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S3 Graphics Adds DirectX 10.1 Support to New Chrome 500 Series

Paul Lilly — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:30:02 -0600

S3 Graphics, a subsidiary of VIA and a player in the low end graphics market, has launched its next generation Chrome 500 series. S3 claims its new add-in cards offer up to a 30 percent performance increase while supporting Blu-ray playback, streaming HD video, DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

"S3 Graphics has built upon the success of the Chrome 400 Series with another GPU line that fulfills user demand of a superior visual experience and product that extends beyond just graphics," said Dr. Ken Weng, GM for S3 Graphics. "Our latest Chrome 500 supports features that surpass those found in higher end products, like high quality HD video support. This truly is a power-efficient multimedia / multi-application processor that delivers."

S3's Chrome 530 GT is the first videocad to market from the new Chrome 500 series. The upgraded GPU makes a strong bid for HTPC enthusiasts with support for PiP Blu-ray playback, HDCP capable DVI-I and HDMI ports, and a low power draw rated at just 25W.

The Chrome 530 GT is available now direct from S3 Graphics for $45 and comes bundled with InterVideo WinDVD 8.

Rumor: Nvidia Spooked by AMD's Market Share Gains, Will Cut Videocard Prices in Response

Paul Lilly — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:45:15 -0600

A report by Jon Peddie Research (JPR) earlier this week confirmed that AMD's recent success with its Radeon 4000 series has helped the company take back some market share from rival GPU maker Nvidia, while also forcing Nvidia and its partners to lower prices on the recently released GTX 200 series. It appears even more cuts are on the way.

DigiTimes, citing un-named sources at graphics cards makers, says that Nvidia "is planning to cut its graphics card prices in an attempt to curb further loss of market share" to AMD. For its part, AMD isn't finished taking it to Nvidia and anticipates grabbing 50 percent of the market following lowered prices on its ATI Radeon HD 4000 series.

In short, it continues to be a great time to be a PC gamer, and it only looks to get better as AMD and Nvidia battle on the pricing front.

Nvidia Thumps Chest with Quadro FX 5800, World's First 4GB Videocard

Paul Lilly — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:48:01 -0600

Nividia today announced its Quadro FX 5800 videocard calling it "the most powerful professional graphics card in graphics history." To help justify such a big claim, Nvidia slapped a big 4GB frame buffer on the new videocard, more than any other videocard to date.

"The size and complexity of data is growing at an exponential rate," said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, Nvidia. "The challenge for today's professional is to make sense of the mountain of data by distilling it into a form they can comprehend, analyze, and use to make impactful decisions. At stake can be billions of investment dollars, or even people's lives. The Quadro FX 5800 has advanced features to allow massive datasets to be viewed beyond traditional 3D enabling professionals to make fast and accurate decisions."

Nvidia says its new videocard is a perfect match for oil and gas exploration, medical imaging, styling and design, and scientific visualization, all of which can benefit from the large amount of memory and up to 240 CUDA programmable parallel core. Other specs include a memory bandwidth of up to 102 GB/s, a fill rate claimed to exceed 52 billion texels per second, and geometry performance of 300 million triangles per second. The Quadro FX 5800 also boasts true 10-bit color, giving it the ability to enable billions of color variations instead of millions, according to Nvidia.

The Quadro FX 5800 is available now with an MSRP set at $3500. But if it helps, think of it as less than $1000 per GB of memory.

Palit Wants to Pack Your Computer Case with Three-Slot Graphics Card

Paul Lilly — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:10:50 -0600

Who says thin is in? Not Palit, who has just introduced a massive three-slot graphics card based on AMD's dual-GPU ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. Dubbed the Revolution 700 Deluxe, the new card owes its wide load to a giant heatsink consisting of a two-fan cooling solution outfitted with heatpipes and a plethora of connection options.

The Revolution 700 Deluxe comes equipped with DisplayPort, HDMI, Dual-Link DVI, and D-Sub (VGA) connections, so while you might have to worry about how you're going to cram this card inside your case, you at least won't face any problems connecting it to nearly any type of display.

Other specs include 2GB of GDDR5 slightly overclocked at 3800MHz (compared to 3600MHz reference), 750MHz core clockspeed, DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 support, and a 512-bit memory interface resulting in 2.4 teraFLOPS of graphics horsepower.

