It seems some users are blaming StarCraft II for the fact that their pants no longer fit as well as they used to. No, wait, that’s not it. They’re blaming StarCraft II for killing their video cards. Mm. → Read More
This is just a heads-up for any ATI folks out there looking to add a little anti-aliasing to your StarCraft II-ing. ATI has released an updated driver, version 10.7a, that includes a hotfix that enables forced AA for the game. You have to activate AA inside the Catalyst Control Thingamajig outside of the game. End transmission. → Read More
Damn you, Sapphire. Three weeks ago I bought your vanilla Radeon 5970, and now you release the Radeon 5970 4G TOXIC Edition? What a load of bunk. Fastest video card on the planet, you say? Well I say FE$%Fxtgredth. → 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
There’s been a lot of buzz about the code-name Fermi series of cards NVIDIA has been cooking up. They’re the company’s first DirectX 11-compatible cards, and rival AMD has had the DX11 58xx series on the market for months now, giving them a definite head start. The hope (among NVIDIA fans) was that the Fermi/GF100 cards would blow AMD’s out of the water despite the delays. That doesn’t seem to be… → Read More
ATI just released a new, super entry level graphics card that should placate, well, not hardcore gamers, but most regular people. It’s the Radeon 5450. Like other 5000 series cards, it works with Eyefinity, meaning that you can spread the image across several screens, as this image swiped from Tom’s Hardware shows. → Read More
…Then we will benchmark in the shade. There’s not a lot more to this story than “this is a freaking huge video card,” so just gaze in awe at this monstrosity and then move on to the next post. [via HardOCP] → Read More
Some day, I too will have three identical monitors for gaming purposes. It’ll have to be in my game cave once I retire as an eccentric millionaire, though. Don’t have room for it here. That’s probably a good thing, though, since I also don’t have the money required, and besides that there are still a few quirks to be worked out. Not to mention the fact that the best games are barely playable on… → Read More
The more my games stutter and the more my HD content skips frames, the more I think about that wonderful day when I shall put together a beautiful new system with all new hardware. The trouble is that Intel’s got the processor thing locked down and AMD has the lead on graphics. I don’t really want to mix and match, but the pull of the Radeons might prove to be too strong. That new 5800… → Read More
If you’ve been a PC gamer for more than a few years, it’s definitely worth your time to take a look at this long history of PC video cards. I jumped into the game around the middle, when the Riva TNT was vying for dominance with the Voodoo2 and Rage 128.
If you have a technophobic spouse or work somewhere where people think “PCI express” is a kind of train, you probably should hide this article… → Read More
The eternal quandary for system builders has been much less quandarious (to coin a term) for the last year or so. Intel processor, AMD video card — anything else would be uncivilized. AMD’s 48xx series has been the only choice for a while, but the latest products from AMD and NVIDIA are a little less starkly separated.
For around $250 (the mid-high sweet spot), the 4890 and GTX 275 are … → Read More
Expect a lot more reviews in the next week or so; the 4890 is the product AMD has aimed at Nvidia’s high-end cards, and according to German site Gamestar, it’s doing a pretty good job. It couldn’t quite beat the GTX 295 without overclocking, but since it’ll probably cost about $100 less, we won’t hold that against it. → Read More
Things are getting out of control in the 3D modeling business. Models for movies and games have gone from thousands to hundreds of thousands of triangles, and the lighting and shading necessary for them is getting so complicated as to require a whole separate video card. Imagine you’re an animator at Pixar — do you think they made WALL-E on netbooks? No, son. They probably used things we… → 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
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
NVIDIA’s ice-cream sandwich-looking dual-GPU answer to AMD’s dual-GPU 4870 X2 doesn’t excel, but doesn’t disappoint, either. Although the GeForce GTX 280 has recently surpassed the 4870 in performance with its new drivers, the architecture of the GTX 295 limits the capabilities and makes it just barely eke ahead of AMD, and even then it’s with a price premium. At $500… → Read More
In what has become pretty much a standard move by graphics card makers, NVIDIA has revealed that its new fastest card will be… two of its old fastest cards glued together. It should be said that this is far from an ineffective approach: the 9800GX2 annihilated everything when it came out last year and the 4870X2 is the king of the hill right now on the price/performance bit. The GTX295 will… → Read More
This is exactly what I feared might happen when I heard Apple was moving to a full NVIDIA solution, complete with the faulty parts that caused so many other mobile setups to croak. A very thorough article at the Inquirer, based on analysis of a new MacBook Pro teardown by parties who wish to remain anonymous, shows that the solder bumps used in at least their test MBP are in fact the infamous… → Read More
The video card business pendulum has had its swing into AMD territory, but bit by bit NVIDIA is making its comeback after an embarrassing early last generation. This time it’s not more frames per second, but favorable alliances which are gaining ground for the graphics giant: EA and 2K Games (creators of Bioshock) have both agreed to use NVIDIA’s PhysX technology to drive their physics… → Read More
Boy oh boy is this a sweet deal. This eVGA GeForce 260 is one of the newer ones, revised with more stream processors than the original, already a powerhouse. It should handle the included (register to get it, bleh) Far Cry 2 with ease. It’s a totally solid card and at $250 it’s a steal, even with AMD competitive right now. If you’re in the market, I’d jump on this right… → 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
I think you have to be a real hardware geek to find this stuff funny, so it’s no surprise that it made me smile. Although it’s not exactly credited, it’s pretty clear that this is a low-key effort by AMD to discredit NVIDIA — the cartoon casts a bediapered dinosaur as NVIDIA’s troubled last generation of video cards and makes fun of their limited and faulty hardware. → Read More
In systems where both energy limitations and heat flow are major considerations, passive cooling has been an increasingly popular solution, though not always the best one. Heatsinks are often just not enough to do the job, but as they become more sophisticated they are closing the performance gap with active heat reduction like fans or piping. Celsia has made the heatsink into something more… → 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
A couple weeks ago we posted about allegations of widespread solder failure in NVIDIA graphics cards. This is further confirmation of that, as a study done at my alma mater comparing high-lead (90% lead, 10% tin) and eutectic (60% lead, 40% tin) found that under controlled circumstances, “…plastic energy produced in the high-lead layer is about 100 times larger than in the eutectic… → 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
NVIDIA’s “abnormal” number of GPU failures have been the subject of much discussion and speculation during the last couple months. The culprit seems to have been the high-lead solder, which everybody rightly assumed NVIDIA would abandon — after all, it’s cost the company hundreds of millions in direct costs and probably far more in lost sales, lost brand credibility… → Read More
While the world oohs and ahhs to tiny laptops and green benchmarks, there is a sort of blind eye turned to the excesses of extreme gamers. This interesting article points out that as everyone else is going lighter, smaller, and more efficient, video cards are getting bigger, guzzling power, and even multiplying themselves. A cutting edge card will draw nearly 300W at maximum, which is what we were… → Read More
Will wonders never cease? It wasn’t so long ago that water-cooling your CPU or video card meant expensive modifications at the risk of ruining your whole setup. This MSI GeForce N280GTX is already set up with water cooling, and what’s more, it only takes up one slot! Now you can actually have dual water-cooled GeForces, something that sounds like something you upgrade your Zealots with… → Read More
The video card scene right now is like watching a boxing match. AMD dealt NVIDIA a solid shot to the face with the 4870 and 4850, causing NVIDIA to lower their prices in an evasive maneuver. NVIDIA has responded by throwing cards at the budget segment under $75. AMD of course disparaged this move, saying it was “quick and dirty,” and said something I feel is insightful: “If you have… → Read More
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