Video Cards & GPUs - Page 435

CES 2014 - Intel's Thunderbolt 2 is widely considered the data connection of the future, and rightfully so as nothing else comes close to its transfer speeds. The protocol is so fast that companies can connect GPUs externally to devices such as laptops to give them a boost when needed.

Silverstone was showing off its XG2 Station, a Thunderbolt 2 External GPU housing designed in partnership with ASUS at the 2014 CES. The XG2 housed a AMD Radeon 7970 and small form factor power supply along with an ASUS designed main board that provided the Thunderbolt to PCIe connectivity. Unfortunately we did not get to demo the device, and no word was given on if or when we might see the XG2 Station hit the retail market.

We know that by leveraging AMD's so far impressive Mantle technology, DICE can squeeze up to 45% more performance out of Battlefield 4. But with a gaming market focused on first-person shooters (FPS), what can AMD's technology do for other genres, such real-time strategy (RTS) games?

Well, there's a game called Nitrous, which uses AMD's Mantle programming tool to speed up the communication between the CPU and GPU. This increase in communication sees the on-screen unit count climb from the usual 50-70 units, to around 5,000 units. These 5,000 units aren't just mindless pieces of robots on your screen, but they can be AI- or physics-driven entities.

Dan Baker, Oxide founder and previous Graphics Lead on Civilization V, has said: "It's a difference of at least an order of magnitude. Take the most complex scene you've ever seen in StarCraft II and multiply it by 10."

CES 2014 - VisionTek has just unveiled its latest high-end GPU and its features and price will surprise you. The new CryoVenom is based on a Radeon R9 290 and is fitted with a custom-built water cooling block that is said to offer a cooling performance increase of up to 38-percent.

VisionTek says that the custom liquid cooling block allows the Radeon R9 290 to be overclocked by as much as 24-percent, something that is just not possible with air coolers which have trouble just keeping the card at operating temperatures at stock clocks. Sweetening the deal, the CryoVenom R9 290 emits under 10dB of noise, ensuring for the most quiet Radeon R9 290 experience available on the market today!

Not only is the VisionTek CryoVenom R9 290 faster, cooler, and quieter, it's cheaper as well. With other R9 290 GPUs retailing for as much as $700, VisionTek has managed to offer the CryoVenom R9 290 for just $550. The card features a nickle plated block with acrylic top plate and fittings for standard G-1/4 fittings. For anyone looking for a liquid cooled R9 solution, this is the card for you!

CES 2014 - NVIDIA was showing off an amazing Origin Genesis PC that was heavily customized, pumping out Project CARS onto three 65-inch 4K TVs with 4-way GeForce GTX Titans.

Project CARS is one of the best-looking games being developed, with Slightly Mad Studios' coding abilities being shown off at CES 2014. It shows that Project CARS scales unbelievably well, all the way up to 12K (if that's even a thing) - or 4K Surround as NVIDIA would put it. The four GTX Titan's are going to cost you $4000 on their own, so imagine the total cost of this PC and the TVs... yes, it's for the PC master race, that's for sure.

As Google edges closer to the consumer release of its Glass headset, the search giant has unveiled some brand guidelines for developers. Google is trying to maintain control over the way Glass is treated by third-party companies, in the way of its marketing and branding.

For example, Google wants the "G" in Glass to be capitalized, and that the term is never possessive or plural. This means that the search giant won't allow "Glasses" or "Glass's", which might get annoying, fast. Apple has been here, done that, where it removed "the" before its iPhone, iPad, and iPod products. Another example of walking the fine wearable walk with Glass, is that you should never have the word "Glass" in its name.

It provide an example, "Glass Cat Facts" and "Glassy Cat Photos" are not accepted, but "Cat Facts for Glass" is acceptable. Google also wants to see developers using #throughglass when sharing Glass content, which it says is for better "discoverability and aggregation". As for e-mails, it wants to see users use "Sent through Glass".

CES 2014 - Razer has just unveiled its first foray into the fitness tracking smartwatch world at CES 2014, by introducing the Razer Nabu. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan said: "We are calling it a cross between a smartwatch and a fitness band. It's a wearable device focused on helping you live smarter."

Razer's Nabu is a mashup of the traditional fitness tracking band, and the latest smartwatches. Nabu features two notification screens, one that displays the usual watch face, with the opposite side displaying wellness data and smartphone notifications. Nabu tracks your steps walked, distance traveled, and it will monitor your sleeping patterns, too.

The gaming peripheral maker suggests a battery life of around 7-10 hours, and is rain and splash proof. The Nabu is available to developers right now at a cost of $49, but this price should increase considerably when it reaches consumers.

Today Sapphire Technology unveiled a new variant of its R9 270X GPU. The new R9 290X Dual-X 4GB GPU features the same specifications of its previous counterpart, except the new 4GB model features double the RAM. Sapphire says that they have updated the card with 4GB of RAM to meet Battlefield 4 recommended specs.

The R9 270X Dual-X 4GB features 4GB of GDDR5 RAM that has been clocked in at 5.6GHz across a 256-bit wide interface and is capable of cranking out a bandwidth of 179GB/s. The card is a non-reference design, and features Sapphire's Dual-X cooling solution which helps the card remain budget friendly while managing to keep things cool. The new card is expected to retail between $220 and $230.

The first video cards from the Club 3D '14Series will be the Radeon R9 270 and 270X, and should be an affordable product for PC users and gamers looking for a full-HD 1080p gaming experience.

The '13Series was introduced by Club 3D earlier in the year as an extension to its PokerSeries gaming cards - but the launch of R7 and R9 chipsets left Club 3D scrambling to upgrade. The '13Series was designed for system integrators and PC users looking for an added boost with a second GPU in their workstations - and the '14Series promises even better performance:

Club 3D Radeon R9 270 specs:

If you were holding off on pulling the trigger on that fancy new Mantle-capable AMD Radeon R9 290X, this news is just for you. According to "reliable sources" of VR-Zone, AMD is planning on releasing a new dual-GPU based on two Hawaii XT cores - the same core used in the R9 290X.

The dual-GPU has a unique codename: "Vesuvius", which is the only active volcano in Europe, and is located in the east coast of the Bay of Naples, in southern Italy. There's not much known about the card, but there are some questions: the R9 290X has had power issues, and gets pretty hot as it is, so what would AMD do with two of these cores on the single PCB?

We're talking about some serious horsepower here, which is going to generate lots of heat, which will require a more than formidable cooling setup. Exciting times ahead, I'm looking forward to what AMD can show us in the coming months.

Sapphire has had a long standing history of providing high-performing products as well as providing tools to make those products perform to the extreme. The company's latest R9 series of GPUs is not different and today Sapphire announced that it has released a new BIOS and Flashing Tool, that will help increase the performance of its R9 290 GPU.

Usually overclocking a Sapphire GPU is as simple as loading up the TriXX utility and adjusting clocks until things stabilize, but in the case of the R9 290 GPU. Its performance is capped by system as its temperature rises, and this is due to the way AMD engineered the Hawaii chip to operate. The newly released BIOS will allow the R9 290 to operate under a new fan profile, which will limit maximum fan speed to 47-percent while increasing performance and reducing noise. Head over to the source links below to download the new BIOS and Flashing Utility!