Video Card

GeForce GTX 780 Benchmarks

josh norem — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:12:01 +0000

Team Green captures the single-GPU crown, again

Today Nvidia pulls the wraps off its $650 GK110-based 700 series flagship card, the GeForce GTX 780. This board slides directly into the yawning chasm that exists between the $500 GK104-based GTX 680 and the $1,000 GK110-based GTX Titan, though despite its price it's actually much closer in specs and performance to the Titan than it is to the GTX 680.

Specifications

Like the Titan, the GTX 780 is a GK110 board, so it has all 7.1 billion transistors, a 384-bit memory bus care of six 64-bit memory controllers and two less SMX clusters with 12 for a total of 2,304 CUDA cores. Its 3GB of memory runs at the usual 6GHz clock speed, and its 863MHz core clock speed is just a smidge higher than the Titan’s 836MHz clock. Its 900MHz boost clock is also a bit faster than the Titan’s 876MHz. Overall, it would be fair to refer to the GTX 780 as the so-called Titan LE that has been rumored for a while now, as it’s a basically a slightly neutered version of the Titan, at least as far as gamers are concerned. Performance in games is extremely competitive with the Titan, more so than we thought it would be given its price. When it comes to compute performance, however, the GTX 780 is heavily neutered compared to the Titan, and for good reason. The 1.5 Teraflops of double precision performance that was so welcome in the Titan is nowhere to be seen in the GTX 780, as Nvidia is reserving that feature for the pricier Titan, and is also billing the GTX 780 as strictly a gaming card. The GTX 780 still offers respectable single precision performance though, clocking in at 4 Teraflops compared to the Titan's 4.5 Teraflops. For comparison, the GK104-based GTX 680 can only push 1 Teraflop of single precision, and its double precision performance is just 1/24th of that by Nvidia's design. It wants these "cheap" cards to be used for gaming, period, and its expensive Tesla cards to be used for Compute. This is why the Titan costs $1,000 and the GTX 780 costs $650.

GTX 780 Specs

Otherwise the card looks, feels, and runs almost exactly like a Titan. It has the same 10.5-inch length, the same six-pin and eight-pin PCIe connectors, and the same HDMI, DisplayPort , and DVI connectors. It supports up to three-way SLI. The minimum power supply required is 600w, and the card's TDP is 250w, just like the Titan.

New Technology

Nvidia is releasing the GTX 780 with a fair bit of cool new technology that helps round out the package a bit, so let's look at each of them one by one.

Adaptive Fan Control

Nvidia's all-new Adaptive Fan Control smooths out the speed at which the fans spin up and down, resulting in less noticeable noise during operation.

Even though the GTX Titan was and is a "quiet" GPU by our standards, Nvidia tells us that it's not necessarily fan noise that people notice as much as changes in fan speed, and we have to say there's some truth to that. Once a fan is spinning at a certain RPM we tend to not notice it, especially as the Titan and the GTX 780's fans never really spin very fast. It is certainly noticeable though when the fans spin up or down suddenly; we all hear that. So on the GTX 780 Nvidia has smoothed out the speed at which the fans spin up and down so you don't hear the change in fan speed.

ShadowPlay

ShadowPlay is designed to improve the in-game video recording experience over FRAPS by consuming less system resources and compressing the videos. It will work with any Kepler GPU and will be released this summer.

Now this is a cool feature, albeit one we have not tested as it was not available just yet. This is software that only works with Kepler GPUs to record your gaming sessions by using the GPU's built-in H.264 video encoder. The software will just record everything you do and keep only the portion that you just played, hence it's name, as it records everything that you just did, like a shadow. You can tell the software to just keep the last five minutes, 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, and it'll intelligently delete what is not needed, helping keep file sizes down by both deleting unneeded video and also through video compression. Nvidia also claims the peformance hit from turning on Shadowplay is less than five percent, so it's main advantages over FRAPS are that it only records what just happened instead of everything, and it requires less system resources to do so. This software will be rolling out this summer and will be available via Nvidia's GeForce Experience software, and will be supported on any Kepler GPU. It should be noted that beginning with this launch driver, the GeForce Experience software will replace the Nvidia Update software in the driver package, and though users can opt out of installing it, by default it will be installed with all Nvidia drivers going forward.

