Graphics Cards - Page 255

We've talked about this before, but some fresh news has floated up onto the surface of the waves of the Internet. New reports from Chinese websites have sparked up the XDR2 topic again with new rumors that AMD will attempt to deploy XDR2 memory on their next-gen ultra-high end products.

XDR2 is quite powerful according to Rambus, where it can transfer twice the amount of data per clock when compared to GDDR5. AMD and Rambus have had better relations with each other when compared to most other companies. In 2006, AMD settled outstanding disputes with Rambus by willing to pay licensing costs for certain technologies claimed by Rambus, turning a lead in the relations between the two companies.

XDR2 offers not only double the bandwidth, but power consumption is reduced by 30-percent, which would make it a very attractive point for AMD and their high-end units. Rambus have also allowed support for both XDR2 memory controller and GDDR5 memory, which would allow AMD to offer two GPUs. One with XDR2 memory, more performance, more expensive, whilst lower-end would have a 7900 series GPU with GDDR5.

NVIDIA have just launched a new hybrid processing technology that should interest professionals that want to use NVIDIA's graphics and compute products in the same machine. NVIDIA first showed the technology off at SIGGRAPH 2011 in August, and now enter, Maximus.

Maximus technology works pretty close to how their consumer graphics switching software, Optimus, works. Instead of allocating resources between two graphics processors (generally an integrated and discrete solution), Maximus offers the hybridization of NVIDIA's Quadro GPU and Tesla GPGPU products.

Where the Quadro series is targeted toward displaying graphics such as computer-aided design (CAD) and Tesla is geared toward raw compute tasks. Now, systems sporting both products can use Maximus to intelligently distribute loads as necessary. In the video demonstration below, NVIDIA shows how professionals would use the Tesla card to render a project, while Quadro allows them to continue working.

In typical standout fashion, chinese based VGA add-in board partner Colorful has come forward today introducing their latest super duper, highly modified graphics card - the iGame GTX 560Ti Kudan.

Straight off the bat when you look at the accompanying photos of this card, you can see it's a huge step away from the norm and clearly stands right out. There might be a real lot of GTX 560Ti's on the market, but nothing quite like this one.

Colorful has not only designed a stronger custom PCB for this card, but it also comes with a add-in card that provides additional power phases. The triple-slot cooler boasting ten heatpipes and three fans (one 90mm and two 80mm) is truly a work of art, as shown in the photos, with a chunky backplate and also coming with five detachable heatsinks (which are a part of the Air-Kit), along with paints and brushes in the Color-Kit to further customize the look of your GTX 560Ti Kudan's cooler how you see fit.

AMD's 28nm-based next-generation GPUs are rumored to arrive in January 2012, according to a report from Fudzilla. Grains of salt are being thrown left, right and centre, and while the 7000-series was meant to be released this year, Fuzilla report that word from "multiple industry sources" that Tahiti won't make it until 2012.

Tahiti will be the direct successor to Cayman, which is what powers the current Radeon HD 6900-series cards, and is expected to come in both XP and PRO variants. Specific models haven't been announced, but if AMD stick to their current naming system and don't throw it all around again, we should expect the new cards to be Radeon HD 7950 and Radeon HD 7970.

Both cards will be single-GPU parts, replacing both the HD 6950 and HD 6970, while a dual-GPU powerhouse card featuring two Tahiti cores will arrive later in 2012 and be dubbed the Radeon HD 7990 aka New Zealand. This could see either a March release, and if its too busy sipping cocktails waiting for NVIDIA to play catch up, we could see it laze through until early Q2 2012.

NVIDIA are set to unleash their latest graphics card, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 cores on the 29th of November. It has been talked about for a little while now, but the official specifications are now available for us to drool over, so let's get into it.

The original GeForce GTX 560 Ti launched back in January of this year and featured the GF114 silicon, 384 CUDA cores, a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 1GB of memory, high clock speed and some great overclocking potential. This caused AMD to go red with anger, as NVIDIA liked to say that their GTX 560 Ti "pwned" the Radeon HD 6870. AMD came back swinging with the HD 6950 and was able to lay some smack down on the 560 Ti.

NVIDIA doesn't want its crown taken away from the $250-ish price point, which is why they've gone back to the drawing board on the 560 Ti and introduced a redesigned version. The new GeForce GTX 560 Ti will sport the "448 cores" brand extension, which will of course include 448 CUDA cores compared to the 384 on the original 560 Ti. The new SKU will feature the same silicon that is on the GTX 570, 580 and GTX590 cards are based on: GF110.

