Published in Reviews

Sandy based Sapphire Edge HD4 delivers surprising performance

by on19 February 2013

Index

The bios is relatively simple and it doesn’t offer many options. It is impossible to change the CPU and memory clocks.

The Edge HD4 comes with preinstalled FreeDOS, which is basically like old MS-DOS, but a bit better, which really isn’t saying much. FreeDOS can be very useful sometimes, but you can run only programs intended for MS-DOS or for FreeDOS. You can check software list here.

The Edge HD4 does not ship with preinstalled Windows. The approach allows users to use their own copy of Windows, or install Linux in any flavor. However, most consumers are not tech savvy and they might need some help in this department. The decision not to ship Windows also helps keep the retail price down.

Our OS of choice was Windows 8 Pro 64-bit. If you do not want to buy a license for the operating system right now, you can install a trial version of Windows first. For example you can download a 90-days test version of Windows 8 here.

A word of caution for XP lovers. The Edge HD4 comes with WD3200BPVT hard drive. This drive uses Advanced Format Technology and if you're installing Win XP system on this drive, you must download Western Digital's "WD Align" software, here, to format the drive prior to Win XP installation. Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 users can ignore this part and format the drive just like any other.

Since the system ships without an optical drive, you can install Windows from a bootable USB stick. The Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool comes in handy when you need to create a bootable USB stick from ISO file (you can find it here).

Our bootable USB was recognized correctly after inserting it into USB 3.0. We decided to delete partition with FreeDOS because it used up 150GB and the whole partition was formatted in FAT32.

hd4-install

All the drivers are supplied on a disc which is included in the box. Try not to lose it, because the Edge HD4 drivers are not available online, at least for now.

Drivers Download - No Win8 Drivers small


Last modified on 19 February 2013
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