Graphics Cards - Page 267

Recently we did a news post about the fact that the XFX HD 5970 Black Edition's own overclocking utility didn't offer support for 64-bit users of Windows. For the most part this was a huge fail, but the good news is that it seems XFX heard our roar and sorted the issue out.

Seen below are a bunch of benchmark results showing off Fermi's performance vs. NVIDIA's current-gen GTX 295 and 285 graphics cards as well as ATI's HD 5870 and 5970 models.

Of course, given the lack of validity to these results along with the fact that the layout of the graphs scream out 'NVIDIA slide deck presentation', the results are to be taken with grains of salt.

Benchmarks are performed in Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5 and STALKER: Clear Sky; you can see whether or not AA was used and at what resolution the tests were done with at the bottom portion of each graph.

Ah the wonders of the rumor mill and the leaks of big companies. Toady while cruising the Internet I stumbled upon an interesting article. It supposes that AMD has a new low-end (you might call it value) DX11 40nm GPU ready for release in the beginning of 2010. The new GPU is called Redwood and fits most of the information we have. There will be 400 Stream Processors (meaning 80 "fat" and 320 "thin" following the Vec5D architecture) 1GB of GDDR5 (128 Bit interface) and should not need external 12v power.

However there are, as with many leaks, inconsistencies.

The first thing that leapt out at me when looking this over is the Texture Fillrate listed by GPUz. It shows as 103.3 GTexels per Second. Quite a feat considering the 5870 only achieves about 68 GTexel/s . This could be nothing more than an incorrect reading by GPUz though.

Every day I try to somehow snag a Fermi sample from one of the many companies we work with here at TweakTown. The problem is for the first time over the weekend we heard the 'M' word come out of a partners mouth in regards to the release. What's the 'M' word? March!

NVIDIA has just quietly unveiled its first GeForce 300 series graphics chipset, dubbed the GeForce 310. But don't get too excited, it's said to be based on current architecture, not Fermi (which adds DirectX 11 support and inevitably far superior performance characteristics).

The GeForce 310 is positioned to directly replace the older 210 model as a replacement for systems limited to slow integrated graphics. As such, specifications aren't anything to wow yourself over with a 64-bit memory bus and 16 processing cores. Stock clockspeeds come in at 589MHz for the core and 500MHz on the 512MB of DDR2 memory.

Despite the lowly specs, the card is still said to be quite capable for most desktop tasks including the ability to fully accelerate 1080p video in hardware and make good use of NVIDIA's CUDA or PhysX technologies.

Yesterday I attempted to begin my guide on bitstreaming Blu-ray HD audio from movie discs to your amplifier knowing that the current batch of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs come with this type of support. Namely the GeForce 200 series and Radeon HD 5000 series.

Suspecting it may be an issue, I quickly discovered that while the hardware side is ready to roll, the software is playing catch up. Presently, the publically available versions of CyberLink's PowerDVD do not support bitstreaming with either and we are still waiting to hear back from ArcSoft about whether or not Total Media Theater (TMT) is capable of such a feat.

AMD is set to launch a new flagship video card called the HD 5970 and ahead of that official introduction, some of the specifications for the card have been leaked online. The card has the code name Hemlock and has two GPUs on a single video card.

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The GPUs are called Cypress, has an internal CrossfireX configuration, and are built on the 40nm process. Each GPU will have 1600 stream processors and a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface. Actual VRAM will be 4GB total.

That means each GPU will get a massive 2TB of memory. The dual slot card will reportedly have a pair of DVI-D ports and a mini DisplayPort with the other slot having a large heat vent. The NDA will reportedly expire on the card on the 19th of November.

Wow there is so much spin out right now about Fermi/GT300/G100 that it is not funny. From the Anti-Green side we hear of delays and yield issues. We hear rumblings of problems with the actual design, that NVIDIA knows and is stalling, and that somehow they are pulling the wool over consumers' eyes on their DX11 parts. All in an attempt to undermine poor put upon AMD.

But what is really going on? The truthful answer to that one is, no one but NV (and maybe a few OEMs and TSMC) really knows. But still we do know that recent rumors and rumblings have some root in truth. The problem is with presentation and spin. For example we hear that Fermi is being delayed until Q1 2010. When you read this you automatically hear that everything related to the Fermi/GT300/G100 is being delayed. You think that this means no DX11 GeForce cards from NV this year, time to pull out the wallet and look to AMD right?

Well you would only be partially right.

You see Fermi actually represents several products; there is the GeForce, Tesla, and Quadro. So what are the new reports really talking about? Well they are talking about Quadro and Tesla. Traditionally new Quadro Products from NVIDIA are released in the April Time Frame right around NAB and Sigraph. So the news that this will not be launched until then is nothing new and just business as usual. As for Tesla, they are usually updated once a year so again that is not new and nothing out of the ordinary.