This is what I like to hear! With NVIDIA currently on a roll with their Tegra range and Tegra 3-powered devices starting to roll out any day now (in the form of ASUS' Transformer Prime), we now have some GeForce-related new. Rub your hands together with glee! Rumor has it that NVIDIA are flushing the channel of 500-series GPUs, and should introduce some more price cuts soon.

Price cuts on 500-series of GPUs has been happening slowly, but NVIDIA believes that their next-gen 'Kepler' GPU based on a 28nm process is ready and has a strong suspicion that AMD won't be ready with their 7000-series Radeon cards until after Santa does his rounds this Christmas. NVIDIA wants to push hard for a Christmas launch, and you won't hear any complaining from me!

NVIDIA could do a few things here, launch the 600-series before Christmas and use the promise of 'something more from NVIDIA, but it is not here just yet', to try and grab a few of those GPU fans that were leaning toward a Radeon-flavored GPU, and keep them licking that sweet, green NVIDIA pie. Then we have the bundles NVIDIA are pumping out with partners, bundling games such as Mafia II and Batman: Arkham City - this is great, and it keeps customers coming back.

If you're holding off on picking up a copy of Battlefield 3 due to your current VGA card being indefinitely not up to scratch to handle it, ASUS has just the ticket for you convenience wise, and may well save you some cash at the same time.

This page from ASUS direct details a couple bundles they're now offering which comprise a graphics card or sound card, and a Battlefield 3 coupon that can be redeemed on Origin.

The graphics card bundle comprises ASUS' GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP with a BF3-themed Lanyard and of course the coupon for the game thrown in too.

KFA2 has been quiet for a while, since announcing their MDT (Multi Display Technology) range of graphics cards, but now we have something to sink our teeth into. KFA2 have unveiled the KFA2 GTX MDT 570 which is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570, and sports a black PCB, custom aluminium cooling solution and is said to offer unique voltage control features.

The KFA2 GTX MDT 570 is set to launch next month and is said to be factory-overclocked. But that's not the most special part of this card, it features support for four 1080p displays, or three 1080p displays if you want to use NVIDIA's Surround Vision. Output wide, it will include three DVI-D ports, a single Dual-Link DVI port and a single mini HDMI port.

These cards will be a great purchase for anyone wanting to do Surround Vision from a single GPU, as currently, NVIDIA requires SLI to do Surround Vision. But, keep in mind this card will not do 3D Vision Surround as it only has a single Dual-Link DVI port. Three Dual-Link DVI ports are required for 120Hz/3D gaming, so you would need two cards with at least one of them sporting dual-dual-link DVI.

To celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3 (for some initial impressions, check it out here), SAPPHIRE Technology have introduced the SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition, which sports two SAPPHIRE exclusive technologies, SAPPHIRE FleX and Vapor-X cooling as well as performance enhancing options for the enthusiast and finally, a FREE copy of Battlefield 3.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition includes a Dual BIOS switch which goes between two performance settings delivering the best performance in its class. While sitting in the 'normal' setting, clock speed sit at 880MHz for core, 1375MHz for memory and a quite fan profile. Choosing the "boost" setting throws the card up to 930MHz as well as increasing core voltage, fan speed and overclock limits to deliver higher performance.

SAPPHIRE's FleX technology is also great as it allows Eyefinity from three DVI monitors, without the need for DisplayPort or any adapters. Vapor-X cooling is also awesome, which enables the performance to be maxed out, but keeping those noise levels down low.

The VGA market almost seems like it's in hibernation at the moment for the most part, as we all anticipate the launch of new families from both sides of the fence sporting 28nm GPUs, of which we know won't be until a bit of a ways into 2012.

However, it appears NVIDIA has been working on a little bit of a side project in the meantime; some more love towards its popular GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Apparently the company is preparing a new suped up release of the model that switches the GF114 GPU on the original version for the GF110 that's used on the GTX 570 and 580 models.

This in turn would give the card 448 CUDA Cores, as denoted by the supposed model name NVIDIA is going for, "GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Core). This compares to the 480 cores on the GTX 570 and 512 on the GTX 580. The card will have 56 TMU's a 320-bit memory interface, 3-way SLI support, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and will most likely carry 1280MB of GDDR5.

