3D Graphics Card Blog

Intel to pay AMD $1.25bn to settle legal rows

2009-11-12T11:51:00.001-08:00

Intel has agreed to pay rival AMD $1.25bn to settle all outstanding legal disputes.

To read more about the story, click on the link below,

Intel and AMD settle legal rows

Batman Arkham Asylum Performance

2009-11-10T07:42:00.001-08:00

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 6 months, you must have heard about Batman Arkham Asylum, one of the best comic book to video game adaptations ever. In case you are wondering how this Unreal Engine 3 powered game might perform on your rig, TomsHardware.com have tested the game on various settings and posted the benchmarks in their review.

You can check out the entire review from the following link,

TomsHardware.com Batman Arkham Asylum Review

How do the AMD 5770 and 5750 compare with their previous generation counterparts?

2009-11-09T06:17:00.001-08:00

Here is a nice comparison table I found over at AnandTech when browsing through a review of the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 graphics cards by AMD.

The above table gives you a nice overview of what to expect from these new DX11 graphics cards as compared to their previous generation counterparts. To read the full review, head on over to the following link.

AnandTech: AMD's Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 Review

Radeon HD 5770 in 3-way CrossfireX

2009-11-09T05:42:00.001-08:00

After quite a long hiatus of writing blog posts on my blog. I have finally decided to come back to updating my fans with news from the industry. This article caught my eye with the recent release of AMD/ATi's 5770 graphics card. So far it has been a bang for the buck and is the first DX11 capable card available on the market.

The folks at Guru3D.com however decided that they should post some numbers by putting 3 of these puppies together in a 3-way CrossfireX setup. The results have been quite impressive and also suprising in some cases. It is a definite read and you should head over to their finding by clicking on the following link.

Guru3D Radeon HD 5770 in 3-way CrossfireX

Geforce GTX 295 Preview

2008-12-19T11:35:00.001-08:00

The guys at Guru 3D have previewed the new Geforce GTX 295!

No matter what game you'll play with the GeForce GTX 295, you'll play it at dazzling framerates, very high resolutions and the very best in image quality. We have shown you the performance of some pretty hot titles. Surely Left 4 Dead based on the HL-2 source engine is a pretty easy task for any modern graphics card, but the card scaled just so well. And when we look at Far Cry 2, we see more of the pretty jawbreaking performance. The same goes for Call of Duty World at War and obviously the other titles we tested. You will not have to forfeit on image quality settings and you can play in the highest resolutions. But that is of course expected. Also and I do have to mention this, the GTX 295 will be a graphics card for users with a high resolution monitor. The overall performance really starts to kick in after roughly 1920x1200, a resolution where more and more pixels need to be rendered and where GPU limitation normally kicks in pretty fast... So keep in mind that cards like these really start to show off in the higher resolutions.

Click here for the full preview.

NVIDIA QuadroFX 5800 Reviewed

2008-12-15T16:21:00.001-08:00

HotHardware have been really lucky to get their hands on the latest NVIDIA QuadroFX cards.

The QuadroFX 4800 is a much more palatable high-end solution, coupling together a GT200 graphics processor with 1.5 GB of memory and a price tag nearly half that of the QuadroFX 5800. Let's find out how NVIDIA's massive GT200 graphics processor handles workstation-class loads instead of crunching pixels in Crysis...

Click here to read the full review

3D Card Review: VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB

2008-08-24T01:13:00.001-07:00

Phoronix have reviewed a sweet performing Radeon HD 4870 X2 on their website.

In a majority of the benchmarks -- including those with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering -- the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 was within frames of the dual Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire configuration. However, in some tests such as running Enemy Territory: Quake Wars at 2560 x 1600, the R700 had fallen about eight frames behind, or about 6%. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 isn't quite as far as two Radeon HD 4870 512MB graphics cards linked together via CrossFire, but it's darn close.

[Phoronix] VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB Review

3D Card Review: Palit Radeon 4850

2008-08-24T01:09:00.001-07:00

TweakTown has reviewed the Palit Radeon 4850.

The good thing about Palit is the aggressive pricing, which means you can actually get your hands on one of these cards for similar prices, or sometimes cheaper than what some brands charge for the stock model, which makes it quite an attractive purchase.

Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic Graphics Card :: TweakTown

Intel's 'Larrabee' to Shakeup AMD, Nvidia - Tom's Hardware

2008-08-23T07:09:00.001-07:00

Performance wise, rumors have it that Larrabee is expected no earlier than 2009 and shall be only as fast as todays current generation of GPUs upon release. According to a recent paper from Intel, simulated Larrabee performance would have us believe that with 25-cores, each running at 1GHz, we would be able to run both F.E.A.R. and Gears of War at 60 FPS. Speculating that Larrabee will be released with 32-cores, running at over 2GHz each, it is possible that Larrabee could actually be faster than rumored. Other than performance, another concern for Larrabee is its drivers and support. Even excellent hardware can be tainted by poorly written drivers and lack of support in the industry. There has been a lot of criticism of Intels past ability to write quality drivers, adding to the concern, but Intel still has time to address this matter properly. Larrabee has a really rather flexible and programmable design that ultimately depends on the drivers and supplied compilers for it to be useful.

