Graphics Cards - Page 272

Well well, can't say we weren't expecting this to happen. Not long after NVIDIA's announcement regarding their new 3-way SLI technology someone's smashed the 3DMark03 ORB with a world record score of 103,888 points using an EVGA, MSI & Leadtek GeForce 8800 Ultra @ 720/1760/1180MHz, this with a Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 @ 4706MHz.

PCGH from Germany managed to get their hands on three GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards and a yet to be released nForce 780i motherboard for some 3-way SLI loving!

Sparkle has today announced a new range of passively cooled Nvidia GeForce 8600GT graphics cards. The oversized heatsinks are as big as the card itself and promise to effectively dissipate heat. They look like they will indeed do the job rather well.

The three models all use the same cooler but vary on the amount and type of onboard memory and display connectors. The SF-PX86GT256D3-HP Passive is at the top of the line with 256MB GDDR3 memory and dual DVI-I connectors. SF-PX86GT256U2-HP Passive and SF-PX86GT512U2-HP Passive both just include single DVI-I connectors and use slower DDR2 memory (256MB and 512MB respectively).

You would think, since these cards produce zero noise and hence a perfection edition to any HTPC, that they would include native HDMI port but unfortunately they do not. It is unclear whether or not Sparkle include a DVI to HDMI adapter in the package or not but we hope they end up doing so.

Fujitsu is one of the very first off the blocks with their AMILO Xi 2550 notebook which sports the latest mobile graphics chip from AMD; the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2700 GPU, which made its rather quiet debut today.

The 2550 is a 17" notebook capable of 1920 x 1200 resolutions and if you have enough bucks, it will ship with a Blu-ray reader for a pretty kick ass entertainment experience since the LCD is capable of 1080p.

Based on an Intel 965PM chipset based motherboard, it comes with either the T7250 processor at 2GHz or T7700 processor which operates at 2.4GHz. Strangely enough, only 2GB of memory is supported but should be just enough for most usage.

You even have the option of a RAID array (1 for redundancy or 0 for speed) via two 250GB SATA hard drives with 8 MB cache with spindle speed of 5400 rpm. The notebook firm mentions that the notebook is able to score 4000 points under a 3DMark06 default run - probably with the highest spec and most expensive model. Nevertheless, if you have the money to spend this Christmas, this notebook should put a rather large smile on your face.

It comes with loads of features as you've already read including HDMI and even eSATA. For a full run down of the "X-treme multimedia x-perience", check out this PDF data sheet.

Walton Chaintech are first off the blocks with the announcement of their brand spanking new 8800GTS 512MB graphics card based on the new and improved G92 core. You have seen the benchmark results previously her at TweakTown and now they are up for grabs.

The GAE88GTS 512MB is equipped with the higher level G92-400 chip in comparison with GeForce 8800GT. The folks at Chaintech reckon what makes this card special is its heavy-duty dual slot cooler and extra shaders on tap for optimizing the cooling performance and for noise reduction.

In what seems like an endless flow of graphics card news the past few weeks, Palit are next to step into the fray with news of a couple new products.

EVGA to the best of our knowledge is first out with their 256MB GDDR3 8800GT graphics card.

Thermaltake relentless in their endeavors for the ultimate product range today announced a couple dedicated graphics card power supplies - a 450-watt and 650-watt model.

Thermaltake have reached new heights in the PSU market this week, announcing the world's first NVIDIA SLI Certified "1500W" power supply, this as a member of their Toughpower series.

With four 6-pin and four 8-pin PCIe power connectors, this PSU is suited to beefed up systems with next-gen quad-graphics card arrangements. The PSU is of modular design and sports four individual +12V rails as well as an efficiency level of over 85%. A 140mm dual ball bearing fan is used to cool the monster.

For further information on it, you can read the official announcement here or head straight to the product page on Thermaltake's website.

What appears to be a brand new review site has got its hands on a pair of ATI Radeon HD 3870 cards and they've put the cards through their paces to see how well they perform in CrossFire. The cards are apparently clocked at 777MHz for the core and 2,252MHz for the memory. These aren't exactly the expected stock speeds, but at least it's not far off.

They've kindly dissected one of card for everyone's viewing pleasure as to show you what the card looks like without all that plastic and metal on top. The test system specs are very vague at best, the site used the 7.10 Catalyst drivers as well as the brand new Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU, but apart from that very few details are available. It looks as if the cards are on a board that was only capable of dual x8 PCI Express, at least that's what showing on one of the driver screenshot pages, but it's a PCI Express 2.0 board.

The benchmarks for the CrossFire setup are limited to 3DMark06, but there are also some Crysis numbers from a single card. We're looking at scores of 12,590 3DMarks for a single card, while two cards in CrossFire manages 20,383, compared to 13,837 for a single 8800 GT at 1,280x1,024. At no time does the single card outperform the 8800 GT in 3DMark06, although it seems like this is a very limited review, as no other resolution was used.

In Crysis we're looking at 1,280x1,024 again and the default benchmark, which produced 14.77 fps for the 3870 while the 8800 GT managed 16.77. According to the site, the ATI card seemed to have much higher image quality.

You can find the full (p)review here

uy.com is listing an AMD Radeon HD 3870 card for pre-order on its website for pre-order and it's apparently from Best Data which is the company behind Diamond Multimedia. There's no picture of the card an there are very few specs up, but the card will have GDDR4 memory and support for HDMI. It will most likely be a reference design for now and it's listed to have two DVI ports.

