This is the 3rd Radeon card I have purchased this year: I decided to switch to Radeon, after decades of Nvidia oppression... besides of excellent performance for a price, Radeon cards have some other important advantages: do not get that hot as nvidia cards do, radeon cards do not require excessively powerful PSU, which means less cost as well.
Well, this one isn't an exception. The card is small (short) so can be installed in a small case (exactly what I did), the card runs fine on cheap 450W (!) only (ACME brand) power supply, card has external power connector (the 6-pin cable is supplied), also the card can work as Crossfire, which is great: a significant upgrade for $100 approx.
The card is silent, even when runs at full throttle, also it is cool (I live in a pretty hot place (in all aspects), so I was experiencing crashes due to overheating, when I was using nvidia cards (I had to put additional fans in order to cool them down), well it does not happen with Radeon cards, this one is not an exception.
Another good thing about this card, is GPU clock: 1GHz, which put it a bit closer to "high end" cards, DDR5 memory runs at 1125MHz, which is good but less than I expected (the other Radeon I have, XFX 6770, runs at 1200MHz), however it is not a big deal: the card shows excellent performance in most recent games (I tried it on FarCry 3 and Dishonored): well, it would be wrong to expect something outrageous form a $100 card, but it certainly great (especially considering the price), runs smoothly and does well the job.
2013-01-13 Update: I have slightly upgraded my crig to an low cost i3-2100,with 3mb of cache, running at 3.10GHz, an average Gigabyte MB, and 8Gb of DDR3 1333MHz, in dual channel mode... Now I can run FarCry 3, in FullHD, at all settings at max, at about 25fps... This card is definitely great... I start feeling regrets about had purchased an XFX radeon HD R7970, with 3Gb of DDR5, which cost about $500, and shows similar results, being 5 times more expensive...
2013-03-25 Update: I went Crossfire... I purchased another card (the same one), and put them both in crossfire... I must say it is the best investment I have made so far (in gaming hardware): I have an ultimate graphic sub system for only $238... Another good news that the whole rig runs well on cheap generic power supply, 650W, $14... I have run 3DMark, and the result is not that impressive: 3DMark score 2518 on single card, 3050: crossfire. But the games show other thing: FarCry 3: 60 (very high) fps, ElderScrolls V: 80 fps (ultra high), Tomb Raider 2013: 60 fps (ultra high), Resident Evil 6: 60 fps... Resolution: 1920x1080. The whole rig is about $620. Could not be better...
2013-03-29 Update: Bioshock Infinite: 45 fps (ultra high), Sniper Ghost Warrior 2: 35 fps (High)
| Max Screen Resolution | 4096 x 2160 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 1125 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | AMD Radeon |
| Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 1 GB |