AMD know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake, they also know if you've been bad or good, so for 28nm GPUs, be good for goodness sake. If you want a 28nm Radeon GPU before the end of the year, in time for Christmas and just after the launch of the pillars of the FPS genre, Battlefield 3 and COD: Modern Warfare 3, then this is a great time to be a PC fan. We've reported before that AMD would launch their next-gen, 28nm-based Radeon GPUs sometime this year, but whether it would be low or mid-range GPUs is the question.

Another fact is that they could be notebook parts, with high-end parts hitting early next year. German website heise.de who claims multiple industry sources have pointed toward a December launch with one source specifically pointing to December 6. The new launch could be a desktop or notebook part, but I very much doubt it will be a high-end GPU. Another industry source is convinced that this is more of a symbolic launch, to beat out green-team rivals, NVIDIA.

That is my opinion too, I really think we're just going to see a launch, in general. Nothing special, no high-end parts.. it'll just be something launched on their 28nm process to stick it in NVIDIA's green-with-envy face. Whatever it is, we're within 3 - 4 months of seeing next-gen parts from AMD, with NVIDIA trailing behind. Whatever happens, I'm just excited to receive new GPUs again!

NVIDIA stumbled quite a bit with the Fermi, GF100 architecture and it looks as though they don't want to repeat the same mistakes by going top-to-bottom with GPU releases. NVIDIA are currently playing with engineering samples of their first chip built on the next-gen Kepler architecture, the GK107. This is not the flagship GK100 everyone expected, with NVIDIA changing gears and going for a bottom-to-top release by working on the GK107 first which will be a notebook-based chip.

GK107 is set to be powering four mobile GeForce SKUs - N13P-LP, N13P-GS, N13P-GT and the N13E-GE. These codenames may sound familiar to you, that's because they appeared in the leaked 28nm mobile GPU line-up. The GK107 sports a 128-bit memory interface and has support for both DDR3 and GDDR5 memory. The first three GK107-based SKUs with the "P" suffix will most likely succeed the GeForce GT 500M series, and will probably be branded as the GeForce GT 600M series.

The top GK107 part, N13E-GE, may replace the GTX 560M and be part of the GTX 600M series, as denoted by the "E" suffix (Enthusiast). GK107 will also find its way into the mobile Quadro SKUs - N14P-Q1 and N14P-Q3.

Colorful have unleashed a Radeon card under their ColorFire brand dubbed, ColorFire Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4GB. If you didn't already guess what it was from that ever so elusive name, it's a dual-GPU graphics card sporting two Radeon HD 6850 GPUs with a total of 4GB of memory. But that's not all, the designers of this card are trying out what they call "Silver-Plated Technology". All of the PCB's contacts, apart from the PCIe and CFBE interfaces are plated with silver. Silver being one of the best conductors, you can see why this card looks exciting.

ColorFire argue that the use of silver contacts reduces resistance and also helps with cooling. Next up we have DIP-switched based voltage control, which is an effective, yet old-school way of tuning voltages. Voltage measurement points are consolidated to a convenient location (next to the power connectors) and are angled for easy access. A pair of jumpers near the display output connectors allows the user of this card to switch between two sets of EEPROMs, each with different clock and voltage profiles.

The card chews through two 8-pin connectors, uses a 12-phase VRM which handles voltage regulation and also sports a custom design dual-fan cooler which uses a large heatsink and included five heat-pipes.

AMD have shown off their first working 28nm notebook GPU to the public at a media event held in San Francisco, California. The chip is part of the upcoming AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and was shown off displaying Dirt 3 but resolution, graphic settings and FPS were unknown. The upcoming HD 7000 series dons the codename "Southern Islands" and is being built by TMSC. The new cards are looking to be unleashed onto the market by the end of the year - but there are also rumors TMSC are having issues with the 28nm production.

The new cards are expected to support switchable graphics and continue pushing current technology features such as Eyefinity and H3D stereo 3D gaming. There are reports that AMD are planning to launch four different GPUs based on the 28nm version of the VLIW4 architecture and will use them in three different series: the Radeon HD 7800, HD 7600 and HD 7500. These GPUs will sport between 768 and 1536 stream processors as well as using GDDR5 memory.

Later on, AMD will launch the Radeon HD 7900 series featuring the new Graphics Core Next (GVN) architecture that is has been talking about since June. The idea behind GCN is to create a GPU that can perform well at both graphical and computing tasks.

Following leaked details on AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards earlier in the week, some new slides (said to be straight from AMD) have since popped up which add some more meat to the equation.

