We’ve already talked about Nvidia’s upcoming mid-range card, the GTX 560. While the king pin GTX 580 is the card that makes us all drool with its copious amounts of power, the 560 is the one that will end up in a greater number gamers’ PCs. Not to mention, the 560′s precursor (GTX 460) is an amazingly versatile card as it overclocks well and scales great in SLI. And now that we have the leaked image above giving us an early look at the upcoming card, we can only attempt to bottle our enthusiasm as it continues to grow.
Accompanying the image above in the Overclock.net Forums were a few benchmarks (no source given — trying to confirm/deny). How does a 3D Mark Vantage score of 21,187 and a 3D Mark 11 of P4130 sound? Not too shabby for a card that will likely fall under $250. Like we said, slap two of these bad boys together in a case and you’ve got some cheap speed.
We could be seeing some GTX 560 action at CES next week, so make sure you stick close.
Nvidia isn’t a stranger to dual-GPU cards. Some of the more recent ones include the GTX 295 and 9800 GX2 which in their own right, were quite powerful as well as thirsty for power. With the GF100 release, it looked like dual-GPU solutions from Nvidia weren’t going to be possible due to the architectures extreme heat outputs and power consumption being the limiting factors. However, the newer GF104 and GF110 architecture refreshes have ratcheted down power consumption and heat considerably, once again making a dual-GPU/single PCB layout a possibility.
According to TechPowerUP, a Chinese news source has images of a claimed Nvidia GTX 595 — a true dual GPU/single PCB graphics card. Some interesting things worth pointing out include the 3x-DVI connectors which mean 3D Surround will be possible. Currently, Nvidia has yet to find a way to make 3+ monitor setups possible from a single card. Though considering this is really two cards in one, it should be a shoe in regardless.
Memory comes in at 3GB (1.5GB per card) and power is delivered via two 8-pin connectors. Finally, the reported GTX 595 will be dual-SLI capable.
Overall it looks mighty interesting. What do you think: $699 sound about right?
A few days back, we shared the good news of the Nvidia Quadro 4000 workstation graphics card coming to Mac desktops. As it stands now, that release was even better than originally thought. An eagle-eyed reader of xlr8yourmac found some rather tantalizing information buried deep within the Quadro 4000′s drivers. Specifically, the reader highlighted above used an ATY_Init injector developed by Netkas.org to force his Mac’s EFI to recognize his freshly installed GTX 480. That’s significant because Apple doesn’t officially support the GTX 480. WIth that said, it would be pretty sweet to get a GTX 580 or two humming along inside of a Mac Pro, no?
WIth the right hardware, gaming on the Mac could actually be quite potent.
No, my GTX 580 hasn’t quite arrived yet. That little venture of joy starts tonight. But for those of you who have received your GTX 580′s and prepared to benchmark the living joules out of them, you’ve no doubt found out about Nvidia’s new power-limiting feature of the card. Included within the new drivers are special conditions for certain high-stress applications and services. When certain applications such as popular benchmarking tool, Furmark, are used, Nvidia has the cards throttle down to limit heat and protect the inner components.
But thanks to one handy PC enthusiast, we can let the GTX 580 break through its digital shackles and really stretch its legs…
Video/photo editing professionals using Mac hardware have a new toy to lust for. Nvidia officially launched their first Fermi-powered card for Macs, the Quadro 4000. Similar to the card’s Windows origins, the Quadro line of graphics cards are designed and built for general-purpose computing (read: not gaming). The big talking points of the Quadro 4000 include increased Open-CL support, Nvidia’s own CUDA coding technology, and video processing built into Adobe CS5 products such as Photoshop.
Hardware specs for the Nvidia Quadro 4000 include 2GB of video memory and 256-bit memory bus good for 89.6GB of bandwidth. Hooking up your favorite slab of glass comes by way of 2 Dual-link DVI ports, a stereo 3D port, and a full-size Display Port. Included in the box is a Display Port-to-mini Display Port adapter.
You’ll need both a Mac Pro ’08 or newer model along with OS X 10.6.5. Check the Apple Store later this month for the Nvidia Quadro 4000, retailing for $1,149.
Ever since we saw early specs and hands on previews (and now reviews) of the latest Nvidia cards — the GTX 470 and 480 — many were passing off hand comments that an egg could be fried on these new cards due their high operating temperature. In many circumstances, idling between 70-80 C isn’t uncommon. For a reference, my ATI CrossFire 5850 set up never goes above 50 C idling. Two different cards, two different architectures though.
Seeing as how the new Fermi cards run so hot, I really was curious if it could really fry an egg. Thankfully LegitReviews had a review sample (and carefully placed egg) to put the rumor to the test.
Does it actually cook? **Spoiler** — No. Unfortunately not. Think of how humorous/cool it would be to have a piece of computer equipment actually heat up enough to fry an egg. Looks like we’ll have to keep around those antiquated frying pans and stove a little longer…
**Update: As RedSpectacle pointed out below, they are not renders. I updated my original post as it is/was slightly confusing. Hopefully some real rendered pics surface in the near term.
Nvidia’s upcoming “Fermi” chipset set to debut on the 300 series desktop graphics will usher in a new era of photo-realistic gaming. I’m not even kidding. Packing the visual punch comes by way of 512 cores which make previous challenges such as facial hair, skin glare, and ray-traced lighting are no match for this new hardware. Don’t believe me? Let the pictures do the talking…
Below are some examples of images typically a challenge for current graphics hardware.
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