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RADEON 9800 PRO vs. NVIDIA FX5900
Hello,
Wow! PCstats has some really exciting
reviews for you to read in this weeks Edition! In the left corner we have the ATI Radeon
9800 Pro, and in the right - nVidia's GeForceFX 5900 Videocard from newcomer Albatron. Who will be the winner,
and who will be the vanquished? When it comes to a
battle of GPU vs. GPU on
the field of FPS,
your court side seats are the best in the house!
What good is a fast videocard if your current
motherboard goes back to the day of the BX chipset? Not much
unfortunately, but there is a good upgrade path in the form of the i865PE
chipset. We had some reviews of Springdale-based motherboards in the last few
PCstats.com Newsletters, so today we are examining an i875P motherboard from EPOX called the EP-4PCA3+. PCstats.com recently tested the Asus P4C800 DLX
800MHz FSB Pentium 4 motherboard which is also built around the powerful
i875P chipset, so be sure to read that review if you are deciding between i865PE and i875P chipsets.
I'm looking forward to what
could be the 'Pentium 5' processor, and in this week's High Tech Low Down
Chris fills in the the details as they have started to emerge. Colin talks
memory speed in the Tech Tips which are always helpful, and remember to visit www.PCstats.com for up to the minute
news throughout the day!
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 |  ATi
are laying down the same game plan set by nVIDIA many years back,
releasing new VPUs every six to eight months. The Radeon 9800 Pro VPU was
released seven months after the highly successful Radeon 9700 Pro and the
upcoming 'R420' is on course for a late September release. The Radeon 9800 Pro VPU is really nothing more than a
higher clocked 'R300' core that has been tweaked for just a bit
more performance. We'll get into the specifics in a moment, but as you're
about to see it really does improve performance nicely. In any event, the highly successful Radeon 9800 Pro we
are examining now came to market from an unlikely source - Crucial, a division of
Micron, and a tier one memory manufacturer. Crucial ventured into the
highly competitive world of videocards in the summer of 2002, originally
releasing a Radeon 8500LE. Their videocard caused quite a stir in
the hardware community due to the use of 6ns DRAM,
however the performance of the card was not able to live up to
expectations.
Today we'll be checking out Crucial's new
Radeon 9800 Pro videocard. The same questions arise; does this card live
up to the Crucial name and expectations? You'll just have to read on to
find out... Continue -- Click
Here>>
 When
the news came down the wire that the Epox 4PCA3+ i875P motherboard was on
the testing block I have to admit I was a little excited. You see, Epox
are one of the few manufacturers that can make my [techie] pulse rise.
This isn't because of any grand marketing schemes, promotions, or bundles
of software and USB break-out boxes in the box. Nope, this impression is
one which has been built over many months, and over experiences with many
different motherboards from Epox. And if the past is any indication of
what to expect in the future, then the 4PCA3+ has a lot to live up to. For
not only are Epox motherboards typically fast, they are also typically
very good overclockers; and as you may have realized, I'm all for
hitting the high numbers!
I understand the future is in Serial ATA but
I still have quite a few large capacity IDE drives that are far from being
tossed out with yesterdays BX chipset. It's easy to see why a quiet grin
swept across my face the second I saw not four, but six IDE
headers on this motherboard. With the right sized hard drives one could
make very nice use of the on board High Point HPT374 controller indeed.
Continue -- Click
Here>>
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The FX5900PV comes in a nifty carry case
which through us for a loop as I thought Albatron had sent a notebook by
accident! The Albatron GeForceFX 5900PV is packed securely in a block of
antistatic closed-cell foam inside the nylon notebook style bag, which
also includes a full version of Duke Nukem: MP, a five game demo/lite CD,
Power Director and Power DVD among other items. Because the card supports VIVO, Albatron also a VIVO break out box
a S-Video to S-Video, and a composite to composite cable. An analog to DVI
converter is also bundled in with the package as well. The Albatron GeForceFX 5900PV is a long videocard at
22.5 cm, so you may have to remove the videocard when you're installing
system memory. The card only has 128MB of memory that's why you see silk
screens for eight additional DRAM modules. With no memory on the back of
the card and with the core clocked at 400 MHz, the Albatron GeForceFX
5900PV does not require any rear-PCB cooling. Albatron employs the Phillips 7108AE VIVO module with their
GeForceFX 5900PV videocard. These days it's not good enough to have a fast
videocard, you must also have well rounded multimedia options as more and
more users are taking advantage of these features.
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|  Today we're going to be testing out Asus' P4C800 Deluxe Intel
motherboard - the companies flagship board for the Canterwood chipset.
This little bad boy comes with a whole slew of features like; four Serial
ATA/Serial ATA RAID headers, a low-profile Ultra/133 IDE channel, 5.1
audio, Gigabit LAN (not CSA) and IEEE 1394 firewire for starters. If
that's not good enough for you, you can upgrade the board from any of its
five PCI slots and long 8x AGP Pro port. Officially the i875P chipset only supports Northwood B and C
processors (533MHz, 800MHz FSB respectively) however according to Asus,
you can also run 400 MHz based Northwood Pentium 4 processors in the
P4C800-DLX. The four DIMM slots can accommodate up to 4GB of PC1600-3200
DDR RAM, ECC or non ECC. One thing we
really liked about the Asus P4C800 was that the manufacturer installed a
plastic back plate behind the CPU socket for added support. This back
plate help to ensure that the motherboard will not warp, or buckle when a
stiff heatsink is attached to the HSRM (Heatsink Retention
Mechanism).
Continue -- Click
Here>>
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PCstats Issue
No.96
Circulation: 280,696
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The High Tech
Low Down |
| Let's talk Grantsdale for a bit, shall we? Intel's 875P chipset is wildly popular at the moment for its 800MHz front side bus support, CSA gigabit Ethernet architecture and native Serial ATA RAID 0 support. But as we all know, it won't last. Intel always has something bigger and better running behind closed doors. That something is primed to debut in 2004 alongside a new version of the 'Prescott' core, which still lacks association with the Pentium moniker (will it be an extension of Pentium 4, will it be Pentium 5, or will it be something new?).
At any rate, Grantsdale is the chipset that will invariably replace 875P. Its main allure will be an implementation of PCI Express x16, delivering an increasing quantity of throughput to the next generation of graphics cards. Initially set for an 800MHz front side bus, the platform will eventually transition up to 1.2GHz, accompanied by DDR-II memory running at up to 533MHz. Undoubtedly, a version of the chipset will surface with integrated graphics - said to be an entirely new core. Finally, the ICH6 will succeed today's ICH5, sporting four channels of Serial ATA support and PCI Express x1 slots. Save your pennies, though. Like today's 875P, don't expect Grantsdale to be inexpensive!
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| Written By |
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Editor-in-Chief
. M. Page
Weekly Tips
. C. Sun
HTLD Columnist
. C. Angelini | |
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