Graphics Cards - Page 265

Our VGA gun Shane has learned that the upcoming GTX 465 that gets you a top end NVIDIA DX11 capable graphics card for less dollars will be officially launched on June 1, the day Computex makes its 2010 splash.

GALAXY is one of several companies looking to bring out modified versions of the GTX 400 series cards from NVIDIA and below you can see the worlds first 100% modified GTX 470 which GALAXY has been working on.

Multi-monitor mad users who are addicted to connecting as many monitors as they can to a single PC would have been foaming at the mouth when AMD announced its Eyefinity6 technology (giving the ability to connect six monitors to a single video card).

However, while this in itself seems like it would only be fully harnessed by a niche crowd looking to go all out with gaming simulation setups or advanced (overkill?) levels of productivity, Power Color seems to think there are people out there who still feel it's not enough.

Take a look at this picture below :-

Following AMD's recent decision to provide more regular, consistent Catalyst Mobility driver support for mobile GPUs, NVIDIA has now focused attention on giving better support for its mobile GPUs.

In the past notebook users have had to depend on notebook OEMs to make available mobile graphics driver updates for NVIDIA GPUs residing in select models, of which the timeframes between each of these updates was most always significantly longer than the rate at which GPU makers can make driver updates available to the public.

Not so long ago an ingenius fellow going by the name of GenL over at the NGOHQ forums came up with a working Hybrid PhysX mod for NVIDIA's GeForce drivers that gives the ability to enable hardware level PhysX support for NVIDIA GPUs even if one's primary display device is not NVIDIA made.

MSI has made the first step in giving GTX 400 series owners more flexibility in obtaining higher than stock clock rates with its latest Afterburner software (1.6.1 Beta 4). The installation of this software together with a GTX 480 gives the ability to start tinkering with the voltages.

Shane has confirmed that the software is not restricted to MSI-only branded cards either; you can see in his latest article here that he used a GIGABYTE branded GTX 480 to test with and it worked a treat.

The folks at Nordic Hardware share a report from reknowned overclockers Kinc and Elmor this week in which they had hold of 4k worth of ASUS' suped up ARES video cards that have been hyped up for a while now and for good reason. But we're still yet to be assured of any form of mass production worldwide (possibly never to be).

The gaming and computer tech circles were aflutter when NVIDIA went official with its GTX 480 and 470 video cards based on the new Fermi architecture. The video cards promise some big performance for gamers.

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When the cards started hitting market and specs were unveiled, some were aghast at the amount of power the GTX 480 consumed and how much heat the thing puts out. This lead to some worrying that the GPU might have a shorter life because of all the heat it creates.

NVIDIA has posted on its official blog that gamers and enthusiasts need not worry about the GPU. Big green says that the GTX 480 GPU was designed to operate at high temperatures and the power consumption was a concession to the performance wanted from the GPU.

Today our moles were hard at work. They have uncovered a couple of rumors for you to gobble up with your chocolate bunnies and peeps. The first concerns our old friends at NVIDIA. The rumor here is that they have decided to take Fermi GPU's that do not pass QA at any acceptable speeds and resell them to Matel for their new model of Easy Bake Oven.

Jen Sun Haung, NVIDIA's CEO was quoted as saying they felt that by using a Fermi over the traditional light bulb new owners would be getting a 50% decrese in cooking times. The new program will be dubbed TWIMTBB (The Way it's Meant to be Baked). Easy Bake Ovens with Fermi inside will hit the stores sometime in June. There was no word on pricing, but some sources are saying they expect the new Fermi based "nuclear" Easy Bakes to be over $200. An ASUS engineer was also quoted as saying "we can overclock it, too" while a source at GIGABYTE referred to needing more copper in the design.

Any chance it gets, NVIDIA will take a stab at Intel and push the importance of the graphics processing unit over the traditional CPU for a whole range of computing tasks with modern computing. Especially when it comes to Intel's low-cost Atom processor platform, NVIDIA will jump through hoops on fire to bring the big Intel down whenever, wherever and however they can.

That is business though, don't mistake it and in this particular case, we like it - a lot. Microsoft just released its Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview and if you didn't know, IE9 will support GPU-accelerated HTML5, JavaScript and Direct2D technologies. Chris Pederson from NVIDIA in a video recently uploaded to YouTube, discusses the performance of a next-generation ION netbook compared to a standard netbook without ION graphics.

In a side by side presentation, Pederson shows off a few examples of how in the future consumers will want to have a system with adequate graphics to improve the changing Internet experience. Demonstrations are displayed such as map rendering and some test games from Microsoft and puts a very good light on ION equipped netbooks.

NVIDIA's new Fermi (GTX 470 and GTX 480) graphics cards have caused a fair bit of a stir in the video card market leading up to and post release last week; some in awe of their performance whilst others in disgust for a number of reasons.

But who would have thought one of NV's own partners, XFX would be so negative about the launch of these new cards that they'd go so far as to tell NVIDIA 'where to go', abandoning this new line-up of high-end cards altogether and refusing to give support; because that's apparently what's just happened!

With the lift on NVIDIA's GTX 470 and 480 graphics card taking place a couple days ago, AIBs were quick to show off their own variants of the cards, although as expected, 99% of them were all identical beneath the unique sticker/color choices on some of the cards to separate them apart.

However, eVGA is one such mob who has gone all out right off the bat and introduced no less than six models; three based on the GTX 470 and three on the 480 :-

• EVGA GeForce GTX 480 (015-P3-1480-TR): 700/1401/924 MHz, reference air-cooled, US $499.99
• EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SC (015-P3-1482-AR): 725/1450/950 MHz, reference air-cooled, US $529.99
• EVGA GeForce GTX 480 FTW Hydro Copper (015-P3-1489-AR): 750/1500/950 MHz, Hydro Copper water-block pre-fitted, US $649.99
• EVGA GeForce GTX 470 (012-P3-1470-TR): 607/1215/837 MHz, reference air-cooled, US $349.99
• EVGA GeForce GTX 470 SC (012-P3-1472-AR): 625/1250/850 MHz, reference air-cooled, US $369.99
• EVGA GeForce GTX 470 FTW Hydro Copper (012-P3-1479-AR): 650/1300/950 MHz, Hydro Copper water-block pre-fitted, US $499.99

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.