Graphics Cards - Page 255

NVIDIA is having lots of trouble with the launch of the Kepler series. It seems as though information about every single card leaked out before the actual card was released. We previously told you about the GTX 660 Ti specifications and launch date, and have now provided a review for your viewing pleasure.

This time we bring news of the GTX 650, a new card that will be aimed at the sub-$200 market and launched in time for back-to-school shopping. It's important for NVIDIA to get a Kepler card into this price range as AMD completely controls that segment of the market right now. This market segment is also where most of the money is made.

The GTX 650 is rumored to launch on September 17 and will be packing a chip based on the 28 nm GK107 ASIC, which is based upon Kepler. The chip will utilize 384 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory bus, and 1GB of memory. A quick guess at performance based upon CUDA core count would put the card competing with the AMD 7770.

A report is claiming to know the launch date and specifications for the upcoming NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti. Nothing has been confirmed by NIVIDIA, so for now it will be treated as a rumor. According to the latest data scored by SweClockers, the GTX 660 is nearly identical to the GTX 670 and the launch is only about 3 weeks away.

The GTX 660 Ti is said to be a 28 nm GK104 GPU with 1,344 CUDA cores enabled, exactly the same as the GTX 670. In fact, the 660 Ti is said to have the exact same clock speeds for both the core and memory as the 670. The memory remains identical at 2GB, as well. It turns out that the only difference is that the memory bus is reduced to 192-bit, down from 256-bit on the 670.

This change will yield a 25% lower bandwidth for memory. It's likely to be arranged with four chips using 32-bit wide paths each and four other chips sharing two 32-bit wide paths. According to the report, the card will launch on August 16. Coincidentally, this is the first public day of the GamesCom event held in Cologne, Germany. This will likely serve as the launchpad for the product.

If you've been saving your money patiently waiting for the next big thing to come out of AMD, you may just get a chance to save a bit longer. Reports are coming in that the dual-GPU card based upon the 7970 silicon may not be released until late-August. This is directly opposed to other reports that it could be available this month.

It's not fully clear why the card has been delayed. AMD certainly needs to challenge the GTX 690's performance and hopefully win the performance crown back, so it's not like AMD is liking having this delay. If they were ahead, then a delay like this could be the result of them trying to keep it in reserve as a later challenge to NVIDIA.

One possible reason for the delay could be due to a shortage of PEX8747 PCIe bridge chips by PLX. These chips have been reported to be experiencing a shortage and are needed at the heart of every dual-GPU card, including the GTX 690. Another issue could be AMD is trying to work out how to provide the best price-performance and performance-Watt ratios.

NVIDIA have released the tech demo for their latest and greatest GeForce GTX 600 series of GPUs dubbed 'A New Dawn'. It features the ever-so-gorgeous Dawn, looking (or is that rendered?) better than ever.

I don't have any GTX 600 series cards myself, but if I did you'd be hearing my personal thoughts on it. But, The Tech Report, er, reports that that on their test rig, which is powered by SLI GTX 680's at 2560x1600 looks "incredible".

You can check it out yourself by downloading it here (a shave under 800MB). I've heard it runs on GTX 500 series cards, so let us know how you go, and what you think of NVIDIA's 'A New Dawn'.

NVIDIA's mid-range of GeForce GPUs have always been the most popular, recently we've seen the GTX 460 and 560 cards soar through gamers' wish lists, as well as the Ti variants. But, with the Kepler-based GPUs, we haven't seen a mid-range card released.

According to Sweclockers, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti will arrive in mid-August carrying an MSRP of $299. This will make it a direct threat to AMD's Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, which just received a new price last week. The GTX 660 Ti would be based on the same core as the GTX 670, the GK104 core architecture, with 7 SMX units enabled giving us a total of 1344 CUDA cores.

Memory specifications, and clock speeds are expected to be changed also. The GTX 670 sports two different choices in memory, either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus. The GTX 660 Ti will reportedly put on offer, 1.5GB or 3GB of GDDR5, on a 192-bit memory bus.

If video cards these days weren't built crazily enough, Gigabyte's newest kid on the block sure is. Gigabyte's upcoming Super Overclock version of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is looking like it'll stand out from the crowd, sporting five 40mm fans mounted on top of a triple-slot radiator.

