Graphics Cards - Page 261

First spotted at Computex early last month, HIS has now released its new Radeon HD 6970 IceQ "Mix" graphics card which is unlike any other around at this time - reason being it is able to be paired with either AMD or NVIDIA DX11 cards on any current motherboard for superior performance. This comes thanks to LucidLogix technology built into the card (most probably a physical Hydra chip residing on its PCB).

As you can see from the image, the card boasts a nice aftermarket dual-slot cooling solution with copper heat-pipes and a 'black hole impeller' fan) which is said to help drop temperatures by 23c over the reference AMD cooler while also being somewhat quieter.

The card supports Eyefinity 5 via its many outputs including dual-DVI, HDMI 1.2 and dual DisplayPort 1.2. The factory clocks on the card see the GPU running at 880MHz out of the box with its 2GB of GDDR5 memory at 5500MHz QDR.

Charlie from SemiAccurate has written an article on Kepler which is NVIDIA's upcoming 28nm-based flagship GPU. If one were to believe the article, it would look like AMD is going to beat NVIDIA to the holy grail of 28nm-based GPUs. Charlie reckons that AMD taped out Southern Islands in February whilst NVIDIA didn't tape out Kepler until June.

He then estimates that a delay of around seven to eight months between tape out and launch, which should throw AMD's cards into our hands in around two months whilst NVIDIA's cards won't get their green on until February of next year "at the earliest." Another thing to throw into the ring of speculation is Kepler's processing resources. Charlie wrote a separate piece that Southern Islands is more or less a play-it-safe shrink of the Cayman-based design that powers the Radeon HD 6900 series whilst Kepler is a new architecture that has substantially more processing resources than Fermi.

If this is true, we might see a repeat of the entire Radeon HD 5000 series punching the Fermi-based GeForce 400-series in the nuts, Cartman style.

AMD have released the Catalyst 11.4 drivers for Windows with various enhancements and issues resolved. First up AMD have included enhancements to the AMD VISION Engine Control Center / AMD Catalyst Control Center with new task-based Display Management controls (which is meant to simplify the configuration of displays and display settings), a new Eyefinity setup group and AMD Catalyst update notification.

AMD has said that it will reveal some details of their next-generation GPUs at the AMD Fusion Development Summit (AFDS) that is set to start in mid-June. AMD are also looking to reveal trends about future directions of accelerated processing units (APUs) and software development.

Since the launch of the GTX 590 we've seen a number of reviewers mention that their cards had died during overclocking, and it's beginning to put doubt in peoples minds when it comes to the quality of the card. About 12 hours ago I'd taken off my reviewer cap and thrown on my investigator one.

AMD did not impress their fans by denying warranty if the performance "OC" bios switch was used on their Radeon HD 6990, but XFX have stepped up to the plate and are now saying that they will be fulfilling their warranty even if AMD won't.

UPDATE: The source looked at the picture wrong, I apologise if I got some people excited! The GTX590 will be a dual-slot card, at 297mm in length which is close to the GTX295's length.

The launch of the soon-to-be amazing GeForce GTX 590 dual-Fermi based GPU is about to go live and the closer we get to the release, the more that leaks out about it. NVIDIA has obviously put a lot of green sweat into this puppy and the latest shots show a 21.5mm-thick cooler which would imply that it's a single-slot based cooler.

NVIDIA is set to launch their dual-GPU counter-punch-in-the-nuts GeForce GTX 590 on March 22nd. Coincidentally, this is the date of the Crysis 2 launch in which NVIDIA paid a pretty penny (to the tune of $2 million) for some flashy NVIDIA-only benefits. Although Crysis 2 is only launching with DirectX 9 - which is shocking considering the first game from four years ago launched with DirectX 9 and 10 modes.

Rumor has it that NVIDIA will be the first one out of the gate with a dual-GPU for 2011. Sources close to Taiwan-based Digitimes are saying that both AMD and NVIDIA are noticing a drop in demand for low-end discrete GPUs as IGPs and especially APUs are absorbing this segment.

Gigabyte is one of the more popular computer hardware makers in the industry with a variety of mainboards and video cards that range from entry level to high-end enthusiast offerings. Today Gigabyte has unveiled a pair of new entry-level video cards using the NVIDIA GT 440 GPU. The video cards include the GV-N440TC-1GI and GV-N440D3-1GI.

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Both of the cards use the same GT 440 GPU that supports DirectX 11, 3D, CUDA and a lot more. Both of the cards have D-sub, DVI, and HDMI connectivity. The N440D3 has 1GB of DDR3 RAM inside that is clocked at 1800MHz. The core clock for the GPU is 830MHz and the shader clock is 1660MHz.

The N440TC has 512MB of TurboCache GDDR5 RAM onboard had a clock speed of 830MHz. The RAM is clocked at 3200MHz and the shaders are clocked at 1660MHz. Both of the video cards are RoHS compliant and the GPUs use 40nm technology. Pricing and availability on the cards is unknown at this time.

AMD have today released the WHQL-certified Catalyst 11.1 and 11.1a hotfix packages. The 11.1 set brings a tonne of new features, performance increases and other goodies.

NVIDIA were up first yesterday and now AMD are serving up a new revision of drivers today in the form of Catalyst 11.1a hotfix. The drivers give speed increases for Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 series of GPU's.

I like for as much of my stuff to be wireless as possible in most instances. I am not a big fan of wireless gear for gaming, but for just working on my work computer or for use with an HTPC machine in the living room, wireless is the way to go. The only thing that we generally need wires for no matter the brand is a video card. KFA2 has a new video card that cuts those wires that might be perfect for gaming away from your hot PC or in the living room.

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The video card is the KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 and it has five antennas on the back of the card making it look more like an add-in WiFi card than a video card. Those antennas are responsible for shooting that video out to your PC screen rather than having to use a cable. The interesting part is that the card still supports all those important features the GTX 460 series is known for.

The card has 336 cores, a graphics clock of 675MHz, a processor clock or 1350MHz, and a memory clock of 1800MHz. The card has 1024MB of RAM and the memory interface is 256-bit. The card has SLI support and supports 3D vision as well. A WHDI receiver for connecting to your display is included.

NVIDIA has a lot of GPUs on the market in all sorts of categories form entry-level chips inside notebooks and netbooks to high-end GPUs that are aimed at the gaming market for desktop users. One of the things that all of the NVIDIA GPUs has in common is that NVIDIA designs the parts and TSMC builds them for NVIDIA.

I think that all gamers and computer enthusiasts can agree that for the most part the only difference between video cards from different vendors is the name on the sticker and the bundle that comes with the card. One stock clocked GTX460 is the same as another when you get down to it. If you are in the market for a new video card, a company called Colorful has a new offering that has a really cool bundle and is very limited edition.