Video Cards & GPUs - Page 404

KFA2 has been quiet for a while, since announcing their MDT (Multi Display Technology) range of graphics cards, but now we have something to sink our teeth into. KFA2 have unveiled the KFA2 GTX MDT 570 which is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570, and sports a black PCB, custom aluminium cooling solution and is said to offer unique voltage control features.

The KFA2 GTX MDT 570 is set to launch next month and is said to be factory-overclocked. But that's not the most special part of this card, it features support for four 1080p displays, or three 1080p displays if you want to use NVIDIA's Surround Vision. Output wide, it will include three DVI-D ports, a single Dual-Link DVI port and a single mini HDMI port.

These cards will be a great purchase for anyone wanting to do Surround Vision from a single GPU, as currently, NVIDIA requires SLI to do Surround Vision. But, keep in mind this card will not do 3D Vision Surround as it only has a single Dual-Link DVI port. Three Dual-Link DVI ports are required for 120Hz/3D gaming, so you would need two cards with at least one of them sporting dual-dual-link DVI.

To celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3 (for some initial impressions, check it out here), SAPPHIRE Technology have introduced the SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition, which sports two SAPPHIRE exclusive technologies, SAPPHIRE FleX and Vapor-X cooling as well as performance enhancing options for the enthusiast and finally, a FREE copy of Battlefield 3.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition includes a Dual BIOS switch which goes between two performance settings delivering the best performance in its class. While sitting in the 'normal' setting, clock speed sit at 880MHz for core, 1375MHz for memory and a quite fan profile. Choosing the "boost" setting throws the card up to 930MHz as well as increasing core voltage, fan speed and overclock limits to deliver higher performance.

SAPPHIRE's FleX technology is also great as it allows Eyefinity from three DVI monitors, without the need for DisplayPort or any adapters. Vapor-X cooling is also awesome, which enables the performance to be maxed out, but keeping those noise levels down low.

The VGA market almost seems like it's in hibernation at the moment for the most part, as we all anticipate the launch of new families from both sides of the fence sporting 28nm GPUs, of which we know won't be until a bit of a ways into 2012.

However, it appears NVIDIA has been working on a little bit of a side project in the meantime; some more love towards its popular GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Apparently the company is preparing a new suped up release of the model that switches the GF114 GPU on the original version for the GF110 that's used on the GTX 570 and 580 models.

This in turn would give the card 448 CUDA Cores, as denoted by the supposed model name NVIDIA is going for, "GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Core). This compares to the 480 cores on the GTX 570 and 512 on the GTX 580. The card will have 56 TMU's a 320-bit memory interface, 3-way SLI support, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and will most likely carry 1280MB of GDDR5.

AMD know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake, they also know if you've been bad or good, so for 28nm GPUs, be good for goodness sake. If you want a 28nm Radeon GPU before the end of the year, in time for Christmas and just after the launch of the pillars of the FPS genre, Battlefield 3 and COD: Modern Warfare 3, then this is a great time to be a PC fan. We've reported before that AMD would launch their next-gen, 28nm-based Radeon GPUs sometime this year, but whether it would be low or mid-range GPUs is the question.

Another fact is that they could be notebook parts, with high-end parts hitting early next year. German website heise.de who claims multiple industry sources have pointed toward a December launch with one source specifically pointing to December 6. The new launch could be a desktop or notebook part, but I very much doubt it will be a high-end GPU. Another industry source is convinced that this is more of a symbolic launch, to beat out green-team rivals, NVIDIA.

That is my opinion too, I really think we're just going to see a launch, in general. Nothing special, no high-end parts.. it'll just be something launched on their 28nm process to stick it in NVIDIA's green-with-envy face. Whatever it is, we're within 3 - 4 months of seeing next-gen parts from AMD, with NVIDIA trailing behind. Whatever happens, I'm just excited to receive new GPUs again!

NVIDIA stumbled quite a bit with the Fermi, GF100 architecture and it looks as though they don't want to repeat the same mistakes by going top-to-bottom with GPU releases. NVIDIA are currently playing with engineering samples of their first chip built on the next-gen Kepler architecture, the GK107. This is not the flagship GK100 everyone expected, with NVIDIA changing gears and going for a bottom-to-top release by working on the GK107 first which will be a notebook-based chip.

GK107 is set to be powering four mobile GeForce SKUs - N13P-LP, N13P-GS, N13P-GT and the N13E-GE. These codenames may sound familiar to you, that's because they appeared in the leaked 28nm mobile GPU line-up. The GK107 sports a 128-bit memory interface and has support for both DDR3 and GDDR5 memory. The first three GK107-based SKUs with the "P" suffix will most likely succeed the GeForce GT 500M series, and will probably be branded as the GeForce GT 600M series.

