What is it with ATI and stuttering? When Half-Life 2 was released, the game was totally unplayable on my rig (With a Radeon 9600 Pro, no slouch at the time) and pretty much everyone else’s due to constant and crippling stuttering and the still-dangerous audio-loop crash. The game was allegedly designed with almost my exact hardware configuration in mind, yet it was totally busted (didn’t stop me from playing through it, slowly). Well, lately they’ve had trouble like that with other games, like TimeShift, as I’m sure you know very well if you have one the games affected. Fortunately, they’ve released a hotfix for it which should resolve the problem. Nice job, ATI, but is it too much to ask to not have these game-killing bugs in the first place? → Read More
Interesting. I’m not sure why they went with three instead of the obvious four, but this single card sports two R670 cores on the back and one on the front. That’s the core of ATi’s last generation of 3800s, so it’s at least as powerful as a 3870 X2, which is a viable retail product. They call it the Trinity, which is okay I guess, but has uncomfortable Matrix implications. I’d go with “Cerberus” — three heads, lots of power, it’s perfect. Exclusive: ASUS EAH3850 Trinity – three GPUs with one card [Nordic Hardware] → Read More
It’s not exactly world-shattering news, but it is nice to know what in the future I’m not going to be saddled with triple-DVI connections for my 2K monitor. Radeon’s 3000 series and their 780G integrated graphics chipset are the first to be fully DisplayPort-certified.The DisplayPort interface pushes twice as much information as DVI, so not only could that open doors for some kind of daisy-chaining of monitors for dual display setups (already possible? I’m not a dual-display guy) but it could allow for some really high-res monitors, technology allowing. Editing truly hi-def video is a pain not only because of the processing time involved, but because you’re always working with reduced or cropped video because the resolution of the screen is limiting. With higher bandwidth and advances in LCD technology, consumer-accessible displays could be pushing 2000 vertical pixels soon. AMD Receives First Ever DisplayPort™ Certification for PC Graphics → Read More
Check it out: I saw this X1950, which was one of the last and best DirectX 9 cards, featured on Tom’s Hardware’s Best Gaming Cards for the Money feature. They said they had it at Newegg for $89, but Newegg has removed that deal. Fortunately, a relatively reputable dealer has a similar deal. This is a steal of a price, you would normally be paying around $175 for one of these things. This is probably the best value you can get for the dollar right now; it’s got great performance and no games that really need DirectX 10 will run on anything less than a GeForce 8800GTS anyway. Jetway Radeon X1950 Pro → Read More
[photopress:nvidia.jpg,full,center] We’d heard that the new MacBook Pros that launched today were going to feature new ATI GPUs, but here we are, they’re launched, and they feature NVIDIA GeForce chipsets instead. Or that should be “still”, as that’s what the MacBook Pros have had standard all along. Video editors in particular want ATI, but Apple keeps going with NVIDIA. What gives? → Read More
Looks like Radeons are competitive again. For a whole year, ATI and their owner/partner AMD have lagged behind the industry leaders NVIDIA and Intel in GPU and CPU performance. Well, it looks like ATI has finally managed to come out on top (again), although it’s entirely possible that their competitors will drop something hot in the next few weeks as well. The 3800 series is their high-end graphics card series, and the HD 3870 X2 is the dual-GPU’d beast they engineered to do battle with the 8800 Ultra. Tom’s Hardware, whom I trust in these things, has it beating the 8800 by 7%, while costing about $250 less ($450 vs $700 street prices). That’s a triumph, and even if NVIDIA does paste two cards together too, the cost would be prohibitive. Add in the hardware HD decoder and you’ve got a sweet deal, although you might not be able to hear the movie over the sound of the fan working overtime to cool two GPUs. And 66 frames per second in Call of Duty 4 at 1920×1200? Yes, please! Product Page → Read More
Just don’t try to play any games with it. I thought this was worth mentioning since people have complained of the cost of DX10 cards. Well, now you can get one for 50 clams. Of course, for that amount of cash you’re probably getting 64 megs of RAM (they don’t specify), which is almost enough to run Daikatana. But if you’ve got it set up right, you’ll be getting hardware processing of your HD DVD and Blu-Ray movies. This is probably a good graphics card for your mom, or at least until she gets that 8800GTX I ordered her for Valentine’s day. Sorry the pic is watermarked, Tom’s Hardware got the exclusive shots on this one (the passive-cooling 3450 to be precise). Press Release at AMD → Read More
