Graphics Cards - Page 261

With the launch of NVIDIAs first high-end DX11 desktop parts finally behind us, word has it NVIDIA is in the midst of planning its refreshment of mid-range and entry-level parts which the company aims to have ready by as early as June'10.

The launch of NVIDIA's first wave of DX11 capable desktop graphics cards is nigh and while ATI don't have any new models on the horizon to answer to it (except for Eyefinity6 variants of existing models), there has been talk of ATI combating GTX 470/480 by lowering pricing on its cards.

NVIDIA's long awaited Fermi based GXT 400 series GPUs are all set to hit the market on the 26ths of this month. However, as with many past launches of new GPUs we are beginning to see the early peaks and leaks of pictures and specs.

Today it is MSI that is showing of their new GXT 480 in the hopes that at launch time you have them firmly in mind for your NVIDIA DX11 purchase. The card in question is the N480GTX, and like the others that will hit the stores around the 26th it is a reference card.

MSI is making claims of "military-class" components for N480GTX. However, I am not sure that this is the right thing to do. After being in the Military myself, I can tell you that most of what I used was old, used and often in need of constant maintenance. Here's to hoping that they MSI GTX 480 is nothing like that at all.

No word on pricing or actual retail availability just yet.

If you remember back during CES we told you about EVGA's ambitious project to build a highly overclockable dual 1366 socket motherboard that could run Quad SLI or Quad Crossfire. Well it has finally been announced and given a name. This board will be known as the Classified SR-2.

Just like we told you before this will run two Xeon 55xx or 56xx CPU with up to 48GB of registered DDR3 1333 memory (24GB per CPU) it supports both dual and triple channel setups. It also has a enough PCIe x16 slots to support up to four GPUs in full x16 mode across all of them. However, to get all this in the board has to be huge! It is even larger than full XL-ATX. It is so big EVGA had to come up with a new size name HPTX.

Power will also be an issue, to run Tri SLI and OC both sockets will put you in the area of 1500 Watts of power draw. With Quad SLI you are looking at 2000+ Watts. Most are thinking that to get this off the ground a pair of 1200-1400 Watt PSUs will be needed. Unfortunately there is still no word on when these will actually hit the market.

Over at NVIDIA's company nTersect Blog, Ashu Rege has blogged about the impressive DirectX 11 technology demonstrations that the graphics firm showcased at GDC in San Francisco last week. These demonstrations are designed to show developers what next-gen GPU technology such as the GeForce GTX 480 and 470 can do and also create hype in the community.

As the launch date nudges closer, the big talk of the town is of course NVIDIA's next-gen GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards that bring DX11 support and expectedly a significant performance leap over anything we've seen up 'till now; these slated for a March 26 launch date.

Unlike the past when both the manufacturer and AIBs shook their heads at any form of manipulation with voltage on graphics cards to favour a better overclock, these days it's a different story with some companies going so far as to provide software with their cards that promote the ability to do so for your overclocking pleasures.

Whilst we all continue to count down the days until NVIDIA lets Fermi (GF100) off its chains, little has been shared to give a clearer perspective on just how these latest and greatest monsters from NVIDIA dubbed the GTX 480 and GTX 470 will perform.

But, one thing that we're sometimes seeing pop up is the box designs some of the AIBs are going to use to ship their variants in. Not exactly exciting, but sure whets the appetite a bit.

The folks over at Toms Hardware have acquired box art images from Palit for its GTX 480 and 470 models, both using a V designed engine theme.

We've heard bits and pieces about Galaxy's plans to release a one of a kind dual GPU GeForce GTS 250 graphics card to market in the near future and more recently obtained concrete information that it was definitely being produced, but until now have seen very little in terms of performance expectations or how it looks in its final form.

Our VGA man Shane Baxtor has managed to sus out when AMD/ATI plans to officially announce its new Eyefinity6 technology which gives the ability to drive up to six monitors from a single card.