Intel's 'Larrabee' to Shakeup AMD, Nvidia - Tom's Hardware

More Info on Lucid's flexibele multi-gpu-technology

2008-08-23T06:47:00.001-07:00

More info on this "Bridge' chip was presented at IDF. This might even be a revolution in the high-end gaming segment. Lucid is building a new "real-time distributed processing engine" system on a chip called HYDRA, which can mix and match any GPU from any manufacturer and work with any chipset, and piles it all together for performance scaling that Lucid claims is "near-linear" or even "above-linear."

More Info on Lucid's flexibele multi-gpu-technology

ATI Radeon 4870 X2 Review: AMD is back on top!

2008-08-12T01:08:00.001-07:00

HotHardware has put up a review of the latest ATI/AMD Radeon 4870 X2 and looks like AMD is on top of the game again!

Make no mistake, the new Radeon HD 4870 X2 marks ATI's return to the top of the 3D graphics food chain. It took a few years, but through steady improvements in multi-GPU software support, and a new strategy regarding the design and manufacture of high-end graphics cards that utilizes two mid-sized chips in lieu of a single monolithic one, AMD was able to produce a graphics card capable of outpacing the best NVIDIA currently has to offer.

Read the ATI Radeon 4870 X2 Review here.

Nvidia licenses Transmeta

2008-08-09T05:59:00.001-07:00

Saw this news over at TomsHardware

According to Transmeta, Nvidia has been granted a “non-exclusive license to Transmeta’s Longrun and Longrun 2 technologies and other intellectual property”. Nvidia paid a “one-time, non-refundable license fee of $25 million”.

You can read the full story here.

Geforce GTX 200 Architecture Review

2008-08-05T21:17:00.001-07:00

XBitLabs has put up an architecture review of the new Geforce GTX 200 series. Take a peek at what they have to say!

New Nvidia chip codenamed G200 was supposed to top the traditional approach to GPU design: the most complex, the most expensive, the most powerful and of course the fastest of all. Everything was at stake here: the company didn’t stop at anything trying to prove to the world who the real king of consumer 3D graphics was.

To read the full article, click here.

BFG 9800 GX2 Review

2008-08-05T21:13:00.001-07:00

TheTechLounge has reviewed the BFG 9800 GX2 1GB version.

It would be very, very hard not to covet this video card. I know I recently said that the 9800 GTX was the sexy card, but this one might actually look nicer, eye of the beholder and all. And it's not just skin-deep, this card is faaast, and because of that, we can overlook its frightening heat production and power consumption.

To read the full review, click here.

Gigabyte HD 4850 Review

2008-08-05T21:09:00.001-07:00

Overclockersclub has posted a review of the new Gigabyte HD 4850.

The Gigabyte HD 4850 is just your average Radeon HD 4850 with the exception of its overclocking headroom. The card performed almost exactly the same as the competing 4850. When I overclocked the card, I wasn't expecting it to go far since the temperatures were quite high as it was (the card was idle at 70 degrees Celsius!), but this Gigabyte 4850 still pumped out some pretty good clock speeds. I was able to raise the core GPU clock of 625MHz up to 675MHz and the memory from 990MHz to 1075MHz, but I couldn't go any further due to temperatures because they were approaching almost 90 degrees Celsius! With an aftermarket heatsink and fan, I have no doubt in my mind that this card can be pushed even more because it's hard to overclock with a video card that idles at 70C without any aftermarket parts. However, a 50MHz increase on the GPU clock speed is good headroom if you ask me. If you look back at our first 4850 review, you'll notice that this Gigabyte HD 4850 was overclocked twice as much as that card.

To read the full review, click here.

Galaxy silent heat pipe 9600 GT review

2008-08-05T20:26:00.001-07:00

Guru3D has reviewed the new Galaxy silent heat pipe 9600 GT. If you are looking for a completely noiseless budget gaming card, this is it!

Galaxy's GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Silent heatpipe graphics card is once again a fine product to own. I like the somewhat customized design and I definitely am charmed by the cooler. Even on a hot day, it performed good enough in our test-environment. You however will need decent airflow inside that PC of yours to get that residual heat from the innards of your PC and you need to remember that the cooler is pretty bulky. Bulky or not, it will only eat up one slot, as the big heatink was placed on the rear-side of the card, in some cases at that position a x1 PCIe slot is located but not really a big deal. Pretty clever really, it has Galaxy written all over it as they really do think about these things.

To read the full review, click here.

Best video cards for money, August 2008

2008-08-05T13:17:00.001-07:00

TomsHardware have posted their best picks for the month of August, 2008.

