Graphics Cards - Page 259

2011 was relatively quite for GPU releases, it featured more next-gen CPU and APU launches than anything else. We had a few different cards come out, but nothing revolutionary, until last week with AMD's launch of their Graphics Core Next (GCN) and the launch of the AMD Radeon HD 7970.

The new 28nm-based "Tahiti" chips have taken the world by storm, and have been a very impressive GPU, considering early drivers and whatnot. AMD are planning to launch a dual-GPU card codenamed "New Zealand" and will carry the AMD Radeon HD 7990 moniker, launching in Q1 2012.

This means we'll see AMD's dual-GPU beast before April Fools next year. Since Tahiti/HD 7970 is so energy-efficient, dual-GPU efficiency should be quite the sight to see. We should see two Tahiti GPUs sporting the same power of the single-GPU HD 7970's, with 6GB of total graphics card memory (3GB per GPU system).

We've had a fair amount of news on AMD's next-generation GPUs over the past six weeks, with the first news that the cards would be launching in January, then we had some rumored pricing, and then a few days ago we posted some leaked info on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 specs. Today, we have news of the feature-set that will be included on the GPU when it launches.

There are three main categories of feature updates: Graphics CoreNext, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 and AMD APP Acceleration. AMD have claimed that CoreNext will be a "revolutionary" new architecture that changes the way the GPU crunches numbers. Also keep in mind that GCN is the first new architecture since the HD 2000-series launches all those years ago.

The first five generations since the HD 2000-series launched all included VLIW (very-long instruction word) core arrangement. CoreNext replaces the now ageing VLIW4 that was introduced by the Radeon HD 6900-series cards, which was an evolution, not a revolution of the VLIW set. CoreNext replaces VLIW stream processors with super-scalar Graphics Compute cores.

Juniper is out, Cape Verde is in. The Radeon HD 5770, after two years on the force, is retiring. In it's place is the rookie AMD Radeon HD 7770. If you remember, AMD rebranded the HD 5770 as the HD 6770, so we saw nothing new. This is the first time in two years that AMD are giving its mainstream performance class products a performance upgrade.

As you can see from the above shot, the HD 7770 definitely looks like it's older, and much stronger brother, the Radeon HD 7970. It includes a large diameter fan pushing air down vertically and is a similar design introduced by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460. The length is also nearly the same, measuring in at 8.25-inches.

The HD 7770 includes the usual 3 display outputs - DVI, HDMI and miniDisplayPort. The card only requires a single 6-pin PCI-e power connector, and power consumption is said to be in the early-100W range. It can only be CrossFired with another card, so a maximum of 2 GPUs is limited here.

This was mostly unexpected, but then again, AMD have been waving their big red flag all over the Internet in the last few days due to the leaked AMD Radeon HD 7970 performance and specs. Today, we have PCINLIFE leaking an NVIDIA slide, that shows the difference in performance between their current single-GPU hero, the GeForce GTX 580 versus the GeForce GTX 780.

Say what? GeForce GTX 780?? Not GTX 680? Yes!

The above slide shows the performance between the current GTX 580 and the next-gen Kepler-based GTX 780. The test bed is a Core i7-3960X, Windows 7 64-bit, 297-Series driver, 2560x1600 resolution with both AA and AF enabled. The GTX 780 is virtually twice as fast as the GTX 580 if the chart is correct.

As the launch of AMD's next-generation Radeon cards gets closer, we have some exciting leaked specs to share with you. From some leaked slides, the specs of AMD's first Graphics Core Next (GCN) chip, the Tahiti XT, which goes under the suave name of the AMD Radeon HD 7970, will sport 3GB of GDDR5 (and not the rumored XDR2 memory), 3.5 TFLOPS of power, 2048 stream processors, 384bit memory width at 5.5Gbps, total load consumption of up to 300W and an less than 3W for idle.

Display outputs include 1 x DVI, 2 x miniDisplayPort and HDMI, in terms of power connectors, it should have one 8-pin and one 6-pin. If these specs are true, we should expect the single-GPU Radeon HD 7970 to keep up with, and most likely beat in some games, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590. It seems to be about 30-percent faster than the single-GPU Radeon HD 6970.

Once some great drivers are released for it, we should see more performance sucked out of the new cards. Two of these should see a game like Battlefield 3 run at Ultra quality, 1920x1080 at 120Hz absolutely maxed out with AA/AF at 120fps minimum, or 2560x1xx0 at 60Hz, minimum 60fps.

AMD's next-generation high-end graphics card has been spotted, with images making their way onto the Internet. The new boards are marked as "Tahiti" and are believed to be the top-of-the-line single-GPU cards from AMD. This should be what the Radeon HD 7900-Series will eventually be.