Now for most the big question is GeForce; so far NVIDIA is still saying that it will be launched this year. This could be very true and we will see DX11 performance from NV sometime in the next month or so. But will this be a general launch or a limited launch just to make the deadline. My thoughts now are different from what they were a couple of months ago. For starters at the time I was being told that the GT300 DX11 parts would make their debut in early to mid-November. This has now changed to late November, possibly after Black Friday. A launch this late with nothing in the stores will not improve NV sales but it might hurt AMD's if the performance is good enough. So I think that a limited product launch is very likely in the next few weeks. NV needs something on record before the end of the year to compete with AMD's current momentum. Anything less than a true DX11 part based on Fermi will not cut it with today's consumer so they had better be working very hard to get those out.

NVIDIA's third instalment of their SLI Profile updates has just been released which expands upon the list of game titles to support the company's SLI multi-GPU technology and in some cases also optimizing support for SLI-ready titles.

The latest additions to support SLI using this update are as follows :-

• Borderlands
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• G-Force
• FIFA Soccer 2010
• League of Legends: Clash of Fates
• NHL 2009
• Order of War
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
• Race On
• Star Trek: D-A-C
• Champions Online (Enhanced support)
• Dragon-Age: Origins (Enhanced support)

The GPU race is heating up. This is evidenced by the latest round of FUD circling the internet over the weekend. You see NVIDIA used a Mock Up card for its introduction of the Fermi at their GTC event. Now this is a typical setup. Manufacturers often show off mock up cards at trade shows - nothing new here really.

So why has this become a big topic in the news? Simply put because Fermi represents a real threat.

Even if it is not ready for launch right now (all of our sources still say first week of November for the launch and availability at the end of November). It is still a serious enough threat to AMD that much of the "information" getting out can be traced back to them.

This is like the rumors about Larrabee and its yields. With Larrabee, AMD was claiming that Intel was on their 3rd or 4th version of silicone. With GT300 yields, it was that they were less than 2%. Neither appears to be true according to the information we have about this.

So, what of this latest one? Well, we have heard that the first information about the mockup card was sent around by an AMD employee. Despite the truth that it was a mock up card, the mere fact that AMD is sending this out shows that Fermi represents a real threat to AMD and their new 58xx series. After all, why throw mud if you know you have the upper hand?

I do not know how the two GPUs will stand up next to each other in terms of performance. After all, I have not seen the cards in action side by side. But I do know that I am more eager than ever to find out, knowing that the information about the mock up came from a source at AMD. The sad part is that this will probably backfire on AMD as many enthusiasts will do the same thing and wait to see what all the bother is about.

So get this, after all the people claiming the GT300 was a pipe dream or failure were prove wrong yesterday with the demo the first Fermi based Tesla cards we now hear some people claiming that NVIDIA's launch shows a commitment towards GPU computing and a move away from Graphics.

This argument is about as bad as the people that claimed the Core i7 would be horrible for gaming because it Looked to be aimed at the high end desktop. At the time when these comments were made not much was known other than what Intel showed at IDC. This is the same thing we have here.

NVIDIA did a great job of keeping GT300/ Fermi under the radar. There was enough ATi news and NVIDIA bad PR to keep much of the details hidden from the public. As such it was not until the last few weeks that the GT300 was even known by the vast majority to be real and ready for launch.

However, NVIDIA has chosen to show off the power of Fermi in a very clever way. This is a top down method. We see the pinnacle of the line here with full GPU computing power. It is from this cPGU (as some are calling it) that the Gaming parts will be made.

People making claims about Fermi's performance as a GPU is the equivalent of only driving a car at 100MPH and saying it handles poorly at slows speeds. We all will have to wait and see how well it does in gaming performance. Personally with the information I have, I think everyone is going to be shocked at how well it does in gaming and where it might go in the near future.

Word's come in from the horse's mouth that NVIDIA's first DirectX 11 (GT300) GPU is shaping up okay and should make it for a Q4'09 launch, despite previous reports indicating delays and yield issues.

Remember all the rumors about bad yields of the GT300? Well nVidia has come out to confirm what we told you before. GT300 yields are fine and they are on schedule for a Q4 2009 launch. This launch should be at GTC in November with retail availability by the end of November.

Fudo over at Fudzilla is also confirming this with a direct statement from NVIDIA on the subject. They are claiming that the reports of less than 2% yields were based on a mistranslated report from AMD's competitive analysis team.