Head on over to page 2 to read about the rest of the new features, see the benchmarks, and our final thoughts.

GPU Boost 2.0

The GTX 780 features GPU Boost 2.0 temperature target settings as well as the ability to overvolt the board.

This feature first appeared on the GTX Titan and it works beautifully. Its main goal is to prevent the GPU from throttling itself due to excessive heat, which results in reduced performance. To prevent this from happening, users can now set the peak temperature for a card, which by default is set to 81C but it can be pushed up to 95C if you like (the card can handle it). Nvidia tells us these cards can go all the way up to 105C before the hardware is damaged, but you'd be lucky to push either a Titan or a GTX 780 past 80C typically since their coolers are so effective. However, the GPU will overclock as high as it can until it reaches that pre-determined temperature, so you can nudge the temperature GPU Boost 2.0 also allows for overvolting a card, so you can overclock it as high as you can get away with by pushing the core clock power target, temperature target, memory, and voltage. Only the Titan and the GTX 780 offers these features at this time. If you try to use them on a GTX 680, for example, they are simply greyed out.

Performance

When we first heard of this card we figured it would land squarely in between the $500 GTX 680 and the $1,000 GTX Titan, both in performance and price. Then Nvidia informed us the card was priced at $650, and we looked at the benchmark charts and thought this was either a very competitively priced product, or the Titan is really overpriced, at least for gamers. Looking at the benchmark chart (below) you can see the GTX 780 is within five to 15 percent of the Titan in all benchmarks, which is seriously impressive given it costs $350 less. In general we run all games at 2560x1600 with 4XAA enabled, which is extremely taxing on even the most hardcore systems, and yet the GTX 780 was just on the cusp of playing all games extremely smoothly, with the exception of Metro: Last Light, which will remain a ball buster for the forseeable future it seems. Even though we'd prefer to have at least 40-50fps, that is just not possible with a single GPU at the resolution we run, and only the Titan can get close to achieving it. That said, the GTX 780 is damn close, and easily puts some distance on both the GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970, making it the fastest sub-$1,000 GPU available at this time. It should also be noted that the card ran cool and quiet throughout testing, and we were able to run it at 1,084MHz with no problems at all.

GTX 780 Benchmarks

Final thoughts

This is one wicked fast GPU, and if it was $750 or so like we thought it would be you would see us waffling a bit between this card and the Titan. However, at $650 it is very competitive, though we've yet to compare it to dual GTX 660 Ti cards or GTX 670 cards in SLI, but then you have to deal with dual GPUs. Also, add-in board partners will be releasing their own versions of the GTX 780 with custom cooling solutions, but we do not know at this time whether the boards will be overclocked or offer larger frame buffers.

In our opinion, the best news about the GTX 780 is at the resolution we use for testing there was no such thing as an affordable GPU that could handle it. The GTX 680 and the HD 7970 were all stuck around 20fps or so for newer games, though the Titan could handle them much better. With the GTX 780 we have a truly semi-affordable card that can run newer games at these resolutions and AA settings just fine. Nvidia says the GTX 780 is 34 percent faster than a GTX 680 and that seems about right to us, and 70 percent faster than a GTX 580, so people with older cards will see quite a jump in performance by upgrading. There also might be other 700-series cards in the pipeline, so anyone looking to upgrade might want to wait just a bit before pulling the trigger on a new card.

As far as how AMD will respond, that remains to be seen. The company reminded us that the HD 7970 GHz edition is still the fastest card at its price point of roughly $420, and that is certainly true. Whether or not it will respond with a GCN 2.0 board dubbed Radeon 8790 or similar is anyone's guess, but given the ferocity of the GPU wars as of late we'd be shocked if AMD sat on the sidelines for very long.

PS: Here is a promotional video Nvidia sent us that walks you through the GTX 780's hardware and software.

Gigabyte Attaches Cooling Guarantee to Tri-Fan GeForce GTX 780 OC Edition

Paul Lilly — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:40:26 +0000

High end graphics card keeps its cool.

