by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
04/30/2009 | 04:04 PM
In the prehistoric times of the computer industry, PCs were almost silent, often having but a single fan in the power supply. Besides it, the hard disk was the only other source of noise in the system. As time went by, CPUs’ computing capacities were growing up together with their complexity and heat dissipation. The amount of fans needed for a PC was growing up, too. Today, it is not unusual to have two or three fans. And you can even see advanced PCs with five or even more cooling fans. This has provoked the problem of noise. In a high-performance PC the loudest source of noise is usually the graphics card that often dissipates more heat than the CPU.
For example, an inexpensive mainstream Radeon HD 4850 has a heat dissipation of about 110 watts, and this heat must be removed while staying within the size constraints: you cannot install a huge heatsink with a quiet 120mm fan on your graphics card! As a result, the developers have to compromise between optimal cooling and noise level. On the contrary, a passive and absolutely silent cooler can be developed quite easily – and there are a number of such products available on the market, but these are mostly entry-level solutions like Radeon HD 4650 or GeForce 9500. As we have seen before, they cope with decoding high-definition video but do not suit well for playing modern 3D games.
So, is it really possible to develop a completely silent graphics card with the performance of a Radeon HD 4850 or higher, or the combination of silence and speed in a gaming system is just a dream? Gigabyte wants to offer its solution to this problem by releasing the GV-R485MC-1GI. It is a unique version of Radeon HD 4850 with a passive cooling system, 1 gigabyte of onboard graphics memory, and a number of other features that differentiate it from the crowd of copies of ATI’s reference card. We’ve got a sample of it for us to test.
The gaming and multimedia capabilities of the Radeon HD 4850 are well known to our readers, so if Gigabyte has achieved its goal, the GV-R485MC-1GI may be a perfect choice for a universal HTPC that could be used for playing modern games. It may also be an optimal graphics card for a mainstream gaming station. Let’s take a look at this product now.
Gigabyte’s product comes to retail in standard-sized glossy box. There is a trivial picture of a girl holding a BFG on the front panel, but the color scheme is quite eye-pleasing.
The type and amount of the graphics card’s memory are indicated on the box. There is also a vague mention of a unique multi-core cooling system. We will discuss later on what this really is. If you turn the box around, you can also learn that the GV-R485MC-1GI comes from the Ultra Durable 2 series that features high-quality electronic components such as polymer capacitors, low RDS(on) MOSFETs, etc. However, the manufacturer does not claim this card to have an increased thickness of the metallization layers like the GV-N250OC-1GI model we have tested recently. The card offers full support for Gamer HUD technology which allows controlling the GPU voltage. This option may not be very valuable for a card with a passive cooler, but anyway. You don’t have to overclock if you don’t want to whereas an overclocker will accelerate his graphics card in spite of all the limitations and restrictions.
The full-featured version of Gamer HUD looks like follows:
The control utility’s interface is questionable, but not overloaded with useless design elements. Its functionality is high because you can control the voltage of both GPU and memory. You can also keep track of the GPU load. Gamer HUD technology has a hardware part as we will describe shortly.
Besides the graphics card proper, the box contains the following accessories:
That’s just a basic set of things you need to run a graphics card but we guess a HDMI → DVI-I adapter might have been included for owners of two monitors with digital inputs. The disc does not contain a software player of high-definition video, but that’s a common practice among graphics card makers. Such software costs a lot and is included with select products only. It would have affected the retail price of a Radeon HD 4850 too much, repelling some of potential customers. After all, the GV-R485MC-1GI has other advantages of its own.
Summing this section up, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI has good packaging and accessories yet that’s not its key feature. Let’s discuss its technical specs now.
Being a large manufacturer, Gigabyte has enough of resources and experience to develop printed circuit boards of any level of sophistication. We can recall this brand to have issued a single-PCB dual-processor graphics card back in 2005, long before the Radeon HD 3870 X2 or GeForce 7950 GX2. It is no wonder then that the GV-R485MC-1GI has a nonstandard PCB, too.
It is the unusual layout of the power circuit that is the most interesting thing here. A GPU voltage regulator is usually located at the back of the PCB, next to a power connector. Here, it is just the opposite: the two-phase regulator is in the front of the PCB, near the CrossFire ports and VGA D-Sub connector. This unusual solution may be questionable, yet we did not observe any stability issues with the GV-R485MC-1GI. The regulator is based on an NCP5392 controller from ON Semiconductor that was originally developed for VRMs of modern Intel and AMD processors.
There are three more power transistors at the back of the PCB. They must be part of the memory voltage regulator. In the same area but on the reverse side of the PCB there is a curious chip marked as Gamer HUD 28280360-ZY.