The top GK107 part, N13E-GE, may replace the GTX 560M and be part of the GTX 600M series, as denoted by the "E" suffix (Enthusiast). GK107 will also find its way into the mobile Quadro SKUs - N14P-Q1 and N14P-Q3.

Colorful have unleashed a Radeon card under their ColorFire brand dubbed, ColorFire Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4GB. If you didn't already guess what it was from that ever so elusive name, it's a dual-GPU graphics card sporting two Radeon HD 6850 GPUs with a total of 4GB of memory. But that's not all, the designers of this card are trying out what they call "Silver-Plated Technology". All of the PCB's contacts, apart from the PCIe and CFBE interfaces are plated with silver. Silver being one of the best conductors, you can see why this card looks exciting.

ColorFire argue that the use of silver contacts reduces resistance and also helps with cooling. Next up we have DIP-switched based voltage control, which is an effective, yet old-school way of tuning voltages. Voltage measurement points are consolidated to a convenient location (next to the power connectors) and are angled for easy access. A pair of jumpers near the display output connectors allows the user of this card to switch between two sets of EEPROMs, each with different clock and voltage profiles.

The card chews through two 8-pin connectors, uses a 12-phase VRM which handles voltage regulation and also sports a custom design dual-fan cooler which uses a large heatsink and included five heat-pipes.

AMD have shown off their first working 28nm notebook GPU to the public at a media event held in San Francisco, California. The chip is part of the upcoming AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and was shown off displaying Dirt 3 but resolution, graphic settings and FPS were unknown. The upcoming HD 7000 series dons the codename "Southern Islands" and is being built by TMSC. The new cards are looking to be unleashed onto the market by the end of the year - but there are also rumors TMSC are having issues with the 28nm production.

The new cards are expected to support switchable graphics and continue pushing current technology features such as Eyefinity and H3D stereo 3D gaming. There are reports that AMD are planning to launch four different GPUs based on the 28nm version of the VLIW4 architecture and will use them in three different series: the Radeon HD 7800, HD 7600 and HD 7500. These GPUs will sport between 768 and 1536 stream processors as well as using GDDR5 memory.

Later on, AMD will launch the Radeon HD 7900 series featuring the new Graphics Core Next (GVN) architecture that is has been talking about since June. The idea behind GCN is to create a GPU that can perform well at both graphical and computing tasks.

Following leaked details on AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards earlier in the week, some new slides (said to be straight from AMD) have since popped up which add some more meat to the equation.

We are assured that the HD 7000 family will use the first VLIW4 circuits at 28nm. In usual fashion the series will be rolled out in steps, with each sub-series based off different base architectures. Looking at the latest leaked roadmap, we can ascertain that AMD is initially planning the launch of four different GPUs making up three series, said to be scheduled for a Q4 2011 launch.

There will be the Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850, HD 7670 and HD 7570. They will be equipped with GDDR5 memory across the board and sport 768 to 1536 Radeon cores (stream processors).

A little birdy has leaked out some specs on AMD's next generation Radeon HD 7000 series of graphics cards, though the information is most certainly still questionable at this stage with the lack of confirmation on any of it.

Codenamed Southern Islands, these next-gen chips will be 28nm (TSMC) based and as the chart above denotes, sitting at the top of the hill is the dual GPU wielding HD 7990. As per tid bits of info on the two Tahiti XT/Pro Cores the card will use, the max stream processor count is estimated to be around 4000 ALU, with the card featuring a TDP of >300W.

Head on over to the source link for a better idea of how the complete lineup is likely to shape up, with details on 8 known SKUs in the 7000 series shared. But remember, it's all potentially very loose information just at this point, so do remember to take it with a pinch of salt.

Here's an innovative, yet simply executed piece of tech MSI has come up with for future graphics cards. Word has come out that MSI has been testing a new feature it's looking to help make its already kickass lineup of non-reference graphics cards stand out even more.

MSI calls it "Dust Removal Technology", which is obviously to help rid your card of a negative scenario that affects every card sooner or later - dust buildup, translating to heat buildup. MSI say that enough dust buildup can eventuate to a rise in temperatures by as much as 15c, and from personal experience I can say that's not an exaggeration. Their new founded technology is quite simple in principle really.

The way it works is by simply running the fans in an opposite rotation at 100% speed for the first 30 seconds of system startup. This would result in air being drawn from the heatsink itself and pushed back out through the intakes of the cooler. While it certainly wouldn't remove every single bit of dust from the heatsink, MSI say it does work to significantly reduce dust accumulation in those tough to clean areas.