Video Cards & GPUs - Page 421

It's about time that someone went and made a 7990. We've been hearing that AMD has them coming for a long time now, but they have failed to deliver. That is, until today. PowerCooler has announced the world's first dual-Tahiti GPU and is calling it the 7990. Does this mean that we may finally start seeing them from other manufacturers?

For right now, PowerCooler is billing this card as the first and only 7990 in the world. The specifications are pretty beefy and really provide what everyone was expecting. The Devil 13 HD7990 has default settings at 925MHz engine clocks and 1375MHz memory clocks and sports 6GB of GDDR5.

If you're looking to buy a new AMD graphics card, the time could not be better. AMD has again dropped prices on its high-end cards so that they are more competitive with NVIDIA's latest offering. With the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti finally outed by the company, AMD wants to position its cards in places where they can compete.

The street prices have dropped accordingly:

The 7970 does not see a price drop in this latest round, the both the 78XX and 7950 have had their prices lowered. The 3GB 7950 price drop brings its price down to a level similar to the GTX 660. In tests, a 2GB 7950 and 660 Ti were about 50/50. The 3GB version will likely pull out a couple of extra wins, and with the new pricing, should win business.

Contrary to rumors flying around the internet, Sapphire has not cancelled the 6GB 7970 Toxic graphics card they produce. It seems that because one major reseller put "discontinued" instead of "out-of-stock", or something similar, enthusiasts freaked out that they wouldn't be able to get the super fast card.

At Gamescon, however, Sapphire has a large booth and sitting right in the middle as the pride and joy of the booth was the 6GB 7970 Toxic card. KitGuru asked Bill Donnelly for a little more information regarding the rumor flying around the web. The short answer? It's not discontinued, just facing production constraints.

The red camp fires back. AMD has just announced an updated version of the 7950 in the same vein as the 7970 GHz edition update. What this means is that the card is getting faster base clocks as well as a new feature that boosts the core clock when the TDP isn't fully loaded. With AMD and NVIDIA nearly matched on performance and AMD losing in power efficiency, they've decided to go for the best performance-per-dollar.

So, aside from throwing power consumption out the window, what else have they changed? Not much really. The new base clock is up to 850MHz from the original 800MHz. Boost clock speeds allow the clock speed to jump to 925MHz. The reason power usage will jump is they have increased the core voltage to support these speeds.

With the 7970, it wasn't too bad as they had top bin parts. With the 7950, they are dealing with either broken chips or chips that wouldn't hit clock speed requirements. Because of this, AMD is using 1.25v which is higher than the 7970GHzE's 1.218v. It will be interesting to see how this increase affects benchmark results.

NVIDIA is having lots of trouble with the launch of the Kepler series. It seems as though information about every single card leaked out before the actual card was released. We previously told you about the GTX 660 Ti specifications and launch date, and have now provided a review for your viewing pleasure.

This time we bring news of the GTX 650, a new card that will be aimed at the sub-$200 market and launched in time for back-to-school shopping. It's important for NVIDIA to get a Kepler card into this price range as AMD completely controls that segment of the market right now. This market segment is also where most of the money is made.

The GTX 650 is rumored to launch on September 17 and will be packing a chip based on the 28 nm GK107 ASIC, which is based upon Kepler. The chip will utilize 384 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory bus, and 1GB of memory. A quick guess at performance based upon CUDA core count would put the card competing with the AMD 7770.

A report is claiming to know the launch date and specifications for the upcoming NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti. Nothing has been confirmed by NIVIDIA, so for now it will be treated as a rumor. According to the latest data scored by SweClockers, the GTX 660 is nearly identical to the GTX 670 and the launch is only about 3 weeks away.

The GTX 660 Ti is said to be a 28 nm GK104 GPU with 1,344 CUDA cores enabled, exactly the same as the GTX 670. In fact, the 660 Ti is said to have the exact same clock speeds for both the core and memory as the 670. The memory remains identical at 2GB, as well. It turns out that the only difference is that the memory bus is reduced to 192-bit, down from 256-bit on the 670.