This chip is responsible for the handy software-based control over the GPU and memory voltage. It is this chip that makes the GV-R485MC-1GI a truly unique product. The GV-N250OC-1GI we have described earlier lacks a Gamer HUD chip, and the related software tool works in Lite mode with it, without giving you the option of flexible control over the graphics card’s power supply. The GV-R485MC-1GI has one power connector, a 6-pin PCIe 1.0 plug with a peak load capacity of 75W, which is more than enough for powering any version of Radeon HD 4850.
There are 8 GDDR3 memory chips on the card. These are Samsung K4J10324QD-HJ1A chips with a capacity of 1Gb (32Mb x 32), a voltage of 1.85V, and a rated frequency of 1000 (2000) MHz. The card’s memory frequency is a standard 993 (1986) MHz. With a 256-bit memory bus, this means a peak memory bandwidth of about 64GBps. The total amount of local memory is 1024MB as has already become standard even for rather inexpensive products such as Radeon HD 4850 or GeForce GTS 250. So much memory is not a crucial advantage because a graphics card can only profit from it at high resolutions where mainstream products are anyway too slow for practical play, yet there is nothing bad in having 1 gigabyte of memory on board. Moreover, 1GB of local graphics memory may come in handy if you are going to build a multi-GPU tandem out of two such cards that would allow playing at 1920x1200 and even at 2560x1600.
The RV770 chip installed on the GV-R485MC-1GI was manufactured in late July of the last year. Its frequency of 640MHz is somewhat higher than the official specs (625MHz) but the difference is not big enough for considerable performance benefits.
The graphics core has the maximum configuration possible with 800 ALUs, 40 TMUs, and 16 RBEs. There are no disabled subunits in it.
The card’s connectors are what you can often see on today’s HTPC-oriented products including a physical HDMI port to connect to LCD panels without adapters. There are slits in the top part of the card’s mounting bracket the cooler’s heatsink ribs poke through (we will discuss it below). Like every other Radeon HD 4850, the GV-R485MC-1GI can work in a CrossFireX subsystem, offering two standard connectors for that.
Silence is the number one priority for HTPCs. No one will be pleased to hear an incessant noise of fans while watching a favorite movie. Of course, absolute silence can only be achieved in a system that has no moving parts. It is the graphics card’s cooler that often contributes the most to the computer’s overall noise, but the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is not a solution of that kind thanks to the all-passive Multi-Core 3 Points Cooling system.
We don’t quite understand whence the name comes from, especially the multi-core allusion, as this cooler only has one heat-exchanger that has contact with the GPU die. Very dry gray thermal grease is used as a thermal interface. It looks like the additional “cores” are the small copper blocks that can be clearly seen in the photo above. These are no cheat-exchangers, though. The cooler has no additional heat transfer points, for example for power transistors or memory chips.
The heat-exchanger carries a rather large heatsink consisting of thin aluminum plates. The farthest section of the heatsink is connected to the heat-exchanger with two heat pipes. We don’t think this position optimal. One pipe should have been placed between the heat-exchanger and the side section of the heatsink for the latter to warm up uniformly. The second pair of pipes connects the cooler’s sole with an additional heatsink located near the card’s mounting bracket. Its ribs stick out through the slits in the mounting bracket by 1.5-2 centimeters. The developer must have made this to increase cooling performance but we don’t quite get the point because the cooler is passive and the heatsink gets no airflow from a fan. This solution will only work if there is high air pressure inside the system case – some of the air will be leaving the case through the heatsink, cooling it along the way. Gigabyte used a similar solution before.
The whole arrangement is secured on the PCB with four spring-loaded screws and an X-shaped plastic back-plate. The additional heatsink has no fastening and just hangs in the air on the heat pipes. The cooler is secured very firmly, without any misalignment, and the GPU die is protected against chipping with the metallic frame on its package.
For all the questionable solutions in its design, this cooler copes well enough with the card working at the default frequencies.
The GPU temperature is no higher than 86°C under load, which is the same as you can get with the reference single-slot cooler, but at zero noise. That’s a very nice result considering the core’s heat dissipation of 110W. When we tried to overclock the card, it quickly reached a GPU temperature of 101°C and the system hung up. That’s all we could achieve after a few attempts at overclocking:
This is no wonder considering the lack of a fan and that the power transistors and the memory chips are not cooled at all.
The growth of the GPU and memory frequencies is too modest, so we did not test the card in that mode. The GV-R485MC-1GI is obviously not the kind of a product that might interest an overclocker unless you add fans to it. It is not quite clear why the developer equipped it with such advanced overclocking options including software-based control over the GPU and memory voltages. This product has a special feature anyway. It is silent and supports different display devices and also offers rather high performance in games.