It's only been a day since Nvidia announced its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card and as expected, the GPU maker's hardware partners are coming out of the woodwork with custom cooling solutions. We saw it with EVGA and its ACX Cooler, and today Gigabyte is giving us a glimpse of its GeForce GTX 780 OC Edition (GV-N780OC-3GD) graphics card with the latest Windforce 3X dual-slot cooling design.

Gigabyte "guarantees gamers an insanely fast, smooth, and whisper-quiet gaming experience," adding that its card is further guaranteed capable of dissipating over 450W of heat.

The Windforce 3X chills the GeForce card using three ultra quiet PWM fans, two 8mm copper heat pipes, four 6mm copper heat pipes, and a RAM heatsink. According to Gigabyte, it's 25 percent better than a stock cooling solution. It also looks pretty gnarly, so there's that.

Cooling aside, Gigabyte's OC Edition card bests Nvidia's reference design with faster clockspeeds. The GPU runs at 954MHz base and 1,006MHz boost, versus 863MHz and 900MHz, respectively. Memory is untouched at 6,008MHz effective (1,502MHz).

No word yet on price or availability.

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Still Headed for a May 23 Release

Paul Lilly — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:33:48 +0000

Rumors point to the GTX 780 launching next week.

Near the beginning of the month, news and rumor site Fudzilla reported that Nvidia was planning to launch its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card on May 23 at 6:00 AM PDT. That date is now only a week away, and so far, things are looking good. Withing naming anyone, Fudzilla says it's now heard from "multiple sources" that the May 23 launch date is accurate, at which time Nvidia's hardware partners will debut reference clocked cards.

As with most video cards these days, overclocked versions will inevitably pop up, though most of them will come out "several weeks" after the initial launch.

Reference cards are said to be using a GeForce Titan cooler quality since it's a high quality design. You may even spot overclocked cards using the same cooler, though vendors typically like to slap on their own cooling solutions, which often do a better job than reference at whisking away heat and run quieter to boot.

According to Fudzilla, the GTX 780 part based on reference specs should sell for around 500 Euros. That's about $645 USD, though PC component pricing doesn't always follow a straight currency conversion from one market to the next.

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AMD Levels Up Never Settle Reloaded Bundle

Paul Lilly — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

You asked, AMD listened.

Two questions AMD tells us it's always getting asked by customers in regards to its sweet Never Settle game bundles are, "Can you add more games?" and "Why do I have to choose between Crysis 3 or Tomb Raider?" Lucky for you, these questions haven't fallen on deaf ears, as AMD is adding bonus games to its Never Settle Reloaded program as part of a limited-time offer.

It's officially called "Level Up with Never Settle Reloaded," but who cares about the title. What you really want to know is what kind of gaming loot AMD is bundling with its graphics cards, and we have the skinny. Short and sweet, AMD's updated promotion adds Tomb Raider to the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, HD 7970, HD 7950, and HD 7790 graphics cards, and Crysis 3 to the Radeon HD 7870 graphics card.

Here's a tidy breakdown of the updated promotion (Level Up games bolded):

Radeon HD 7970 and 7950: Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
Radeon HD7870 GHz Edition: Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
Radeon HD 7790: Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

The Level Up promotion goes into effect immediately at participating retailers and is valid "while supplies last." In addition, AMD is still giving away games as part of its regular Never Settle bundle. They include:

Radeon HD 7990: Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Radeon HD 7850: Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
Radeon HD 7770: Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

So, who plans on upgrading?

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Powercolor Slaps a Passive Cooler to Radeon HD 7850 Graphics Card

Paul Lilly — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:33:36 +0000

Do you hear anything? No? Good!

Looking for a challenge for your next PC build? Try piecing together a quiet system that will hardly let you know it's running without jamming your ear to the side of the case. Not only is it entirely possible to build such a system, but you can build a quiet PC that's still powerful enough to play games, it just takes a little research. One component that could help you along the way is Powercolor's new SCS3 HD7850, a passively cooled Radeon HD 7850 graphics card.

The card uses G-shape heat pipes that Powercolor says provide the same cooling effect as dual U-shape heat pipes, but with an enlarged surface. It's also armed with solid copper cooling base that fully covers the GPU and lots of aluminum fins to whisk heat away from the card.

Powercolor opted for high quality components to further enhance reliability, such as a Ferrite Core Choke and solid capacitors. As for standard specs, the card's core clockspeed is 850MHz, and its 1GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1200MHz on a 256-bit bus.

