Graphics Cards - Page 264

Although this is not really a surprise (people have been talking about this for some time) it looks like eVGA could be making a switch from nVidia to Intel.

I am not talking about chipsets either. It seems that Intel might have got eVGA all excited about the Larrabee GPU and they are looking to push them on the public.

As it stands eVGA is one of the last nVidia only AIBs out. They have increased their reputation by standing behind their cards with Life-Time warranties, Upgrade programs, and free overclocking tools and software (might explain why they do not work with AMD/ATi).

If this is the case and eVGA moves to Larrabee it will mean that the first Boards with this new GPU will at least come from a good company.

Read more here.

Shuttle has just popped up a pretty neat video of their latest SFF system. This one is actually powered by the VIA nano. As part of the XS29 series the new nano powered systems will be completely fan less. This means minimal noise for those that are picky about a quiet system.

The flavor of Nano under the hood will be the 1GHz U1700, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, with graphics powered by an VIA Chrome9 HC3 integrated GPU.

The box will be small and light and according to Shuttle will sip a mere 50 Watts of power under load.

Read more here.

In shocking news and in opposition to what most are reporting it looks like at least one ATi partner will be going ahead with a Radeon HD4890X2.

The HD4890, which launched on the 2nd is giving the GTX 285 a good run for its money. ATi and their partners must feel that an X2 version of this part would clean up the rest of the nVidia parts and recapture the speed crown from nVidia.

Read more at Bright Side of News.

GIGABYTE has announce that they have extened SLI support to all of their X58 lineup.

Last week it was discovered that NVIDIA was redesigning the GTX 295 by reworking things to fit on a single PCB. While it made sense to do so in that it would lower the manufacturing costs, it made little sense due to the cost of re-engineering the card.

AMD has begun volume shipments of the Radeon HD 4890 to distributors and retailers, however GPUCafe is a little bit miffed that nobody will come clean with the official release date.

It looks like there will be over 40,000 cards available at launch and the company has hopes of 250K cards being available by the end of the first half of this year. As the Catalyst driver team just released the 9.3 drivers and they usually like to release updates in the latter half of the month, it looks like previews using beta drivers should start showing up soon.

With the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 just weeks away, it should come as to no surprise that pictures are starting to pop up all over the web. It is unusual however that we see non-reference designs so early.

ASUS is working on a high-end version of the 4890 with beefed up power circuitry. TechPowerUp thinks that it will fit in nicely as either a "TOP" or "MATRIX" lineup when released.

OCHeaven have what they claim is the first 3Dmark tests on the Radeon HD4890. The results are based on testing done by an unnamed source and are, as of this writing, yet to be verified.

The test system had an Intel Core i7 930 and 3 GB of RAM, although other details are not known.

The scores that the HD 4890 achieved (P10996 in 3DMark Vantage and 16096 in 3DMark06) are from testing with an Unknown and possibly beta driver.

Although the 3DMark06 score is close to the GTX285 the 3DMark Vantage score still lags behind due to the PhysX boost from the GPU.

I will be fun to see where these cards end up once officially released.

Read more here

All sorts of information popped up around the web today concerning ATI's upcomming Radeon HD 4890 GPU.

Based on conversations between ATI and PCGH, it seems that ATI might be thinking about a Radeon HD 4890 X2 to compete with the GTX 285.

With NVIDIA getting ready to launch the GTS 250, ATI is slashing prices on its HD

4870 and HD 4850 cards. The price cuts will drop the 4870 down to $149 and the 4850 will go down to $129. If the price cuts hit later in the week, this should really give NVIDIA a run for its money.



ATI's dual GPU offerings, the HD4850 X2 and HD4870 X2, don't seem to be getting the price cut at all and the HD 4830 will also stay the same price. The HD 4830 will soon be replaced by the upcomming RV740, which is also expected to launch along side the RV790 chip.

More importantly is that this adds some evidence to earlier rumors on the Radeon HD 4890 launch date of April 6.

If everything holds true, the next month or so will prove very interesting for everyone in the video card market. Both desktop and mobile users are getting new chips and with lots of new numbers flying around, the fight for title of king will surely be a heated one.

Zotac has confirmed its latest addition to the GT200 family of cards, the GTX 285 Infinity Edition.

While the card doesn't feature any additional memory, it does come with a custom all-copper water block with 3/8" fittings.

The folks over at GPU Cafe were told by Asus that their new W90 notebook will launch on February 23rd. What makes it so special that that the W90 will feature the upcomming ATI Mobility Radeon 4870X2 GPU. The mobile version of the 4870X2 wll have clock speeds of 600 MHz on the core and 900 MHz for the memory.

EVGA is now giving its registered NVIDIA SLI graphics card owners a free treat, something EVGA refers to as the SLI Enhancement Patch. As many of you know, for SLI to work in an optimized state for various games and 3D applications, "SLI profiles" at the software level are required. As these are unique to many game titles and the like, updating the profiles listing is required and this is something NVIDIA don't get onto straight away.

It looks like the new Atom with the Integrated GPU will still only be a DX9 part.

The GPU that will be going side by side with the 32nm Atom pineview will be none other than the GMA950, the same underperforming GPU that you find in the 945GSE chipset but shrunk down to 45nm and with a higher clock.

The new Pineview, although it will not have the most amazing graphics will feature an IMC (Internal Memory Controller) that will be paired up with the GPU. This will allow up to DDR2 800 memory.

Overall the new Atom when combined with the Tiger Point chipset will reduce the total kit package by 70% and Total TDP for the package by 50%.

This all may be moot as I am sure part of the agreement to license SLI for the DX580SO included some ION agreements.

Read more here at Fudzilla.

NVIDIA has just sent us news that it has recently seen explosive hardware sales growth of its GeForce 3D Vision 3D glasses.

It seems like NVIDIA are playing the same old and boring brand name games again.

Now that the 9.1 Catalyst drivers have been released, german website ATI Forum has dug into the driver information to see what they can pluck from it in the way of future plans; what they discovered is that the world's first 40nm GPU (codenamed RV740) will come in the form of not one, but two SKUs, now known as the Radeon HD 4730 and HD 4750.

The economic downturn hurt GPU sales in the final quarter of 2008.
At least that is the case according to Jon Peddie Research.

The study followed the sale of Graphics chips over the course of eight years and compared them. Jon Peddie Research did not limit the study to Desktop GPUs but also covered the entire range of products that ship with a Graphics Chip.

The study found that Q4 2008 suffered an incredible 34% drop over Q3 and 2% drop over Q4 2007.

They also broke down the numbers by manufacturer finding that out of the big three (AMD, nVidia and Intel) nVidia had the largest drop when comparing year to year and AMD was behind comparing Q3 to Q4.

Read more here.