Also they say that the reports that the GT300 is a rebranded/respun GT200 are baseless. According to the report the GT300 is a ground up redesign and a new GPU. This is good news for the NVIDIA fans out there as recently AMD has been hogging all the press with the DX11 40nm Radeon HD5870.

Still we will have to wait and see what the GT300 bring to the table in terms of performance. Traditionally AMD has been a little better at implementing new versions of DX while NVIDIA has been better at the brute force approach. Either way the last month of the year will be interesting to be sure.

You know, I think we need to start a new section (to go with the random stupidity awards) maybe we will call it DX11 watch. After all with AMD and NVIDIA going back and forth about DX11 and its importance, why not see what the real state of DX11 is.

For starters, let's cover some things that we know. AMD has a DX11 card out. It is launched, public and available. There will be a DX11 operating system, Windows 7, available starting on the 23rd of October. Despite this future date, Steam is reporting a large number of early adopters.
Codemasters are implementing partial DX11 support (much like the DX10 surfaces in Bioshock) for DiRT 2 and the Battle Field Engine has been ported to DX11 completely.

So we see a massive two companies that are announcing DX11 support. But what about those that have not announced DX11 support? There are a large number of companies that have not really made a statement one way or the other. Interestingly, these are the same companies that sat back as DX10 went by. Yes, it is true that DX10 did not offer much and had performance issues that caused many gamers to be unhappy with it. However, the blame was not entirely DX10's fault. In many cases the DX10 support was bolted on or poorly coded to get it in quickly. These poor attempts at adoption caused DX10 to be almost globally disliked. There were bright spots like Assassin's Creed that used DX10 and even DX10.1 to great effect, but they were few and far between.

So what then of DX11? Well, I have heard from a few sources that many companies are quietly porting their engines over for DX11 support. Why the behind the scenes support? Well, there are a couple of reasons; the first is to be sure that they have something if DX11 and Windows 7 really do take off and the second is probably a sort of company embarrassment / shame over taking sides. Too many companies that are part of the "TWIMTBP" gang do not want to upset NVIDIA by working to support something that NVIDIA is currently saying is of no great importance. In fact, they recently stated that AMD's support for DX11 is a sort of "punishment" for gamers. That makes it hard to work on DX11 support and maintain friendships with the green team.

Looking at the signs and listening to the whispers, I feel that DX11 will have some of the best "closet" support of any version of Direct X that Microsoft has even released.

I love the launch of new graphics cards, especially when it comes to AMD products. The main reason for this is that NVIDIA normally send over an email asking if we've got samples and when we respond with a yes, we get some questions that they think we should be asking ourselves.

This time was no different; the email came through right on time with NVIDIA asking the "tough" questions. To be honest though, I'm not AMD, I don't really feel great about answering questions on behalf of AMD, so with an email sent we had someone who was willing to respond. That person was Chris Hook who is AMD Global Communications, now with Global Communications in your title, you've got to feel pretty safe that the right person is responding.

So, what did NVIDIA ask and how did AMD respond?


UPDATE - NVIDIA's PR company for Asia Pacific in Singapore, CIZA Concept, has contacted us and claimed that the source of the questions was from them as "our observations, as industry watchers" and not NVIDIA. We always get these types of questions and they seem to read like they are from NVIDIA, so we are unsure. We were asked to state this in this news post, which has been done here.

We were also contacted by phone about this by NVIDIA and we have offered them the chance to do a follow-up. We are in the process of preparing questions and will have them answered early next week in a new news post.


Why is AMD focusing so much on DX11 when most games are on DX9 console ports?

Today and over the life of the Radeon HD 5000 series, dozens of triple A titles will leverage DirectX11 features. If NV was able to produce a DirectX11 card today, they'd be delivering a much different narrative on DirectX 11 to the press. If NV really believes that DirectX11 doesn't matter, then we challenge them to say that publically, on the record.


Aren't they punishing PC gamers by pushing out the schedule of PC titles such as Dirt 2 in order to support DX11?

Proprietary standards punish gamers, not industry standards like DirectX11. Why is NVIDIA punishing gamers by putting in proprietary and closed standards like PhysX in games?


When are GPU-accelerated Havoc titles going to be shipped? Do they have a list of games that will support Havoc?

PhysX has been around for years and years, but today, GPU-accelerated PhysX titles are still in the single digits. The physics experiences that many of those titles delivered have disappointed gamers and were widely panned by the press worldwide. GPU accelerated game physics will only be accepted in the marketplace when industry standards are embraced.

Back in the days of the X19xx series Radeon GPUs, AMD and ATI were talking about using the GPU to process in game physics. This was in contrast to anything that was being thought about over at NVIDIA and, at the time, was even denounced by NVIDIA as a bad idea.