Gigabyte's GV-R797SO-3GD is surely going to be one of the hottest cards (and not in the temperature sense) when it hits, sporting a Tahiti XT-based GPU running a 384-bit memory bus backed up by 2048 stream processors. The overclocked model comes with a core clock of 1080MHz, up from the stock clock of 925MHz, and 3GB of GDDR5 memory clocking in at 5500MHz. Output-wise we find ourselves being offered two mini DisplayPorts, one gold-plated HDMI port, a single dual-link DVI port, meaning the card is capable of running four displays simultaneously.

Gigabyte's SOC card uses the five fans mounted at the top of the GPU to "pul" the heated air off the radiator, which the company says reduces "hotspots" on the bottom of the card due to minimal airflow created with traditional cooler designs. What this means is that the HD 7970 SOC is totally silent below 30C, with Gigabyte's Anti-Turbulence Pull Airflow System hitting 53dB at 57C, almost 9dB quieter than a standard HD 7970 running at 64C.

It looks like Team Red have just taken a pair of scissors to the pricing of some of their high-end Radeon HD 7000-series GPUs. Three of the cards have just received a price cut, with the new pricing to go into effect on Monday morning with online retailers. Here are some details:

But, it seems that a few online retailers are already doing these AMD GPUs cheap. Newegg only charges $289.99 for their cheapest HD 7870, and just $339.99 for the cheapest HD 7950. So one would think that this "new" pricing from AMD, is not that "new", and that maybe something else might happen.

Maybe a larger variety of cards, from more graphics card makers will receive cuts thanks to AMD's cutting of the pricing from the top? Whichever way you look at it, price cuts are win-win for customers.

AMD's dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990 has been quite elusive until now, but "New Zealand" is now rumored to be hitting sometime late this month. It will sport two Tahiti XT GPUs and 6GB of GDDR5 memory, with special editions of the 7990 reaching an amazing 12GB of RAM on-board.

VR-Zone cites some of their sources saying that the boards are being sampled right now, with it all ramping up to a product launch before the end of the month. Pricing is one of the details that has been left out for now, and AMD are known to change pricing at the last minute.

Do you think we need a Radeon HD 7990? So there can be more broken 3DMark records? The only time these bad boys would really stretch their legs is for multi-monitor gaming, or when games really ramp up their graphics engines in the near-future, hopefully. I would love to see what one of the 12GB cards could do, CrossFired up with another HD 7990 12GB card, on 6 screens, oh the pants-wetting would be glorious.

Hazzan, an Indonesian overclocker has broken the world record for overclocking graphics cards, using 3DMark 11. Hazzan used a 4-way GEFORCE GTX 680 setup, pushing a score of P33190, 39 points ahead of the previous record.

In order to get the record-breaking score, Hazzah had to go to some pretty serious lengths, as you can see from the pictures. He stood over his PC with an open bottle of liquid nitrogen (as you do), and kept pouring some in every few minutes or so, just to keep those pesky temps down. His entire rig consists of:

Hazzah broke the record at the ROG Absolute Zero Extreme OC event.

Creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, has slammed NVIDIA for their lack of drivers/support in a public presentation. During the talk, Torvalds called NVIDIA "the single worst company we have ever dealt with" and ended it in a positive note with "NVIDIA: F*** YOU!!", I'm sure you know what are behind those *'s.

Torvalds made the colorful comments during a speech at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland. Nearling the end of his hour-long speech, he was asked by one of the attendees about NVIDIA's hardware support and lack of open-source drive enablement/documentation, where he mentioned those colorful words. Torvalds did start off by stating that NVIDIA is an exception to Linux support, rather than the rule in terms of their lack of friendliness towards open-source drivers, and the Linux community.

Then things get better, Torvalds said he was happy to publicly point them out and their problems, where his statements toward NVIDIA continued. He said that NVIDIA is "one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers", continuing with "NVIDIA has been the single worst company we have ever dealt with". He ended his NVIDIA tirade with "NVIDIA: F*** YOU!" and flipped them off toward the camera.