We are going to test the performance of Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI graphics card on our universal testbed with the following configuration:
The graphics card drivers were configured in the same way as before: to provide the highest possible quality of texture filtering and to minimize the effect of default software optimizations. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia GeForce:
The list of benchmarks includes the following gaming titles and synthetic tests:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
RPG
Simulators
Strategies
Semi-synthetic Benchmarks
We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way, because the ordinary user doesn’t have to know how to do it. We made a few exceptions for selected games if that was necessary. We are going to specifically dwell on each exception like that later on in our article.
Besides Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI we have also included the following graphics accelerators to participate in our test session:
We ran our tests in the following resolutions: 1280x1024, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. Everywhere, where it was possible we added MSAA 4x antialiasing to the standard anisotropic filtering 16x. We enabled antialiasing from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers.
Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.8. In the latter case we ran the test three times and took the average of the three for the performance charts.
Starting from version 1.3 we use the game’s integrated benchmarking options together with a custom demo record. Unfortunately, this method does not report the bottom frame rate.
The Gigabyte card delivers good performance at every resolution and even outpaces the GeForce GTS 250 at 1920x1200 – and this is without a decibel of noise! One gigabyte of graphics memory has no effect on the performance of the described card as well as of Nvidia’s opponent solution from the same class.
The amount of graphics memory affects performance in this game right from the resolution of 1280x1024 because Crysis Warhead is one of the most technologically advanced games of today. It does not go for compromises with game consoles and therefore has high system requirements. Graphics cards of the Radeon HD 4850 class cannot deliver comfortable performance even at low resolutions if you choose maximum visual quality settings together with full-screen antialiasing.
We disabled the integrated frame rate limiter in the game console for the sake of comparing the cards. The game’s built-in benchmarking options do not provide information about the bottom speed, so there is no such info in the diagrams.
Although the game uses MegaTexture technology, it is quite satisfied with 512 megabytes of local graphics memory. Nvidia’s solutions are not unrivalled in OpenGL games as they used to be. Today, the GeForce GTS 250 is as good as the Radeon HD 4850 at resolutions up to 1680x1050 and the latter is even ahead of its opponent at 1920x1200. Thus, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI gives you an opportunity to enjoy a network combat on a big display without irritating your ear with noise.
We can’t say that 1 gigabyte of graphics memory on board the described graphics card makes a difference for its average performance. The maximum advantage over ATI’s reference card is only 13%.
However, it is different with the bottom speed: the extra 512 megabytes of local graphics memory ensure a high level of comfort at 1280x1024 and an acceptable speed at 1680x1050.
The pair of GeForce GTS 250 cards that differ in the amount of graphics memory behave in the same way, but the difference is more conspicuous. The senior model offers a playable speed at 1920x1200 whereas the junior model, at 1280x1024 only.
Nvidia’s solutions gain the upper hand at every resolution irrespective of the amount of graphics memory but the GV-R485MC-1GI can be used successfully even at 1900x1200 although its bottom speed is barely playable then. Therefore you may want to switch to 1680x1050 or turn full-screen antialiasing off.
The game runs on the Source engine and has an integrated benchmark, but the latter does not report the bottom speed information.
The two models of Radeon HD 4850 and the pair of GeForce GTS 250 cards do not differ between each other irrespective of the display resolution. The GV-R485MC-1GI model from Gigabyte offers the additional advantage of high-quality components and absolute silence, though.
To achieve a playable speed in this game we disabled FSAA and such resource-consuming options as Sun rays, Wet surfaces and Volumetric Smoke. We use the Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX10) mode for our test and additionally enable the DirectX 10.1 mode for the ATI cards.
The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the only card that can deliver a comfortable speed at 1680x1050 here. The Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is quite good at 1280x1024, being ahead of Nvidia’s solutions in terms of bottom speed.
This game has modest system requirements and every graphics card in this review can easily deliver high performance at every resolution including 1920x1200. Being somewhat inferior to Nvidia’s solutions in bottom speed, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI stands out with its silent operation.
Prince of Persia prefers Nvidia’s architectures, probably because they offer more texture processors. The Radeon HD 4850 is not quite good here, being limited to 1280x1024 with a barely comfortable bottom speed. One gigabyte of memory has no effect on its performance.
ATI’s solutions feel at their ease in this test. You can play Fallout 3 on a Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI comfortably even at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 with full-screen antialiasing. On the other hand, the Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 allows the same, even though with a lower bottom speed.
When we force full-screen antialiasing on, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is the only card that can deliver a playable frame rate. The rest of the cards are only as fast as 20fps even at 1280x1024.
The Radeon HD 4850 is 2-3% ahead of the GeForce GTS 250 throughout this test. Of course, the silent cooler makes the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI preferable for this game.
