XFX is one of the most popular global brands of video cards, and for years they have been producing products exclusively based on Nvidia technology.
Thanks mainly to the immense popularity of ATI's HD 4000 series of cards that's all changed, as XFX have decided that they would like a piece of that pie as well. This is a momentous occasion, as personally I've been a big fan of XFX's products over the years, and to celebrate I've managed to get my grubby little hands on one of each of their latest gaming and enthusiast cards. So without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the new XFX family...
ATI HD 4850
Without a doubt the most popular video card available since the release of the úber-successful 8800GT from Nvidia, this is the card that brought ATI back into the hearts and minds of gamers worldwide.
The only complaint people seem to have with this card is that reference-designed units from most manufacturer run way too hot - up to 90'C with the stock cooler. XFX clearly picked up on this as they've used their own custom-designed black PCB and attached a dual slot cooler to keep temps under control. All other specifications and speeds remain the same as other reference designed 4850's. On the back of the card you have 2 DVI outputs and a video out connector, whilst in the box you have the standard accessories of DVI/VGA adaptor (no HDMI), component video dongle, molex power adaptor cable (to fit the single 6-pin plug on the card), install guide and driver CD.
No games come bundled with this card but that doesn't seem to be common practice for midrange cards these days.
ATI HD 4830
The 4850's little brother. The only differences between this and its sibling are that the number of shader processors (the "cores" of the card) have been reduced, and both the core and memory speeds have dropped (check out the table below for fulls specs). Other than that, the XFX 4830 features the same cooler, is the same size, and has the same accessories as the 4850.
ATI HD 4870 512MB & 1GB
Going upmarket now, the 4870 has one significant difference to the cheaper 4800 cards - the memory bandwidth. With the GDDR3 memory on the 4830 and 4850, you take the core memory speed (eg 900MHz) and you double it to get the effective bandwidth (ie 1800MHz). With the GDDR5 on the 4870 cards however, you quadruple it, which in this case gives you a whopping 3600MHz available memory bandwidth. XFX have chosen to use the same cooler as other reference-designed 4870's from other manufacturers, but have used their own black PCB again. The connections are the same as the lower 4800 cards, but this time they've included a DVI/HDMI adaptor.
The XFX 4870 is available in 512MB and 1GB variants.
Nvidia GTX 285
For those of you familiar with Nvidia's latest G200 series of cards, the GTX 285 is primarily an overclocked version of the GTX 280. It also uses 55nm chip manufacturing technology instead of 65nm like the GTX 280, so it should also use less power and have a wee bit more overclocking headroom than the older version. The XFX version has the standard dual-slot cooler attached to a black PCB; 2xDVI and video out connectors on the back; comes shipped with video out cables, power cables, install guide, driver CD, interesting-but-weird doorknob sign to inform others of your geekdom, and last but not least - a free copy of Far Cry 2! It's good to finally see a high quality title such as this thrown in.
Nvidia GTX 295
Nvidia's ego (and bank account presumably) has been a bit battered over the last few months as ATI has held the performance crown with its 4870X2 (which XFX have decided not to produce, yet) but they've finally answered the challenge with the GTX 295. While we won't be comparing the two cards here today, most reviews around the web at the moment seem to tip the lead in Nvidia's favour.
This card has a dual slot cooler wedged between two PCBs (which both contain what are basically underclocked GTX 280 cores, with slightly less memory). XFX have encased the card with hard-wearing rubber moulding and it really looks the business, especially next to the plastic-fantastic cooler on the GTX 285. Same accessories are bundled as the 285 (except the box is about twice the size) and again you get the free copy of Far Cry 2.
Anyhoo, enough yacking, let's put the cards through their paces and see what they can do.
Test System
CPU: Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3600MHz
RAM: 2x2GB G.Skill DDR2-1000 CL5
Mobo: Asus P5Q Pro
O/S: Vista Home Premium 64bit SP1
3DMark06
As always we start by getting our bearings from the ubiquitous gaming benchmark from Futuremark. As it steps up in resolution and AA (anti-aliasing) quality we should see the lower cards start to choke a lot more than the more expensive cards. I also wanted to include 3DMark Vantage scores but I had issues with the ATI drivers running it so decided not to.
On top of returning the highest results here (as expected), the GTX 295 also has the least spread in scores - that is, increasing the image quality and resolution hardly drops the score at all. Impressive stuff.
Crysis Warhead
Sequel to the immensely popular Crysis, this is more of the same with slightly tweaked graphics and slightly more explosions. For the results I've used the Crysis Warhead benchmark tool from Framebuffer, on the Ambush level.
Clearly if you want to play this game on high settings you want to invest in one of the more expensive Nvidia cards, as they both absolutely pummel the ATI cards, especially on the highest "Enthusiast" settings. Otherwise, all the cards offer very playable FPS at 1280x1024, and only the 4830 and 4850 start to struggle at 1680x1050.