In addition to showing off AMD's future roadmaps, Mark Papermaster showed off a cool triple-fan professional graphics card called the FirePro W9000. The card is detailed in the slide shown below and is meant to be a professional version of the 7970. Curiously enough, however, is the fact that the card he held up and the card in the slide appear very different.

Cyril Kowaliski of TechReport noticed the difference as well and put a call into AMD's Dave Erskine to get an answer. Erskine would only say that it was a "dual-GPU product that will be released later this year." Taking a good educated guess, I would say that the card is most likely a 7970x2 (7990?), or in other words, two 7970 chips on one PCB.

After all, AMD has to compete with NVIDIA's dual-Kepler beast, the GTX 690. AMD has been making dual-GPU consumer cards for something like 4 generations now (3870x2) and were rumored to be debuting one at Computex. That debut never occurred, but it seems unlikely that they wouldn't produce a dual-7970 card. The release time frame also indicates that it should be of the Tahiti flavor.

AMD has just announced the immediate availability of the FirePro W600. The FirePro W600 is the first professional-level graphics card to released by AMD that leverages the 28nm manufacturing process along with the Graphics Core Next GPU architecture. This card is designed to be used for large, dynamic screens that are easily updated with new content.

"Whether we are checking flight times at the airport or watching the latest ads on massive screens in city squares, digital signage has quickly become an important and ubiquitous part of our lives," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. "To enable these displays, the digital signage industry demands technology that can be regularly refreshed with new, feature-rich content. With the launch of the AMD FirePro™ W600 professional graphics card, AMD is helping advance the digital display wall industry by providing suppliers and developers with impressive display density, performance and exceptional value."

There are many new screens being built that are leveraging the latest in HD LED, LCD and plasma technologies. These screens, in turn, are being installed together to create giant video walls. The AMD W600 was designed to power these huge, multi-monitor displays which are often used for advertising and video conferencing.

A surprise from AMDs beta drivers has arrived today. No, not some incredible performance jump that causes it to smash the 680...or is it? The new beta drivers make reference to 16 previously unseen device IDs and their codenames. These new device IDs could (read: likely) belong to the upcoming HD 8000 series GPUs.

The codenames, 4x "Venus", 3x "Oland" and finally 9x "Mars", should flesh out the HD 8000 series nicely. The Venus will most likely be the top end card due to the LE, Pro, XT and XTX suffixes. Oland will probably end up being the 8800 series and Mars will most likely flesh out the lower end and mainstream market.

The cards will likely launch near the end of 2012 or very early 2013, if previous AMD launches are anything to go by. There have been zero rumors about performance, although with this new finding, I'm sure they will start flowing. In case you're curious, the device IDs are listed below:

Computex 2012 - Over the past few months since the launch of the GTX 680 we've seen companies add their own touch of flavor to the model. There continues to be a number of companies, though, we haven't seen anything from with one being ECS.

Over at their Computex booth, though, today we got a peek at the ECS GTX 680 Black edition card which carries with it a dual fan setup surrounded by a gold shroud that looks pretty good. We weren't in the best position to take snaps but we can see that the core has been bumped from 1006MHz to 1040MHz while the 2GB of GDDR5 has been left alone.

Hopefully we'll see a sample out of ECS sometimes soon and give you our impressions on the latest GTX 680 variant from the team over at ECS.

Computex 2012 - I'm sitting here in the famous house of our reviewer Shane Baxtor (who is one of the best guys you'll ever meet btw) and I look to my left, I look to my right, heck, I can walk into his kitchen and there's SAPPHIRE gear everywhere. More exciting is seeing some gear in person, at Nangang today we checked out SAPPHIRE's huge demos where multi-monitors and GPUs were being shown off.

I'll keep the details low on this, and just let this post make itself with pictures - check out the 5-screen portrait mode setup. This is something I want to crank at home. There's also a 6-screen portrait setup, and wait for it... a 12-screen setup. Yes, that's 12, as in 2 more than 10 and 11 more than 1. 12 screens in portait, I put my finger to my wrist to make sure blood was stil pumping through my veins and I had not died and gone to heaven. SAPPHIRE, I bow to you.

Another thing that caught our eye was SAPPHIRE's HD 7770 Ultimate, which is a passively-cooled GPU. Yes, no fans so this thing is completely, 100-percent silent. Apart from the screams of joy you'll do when you're using this thing.