Unfortunately there was no mention of price or availability.

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Getting Loco with Video Cards

Tom McNamara — Fri, 03 May 2013 18:28:11 +0000

Maximum PC's Best of the Best Updated

We're closing in on Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexico's Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862, a victory against overwhelming odds and an important step towards Mexican independence from European rulers. These days, it's a popular holiday for getting drunk, dancing and making loud noises, but maybe that's just me. I think I'm gonna play it low-key this year instead, and take the opportunity to update our Best of the Best with a couple new entries: the EVGA GeForce GTX Titan and AMD's Radeon HD 7850.

This time around, we're changing the "high-end video card" category to the best "Single-GPU video card." Every GPU category will be getting a refresh. Because at Maximum PC, we care about your wallet.

Below, there is more text and words that you may find informative and entertaining.

And as always, let us know in the comments what you think about our picks!

Nvidia Rumored to Release GeForce GTX 780 Graphics Card on May 23

Paul Lilly — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:49:03 +0000

The GPU wars are heating up.

Analysts can talk all they want about the demise of desktops and the rise of tablets, we're not buying it. And you know what? Neither are discrete graphics card makers. If they were, Nvidia wouldn't be getting to release a GeForce GTX 780 video card, which if the latest web chatter is true, will be launching in just a few weeks. After that, Nvidia has another GTX 700 Series card to unleash.

According to Fudzilla, the GTX 780 part is scheduled to launch on May 23, 2013 at precisely 6:00 AM PDT. Exactly one week later to the minute, Nvidia will follow that up by launching its GeForce GTX 770 graphics card, both of which will be sold by top tier vendors.

The GTX 780 is based on the GK110 architecture found in Nvidia's Titan cards, and the GTX 770 is based on GK104 425, which Fudzilla says is an improved version of the original 28nm part.

Other than those details, we don't know much about either card, though we expect both to be at least marginally faster than the 600 Series they're replacing.

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First Radeon HD 7730 Graphics Card Spotted in the Wild

Paul Lilly — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:56:03 +0000

MSI's Radeon HD 7730 breaks cover and gets benchmarked.

A rather active user on the Chinese-language forum Coolaler posted several pictures of an MSI Radeon HD 7730 graphics card. As far as we can tell, the entry-level card's model was supposed to have been kept a secret, as identifying information on the retail box was replaced with a red censor strip, but it's tougher to hide such things from software. In addition to the model number, there are also some benchmark numbers to share.

The forum user who posted the pictures also tossed up a few benchmark comparisons between the Radeon HD 7730 and HD 6670. Here's how it shook out between the two:

Radeon HD 7730, 3DMark Vantage Performance: 10,764
Radeon HD 6670, 3DMark Vantage Performance: 5,366
Radeon HD 7730, 3DMark 11 Entry: 4,539
Radeon HD 6670, 3DMark 11 Entry: 2,477
Radeon HD 7730, 3DMark 11 Performance: 2,609
Radeon HD 6670, 3DMark 11 Performance: 1,428
Radeon HD 7730, 3DMark Fire Strike: 1,680
Radeon HD 6670, 3DMark Fire Strike: 878
Radeon HD 7730, Cloud Gate: 11,959
Radeon HD 6670, Cloud Gate: 7,042
Radeon HD 7730, Ice Storm: 101,701
Radeon HD 6670, Ice Storm: 63,660

Those are some big gains across the board, and in some cases, the Radeon HD 7730 benched almost twice as fast as the Radeon HD 6670.

The entry-level part is a 128-bit card with 1GB of memory clocked at 1,125MHz and a core clockspeed of 800MHz. Most of the other details are still a secret, including price and release date.

