Remember the Radeon HD 5830? That videocard filled a certain price point, but it was actually the same GPU used in the high-end HD 5870, with a large chunk of the die disabled. Enter the Radeon HD 6790. At first blush, it’s similar in concept to the HD 5830. AMD took its Barts GPU (used in the Radeon HD 6870 and 6850) and disabled a big chunk of it. Voilà: the Radeon HD 6790.
The Zotac AMP edition of Nvidia’s new budget GPU, the GTX 550 Ti, pushes the clock speeds to a full 1GHz—more than 10 percent higher than the default 900MHz. It amounts to a $150 card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory that performs moderately well in modern games, if you’re willing to dial down features like antialiasing. However, Zotac doesn’t seem to be aiming this card at gamers, but rather at digital media junkies and home theater PC enthusiasts.
The original Radeon HD 6950 cards shipped with a 2GB frame buffer, and you can still get those if you want. But some manufacturers have begun shipping the HD 6950 with 1GB of video memory, which is a fine fit for the current generation of 1080p displays. 
Hot on the heels of AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 dual-GPU monster, Nvidia is putting the pedal to the metal with its own dual GPU video card. The GTX 590 implements a pair of full GF110 CPUs, each with its own 1.5GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory, all 1,024 shader units and a custom cooler.
AMD just announced the Radeon HD 6990 video card, which combines the guts of two Radeon HD 6970s on a single board. We've got a preview of the card, including hands-on benchmarks. Spoiler: It's fast. Really, really fast. 
Palit’s high-end cards tend to be exercises in extravagance. That’s certainly true with its GTX 570 Sonic Platinum. At first, we thought Palit shipped the wrong card, given the 8-pin power connector nestled adjacent to the 6-pin connector, just like a GTX 580. However, it’s really a GTX 570—albeit with a core clock of 800MHz (versus the stock 742MHz) and the GDDR5 frame buffer clocking an even 1GHz (versus the reference 950MHz.)
A new generation of GPUs from Nvidia and AMD has hit the streets. Both camps are offering incredible performance and the widest array of features ever before seen in graphics cards. But, inevitably, each side brings its own unique strengths and weaknesses. What better way to determine the performance champ than by letting this season’s new crop of cards duke it out in the various price categories?
The GTX 570 is the little brother of Nvidia’s current high-end GTX 580. Like the original GTX 480, the GTX 570 has 480 shader cores active, and 32 disabled. Since it’s based on the GTX 580 GPU, however, Nvidia’s able to run the GTX 570 at a higher clock rate than the GTX 480. On the other hand, the memory controller is 320 bits wide, versus the GTX 480’s 384-bit controller. That’s still wider than the 256-bit memory bus on the Radeon HD 6970.
We’re not sure why this card isn’t faster than it is. In many ways, it’s two HD 6870s built onto one chip, but overall throughput may be hobbled by having only 32 ROPs and a 256-bit memory interface. Overall performance is nowhere near double an HD 6870, and the card beats the GTX 570 in only five of 12 benchmarks.
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