14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS has recently unveiled its latest additions to the company's MATRIX graphics cards series, based on AMD's Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 GPUs, the ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) EAH4870 MATRIX/HTDI/512MD5 and EAH4850 MATRIX/HTDI/512M boards. According to the manufacturer, these are intelligent cards equipped with ROG-exclusive technologies, offering a stylish design, a futuristic Hybrid Cooler and a black circuit board.
ASUS has provided the new cards with integrated hardware and software for total graphics card control, customizable functions that provide a new level of control to gamers, twin fan control application to separately adjust Hybrid Cooler+ fans (for EAH4870 MATRIX), accurate adjustments of GPU and memory voltages, complete monitoring of GPU/memory/Power IC/ambient temperatures and of GPU/memory/board power consumption, as well as automatic control of fan speeds according to the GPU loading detection.
ASUS' Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) has been designed so as to gather information on GPU loading and temperature, memory and power IC, and then to calculate an optimized solution for the best performance. Along with the Hybrid Cooler technology and iTracker, the SHE enables 15 percent and 17 percent performance boosts in 3D mode while providing guaranteed 54 percent and 28 percent less power consumption. The cooling in 2D mode is much quieter, fulfilling this way the varied needs of gamers.
The ROG EAH4870 MATRIX and EAH4850 MATRIX feature GPU and memory voltages of 1.423V/1.58V and 1.303V/2.052V respectively. The GPU and memory clock performance of the two cards has been boosted to 855MHz/2014MHz and 752MHz/2057MHz respectively. According to ASUS, the performance gains can rise the cards' 3DMark Vantage Extreme Mode score from 3655 to 4195 and from 2910 to 3395, marking 15 and 17 percent speed improvements compared to other reference designed solutions.
In 2D mode, the ROG EAH4870 MATRIX and EAH4850 MATRIX can reduce GPU and memory voltages to 1.1V/1.353V and 1.15V/1.9V respectively, offering this way great energy savings. Moreover, the included Auto Phase Switch technology has been designed to optimize the power supplied by the power phase for maximum efficiency. The two cards feature power consumptions of 33.53W and 36.99V respectively, marking 54 percent and 28 percent power savings compared to other reference designed boards. In addition, the fan rotations are also reduced in 2D mode, which allows users to enjoy much quieter cooling for comfortable computing environments.