Tick tock, tick tock. What are we waiting for? No, not for Fernando Torres to finally score for Chelsea (although we are, in fact, waiting for that to happen), but for AMD to release its latest GPU, the Radeon HD 7000. Digi Times, which is about as solid as source as you can get, says mass production will begin in May. That should put retail availability at July 2011 at the earliest. → Read More
It’s officially the end of an era. AMD has confirmed what has been rumored for a few months now, that it plans to drop the ATI brand name. AMD says it’s doing so because consumers are more familiar with AMD, so it makes no sense to try to keep pushing the ATI brand. Pour one out for ATI when you have a moment. → Read More
Did Santa give you an AMD Radeon HD 6950 this year? Good news: he actually gave you a 6970! It turns out that with a few clicks of your mouse you can unlock your 6950 so that it runs at 6970 speeds. Nice! → Read More
AMD has released the latest version (10.12) of its Catalyst Control Center driver suite, and there’s something missing: ATI branding! You’ll recall that AMD had decided to phase out the ATI brand name on its Radeon graphics cards (AMD bought ATI several years ago), with the thinking that “Radeon” means more to consumers than “ATI.” Starting with this driver suite, ATI is nowhere to be… → Read More
I’m reasonably certain the first reviews of the new AMD Radeons will hit the Net on Friday, so until then we’ll have to make due with leaked slides and the like. It’s both an exciting and depressing time: excited to see what AMD has in store, but depressed to know that my once high flying 5970 is now old news. → Read More
AMD mentioned in its earnings call that its next-generation graphics cards will be released next week. Details are non-existent, so don’t even bother asking. I do know that the codename of the architecture is “Northern Islands.” → Read More
As the video card wars continue, the as of yet unreleased AMD Radeon HD 6870 looks to be a serious weapon. How do we know? Well, the Chinese website PCinLife.com managed to get a benchmark showing some very interesting information about the new card. A 3DMark score of 11,500 is about 2,500 more then the previous high end card, the Nvidia GTX 480 and the HD 5870. This reflects what appears to be a… → Read More
MSI announced the latest in their stable today, the GX640. Built around the Intel Core i5 processor and ATI Radeon HD5850, it’s definitely a contender in the gaming notebook arena. In fact, it’s been selected as the notebook of choice by the number one pro-gaming team in North America. → Read More
The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is essentially two 5870s slapped together, but underclocked a little bit so as not to melt a hole through your carpet (but will melt a hole through your bank account~!) Asus saw that and was like, “Pfft, wait till you see what we’ve come up with.” It’s called the Asus Ares 5970, a true-to-life dual 5870 solution that doesn’t downclock nothin’ for nobody. Slight problem: it… → Read More
Last week at PAX East, Nvidia showed off for the first time its GTX 480. Reviews were kind, but noted that the card runs at approximately 8 million degrees, and that the performance isn’t as crazy as you’d expect for the $500 you’re going to pay—an ATI Radeon 5870 is nearly as good, for $100 cheaper. So, make your own decisions! That’s part of the fun of PC gaming: spending weeks on Newegg… → Read More
Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You’ll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the ATI HD 5970 in a replica of a H&K P90. Catchy, but hopefully they don’t lose any customers to gunfire. → Read More
Alienware announced some new systems recently, including their latest desktop box, the Aurora ALX. The biggest news about the Aurora is the inclusion of the new ATI Radeon HD 5870 card. Reputed to be the current “top of the heap” when it comes to video cards, it’s being tested all over the web. → Read More
As much as we like the giant-killing 4870 graphics cards from AMD, they have been around for quite a while now. It’s past time when more needs to be done than tape two together and call it “X2.” Luckily, they’ve had the successor to the 4870 in the pipe for a while now, and someone’s just gotten their dirty hands on one. → Read More
If you didn’t already have enough reasons to buy a Radeon 4870 in one of its many forms, well, here’s another one. AMD’s been trying to push sales of its graphics cards, hoping to lower inventory and get a little dough, maybe to offset the enormous loss they posted this last quarter.