No price has yet been set for the mammoth videocard, but according to TGDaily, Palit spokesman Darren Polkowski said it sell in a similar price range as other 4870 X2 cards.

Is three slots too much? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

ATI Releases Driver Hotfix to Improve Performance in Far Cry 2 and Stalker Clear Sky

Paul Lilly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:15:17 -0500

ATI recently updated its Catalyst driver package, and now the company has released a hotfix to address problems gamers might have been having in Far Cry 2, Stalker Clear Sky, and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. Specific fixes include:

Performance boost in Far Cry 2 with DX9 and CrossFire
Performance boost in Far Cry 2 with DX10 on both single-card and CrossFire setups
Performance boost in Stalker Clear Sky with DX10 and DX10.1 on both single-card and CrossFire setups when running "higher resolutions"
Addresses a corrpution issue in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway on the 'Black Friday' level

The hotfix applies to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista and XP starting with ATI's Radeon X1600 series and moving on up to the Radeon HD 4800 graphics cards.

Intel Remains Dominant in Growing GPU Market, Claims 50% Market Share

Paul Lilly — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:50:26 -0500

Maybe a plethora of new must-have gaming titles has caused demand to spike, or perhaps the price war between AMD and Nvidia has sparked GPU sales. But whatever the reason, overall GPU shipments in the third quarter reached a staggering 111 million units, according to research and consulting firm Jon Peddie Research (JPR). That's up 22.5 percent from the 91 million units sold this time last year, and 18 percent from the 94 million units sold in the second quarter of this year.

"The third quarter is seasonally up as OEMs place orders for chips to build inventory for the holiday season," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of JPR. "However, this quarter was up more than any other for some time, and in spite of suggestions of a recession that started from the fourth quarter last year."

The big benefactor in the booming graphics market is Intel, who increased it's overall market share to a dominant 49.4 percent, up from 33.4 percent one year prior. Intel rules both the desktop and notebook sectors with a 43.9 percent share in the former and a 56.2 percent share in the latter.

Surprised? Hit the jump and let us know.

Report: AMD Admits Shipping Some HD 4830 Videocards with Incorrect BIOS

Paul Lilly — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:36:46 -0500

AMD last week launched its HD 4830 graphics card, a sub-$150 GPU with support for DirectX 10.1 instructions. With a budget price tag and impressive spec sheet, the HD 4830 has been positioned to compete with Nvidia's 9800 GT videocard, but some buyers may find that their HIS-branded HD 4830 isn't living up to expectations.

"AMD has identified that, in addition to reference samples of the ATI Radeon HD 4830 boards sent to media with a pre-production BIOS potentially impacting the card's performance, a very limited number of ATI Radeon HD 4830 boards were released to market with the same pre-production BIOS," AMD said in a statement. "This is no way hardware related, and an updated BIOS fully resolves the performance limitation."

Updating the BIOS doesn't perform any voodoo shenanigans on affected cards, and instead enables all 640 stream processors that the HD4830 is supposed to have. For whatever reason, a "small number of HIS-branded" cards sporting the pre-production BIOS only showed 560 stream processors as being enabled, resulting in an undue performance hit.

If you think you might own one of the gimped cards or simply want to verify that your videocard's running at full speed, download and run the GPU-Z utility.

AMD Announces Sub-$150 HD 4830 Graphics Card Running DX10.1

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:42:25 -0500

While the merits of DirectX 10.1 support is still being debated, AMD continues to champion the instruction set in its latest generation of videocards, including the new HD 4830. Best of all, the new graphics card carries an MSRP of less than $150.

There was a time when no self respecting gamer would ever dream of owning a sub-$150 GPU, but today's generation of gamers needn't be so discerning. Built using a 55nm manufacturing process with 956 million transistors, the HD 4830 comes equipped with a respectable 640 stream processors, 32 texture units, and 16 ROPs. And unlike some other budget-priced videocards in recent years, the memory bus checks in at 256-bit rather than 128-bit, making it a solid contender for mid-range gaming duties, at least on paper.

The HD 4830 is being positioned to compete with Nvidia's 9800 GT. AMD claims its new videocard "delivers better performance" than the aforementioned competition in several titles, a notion supported by a cursory glance at benchmarks across the web.