They include,

PCI Express Interface: $0 To $130

PCI Express Interface: $150 To $300

PCI Express Interface: $350 To $400

Best Gaming Graphics Cards For The Money: AGP Interface

Yup, those people still running on AGP cards can also have a go at this.

To read the full article click here.

PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2 GB GDDR3 Reviewed

2008-07-31T23:31:00.001-07:00

Guru3D has reviewed this new baby from PowerColor. At a price of $249, its one hell of a sweet deal.

So overall this product is performing roughly equal to the reference Radeon HD 4850. The big gain you'll get from the product is actually it's cooling. The included zeroTHERM cooler slapped on top of that GPU really does it's job nicely. Where the reference products scare me a little with the high peak temperatures the idle and load temperatures of this product are just extremely nice.

Quadrupling the memory size towards 2 GB luckily didn't mean quadrupling the price, though at roughly 249 USD / 169 EUR it is a couple of tenners more expensive than the regular product yet also close to the HD 4870. Overall we certainly can recommend the PowerColor 4850 2GB, yet place a big question marker on the fact whether you ever use the on-board 2 GB framebuffer.

To read the full review, click here.

Galaxy Geforce 9500GT Review

2008-07-31T03:16:00.001-07:00

Guru3D has reviewed the new Geforce 9500GT. The card costs under a 100 dollars and is aimed at the budget market.

With this product Galaxy definitely set a new standard in the budget range of products though. Never have I seen a product in this price-category so pimped up. Excellent clocks, good overclockability, sound and excellent PCB design. Heck they even slapped a custom cooler on top of the product. The end-result is an extraordinary performing and looking product, within it's defined product category. Props to Galaxy for doing so.

Force3D to offer Accelero cooled Radeon 4850 4870

2008-07-31T03:12:00.001-07:00

Force3D has announced that they will be using coolers by Arctic Cooling called the Accelero Twin Turbo.

Force3D to offer Accelero cooled Radeon 4850 4870

HIS Radeon HD 4850 ICEQ4 Pixelated

2008-07-31T03:09:00.001-07:00

Guru3D reports,

HIS has been working on a new cooler for the pretty hot Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 products.

They further add that,

HIS expects the products to the market in August. Would be great to see some custom 3rd party cooled Radeon HD 4000 series products. This by the way is the Radeon HD 4850.

HIS Radeon HD 4850 ICEQ4 Pixelated

13 Years of NVIDIA

2008-07-30T06:51:00.001-07:00

Tomshardware has an interesting article about the 13 years of NVIDIA which had it's ups and downs. The article details all the company's offerings from the NV1 to the latest G90 GPUs. If you are an NVIDIA buff, you should definitely check out this article.

Leadtek WinFast PX9600 GSO Extreme 384MB

2008-07-28T12:06:00.001-07:00

This new baby from Leadtek packs quite a punch for a low price.

Tweaktown reviewed it and had the following conclusions,

While the bundle was clearly on the lighter side of things, the cooler of choice and overall performance on offer here from the 9600 GSO Extreme is excellent. If you find yourself wanting a quick 9600 GSO that performs pretty much like a 9600GT; sometimes better, sometimes slightly worse, for the same price and with better noise levels and temperatures, this card is great.

To read the full 18 page review, click here.

EVGA Geforce 260 reviewed

2008-07-28T12:01:00.001-07:00

Ocia.net have just reviewed the new EVGA Geforce 260 graphics card.

Here is what they have to say about the card,

I have nothing but good things to say about EVGA. Their customer service folks are top notch and a pleasure to deal with, and their Step-Up program is just one of many benefits they offer to their buyers. Another is lifetime warranty, as long as you register your product through their online website. This is my second EVGA card, my original 8800GTS I used as trade-in for the GTX 260, and both worked flawlessly as long as I've owned them. While there was no game bundled with the plain-jane Step-Up card, many retail versions include one. As far as the rest of the bundle, all the required adapters and software are present and the inclusion of the overclocking Precision utility is a welcome addition.

To read the full review, click here.

HIS Radeon HD 3650 Review

2008-07-26T03:55:00.001-07:00

Motherboards.org have reviewed HIS Radeon HD 3650.

The release of the HD4xxx series cards in the upcoming weeks means that ATI will have released their next generation card series. The 4850 is being released at a price point of $199, but nothing has been said about the mainstream version of that card that corresponds to the HD3650 being reviewed here. HD3650 fits into the $70-100 price range making it a mainstream choice for the consumer. The HIS card is an excellent example of the HD3650 as it has a high clock speed, good over-clock-ability, and the very high performance IceQ cooling system to keep the graphics chip cool even under load. The next few weeks should be interesting as new cards like the HD4850 and GTX260 reach the market, perhaps driving the prices of the higher performing cards like the HD3870 and 8800GT into this market.

To read the full review click here.