The card, as you can see in the picture above, is quite long, roughly the same length as AMD's current Radeon HD 6970. It sports twelve GDDR5 memory chips, which means they use a 384-bit memory bus. It also includes two 8-pin PCI Express power connectors, which should give it up to 375W of power to suck down. The card, however, is powered by the SIG-approved 6-pin plus 8-pin config, which uses up to 300W of power.

It shouldn't be long until we have more concrete info, but generally, when there are leaks like this, the real things aren't far behind.

This is a bit unexpected, but a good move for Zalman. They have just announced their entry into the GPU market with the shipping of Zalman-branded GPUs to start shipping on December 13.

Zalman's first entry will be AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series GPUs, in three different models: Zalman HD6870-H , H-Zalman HD6850 and HD6770 Zalman-H. As you can tell from the model numbers, they are HD 6870, HD 6850 and HD 6770 GPUs. Nothing high-end yet, but I'm sure Zalman are just putting their toes into the water, for now.

All cards will feature two DVI outputs, one HDMI output and one DisplayPort output. All cards are dual-slot with the fan located in the center of the card. The PCB is a wicked blue color.

Juicy one today, folks! It is rumored that AMD's flagship single-GPU graphics card will hit a US$549 price, with the slower model having a price tag of $449.

Remember, that this is just a rumor and nothing is guaranteed, but it gives us a peak into what we could expect when the cards launch. Right now, the names being thrown around are the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7950, just like the previous variants of cards in the 6000 Series. The pricing is reportedly coming from AMD and not card partners.

We're expecting an early January shipping estimate, and should hopefully hear some more news on the subject soon. Is it too early to wish for two of these puppies? I'll take CrossFireX 7970's, thanks.

To tell you the truth, I've been holding back my excitement on AMD's new GPUs for a while now. I was a huge fan of the HD 5000-Series, it just completely outperformed Fermi in virtually every way. Sure, it wasn't the fastest in every test, but it had great temps, great overclockability, great noise levels, and to me, was a better card to launch onto the market than the GTX 400-Series.

But, now we have AMD's first true new graphics architecture since the HD 2000-Series. Dubbed Graphics Core Next, or GCN, the new Radeon HD 7000-Series will be the first to feature the new technology, which is set to have a much bigger focus on GPGPU functionality than any ATI or AMD GPU previously, which should at least keep up with NVIDIA's CUDA, or beat it.

The new HD 7000-Series is rumored to launch in notebooks first, with GPUs seen shortly after. High-end gear is not expected until early next year, but AMD could always surprise us. The unveiling event is to be held in London, and AMD haven't sent me my plane ticket, hotel booking, 4 x high-end GPUs or even a post card. I guess I'll sit here and cry red tears of sadness and await the news in a few more days.

PCIe 3.0 is barely here and rumblings of PCIe 4.0 is coming through the cracks of the Internet tubes. PCI-SIG, who are responsible for developing the PCI Express spec, have listed some preliminary details about PCIe 4.0.

PCI-SIG says that they've decided on a transfer rate of 16GT/sec for the next-generation PCIe technology, with a study showing that 16GT/sec can be achieved over copper wires, at roughly the same power levels of PCIe 3.0, using chips fabbed with "mainstream silicon process technology".

PCIe 4.0 will be backward compatible with older PCIe devices, and vica versa. PCI-SIG haven't mentioned which encoding scheme the new standard will use, so assuming it uses the same 128b/130b system as PCIe 3.0, a 16GT/sec peak transfer rate would translate into per-late, per-direction bandwitch of just under 2GB/sec, a two-fold increase over the PCIe 3.0 standard, and nearly four times as fast as PCIe 2.0. We'd be looking at 31.5GB/sec per direction for a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot.

We have a juicy rumor today from Japanese website 4Gamer and VR-Zone in the form of a roadmap for NVIDIA's upcoming 28nm Kepler GPU line-up for desktops. Kepler's rollout will be bottom-to-top, starting with the mainstream GK107 chip in Q2 2012.

High-end parts such as the GK110/GK112 will not see the light of day until later in the year. All Kepler GPUs will be manufactured on TSMC's 28nm process, use GDDR5 memory and include support for DirectX 11.1 that will be included in Windows 8.

We should see the GK107 mainstream part in Q2 2012, which features 128-bit memory, and should land in notebooks first, with a desktop release shortly after. GK107 also only supports PCI-Express 2.0. GK106 is set to be the mainstream performance part, replacing the current NVIDIA gem, the GeForce GTX 560. This should sport a 256-bit memory bus, with a release sometime in late Q2 2012.

We've seen a few different AMD Catalyst drivers lately, with today bringing the Catalyst 11.11a driver. What does it do? Well, as usual, it supports Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP and brings some fixes, support and improvements for Batman: Arkham City, RAGE, Skyrim and Battlefield 3.

You can grab the drivers here, and for a rundown of what the Catalyst 11.11a driver does, take a look below:

Batman Arkham City:

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.