Their strategy was to lower the 512MB 4850 to ~$120, and its big brother the giant-killer 4870 to an incredible… → Read More
It wasn’t so very long ago that the 4870 was the king of the hill. They offer it all the way up to 2GB right now, but 512MB should suit anybody shopping in the mid range. And $150 (with the $15 mail-in rebate) is an absolutely excellent price for this card. If I weren’t completely broke right now, I’d buy one myself. Maybe one of you guys could buy two and I’ll pay you back… → Read More
A Dutch retailer briefly lists a “Radeon 5870 X2,” along with specs — conspiracy? Coincidence? Sham? Legit? Or just a typo?
Well, check out the specs and then… you be the judge. → Read More
I’ve been trumpeting Radeon superiority in this video card generation for months, but it seems that the seesaw is tipping the other way now and NVIDIA is back on their game. Doubtless the cost-for-performance of the 48xx series early on caused NVIDIA to panic and drop prices, but now that the platforms have matured a little bit, drivers have been updated, and new games are being tested, it… → Read More
AMD’s 4000 series has been exceptional in that not only has it exceeded NVIDIA at the high end while keeping the price down, but the budget offerings going all the way down to <$100 are good performers for the money as well. The new HD 4830 slots right in between the 46XX series ($70-80) and the 4850 (~$170). At around $130 or less, the Radeon HD 4830 provides DirectX 10.1 support and… → Read More
Every so often, hardware makers strike out in a new direction, improving their product in an almost random manner — double the shader processors! stick two cards together! — and sometimes it actually has good results. The big move happening right now is a vast increase in the amount of RAM available to the video card, even though that’s not really what’s limiting game… → Read More
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 graphics cards are a wet dream for gamers on a budget by delivering DirectX 10.1 graphics and an HDMI port with 7.1 channel audio while keeping the price low. The $55 HD 4550 is equipped with 512MB of DDR3 memory with a 96 GFLOPS of power. The smaller but still potent HD 4350 packs 256MB of memory for $39. ATI claims that this type of power has previously… → Read More
When a serious hardware problem occurs, the buck always passes a few times before it finds a solid resting place. In the recent case of NVIDIA, it was remarkably simple, as the company itself (it seems) was responsible for pushing the bad solder that was cracking. But now we have several thousand Radeon 3800 cards that are faulty, and the finger is not quite so easy to point. Of course, first we… → Read More
The ATI Radeon HD 4600 is out of the gate and already talking a big talk. Allegedly the new, low price card can outperform both the HD 3650 and the 9500GT while still keeping the cost under 80 bones for the GDDR3 flavor. Plus, the HD 4600 is now one of the least expensive DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.x supported graphics card. The graphic-creating power comes from a 55nm manufacturing process… → Read More
AMD is, I think, releasing press releases just for giggles. This one is pretty insubstantial, but it linked the neat demo video above so it’s worth mentioning. Essentially, AMD is attempting to extend its current (and possibly short-lived) dominance by emphasizing how well the conquering 4800 series works with DirectX 10.1. I have to say, the lighting tools shown in the extremely long ping… → Read More
SLI rendering has gained a lot of popularity lately, even to the point where people are making SLI rigs of pre-SLI’ed cards like the 9800GX2 and the 4870X2. The problem is that drivers and motherboards aren’t really set up to take advantage of two cards. Sure, it works a lot better than one card, but Hydra feels that it’s time mobos got an integrated SLI controller that works out… → Read More
Damn, when I first heard about the GeForce 260 and 280 I thought it was checkmate. No one expected much of the new line of Radeons in the first place given ATI’s lackluster offerings lately, and combine that with the improvement in the 65nm 280 — I think I was justified in thinking so. But the Radeon 4850 came out a little later and jaws dropped. It offered nearly the performance of… → Read More
Or maybe over the next week or so. With the release of the ATI HD 4850 and NVIDIA’s new 55nm-based 9800GTX+, the price/performance ratio is really nice right now. Of course, as with all components, the longer you wait, the better the deal is, but if you’re looking for an upgrade right now, these new releases will drop quite a few prices across the board. The 4850 is available for less… → 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. → 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… → 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. → 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… → Read More
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