. Some shocking surprises right there... but guys, are you sure you ran an overclocked Core i7 rig with dual HD 5870 (or dual GTX 285) on a 625W PSU?

Tom Strom at Tom’s Hardware has uncovered a bit of a problem with budget P55 motherboards. It seems the cheaper voltage regulation on these mobos tend to blow if you’re pushing a Lynnfield hard, which is bound to happen to those weekend overclockers.

Xbit Labs tests the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 motherboard. It’s about as hardcore as Gigabyte can get on a P55 mobo – they’ve really stuffed it full of features. You do get a feeling that there is such a thing as “enough”, though.

Neoseeker, with another motherboard test, has the Asus Maximus III Formula. This P55-based motherboard heralds from the Republic of Gamers series and comes with an excellent overclocking pedigree. It didn’t outperform the Intel DP55KG, but did overclock better on air.

PC Perspective is digging a bit deeper into the Eyefinity technology on AMD’s latest GPUs. Ryan tested a few gaming titles at 7680x1600 resolution and uncovered an odd bug that brings performance crashing down.

Overclockers HQ on the other hand went with something a bit more down-to-earth, a review of the Mionix Saiph 3200 gaming mouse. It lights up (yay!) it snipes well, it’s programmable and, according to the site, it looks like you should rush out and buy one. µ