Unfortunately, AMD and ATI did not put much effort into moving physics onto the GPU and NVIDIA did. NVIDIA even went so far as to buy Agiea, so that they would own the complete PhysX library. This left AMD out in the cold as yet another AMD idea was openly taken and implemented by another company.

Well now, a few years later, AMD is getting back to physics on the GPU. They have partnered up with Pixelux and Bullet to bring an Open Physics library to not only the Radeon GPU, but to pretty much any GPU. This move should help to bring a more standardized physics library to developers.

Why is that important to you? Well, for starters it allows game developers to use a standard set of tools for in-game physics. As it stands right now, about 26% of developers use PhysX. This means they have to code triggers in the game to know when an NVIDIA GPU is present and when it is not. If an NVIDIA CUDA enabled GPU is not there, they have to offload the PhysX load to the CPU properly. This creates code overhead and reduces performance on non-PhysX enabled systems.

Now, this is great for NVIDIA as they feel it will compel (to say it nicely) to buy an NVIDIA GPU. But it is bad for developers and consumers. A completely open source physics library allows for anyone to use the GPU they want. Yes, it will still require triggers, but they should be less complex and the offload to CPU is usually much simpler to code.

There is a new nVidia Vs ATi rumor out. It revolves around the latest leaks of ATi/AMD HD 5870 performance. You see those numbers have gotten to people that have seen a demonstration of nVidia's GT300 product.

If their word is to be believed then the new GPU from the Big Green Machine might still out perform AMD's latest offering.

The GT300 has been kept carefully under wraps with surprisingly few leaks about performance, design or even what is going on over at TSMC. Yes there are rumors about bad things happening at nVidia, but from what we have been able to find out those rumors might not be accurate at all.

Still when you are dealing with people willing to talk at that level it is all a game sorting through what the contact would actually know and what they might have on heard from someone else. Where it really is only nVidia really knows, but I have a feeling it is closer to launch than many might think.

After all if all the rumors were true then we would have already seen the GT300 in stores AND have to wait until 2011 to get one.

So what is better than dual monitor gaming? How about putting six or more of them in a nice mount and gaming from there? Sounds nice huh? Well this is what AMD's Eyefinity is aiming to give you.

This technology approaches the resolution of the human eye and according to AMD is 12 times the resolution of 1080p. To do this AMD is enabling their latest DX11 cards to push the signal out to multiple monitors and to allow them to become part of the whole (just like a monitor wall).

AMD and Samsung are working on this together and in fact Samsung has just announced a six monitor setup.

The advantages of this have yet to be seen as any multiple monitor rig (while extremely cool) is held back by the width of the bezel around the edge of the individual displays.

Still the thought of having up to 24 monitors (in either landscape or portrait) is very impressive and has my imagination working as I am sure yours is.

Information about AMD/ATi's pricing for the upper end of the new DX11 cards has hit the internet.

If the rumors about the naming structure are correct we should see a single PCB Dual GPU card called the 5870X2 hit the stores at $599. While the single GPU version will be called the 5870 and only set you back about $399. At the bottom end of the 58xx line we will see the 5850 sell for about $299.

This fits in with what is typical of a new GPU. You can also bet that once nVidia responds AMD will be quick to offer incentives which should filter down to the consumer.

AMD plans to launch these three upper end cars on September 10th, this will give them a good lead on the launch of Windows 7 and DX11.
Their plans are to pretty much wage war with nVidia over DX11 gaming. So far nVidia has not fired back at the shots that AMD has sent their way. But then again nVidia has an event planned for the same day as the AMD launch and there is no telling what they will show.

I love marketing and PR. Not because I enjoy it or because I like dealing with most PR people. No I enjoy it because of the funny things that are done all to gain more press time.

For example AMD is often found right across the street from Intel events to make sure they can counter anything that Intel says. Products are launched in "leap-frog" style or many times on the same date in an attempt to drown out the attention competitors get.

ATi and nVidia have been known to schedule events on exactly the same date and in different locations just to split the press. This last one has not happened in some time but has reared its ugly head again.

On September 10th AMD/ATi will hold a public launch of their new DX11 Evergreen family. This is great news for AMD as they stand to have the only product ready before the launch of Windows 7 and DX11. This means they can have hardware ready and in the stores before the first DX11 games hit. These should hit shortly after Windows 7 in October.

So what do you do if you are nVidia and have not yet demoed your own DX11 hardware? Well you schedule an event on the same date and hint that you might show your own DX11 hardware. At least that is the rumor right now. This, if true, will nicely split the press. After all do you want to cover the launch of something that has already been in the news or something entirely new?