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AMD Radeon HD 7990 First Look

Josh Norem — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:05:06 +0000

Nvidia’s GTX 690 finally has some serious competition

Today the embargo is lifting on the AMD Radeon HD 7990 that was teased back at GDC, so here’s the TLDR version; yes it’s just as fast and a tiny bit quieter than the Nvidia GTX 690, and it includes a mega bad ass eight-AAA-game bundle and costs the same price as its nemesis, making it quite a tempting package for those with the budget for it. Whether or not that will be enough to convince anyone to actually buy it remains to be seen of course, but at least AMD can no longer be knocked for conceding the $1,000 GPU market to Nvidia. It also signifies somewhat of a resurgence for AMD, who first came off the bench late last year and early this year with its totally righteous Never Settle game bundles, then attacked the midrange recently with the surprisingly powerful and quiet Radeon HD 7790 card, and is now going for the jugular with the dual-slot and triple-fan HD 7990. Whether AMD wins or loses that battle is slightly less important than the overall significance of this introduction, as in our minds its designed to not only beat Nvidia’s offering, but also to send a very clear signal to hardcore PC enthusiasts everywhere — AMD is still in the game, and doesn’t intend to give an inch of ground to Nvidia any time soon.

Spec Speak

Let’s start with the card’s basic specs: It features dual HD 7970 Tahiti GPUs clocked at 1,000MHz, which is a bit higher than we expected them to be, and higher than the clocks on a stock HD 7970 (925MHz) and the GTX 690 (915Mhz). Each GPU sports 3GB of GDDR5 RAM and has 2,048 Stream Processors, and the two connect to each other and the motherboard via a PCIe Gen 3 PLX bridge chip. The card takes up two slots, is 12 inches long, has a triple-fan cooler with copper heatpipes, and sports a semi-high TDP of 375w. For comparison, the GTX 690’s TDP is 300w. Power is provided by dual eight-pin PCIe connectors, which is the same requirement of the GTX 690, and one less than what was required on the dual-Tahiti PowerColor Devil 13 board. The board supports five displays with its four Mini DisplayPort connectors and single Dual-Link DVI port. The card will cost $999 and includes an eight-game bundle featuring: Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Deux Ex: Human Revolution. We thought Battlefield 4 would be included as well since the game was demo’d at GDC on the HD 7990, but that deal appears to have fallen through. The card should be available two weeks from the day this is published from all the standard add-in board partners such as Sapphire, HIS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.

Benchmarks

When it comes to performance, the card performs just as well as you would imagine, if you were imagining that AMD would only bring this to market when it was sure it could beat Nvidia’s card. To do otherwise would be a fool’s errand, so naturally the HD 7990 is faster than the GTX 690 in most tests that we ran, but not in all of them (see benchmark chart below). Overall performance with both the GTX 690 is very close though, enough to effectively call it a draw. It's not as fast as the overclocked and water-cooled Asus Ares II, however, but nobody can buy those cards so the point is somewhat moot. When compared to a CrossFireX setup, the results are in favor of the HD 7990, but the CrossFireX results were achieved last month with an older driver, so it's quite possible that two cards would be a tiny bit faster than the HD 7990 if using updated drivers. Even more surprising is the card's lack of noise and heat, as the other dual Tahiti boards we've seen so far have either been water-cooled (Ares II) or so loud and hot as to require earplugs and heat shields (Devil 13), but not the HD 7990. It got up to about 85C in gaming and was a tiny bit audible, but not "loud" at all, which is an amazing development for AMD. We'd say all in all it's probably just a bit quieter than the GTX 690, and gets about as hot.

Benchmarks

Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P9X79 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4X AA except for the 3DMark tests.

Frame Latency and micro-stutter

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about ditching frames per second as a standard for how “smooth” a game runs on given hardware, and instead examining frame latency or frame times instead. The reason why is that sometimes frames per second can be misleading, as we all equate anything over 30fps to be “smooth” when in fact a game can be run at even 50fps and still be somewhat choppy if the frames aren’t being delivered on a consistent schedule. For example, if the GPU alternatively sends frames to the system at 20ms and 100ms or higher throughout a test, it’s possible to still have an average framerate above 30fps, but to have it feel like you’re dropping frames. This is not usually something that you notice when running a single GPU, but it’s more prominent in multi-card setups since both cards are sending individual frames to the system, hopefully in concert with one another. This has been a bee in AMD’s bonnet lately, and when we sat down for the briefing on this card in particular AMD mentioned it, and acknowledged it. They called it “micro stutter,” which is fitting, as it’s an almost imperceptible stutter/lag that you can feel but barely see when playing certain games on specific configurations of GPUs and CPUs.