This change will yield a 25% lower bandwidth for memory. It's likely to be arranged with four chips using 32-bit wide paths each and four other chips sharing two 32-bit wide paths. According to the report, the card will launch on August 16. Coincidentally, this is the first public day of the GamesCom event held in Cologne, Germany. This will likely serve as the launchpad for the product.

If you've been saving your money patiently waiting for the next big thing to come out of AMD, you may just get a chance to save a bit longer. Reports are coming in that the dual-GPU card based upon the 7970 silicon may not be released until late-August. This is directly opposed to other reports that it could be available this month.

It's not fully clear why the card has been delayed. AMD certainly needs to challenge the GTX 690's performance and hopefully win the performance crown back, so it's not like AMD is liking having this delay. If they were ahead, then a delay like this could be the result of them trying to keep it in reserve as a later challenge to NVIDIA.

One possible reason for the delay could be due to a shortage of PEX8747 PCIe bridge chips by PLX. These chips have been reported to be experiencing a shortage and are needed at the heart of every dual-GPU card, including the GTX 690. Another issue could be AMD is trying to work out how to provide the best price-performance and performance-Watt ratios.

NVIDIA have released the tech demo for their latest and greatest GeForce GTX 600 series of GPUs dubbed 'A New Dawn'. It features the ever-so-gorgeous Dawn, looking (or is that rendered?) better than ever.

I don't have any GTX 600 series cards myself, but if I did you'd be hearing my personal thoughts on it. But, The Tech Report, er, reports that that on their test rig, which is powered by SLI GTX 680's at 2560x1600 looks "incredible".

You can check it out yourself by downloading it here (a shave under 800MB). I've heard it runs on GTX 500 series cards, so let us know how you go, and what you think of NVIDIA's 'A New Dawn'.

NVIDIA's mid-range of GeForce GPUs have always been the most popular, recently we've seen the GTX 460 and 560 cards soar through gamers' wish lists, as well as the Ti variants. But, with the Kepler-based GPUs, we haven't seen a mid-range card released.

According to Sweclockers, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti will arrive in mid-August carrying an MSRP of $299. This will make it a direct threat to AMD's Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, which just received a new price last week. The GTX 660 Ti would be based on the same core as the GTX 670, the GK104 core architecture, with 7 SMX units enabled giving us a total of 1344 CUDA cores.

Memory specifications, and clock speeds are expected to be changed also. The GTX 670 sports two different choices in memory, either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus. The GTX 660 Ti will reportedly put on offer, 1.5GB or 3GB of GDDR5, on a 192-bit memory bus.

If video cards these days weren't built crazily enough, Gigabyte's newest kid on the block sure is. Gigabyte's upcoming Super Overclock version of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is looking like it'll stand out from the crowd, sporting five 40mm fans mounted on top of a triple-slot radiator.

Gigabyte's GV-R797SO-3GD is surely going to be one of the hottest cards (and not in the temperature sense) when it hits, sporting a Tahiti XT-based GPU running a 384-bit memory bus backed up by 2048 stream processors. The overclocked model comes with a core clock of 1080MHz, up from the stock clock of 925MHz, and 3GB of GDDR5 memory clocking in at 5500MHz. Output-wise we find ourselves being offered two mini DisplayPorts, one gold-plated HDMI port, a single dual-link DVI port, meaning the card is capable of running four displays simultaneously.

Gigabyte's SOC card uses the five fans mounted at the top of the GPU to "pul" the heated air off the radiator, which the company says reduces "hotspots" on the bottom of the card due to minimal airflow created with traditional cooler designs. What this means is that the HD 7970 SOC is totally silent below 30C, with Gigabyte's Anti-Turbulence Pull Airflow System hitting 53dB at 57C, almost 9dB quieter than a standard HD 7970 running at 64C.