Toshiba Japan has launched a new dynabook Satellite notebook which goes under the WXW moniker. Although it's likely to drop the dynabook branding when it arrives outside of Japan, the name isn't what's important, but rather what's on the inside. This is one of the first notebooks with a pair of GeForce 8600M GT cards in SLI which also features a Core 2 Duo mobile processor and the reasonably new Intel PM965 chipset.

The CPU is a Core 2 Duo T7700 which is clocked at 2.4GHz and this has been paired up with no less than 4GB of DDR2 memory, although it's only 667MHz modules due to some limitations when it come to available modules for notebooks at this size. Each of the graphics cards has 256MB of GDDR3 memory, although they can also use TurboCache if more is needed.

At our visit to Gigabyte yesterday we also got to see something unexpected, Gigabyte's Radeon HD 2950 prototype. The model name on the board was GV-RX295P512, although this will change before the actual launch. The P in the model name suggests Pro and since the card was using GDDR3 memory from Hynix, we presume that this is the Radeon HD 3850, although we weren't specifically told it was.

At a visit to Gigabyte's office in Taipei yesterday, we had the chance to take some pictures of Gigabyte's upcoming 780i SLI board and it looks like it's just about ready to enter mass production. The GA-780SLI-DS5 isn't the top of the range version, but it still has a wide range of high-end features.

If you're an avid reader of TweakTown you might remember that we posted a picture that we found online of this board a few days ago and apparently the designs are slightly different between the two which is really odd. You can find the previous news post here. If you compare the two you'll notice that the heatsink is quite different, although, we were told by Gigabyte that the one on the board we saw is likely to change and it is most likely going to extend to the south bridge.

We've managed to get our hands on a document which contains AMD's plans for Q4 this year and how they position their products against Nvidia's in the graphics card market. There are some interesting information here and one of the main things we spotted was that the Radeon HD 2900 XT is being EOL:ed or in other words, discontinued.

It looks like the Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 are indeed the right names for the new RV670 based cards from AMD, although there's an XT and a P which we presume means Pro on this document which doesn't add up with what we've seen some sites reporting about when it comes to AMD's new naming scheme.

The G3 and G4 refer to GDDR3 or GDDR4 on the cards. We'd guess that this document isn't brand spanking new due to the missing 3DMark 06 scores for the 8800 GT and the fact that it has been placed lower than the 320MB 8800 GTS cards. The Radeon HD 3870 should according to this document score some 12,000 plus points at 1,280x1,024 in 3DMark06, and thus beating the 8800 GTX according to AMD's test results.

There's a 256MB version of the 3850 on there as well and it looks like it will replace the Radeon HD 2900 GT which hasn't exactly arrived en masse as yet and it and its 512MB counterpart scores some 10,245 plus points in 3DMark06. There's also a mention of the R680 on there, some reports are suggesting that this is a new chip, while others claim it's a dual RV670 card, time will tell. It should be priced similar to the 8800 Ultra which will put this card out of reach for most of us.

The pricing also looks a bit off now, but this might have something to do with the date of this document, as AMD has lowered the price of its RV670 since the 8800 GT launched. It seems like AMD is keeping some older cards for a little while longer such as the X1950 GT and the X1650 Pro and the entry level X1550 and X1050 parts. It's only a couple of weeks to go until we find out the real deal here, but this is at least an indication of where things are heading.

Pictures of a retail Radeon 3850 have appeared on a Chinese website and they're from a China only brand as far as we know, since the company behind the card is Yeston. It's a reference card with a sticker on it, so nothing to get too excited about, but since the cards are about to launch within the next two weeks, it's good to see that manufactures have cards already.

We haven't heard from these guys in a fair while but they seem to stay alive and continue to dish up some interesting alternatives in the graphics card market to what we're used to seeing from the likes of NVIDIA and AMD/ATI.

Today Matrox pave the way for a new series of fanless graphics cards, these called the "Millennium P690" series. Making up the lineup is a range of cards with different form factor sizes, each with low enough power consumption that passive cooling is made a breeze.

Another interesting feature about these cards is the ability for them to be quad-upgradeable meaning they can support up to four analog displays with the right configuration. Pair two P690 Plus cards together and you have the ability to output to four DVI or eight analog monitors.

For the full rundown on the new series, check out the official announcement residing on Matrix's website folks.

Intel's upcoming graphics drivers which should be out in the not to distant future will add hardware vertex processing to the G965, GM965 and G35 chipset, but not for all games. Apparently, Intel has found after rigorous testing that some games benefit from having software vertex processing, such as you can see from the picture below which shows F.E.A.R. running with software vertex processing on the left and hardware vertex processing on the right.

We've got one more video for you, of Intel integrated GM965 graphics and in all honesty, it seems like Intel graphics isn't as bad as it used to be. There are several demo's running in the video, but the first two are on Intel integrated graphics powered by the GM965 chipset.

Intel was talking a lot about graphics and with its new programmable graphics core it appears that the company can add features as it goes along. It will add hardware accelerated geometry shaders in its next generation of integrated graphics as well as adding more video decoding and possibly even encoding into hardware as fixed functions.

Power saving was also big on the agenda and we'll talk more about this tomorrow as well as some other interesting features about Intel's upcoming graphics architecture. For now, enjoy the somewhat dark video of a range of Intel powered notebooks.