As far as the HD 7990 goes, here is the situation. Yes this card and the latest drivers we used (13.5 beta 2) suffered from micro stutter, but it was imperceptible in most games with one major exception — Far Cry 3. We’re not sure what it is about Far Cry 3, but it runs like crap on this setup at 2560x1600 with 4xAA. We mean it feels like you are running through molasses the whole time, and when examining the frame time output from FRAPS it is easy to see why, as the latency between frames fluctutates wildly. When examining the frame time charts from other games the delivery times look pretty consistent, with only Crysis 3 showing some anomalies. AMD has told us it is working on a fix for this situation, but the remedy will most likely be a software implementation rather than a hardware fix. We have yet to receive and test a final software fix for this issue, and will sure to update you when we have tested it.

Final Thoughts

On the one hand, we’re pretty pumped to see the HD 7990 finally arrive, as it’s more than a year late to market, and its absence made a lot of people question AMD’s commitment to the uber high-end PC gaming market. Since AMD has sort of abandoned the high-end CPU market, having them leave the same GPU market would mean nothing but bad things for a lot of consumers, so we're stoked to see them join the fight. The card itself presents a very strong option for buyers looking to drop a large bill on a GPU given the fact that it includes over $500 of Kick Ass games. If the bundle wasn't included, we'd say you could flip a coin over whether or not to get this card or the GTX 690, but the gaming bundle clearly gives AMD a significant advantage against its competitors.

Now that the HD 7990 has launched, we have to wonder whether or not Nvidia will counter AMD's launch with the rumored GTX Titan Ultra, but it sure seems likely the way the two have been going at it lately. This effectively means the GPU cold war that has existed throughout 2012 is now largely over, with the two companies fired up and ready to wage war this summer. All we can say to that is "bring it on!"

Nvidia GeForce 320.00 Beta Drivers Increases Performance Up to 20 Percent

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:17:54 +0000

Free performance gain, if you don't mind beta software.

If you like to live on the edge by installing pre-release software, risks be damned, and own an Nvidia-based graphics card, today's your lucky today. Nvidia just released new 320.00 beta drivers for GeForce graphics cards, and if you install them, the GPU maker says you can enjoy performance gains up to 20 percent. Most of the gains won't be quite as high, though several titles receive a shot in the arm from the new drivers.

The examples Nvidia shared all pertain to GeForce GTX 660 graphics cards and include the following gains for single card setups:

Up to 20 percent in Dirt: Showdown
Up to 18 percent in Tomb Raider
Up to 8 percent in StarCraft II
Up to 6 percent in Sniper Elite V2
Up to 6 percent in Metro 2033
Up to 6 percent in Far Cry 3
Up to 6 percent in Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Up to 5 percent in F1 2012

Nvidia also added several new SLI profiles, including ones for Alien Fear, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Dead Island: Riptide, Dragon Sword, and a bunch more.

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PowerColor Shows Off Passive Radeon HD 7850 Graphics Card

Paul Lilly — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:54:28 +0000

A passively cooled Radeon HD 7850 could be the centerpiece of a home theater PC (HTPC).

If you go poking around Facebook long enough, you're apt to run into teaser shots of unreleased products just like we did. Over on one of PowerColor's pages (the company has several), we spied a couple of photos of a passively cooled Radeon HD 7850 graphics card (SCS3), which to the best of our knowledge hasn't been done before. PowerColor didn't post any accompanying specs, though we suspect it will stick with the reference design.

The last thing a passively cooled card needs is overclocked parts and/or higher voltages, both of which generate additional heat. If we're correct in assuming PowerColor's card is based on AMD's reference design, it will feature an 860MHz engine clock and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,200MHz on a 256-bit bus.

It looks to be a dual-slot card with at least five heat pipes directing thermals through more than two dozen aluminum fins running horizontally across the card, plus several more on top. With no active cooling to speak of, you'll want to make sure your case has good airflow if you're considering a card like this.

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Costly DRAM is Driving Up Graphics Card Prices

Paul Lilly — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:48:41 +0000

Even with prices going up, it's still a great time to be a PC gamer.