Computex 2012 - Around about an hour ago HIS showed off its brand new AMD Radeon HD 7970 X2 video card to a select group of media including TweakTown.

This is as far as we know the world's first dual GPU Radeon 7970 video card. The sample we were shown is an engineering sample and it still a little while off going on sale, but it shouldn't be too far away. With AMD's Radeon HD 7990 not all that far away, HIS would want to speed things up and deliver their X2 to the market as soon as possible.

The video card features a new and improved IceQ X2 cooler to cool the two onboard GPUs. The cooler is massive, one of the biggest we've seen for a while and that's saying a lot with the latest batch of video cards hitting the market with big and impressive coolers. The cooler will take up three slots, but obviously offer a crazy amount of performance.

Computex 2012 - ASUS had a few amount of goodies to show off at their Republic of Gamers event, with the AMD-based MATRIX HD 7970 GPU. In usual ROG and MATRIX fashion, this card kicks some serious ass for those serious benchers and gamers. Sporting some very nice features, it can rule your game, as ASUS put it.

The MATRIX HD 7970 features VGA Hotwire, which lets you accurately read and control voltages all at the hardware level, backed up with TweakIt which offers real-time voltage adjustment and full-speed fan cooling, all at the press of a button. DIGI+ VRM with 20-phase Super Allow Power technology is featured on the MATRIX HD 7970 which delivers 'superior efficiency, reliability and performance'. Lastly, GPU Tweak utility can be used to tune those clock speeds, fan performance, GPU load line, PWN frequency and voltages, all from a swanky UI.

The center of the MATRIX HD 7970 is the GPU itself, AMD's GraphicsCore Next-based Radeon HD 7970, featuring 3GB of RAM on a 256-bit wide bus. Cooling is the usual MATRIX-featured DirectCU II which should keep the card nice and chilled under hardcore conditions. 3 or 4 of these in CFX would be quite the sight to behold. Nice work, ASUS.

Computex 2012 - Yesterday we managed to sneak into the Nangang hall at Computex and what follows is first of the many exclusives we managed to find during the Day 0 setup of Computex.

We walked around the hall as everyone was busy setting up for the show and our first stop we walked into the MSI booth where on display was their upcoming NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 Lightning video card. It features some wicked MSI workmanship including an unlocked BIOS to disable everything, that is all the protections that hinder overclocking and allow you to go for your life. Things such as disabling Over Current Protection, disabling Active Phase Switching and an increased power range limit is included.

Not only that but the GTX 680 Lightning features a digital PWM controller along with what MSI calls an enhanced power design which allows for "2X power output for maximum OC potential".

It would seem that PowerColor is the first GPU manufacturer to spill the beans on the upcoming 7970 X2. The new GPU will be based upon two 7970 Tahiti cores, which is the top chip made by AMD. This card is being designed to compete with the NVIDIA GTX 690, which is the current king of the video cards.

The new GPU will be cooled by PowerColor's new monster Vortex III. This new cooler was designed specifically for the new Devil 13 7970 X2 and is huge as you can see by the picture above. It features three fans blowing onto a massive heatsink and takes up 3 slots, as seen by the picture of the backplate.

The new GPU is adorned in red and black and looks beautiful. But it's not all about beauty as the card appears to have some monster stats to go along with the beauty. It will feature a total of 4096 stream processors across the two chips and have a total of 6GB of memory available. The cores will be clocked at 1GHz and require a ton of power. The card is outfitted with three 8-pin PCIe power connectors and has a TDP of 525 watts. The card should make an appearance at Computex early next month. More should be known then.

We talked about NVIDIA prepping two more GPUs, but at the time we thought they'd be GK104-based. New reports have surfaced, where it might seem like the GEFORCE GTX 660 would be a GK106-based part.

The GTX660 based on the GK106 architecture would sport 768 CUDA cores, 4 SMXs, 64 texture units, 2GB of memory with an interface of 256-bit. Pricing isn't too bad, where we should expect the GTX 660 to hit $349 or so. But, in this market, with this much competition, is that too muhc to pay?

Would you grab one of these GPUs at $349? Or would you be looking at something from Team Red if you were getting into the $350-ish territory? Thoughts?