hoss... de man does be selling organs out hoss... nuff said lol...
December Review and January Updates:With no new cards introduced in December, the biggest news was the increased availability of the new Radeon HD 5800-series in the second half of the month. Sourcing one of these cards seems to be fairly easy now, and we're glad to see that the 5850 and 5870 cards haven't strayed into vaporware territory (unfortunately, both models are still priced well above where ATI launched them in 2009). Hopefully this means that TSMC has had some good luck ironing out its difficulties with the 40nm process. On another positive note for ATI, Radeon HD 4850 cards seem to have resurfaced at the sub-$110 price point, bringing back some competition for the GeForce GTS 250. On the flip side, availability of other models remains scant, and the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 remains difficult to find at retail. Some GeForce cards, such as the GTX 275 and GTX 295 are also hard to find, even though they are still officially in production (and we'd argue that, overall, they're more available now than they were a month ago).Prices have fluctuated a bit, and the new Radeon HD 5700-series cards are about $5 more affordable. Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 260 seems to have been bumped up a few dollars. As a result the Radeon HD 5770 stands alone in the ~$155 space that used to be a battleground between the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260. In addition, the majority of GeForce GTX 285 models seem to have suffered a significant price increase that puts them too close to the superior Radeon HD 5850.What surprises does the start of 2010 hold for us? Well, according to the roadmaps that AMD has supplied us with for the 5800- and 5700-series launches, we should be expecting their low-end GPUs in the near future, the 'Redwood' and 'Cedar' models. It will be interesting to see how they will improve on the Radeon 4600- and 4770-series cards.
January Review and February Updates:January saw the introduction of the Radeon HD 5670, an interesting low-to-mid-range card that's almost as fast as the GeForce 9800 GT, yet blessed with all of the new Radeon 5000-series features: DirectX 11 compatibility, Eyefinity triple-display outputs, and low power usage. Available at $95, the worst thing about this new card is that another card from the previous generation, the Radeon HD 4850, sits at about the same price, but kicks out a lot more power from a gaming standpoint. Because of this, the Radeon HD 5670 doesn't get our recommendation, despite its potential.In early February, we were introduced to two other Radeon HD 5000-series cards, the 5450 and 5570. The Radeon HD 5450 is a low-end graphics card not intended for more than casual gaming. However, the Radeon HD 5570 does have a bit more potential. It is essentially a DDR3 version of the Radeon HD 5670 with a lower core clock rate. Performance is slightly higher than the Radeon HD 4670, but at $80, the 5570 evades our recommendation with a price too close to the better-performing GeForce 9600 GT.As far as other news, the new Radeons continue to drop in price, bit by bit. The most significant cut has occurred on the Radeon HD 5850 cards, which can now be found at $290. This is the original price this model was supposed to bear at launch, but low availability prevented it. With production issues seemingly worked out and the price stably below $300, the Radeon HD 5850 goes from honorable mention to a full-fledged recommendation. In addition, the mid-range Radeon HD 5700-series cards have dropped a few dollars as well. With the 1GB Radeon HD 5750 now commonly found at $135, it now takes a solid recommendation away from the 1GB Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTS 250 models.On the negative side, ATI's Radeon HD 4890 is suddenly a lot harder to find. This is unfortunate for the company, as its disappearance leaves a significant hole between the ~$155 Radeon HD 5770 and the $290 Radeon HD 5850. We've heard rumors that AMD plans to fill this gap with a stopgap product, perhaps a de-tuned Radeon HD 5850 called the 5830, but we don't have anything concrete from AMD yet.As always in the graphics world, the biggest changes are just beyond the horizon. Nvidia has released details about its imminent 'Fermi' GF100 architecture, and although we haven't seen anything in the way of finalized hardware or benchmarks its potential certainly inspires a strong impression.
June Updates:The end of May gave us a couple of new graphics card models: one from Nvidia and one from AMD. These are very different cards marketed at very different price points. Let's start with the GeForce GTX 465.Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 465 is a GF100 (Fermi)-based card, essentially a crippled GeForce GTX 470. While the GeForce GTX 480 boasts 480 CUDA cores and the GeForce GTX 470 sports 448, the new GeForce GTX 465 has 352 cores. Couple this with 44 texture units and 32 raster operations per clock, and the new GeForce card clearly isn't going to be faster than either of the other GF100-based boards. But it does have the potential to be a strong card at the right price.The GeForce GTX 465 performs in the same ballpark as the GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 5830, but with a $280 price tag, it's way too close to the Radeon HD 5850. Because of this, the GeForce GTX 465 won't get our recommendation until the price drops to more competitive levels. These cards are available at retail, and you can read more about the new GeForce in our review here.AMD has a new low-end part that could have the chops to game at lower resolutions and with reduced detail settings. The Radeon HD 5550 was stealth-launched in May with no fanfare whatsoever, but the cards are already available. According to AMD's Web site, the Radeon HD 5550 sports 320 shader units, 16 texture units, and eight ROPs. Based on this, performance should be similar to the older Radeon HD 4650/4670, although the new card has half the texture units and this will slow things down. On the other hand, some new models can already be found online at $65 with decent DDR3 memory, and PowerColor has announced a GDDR5 version with twice the bandwidth. It's too early to hand a recommendation out; we need to get our hands on this board first. But the discovery of the 5550 on AMD's site definitely calls for further investigation. We'll be reviewing the new Radeon HD 5550 as soon as possible.Aside from these two launches, there wasn't much happening in May except for the usual price movements, the most notable being the Radeon HD 5830, which dropped to as little as $220 online, and can be found even cheaper with rebates. At its $240 launch price, the Radeon HD 5830 was priced too close to the Radeon HD 5850, but as it approaches $200, it becomes a much more attractive option.Elsewhere, the $80 GeForce 9800 GTs seem to have dried up, and we eagerly hope that they return (or that Nvidia will give us a similarly-priced card based on the new Fermi architecture in the near future).
September Updates:With no new products released in August, the biggest news in the graphics card world may be the announcement that the ATI brand will be dropped from AMD's graphics card division. The Radeon brand remains, but ATI is being replaced by AMD in many instances. For example "ATI Eyefinity" becomes "AMD Eyefinity." This was probably inevitable, and the clock started ticking on this once the AMD/ATI merger happened. But let's have a communal moment of silence for the brand anyway. Is AMD's decision a big deal of any sort? Absolutely not. So long as the same engineers continue designing competitive products, it's all the same to us.In other news, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 400-series cards continue to put pricing pressure on their Radeon counterparts, and I do believe we just might be on the verge of a price war--something that should make gamers in the market for graphics hardware squeal with anticipation. AMD's boards have been on the market for so long that prices on them are moving slowly. But I've definitely seen signs that things are becoming a little more volatile. Maybe it's just wishful thinking. However, with relative performance being what it is, some reaction is needed unless AMD is willing to surrender the price/performance battle. We already know that AMD has an end-of-year answer to Nvidia's recent activity. Perhaps it'll wait until then to pounce.Finally, Nvidia recently released its GeForce GTS 450, aimed squarely at AMD's Radeon HD 5750. Though the GTS 450 does offer superior performance in most cases at a similar price point, we still have a hard time getting excited about mainstream DirectX 11-class hardware when Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTS 250 boards are floating around for $90. No doubt, there will come a time when older DirectX 10-class hardware disappears, leaving only the newer, pricier options. But until that happens, we're still comfortable recommending that you jump on those fire sales before spending substantially more money on minor performance increases.