Listen up, gamers. Normally this is Devin’s territory, but seeing as he’s still in the clink following a disastrous run in with Johnny Law after a few too many glasses of PowerNog™, it falls on my to cover this today. Also, my German isn’t so hot, so I’m trying to translate this with Google and getting nowhere. But here’s the gist of it: new Radeons are coming from ATI, and they seem pretty hot. There are three of them, and they are: The HD3450, a RV620-based, VGA + Display Port, 256MB, 525Mhz PCIe card; the 3470, also based on the RV620, but featuring DVI + VGA + S-Video out, and a 600Mhz clock with 256 or 512MB of RAM; and the HD3650, based on the RV635 running at 600 or 800Mhz, 256 or 512MB RAM, and dual DVI or S-Video out. These are pretty good specs for mid-range cards, we expect to see more of them at CES coming up in a few weeks here. So stay tuned, game nerds! Photos and full specs, not in English, apparently in Italian or something [MadBoxPC] → Read More
AMD’s newly-announced FireStream technology was announced earlier today and is being touted as the first of its kind to contain a double-precision floating point. The technology is based on ATI’s Radeon graphics card line and the new chips will cost $2000 a pop. The floating point, as you’ll remember from gradeschool, “is a numerical-representation system in which a string of digits (or bits) represents a real number,” according to Wikipedia. In plain English, this new chip is “modified to crunch huge amounts of data, with potential customers in financial, engineering, and scientific industries.” AMD taps graphics chip for data-crunching [Reuters] → Read More
Now that GPU manufacturers are touting their ability to tackle high-def content, it’s a good idea to investigate exactly which GPUs you should spend your money on. The two main camps, nVidia and ATI/AMD, both have several GPUs on the market, at several different price points, so choosing one is quite a hassle. Thankfully, AnandTech put several GPUs to the test, seeing how they fared in various videophile-geared tests and seeing how they worked with various CPU configurations. It’s actually disgustingly thorough and unless you’re really into PC-based high-def watching, you’ll probably have no idea what’s going on. If there’s a one-line summary, it’s this: choose a GPU that gives you options. The ATI/AMD GPUs are designed in such a way that the end user has no control of settings like noise reduction and how much should be applied to an image. Conversely, nVidia lets you fiddle away with setting after setting. That matters for video freaks; normal people can probably pass right by “Go.” Another point, though it’s not exactly a state secret: if you plan on watching high-def content on your PC, don’t be a tightwad and choose a “value” card. These cards are complete rubbish as far as high-def goes. HD Video Decode Quality and Performance Summer ’07 [AnandTech] → Read More
PC Gamers will always find a way to justify buying the latest, greatest card on the market. ATI and nVidia know this, which is why they keep releasing cards on a weekly basis. ATI’s latest offerings include the Radeon 2400 HD and 2600 HD. Both cards will be available at fine retailers online and off. Both GPUs feature AMD’s Unified Video Decoder technology, which lessens the load on your PC’s CPU and dumps the processes onto the GPU. HD movies and video will benefit the most from this, including Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Both cards will also be DirectX 10 compatible. No price has been set, but since these cards aren’t top-of-the-line, don’t expect to pay over $200. AMD announces it has begun shipping Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 GPUs to customers [TGDaily] → Read More
Lots of reference designs coming out of Taipei this week at Computex. Adding to that list is CoolIT Systems‘ factory-sealed, maintenance-free liquid-cooling system for AMD’s ATI Crossfire (no, not that Crossfire) configuration for the new high-performance Radeon HD 2900 XT graphic card. The assembly uses “micro-channel technology in a closed loop liquid-cooling design” that reduces the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card to a single PCIe slot size. And with newer motherboard designs showing up with four, x16 PCIe slots, you’d be able to run four cards without worrying about heat or fan noise. The cooling unit itself slides into two, standard 5.25-inch drive bays, meaning anybody with a philips-head screwdriver and two open bays can install this thing. If you’re into building extremely powerful gaming PCs, you’ll want to consider CoolIT’s solutions. Hit the jump to watch a video of the company using the reference design to overclock the crap out of the new AMD GPUs. → Read More
Nothing beats free stuff. Whether it’s a free ice cream cone or a free iPod, both are just so, so sweet. Those of you who still shell out $1000 a year to upgrade your PC for games will be happy to know that Valve and ATI have struck a bit of a deal that runs in your favor. Owners of ATI RadeonT graphics cards will be able to download free games from Valve’s Steam service. So you have a RadeonT card and want to get your download on? Right now, you can get Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch via Steam for the cost of absolutely nothing. Steam will also be packaged with ATI graphics cards from now until 2008. Sounds like a good deal. You can get the full nitty gritty by visiting this site. Free Steam games for all ATI Radeon card users [Strategy Informer] → Read More
