Review Introduction to ASUS EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5
DX11 Graphics card Bluetooth 3 Nov 2009
Introduction
With so many variants of the AMD Radeon
HD5850 graphics cards in the market, it is not easy to pick the card of choice.
As you are probably aware by now. AMD Radeon HD5850
uses the latest 40nm process and GDDR5 memory technologies deliver faster
processing times and general system performance. The GPU clocks at 725MHz and
has a 1440 Stream Processing Units. Users can even run up to three
displays from a single graphics card, thanks to the native DisplayPort and
Eyefinity technology.
Just like the rest of the cards under a different label, most of them
including this ASUS uses the actual AMD reference design. They all looked alike
and performs quite similarly. ASUS, on the other hand tries to make it different
by introducing Voltage Tweak technology. The graphics cards enable users to
boost GPU voltages via the SmartDoctor application to enjoy up to a 38%
improvement in performance.
According to ASUS with their internal tests, they were able
to tune up the performance using SmartDoctor by increasing the GPU voltage. They
raise the GPU voltage from 1.088v to 1.4v and increase the memory clock from
4000MHz to 5200MHz. It gave a 38% improvement compared to other reference
designed boards*.
With the ASUS EAH5800 Series graphics cards' support for
DirectX 11, it is now possible for users to enjoy new levels of visual realism
while playing games and watching videos on the PC. Innovations such as HDR
Texture Compression, DirectCompute and Tessellation are engineered to take
advantage of all the graphical features within the new Windows 7 operating
system. What's more, the ASUS EAH5800 Series is available in a special bundle,
featuring the best in off-road racing—Colin McRae: DiRT 2. Colin McRae: DiRT 2
is one of the most anticipated racing games of the year. It takes full advantage
of DirectX 11, adding realism to the racing environment. Hardware tessellation
improves the appearance of water and other surfaces, as well as crowd
animations. Utilizing the EGO Engine, DiRT 2 sets the world of virtual rallying
alight, a definite must-have for high adrenaline off-road racing on the PC.
The Package
Comes with the game "Dirt 2", manual, VGA drivers,
SmartDoctor, 6 pin power adaptor, CrossFire bridge [see video].
