Review: ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics AIB
Posted by Robert Dow on March 2nd 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Hardware Review
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gpu
ati
amd
graphics
radeon
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ATI-AMD continued to roll out products in its Evergreen line this week, adding to the Enthusiast segment with the HD 5830. The HD 5830 fits in the lower end of the Enthusiast segment in between the HD 5850 and the HD 5770 with a $240 price point. The following chart puts the new board in perspective with its peers from AMD. HD 5770 HD 5830 HD 5850 GTX 260 Core 216 1.36 TFLOPS 1.79 TFLOPS 2.09 TFLOPS 850 MHz 800 MHz Core Clock 725 MHz 1.2 GHz Core Clock 800 Stream Processors 1120 Stream Processors 1440 Steam Processors 240 Processor…
Pay a little, get a lot—AMD’s HD 5450 and 5470 sub $100 AIBs
Posted by Robert Dow on February 16th 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Hardware Review
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AMD introduced two additional add-in boards to their expanding product line for the Value segment putting a virtual strangle hold on the <$100 market. Radeon HD 5450 The HD 5450 with a 40nm “Cedar” GPU is a sub $60 card set to take the place of its HD 4350/4550 predecessors. To get to this thrifty price point AMD made some significant hardwaremodifications. AMD cut the cost of manufacturing of the AIB by giving the 5450 a fan-less heat sink which gives the HD 5450 a unique look but also turns this sub $60 AIB into a dual-slot solution. There will be…
Aperture surprises: Apple slips in new release when fans were losing hope
Posted by Kathleen Maher on February 16th 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Software Review
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apple
review
faces
adobe
lightroom
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images
aperture
photography
photographer
Aperture 3 is here and Apple has made it a lot more flexible and friendly. In fact, Apple has reversed the waterfall and pulled the popular Faces and Places feature in iPhoto up to Aperture. Features like photo books, which have existed in both products, have become easier to use in Aperture but there are also more options. Aperture, if you don’t remember, is a photo management tool introduced for professional photographers. It was brought forth sometime before Adobe introduced Lightroom and it caused a sensation. It handled some of the most common tasks performed by professional photographers—and in so doing…
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD5670
Posted by Robert Dow on January 18th 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Hardware Review
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gpu
ati
amd
radeon
gpgpu
pmark
hd5670
While multi-card Crossfire/ SLi solutions and chasing record breaking performance get the headlines the bottom line is fueled by the $100 and under AIB’s. The Mainstream segment of the market has always been the monetary sweet spot of the GPU industry. What a company loses in profit margins in the segment is more than made up for in volume. In years past this segment would be reserved for the high-end parts that has fallen from grace and becomes obsolete, however recognizing the importance of this segment (Steam is reporting that 90% of AIB are <$100) GPU companies design GPUs specifically for…
Software Review: Making Muvees
Posted by Kathleen Maher on December 15th 2009 | Permalink
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Software Review
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Of all the tools out there that promise to make video making easy and fun, Muvee has been one of the best and one of the easiest. The way Muvee works is to let you select video clips and still pictures, add a soundtrack, and pick a style. The templates add some graphics elements, such as a scrapbook, stars, cubes, and also a style for cuts and transitions. Then you just push a button and see what you get. The developers at Muvee have been pretty quiet and that’s because they’ve been working away re-architecting the software to take advantage of…
EVGA’s GT 240 - Testing a powerful low-cost AIB
Posted by Robert Dow on December 15th 2009 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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We don’t just test super high-end AIBs here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs; we look at any AIB that is novel or interesting, or controversial. So we decided to take a look at some midrange AIBs, and in particular Nvidia’s newest offering, the GT 240. EVGA loaned us a board for examination and we put it through the usual tests. It’s appropriate to look at midrange AIBs at this time of year and in this economy. Consumers looking for a gift, or for themselves, are looking for value in their purchases and the midrange AIBs offer plenty of that. Not everyone…
ATI’s Radeon HD5970 Hemlock - DirectX 11, lots-o-cores, multiple displays, over-clockable
Posted by Jon Peddie on November 24th 2009 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
Tags:
gpu
ati
opencl
directx
amd
graphics
pmark
overclock
benchmark
Number five in its series of new AIBs, ATI as promised delivered the dual chip HD5970 Radeon board. It’s killer fast, easy on the power supply and pocketbook, and has bonuses like multi-display output and over clocking tools. The board comes with 2GB of DDR5, one each for each GPU. The GPUs get to the PCIe lanes via a gen2 PLX PCIe bridge chip. We ran a series of tests on the board in Windows 7 and the results were very impressive—without over-clocking. ATI has a lot of headroom in the RV870 Evergreen GPU, and the two of them on the…
The new Zune review – HD at work
Posted by Kathleen Maher on November 19th 2009 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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Microsoft's latest assault on the portable media market is the Zune HD. It is a lovely little piece of hardware that gives Microsoft a play against some strong. In fact, it reminds me of my beloved Samsung Yepp YP-P2. Samsung has upgraded that line with a new P3 and of course, Apple is the power house with the iPod Touch. Microsoft developed this generation of Zune, the HD, with Nvidia’s Tegra and the added power is evident in the beautiful bright screen. It also has a nifty interface, a long battery life, and a software infrastructure that needs work. Table 1:…
Kill a watt
Posted by Jon Peddie on November 19th 2009 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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Every month the electric bill comes in and every month it’s higher than you think it should be and every month you say we have to find out what is using all that power, it can't be just the PC I sit in front of all day, someone is leaving lights on or something. And then you go back to reading your email and tapping out tweets. At quitting time, you get up and some folks turn off their PC, others have a sleep mode set and want to have instant on when they come back so they leave the machine…
Your very own switchboard
Posted by Jon Peddie on November 19th 2009 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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Here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs we run several computers with AMD or Intel processors of various sizes. We have a variety of monitors, keyboards, and mice, and the one we want is never attached to the machine we’re going to run tests on. Not only that, when we do unravel the rat’s nests of wires, one of them in inevitably is either too short or too knotted up to reach and so a few frustrating minutes are lost sorting that out. We’ve tried to get a KVM switch that would help us manage it and couldn’t find one that handled…