Our VGA guru Shane Baxtor has posted some hot news over at his Blog page pertaining to the new HD 5830 which is already a hot little number in AMD's HD 5000 series lineup with solid performance at a good price.

A David Smith of SolarisUtilityDVD has been made aware of a method to enable SLI on ASUS' Crossfire only P7P55D motherboard which might be of interest to those of you with the board who wish they could double up on their existing GeForce card.

As the P7P55D Deluxe board comes with SLI support (albeit at a fair bit higher price tag), it was as simple as getting into a hex editor, comparing the deluxe board's BIOS to the vanilla variant and copying the required string across to the current BIOS.

The folks at Plaza.fi have obtained both a CAD drawing along with performance expectations of ASUS' suped up Republic of Gamers Ares graphics card which is basically a custom-designed HD 5970 which as many bells and whistles ASUS could jam into it.

This upcoming limited edition model uses two Radeon HD 5870 GPUs with 1600 stream processors each, whilst the core and memory clock remains the same as the HD 5870 at 850MHz / 1200MHz (up from the stock 725/1000MHz on a stock HD 5970). On the subject of memory, ASUS also doubled the memory with 4GB of it residing here.

In now knowing when NVIDIA plans to unveil its GTX 400 Series (based on Fermi/GF100), which happens to be at PAX 2010 next month (March 26 to be exact), information is beginning to trickle out as to the underlying specs on the GTX 470 and 480 cards, in turn helping give a better perspective on the performance expectations of the models.

NVIDIAs next-gen GF100 silicon physically has 512 CUDA cores, 16 geometry units, 64 TMUs, 48 ROPs and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. GTX 480 will of course be without limits and make use of every bit of this power in all regards. GTX 470 is of course a cut-down lower priced variant, but we're not yet sure in which areas and by how much NVIDIA will restrict it.

As we just heard the other day, NVIDIA finally let everyone know of its plans to unveil its next-gen GTX400 (Fermi) series graphics cards on March 26 (during PAX 2010). That's the big day most of us are holding out for so we can get a better perspective on just how well it'll deliver performance wise.

However, the company is certainly not in pause until such time. It is continuing to refresh its somewhat mundane GeForce 300 series of products and has just released some OEM-only cards in the form of the GeForce GT 320, 330 and 340. The folks at Hexus nabbed a picture of the GT 340, as seen below :-

The rumor wagon is in high gear today with another new product rumor surfacing. According to this rumor, AMD is getting ready to launch a new video card next week. The card is said to be the Radeon HD 5830.

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The video card is pegged for a February 25 launch and will boast 1280 stream processors, 750MHz core speed, and 1GB of GDDR5 running at 4000MHz. AMD is also said t be getting ready to launch a new version of the Radeon HD 5870 called the Eyefinity 6 edition.

The card will have the same specs as the stock HD 5870. The stock card has DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectivity, which the Eyefinity 6 version will lack. Instead, the Eyefinity 6 version will ditch the stock connectivity in favor of six DisplayPort connections.

Our resident video card Guru Shane Baxtor has just posted on his blog some of the whispers that he's hearing about the upcoming HD 5830. It seems that come launch day we won't be seeing retail versions of the HD 5830.

China based hardware news website Zol has managed to get a number of snaps along with some details on ASUS' upcoming HD 5870 MATRIX Edition graphics card.

The recent additions to AMD's HD 5000 graphics card lineup still haven't brought the series to a close with talk of the entry top-end HD 5830 still on the way.

We first heard about this model over a month ago, with word that it would arrive in early Feb, but AMD appears to have delayed the release by up to several weeks intentionally and won't give an exact date of launch.

A short while back we learned of a highly unique GTS 250 graphics card from NVIDIA partner GALAXY in that it carries two GTS 250 GPUs onboard. The information that our VGA reviewer Shane acquired was somewhat limited at that time, but he's now learned a lot more about it along with having confirmation that GALAXY does in fact intend to mass produce this model.