We use the in-game benchmarking tools that do not allow to measure the bottom frame rate. We also enable DirectX 10.1 support for ATI’s solutions.
ATI’s solutions do not profit much by their DirectX 10.1 support. They are inferior to Nvidia’s products here. The Radeon HD 4850 come closer to their rivals at 1920x1200 but the frame rates are too low then for comfortable play. The gameplay is not always smooth even on the GeForce GTX 260 at the highest resolution.
The game has a frame rate limiter fixed at 30fps. We could not disable it.
The Radeon HD 4850 are unrivalled whereas the GeForce GTS 250 feels no better even with 1 gigabyte of graphics memory. The bottom speed of all the cards, expecting the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, is not quite comfortable, yet this parameter is not so important for this game as for first-person shooters or flight simulators.
The recently released add-on to the original game does not introduce any technical innovations but contains a new plotline that allows you to play for the USSR.
Neither side can claim victory in this test: the Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTS 250 cannot provide a comfortable bottom speed even at 1280x1024 if you use full-screen antialiasing. As usual, the total noiselessness of the GV-R485MC-1GI becomes the winning feature here.
The Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is inferior to the GeForce GTS 250 in 3DMark06. The benchmark defaults to 1280x1024 without full-screen antialiasing, so there is no difference between the Gigabyte card and the reference Radeon HD 4850 512MB.
We minimize the CPU’s influence by using the Extreme profile (1920x1200, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering). We also publish the results of the individual tests across all display resolutions to provide a full picture.
Notwithstanding the Extreme settings, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is not much faster than its reference counterpart with 512MB of memory. The maximum gap is only 102 points. The Gigabyte stops a mere 10 points short of the 3,000 points score. As for the other camp, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is substantially faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, probably due to the less effective memory management mechanisms we have written about in our earlier reports.
The individual tests do not show anything extraordinary except that the GeForce GTS 250 is more confident at 1280x1024 in the second test than at the higher resolutions where it cannot beat the Radeon HD 4850 anymore.
Just as we had anticipated, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI did not show anything extraordinary in terms of performance, being a regular Radeon HD 4850 with twice the standard amount of memory. The latter factor was not decisive at all. Save for Crysis Warhead, the peak performance growth was 13%. The average benefit was within 5% at 1920x1200. The only exception is Far Cry 2 where one gigabyte of memory helped increase the bottom speed of the GV-R485MC-1GI to comfortable level at 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. The summary diagrams below show detailed information about the Gigabyte card’s performance:
In the lowest of the display resolutions we use, which is popular for monitors smaller than 20 inches, the GV-R485MC-1GI is ahead of the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in eight tests, tied two more tests and lost only three tests, being far slower than the latter in Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. only. As a result, the average advantage over Nvidia’s solution is about 2.5%. The two cards are roughly equal here.
At a resolution of 1680x1050 the Gigabyte card is an average 5% ahead of the GeForce GTS 259 1GB but loses five tests (it is somewhat slower in Far Cry 2 now). The RV770-based product is a little bit faster overall, but you should base your shopping choice on the particular games you are going to play.
The Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI feels best at 1920x1200. It loses only three out of the 15 tests to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB and is only really slower than the latter in Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. The average advantage over the opponent is nearly 9%.
Summing it up, when it comes to gaming performance, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is a regular Radeon HD 4850 1GB that is about 20% slower than its senior variant equipped with GDDR5 memory, and uncompetitive to Nvidia’s G200-based products. However, this card is overall preferable to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB except in specific games such as Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. or F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. In the same way, Nvidia’s card had no chance in Red Alert 3. So, the choice depends on the specific preferences of a gamer.
Besides good gaming performance and 1 gigabyte of memory, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI has one important advantage and one insignificant drawback. It has a fully passive and, consequently, absolutely silent cooling system that makes the card a perfect choice for advanced HTPCs. Gigabyte’s cooler can dissipate 110 watts of heat, but it does not mean the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI can be installed into any system case. It should be a well-ventilated system case if you want to avoid overheat. The insignificant drawback we’ve mentioned is very poor overclockability our sample of the card showed. We must acknowledge, however, that graphics cards with passive cooling are not meant for serious overclocking. Then, overclocking is not something that HTPC or “quite system” users usually do. And third, there is a lot of versions of Radeon HD 4850 on the market that are far more overclocker-friendly than the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI.
Thus, if you are into overclocking, the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI won’t suit you. But if you care about how much noise your gaming system produces more than about its 3DMark score, or if you are assembling a universal configuration suitable for watching HD video and playing modern games on a large display, we can recommend you this card. The Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI is also relatively cheap at considerably less than $200.
Highs:
Lows: