Archive for: graphics card
- February 28, 2011 7:03 am
PC enthusiasts have an exciting March to look forward to. Not only is Nvidia’s dual-GPU 590 rumored to be dropping later in the month, but AMD’s own dual-GPU solution (6990) will be coming even earlier — rumored to be as soon as March 8th. Currently, AMD is said to be finalizing the SKU and planning to have partners ready to go for an official release by said date.
For those not well versed in the land of computer hardware, “dual-GPU” in regards to the 6990 (and GTX 590) simply means that their are two GPU cores on one PCB. (Essentially two graphics cards crammed on to one.) This not only allows uses with smaller cases to save space, but also makes tri- and quad-GPU configurations easier and more energy efficient.
Official pricing hasn’t been released yet, but we’d expect the 6990 to ding your banking account between $600-$700. Expensive — yes. But for those who want only the fastest, it is the only option.
Update
AMD 6990 officially outed. Specs, price, and specific release date still unknown.
Update 2
A rear-end shot after the jump…
It may not be an * official* unveiling, but it is welcome nonetheless. AMD’s Matt Skynner displayed the gem you see above at a Fusion APU press event in lands far from here. While no specs or actual mention was offered for the device itself, the new black with red racing stripes design signals it is the latest generation of card. And, the two silver spots seen on the back of the card are nothing else but dual gpu cores.
If we go on current speculation, the upcoming AMD 6990 will come with 3,840 stream processors total (half and half) and 4GB of memory pumped through dual-DVI and tri-mini-DisplayPort connections. Finally, power requirements are somewhere along the lines of 30/300 idle/load. Look for more information on the AMD 6990 in the second half of February.
At today’s CES press conference, Nvidia took to the stage and unveiled their next generation of mobile processors, the 500M family. In actuality, the changes from the 4xxM series to the new 500M aren’t all that exciting and instead revolve more around higher clock frequencies and more active cores — brute strength as its best.
According to Nvidia’s own tests against Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge integrated graphics, the Nvidia GT 540M was more than 2-3x faster than Intel’s offering. Granted, the added power does come at a cost in reduced run time. Though such things will have to wait until more detailed reviews can be done.
As Nvidia focus on making their discrete graphics more powerful yet energy efficient, Intel is pushing for more power in their own arena. It will certainly be interesting to see when and where the two meet.
- December 30, 2010 5:27 pm
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.
- December 29, 2010 9:45 am
Nvidia currently has two dominating cards on the market — the GTX 570 and 580. Both are on the higher end of things with the 570 going for ~$350 and the 580 ~$500+. Whether it be because of budget constraints or simply not needing all the power in the world, you’re decision to choose lower-spec’d Nvidia equipment means you’ll have to pick the older, though perfectly capable GTX 460. But if you can hold off a few more weeks, Nvidia has a GTX 560 it would like to show you…
- December 27, 2010 8:07 am
As any true PC enthusiast knows, it’s not the biggest, highest end, fastest piece of hardware that is most sought after. It’s the cheapest part you can snag that can be overclocked and hacked to run as fast or better than the high-end offering. In the world of custom computers, the two heaviest modded parts are easily processor and video card. Both pieces benefit greatly from faster clocks, unlocked cores, etc., etc. Today’s story of unlocking hidden potential comes by way of the recently released AMD 6950 and 6970 graphics cards. Would you believe you can get all the performance of the 6970 in the cheaper 6950?
Well, you can — because they’re the same exact card. The only difference the two cards is that the higher-end 6970 has a few more unified shaders unlocked — 1536 vs. the 6950′s stock count of 1408.
But the best part about this new-found power is that it’s easily obtained. A simple bios flash on your 6950 will get the job done. At this point, there is absolutely no reason to pay extra for the 6970. With that said, I can’t imagine AMD will be too happy to see such information released, that’s there fault for designing the card the way they did.
In the meantime, I suggest you hop to it. Who knows how long AMD will let this hack run rampant. I’m sure a future update will some how block the feature highlighted above. But as we’ve seen today, the PC enthusiast crowd is persistent and determined. Another cat and mouse game in the making?
Get the full list of instructions and needed files over at Tech Power Up.
- December 13, 2010 4:54 pm
If there’s one thing modern gamers should come to realize, it’s this: Drivers can make or break a game. Glancing through various hardware reviews, graphics cards in particular, one can see that certain games cater to a particular hardware platform (Nvidia or AMD) over the other. Though, with driver updates extra FPS can be extracted. The reliance on drivers is further highlighted when multiple GPU setups are concerned.
With that said, today’s GPU update comes courtesy of AMD with their latest Catalyst 10.12 Preview drivers. Available now, this latest update will bring among other things, a heavily refined user interface and layout. If you’ve used AMD’s Catalyst Control Center within the last year or two, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that some TLC was definitely needed. That gripe appears to be getting some attention with the latest Catalyst release.
On the performance front however, the various PC enthusiast websites are still running their battery of benchmarks, so hard numbers aren’t yet available. In the meantime, hop inside to check out a few screenshots of the new layout…
Generally speaking, the launch of a next-gen architecture is something to get very excited about. Following that principal, Nvidia’s launch of their top-end GTX 580 desktop graphics card was quite the event. For the first time in Fermi history, it was actually worth lusting over. WIth the GTX 5xx, Nvidia had finally refined the architecture enough to quell the rampant heat and power issues the GTX 470 and GTX 480 suffered from.
If you were hoping for the same dramatic improvement in mobile graphics cards however, you may be slightly disappointed…
- November 29, 2010 10:26 am
If Nvidia’s flagship GTX 580 is either too expensive or too powerful for your needs, come December 7th a new option will present itself. The GTX 570 specs have been leaked, compliments of SWEClockers.com. The biggest improvement is the underlying GF110 architecture which is considerably more efficient and cooler running than the outgoing GF100 architecture that made the 4xx series famous for heat and power requirements.
As you can see, the new second in command to the GTX 580 features 480 shader cores unlocked — the same amount as Nvidia’s previous top of the line GTX 480 — ticking along at 732 MHz core, 1464 MHz CUDA cores, and 950 MHz (3800 MHz effective). Said speeds combined with a 320-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus equate to 152 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Power consumption is rated at 225W.
As previously stated, Nvidia is aiming for a December 7th release date — a mere 5 days before ATI launches their new 69xx series GPU’s. Anyone thinking about picking up one or two for Christmas?