This is the Radeon X2800XT with CrossFire technology. It’s a mammoth of a video card. And if rumors hold true, it’ll hit the streets this April at NAB in Las Vegas. But you won’t be able to buy this guy off the shelf just then. No, the X2800XT with CrossFire will be incorporated into the updated MacPros we’ve been hearing about. And that’s an exclusive deal, pal. These cards are insane. Clocked at 800MHz with 1GB of on-board video RAM, the cards can take advantage of a spare PCI socket to double-up their power, that’s the CrossFire bit. The rumors say Apple will launch Macs with the cards pre-installed alongside Adobe’s launch of CS3 for OS X, and its own 8-way Mac Pros. That is a lot of muscle, but CS3 is by and far the perfect software suite to take advantage of the power. ATI Radeon X2800XT with CrossFire rumored for Apple’s next Mac Pro [Apple Insider] → Read More
So, AMD’s ownership of ATI now means that anywhere you once put the graphics chip-maker’s products, you’ll now be putting in AMD. In this case, it’s the newly available ATI Radeon X1900 G5 Mac Edition. The card is your best option for delivering high-end 3D graphics performance to an older Power Mac desktop with a x16 PCI Express slot. For $349, you get 36 pixel shader processors, 256MB of VRAM and more than 37GB per second of memory bandwidth. And with two DVI ports it’s got good power for driving two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays. ATI Radeon X1900 G5 Mac Edition [product page] → Read More
The Radeon X1950 Pro from ATI that launched today is the company’s $199 competition against Nvidia’s GeForce 7900 GS. Based on a new graphics chip — the R570 — it’s the first of ATI’s cards to not need an external dongle to connect two cards in a dual-GPU CrossFire configuration. The old, thick-cabled dongle was not only a pain to connect, but was far from elegant. The X1950 uses a pair of internal connectors instead, similar to Nvidia’s SLI bridge clip. However, ATI’s are flexible to allow for varying degrees of space between PCI Express slots on different motherboards (see image courtesy of ExtremeTech). The X1950 Pro is also the first CrossFire-ready card that doesn’t require a Master version of the card to work as a two-GPU solution. According to a review on ExtremeTech, the R570 chip has about three-quarters of the features of the R580 chip found in the Radeon X1900. The site was impressed with the overall features of the card, pleased with the abandonment of the external dongle and Master-card requirement and delighted by the X1950 Pro’s performance as a single card. When paired up with another X1950 Pro, though, performance was disappointing. Its recommendation was to go with the ATI card if you have no intentions of doing a dual-card array immediately or in the future. If you’re looking to do something multi-GPU, Nvidia’s cards are still the top choice. Radeon X1950 Pro: The Evolution of CrossFire [ExtremeTech] → Read More
Usually, getting through a graphics card review on Tom’s Hardware leads to skipping through the nauseating number of benchmarks it does and going straight to the conclusion to see if the card is worth the cash. Well for the short-attention-spanned gamers out there, Tom’s went all budgety with the current crop of cards from ATI and Nvidia, with its top choices by price point and by technology, PCI Express and AGP. Even if you’re not shopping for a new card, it’s a good read to quickly see which company is tops at different prices. But if you can’t even take reading the site’s breakdowns, here are some of the winners. PCIe: Best for $100~ ATI Radeon X800 GTO, NVidia Geforce 7300 GT GDDR3 Best for $200~ ATI Radeon X1900 GT Best for $300~ NVidia Geforce 7900 GTX, ATI Radeon X1900 XTX AGP: Best for Under $100~ ATI Radeon X700, Nvidia Geforce 6600 Best for $125~ ATI Radeon X1600, Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT Best for $175~ Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT The Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money: October 2006 [Tom's Hardware Guide] → Read More
Gamers and performance enthusiasts balk at the mere mention of “integrated graphics”, and rightfully so. But the Radeon Xpress 1250 is “Vista Ready” and will handle Vista’s Aero Glass GUI features with no problem, meaning it should be powerful enough to run your games at least at a playable framerate. Radeon Xpress 1250 is the first Intel-based chipset to support ATI’s revolutionary Avivo™ display and video architecture. This technology produces vibrant images and smooth video playback, and true-to-life images for all types of multimedia, including high-definition content. Yeah, that doesn’t really mean much in layman’s terms, but we thought you’d like to know anyway. Get ready for some decently speedy graphics performance in your laptops. Are you excited?! Press Release [Marketwire via The Inquirer] → Read More
On September 14, ATI will set loose its new flagship card. The Radeon X1950 XTX can purportedly outperform its nearest competitor, the GeForce 7950 GX2, in “extreme high definition” resolutions using only half the processors. It can be run individually, or paired with another x1950 XTX in Crossfire mode to deliver even more performance. From what I gather, the X1950 XTX uses dual-GPUs and GDDR4 with a data rate of 2Ghz. Unfortunately the press release mainly uses lots of hortatory language, provides little firm technical data. It does, however, state that the Radeon X1950 XTX will retail for $449 and that it will be available soon in select Dell machines. ATI unleashes the new performance king for gamers: introducing the Radeon® X1950 XTX → Read More
episodes. I guess my question is this: how valuable is OTA HD to people? Would you get a tuner card just to PVR some HD sports every weekend? Discuss. Product Page [ATI via HDBeat] → Read More