Are you planning to build a gaming PC for the summer? If so, you might want to get started early in order to get the most bang for your buck. Yesterday we told you that desktop DRAM pricing is on the rise as contract chip prices have already jumped 50 percent in 2013, spiking 20 percent in March alone, and now we're hearing that graphics cards are getting more expensive.

Once again, you can blame memory chip makers. According to Digitimes and its sources within the graphics card business, several video card vendors have increased retail prices for products made with DDR3 memory in the DIY market. Prices are up 10-15 percent, the news and rumor site says.

Those same sources say it's unlikely graphics card pricing will drop in the next six months, though it's not all bad news. To help offset the rising retail costs, vendors are getting more aggressive in their promotions, some of which we've already seen. AMD, for example, has given away some sweet triple AAA titles as part of its ongoing Never Settle bundles. It's been rumored that the next Never Settle bundle will include Battlefield 4.

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Asus Launches Space Saving GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini

Paul Lilly — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:06:54 +0000

The first and only small form factor GeForce GTX 670.

Graphics cards aren't just getting more powerful by the generation, they've also grown in size over the last several years. Depending on your case, you might even need to remove a drive cage to accommodate a longer graphics card, though that's not likely to be a problem with Asus' new GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini. Living up to its "Mini" nomenclature, Asus claims it's the only small form factor (SFF) GTX 670 money can buy.

As such, it's designed primarily for SFF systems with mini ITX motherboards. It does take up two slots, though it measures just 17 centimeters, which is 7.13 centimeters shorter than the reference design for a GTX 670 card.

Asus said it re-engineered the DirectCU cooler to fit SFF cases. It's obviously shorter than the company's standard cooler, but to make sure it still cools effectively, Asus placed a vapor chamber directly on top of the GPU. This design leads to a 20 percent (or 7.5C) reduction in temperatures versus a reference GTX 670, Asus claims.

No word yet on price or availability.

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AMD's Next Never Settle Bundle Rumored to Include Battlefield 4

Paul Lilly — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:13:57 +0000

Look for a new batch of games in AMD's next Never Settle bundle.

As if gamers with aging GPUs need another reason to upgrade their graphics card, game bundles from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have been providing extra incentive, and more importantly (for AMD), tempting users away from Nvidia. The next "Never Settle" bundle from AMD may include Battlefield 4, which would make perfect sense after the Sunnyvale chip designer demoed the title running on a new Malta Radeon HD 7990 graphics card.

Citing un-named sources, Fudzilla says Ubisoft's upcoming Watch Dogs is another likely candidate for the refreshed bundle offer, along with an unknown third title. Adding a bit of intrigue to the mystery, the site's sources claim the third game hasn't even been announced for the PC just yet. This is wishful thinking, but wouldn't it be great if that title ended up being Grand Theft Auto V?

AMD's original Never Settle bundle included up to three free games, including Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs. It was a tiered offer that rewarded Radeon HD 7900 purchasers with all three games, and one or two titles for lower series graphics cards.

Just last month, AMD announced a Never Settle Reloaded bundle that rewarded Radeon HD 7800 Series owners with Tomb Raider (2013) and Bioshock Infinite, and 7800 Series owner with Bioshock Infinite and Crysis 3.

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Nvidia Gives Cost Conscious Gamers a 'GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost'

Paul Lilly — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:49:13 +0000

Meet the newest sub-$200 graphics card from Nvidia.

Sure, we'd all love to game on multiple top-shelf graphics cards, and while we're making a money-is-no-object wishlist, a toilet made of gold would be pimp as well. Most of us can't afford such luxuries, so we sit our backsides on porcelain and game on less expensive graphics cards. Luckily there are options, and if you have less than $200 to spend on a GPU, Nvidia hopes you'll consider its new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost.

The new part is based on Kepler and equipped with 768 CUDA cores. There are two models available, one with 1GB of GDDR5 memory ($149) and another with 2GB of GDDR5 memory ($169). Either way, the memory is clocked at 6008MHz and shovels data through a 192-bit bus.

Nvidia claims the GTX 650 Ti Boost offers up to 40 percent better performance compared to the non-Boost variant introduced last year. It also includes features typically reserved for higher end cards, such as support for Nvidia's GPU Boost technology (hence the name of the card).

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB is available now, with availability of the 1GB model expected in early April.

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