Video Cards & GPUs - Page 477

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