We are assured that the HD 7000 family will use the first VLIW4 circuits at 28nm. In usual fashion the series will be rolled out in steps, with each sub-series based off different base architectures. Looking at the latest leaked roadmap, we can ascertain that AMD is initially planning the launch of four different GPUs making up three series, said to be scheduled for a Q4 2011 launch.

There will be the Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850, HD 7670 and HD 7570. They will be equipped with GDDR5 memory across the board and sport 768 to 1536 Radeon cores (stream processors).

A little birdy has leaked out some specs on AMD's next generation Radeon HD 7000 series of graphics cards, though the information is most certainly still questionable at this stage with the lack of confirmation on any of it.

Codenamed Southern Islands, these next-gen chips will be 28nm (TSMC) based and as the chart above denotes, sitting at the top of the hill is the dual GPU wielding HD 7990. As per tid bits of info on the two Tahiti XT/Pro Cores the card will use, the max stream processor count is estimated to be around 4000 ALU, with the card featuring a TDP of >300W.

Head on over to the source link for a better idea of how the complete lineup is likely to shape up, with details on 8 known SKUs in the 7000 series shared. But remember, it's all potentially very loose information just at this point, so do remember to take it with a pinch of salt.

Here's an innovative, yet simply executed piece of tech MSI has come up with for future graphics cards. Word has come out that MSI has been testing a new feature it's looking to help make its already kickass lineup of non-reference graphics cards stand out even more.

MSI calls it "Dust Removal Technology", which is obviously to help rid your card of a negative scenario that affects every card sooner or later - dust buildup, translating to heat buildup. MSI say that enough dust buildup can eventuate to a rise in temperatures by as much as 15c, and from personal experience I can say that's not an exaggeration. Their new founded technology is quite simple in principle really.

The way it works is by simply running the fans in an opposite rotation at 100% speed for the first 30 seconds of system startup. This would result in air being drawn from the heatsink itself and pushed back out through the intakes of the cooler. While it certainly wouldn't remove every single bit of dust from the heatsink, MSI say it does work to significantly reduce dust accumulation in those tough to clean areas.

External graphics solutions for the mobile platform has been a talked about subject for several years now, and while we've seen a few forms of these on display at various trade shows and in prototype form around the web, the big players are yet to really make a firm jump into this area.

However, it's still definitely on the cards according to NVIDIA. Fuad of Fudzilla was recently at NV headquarters where he got to have a chat with general manager of NVIDIA's notebook division, Rene Haas and while the finer details of what's planned were retained, he did say that external graphics is something they are working on and the word 'Thunderbolt' was also mentioned, possibly meaning it'll be the connection of choice to ensure enough bandwidth is provided.

Fuad goes on to say that the conversation gave him the impression that external graphics may well surface sometime in 2012, using 28nm NVIDIA mobile parts (initially at least).

No matter how much you try to convince people that "the more memory, the better" when it comes to graphics cards is a somewhat fuzzy statement, the idea of having your card crammed with as much memory as possible is just too hard to pass up for some folks, hence add-in partners sometimes going a little overboard in this respect.

On that note, it seems NVIDIA card partner Point of View is looking to break some kind of record with a new GeForce GTX 550 Ti offering, packing it with not 1.5GB, not 2GB, but a whopping 4GB (!) of memory - equating to 4 times the amount on the reference model.

Such a large increase in memory would be questionably logical on a high end model, but on a mid range card with only a 128-bit memory interface, it does very much seem overboard indeed. It also needs to be mentioned that the memory used isn't the usual GDDR5, PoV took a shortcut here and went for DDR3, clocked in at 1066MHz. Meanwhile, the core runs at 900MHz, with its 192 CUDA cores operating at 1900MHz.

Some slightly fuzzy details on NVIDIA's upcoming 28mm mobile GPU parts have been leaked today; these being Fermi based shrinks, not based on next-gen Kepler.

It should first be noted, the chart provided by semiaccurate that you see above gives a list of the majority, but not all of the upcoming mobile GPU parts on the way, as there will likely be a few more 40nm parts entering the market in amongst this lot.

The other important attribute of what we can learn from this chart is the mass production periods noted. Sources are indicating that the much anticipated Kepler lineup of GPUs won't start being released until (at least) three months after these begin rolling out. So if we're not seeing 28nm parts hit the market until January or so, chances are Kepler will miss the boat for a Q1'12 release.