High End Computer Parts And News

New Nvidia Beta Driver Plus Tomb Raider PC Update Helps Performance

2013-03-16T09:19:00.001-04:00

update for those players on PC for their recent reboot title Tomb Raider, aimed at fixing various bugs and crashes but also notably the memory costs for TressFX.

The new hair setting was previously quite taxing on even the most high-end systems, causing large framerate drops when turned on. The new update has now lowered the amount of memory costing for the realistic hair but also increased simulation and graphical qualities.

We have just made public a new version of the PC version of Tomb Raider, build 1.0.722.3. This patch will be applied by Steam automatically when you next start the game. If your game does not update, please restart the Steam client.

In addition to multiple PC specific fixes this patch brings all the fixes available in the 1.02 console patch to the PC as well, but note that the majority of those was already included in the originally released PC game or version 718.4.

Among the new changes are also fixes to Nvidia graphics card users who found the title more taxing then AMD users. A new driver has been released that coincides with the Tomb Raider patch, with hopes in increasing performance among several GeForce GPUs.

We’ve been working closely with NVIDIA to address the issues experienced by some Tomb Raider players. In conjunction with this patch, NVIDIA will be releasing updated drivers that help to improve stability and performance of Tomb Raider on NVIDIA GeForce GPUs. We are continuing to work together to resolve any remaining outstanding issues. We recommend that GeForce users update to the latest GeForce 314.21 drivers (posting today) for the best experience in Tomb Raider

GTX Titan, GTX 680, and Radeon 7970 go head-to-head at 5760×1080

2013-03-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

The cost, however, is trending downwards, particularly if you’re willing to use a set of smaller displays. Viewsonic’s VX2260s is on sale at Newegg for $149.99. It’s a 22-inch 1920×1080 display with DVI and DP support. The productivity improvements from a dual display are very real, and while 3x monitors are only a boost if you work with multiple full-screen programs simultaneously, the additional cost is smaller if you’re looking to build a dual-monitor workstation to begin with. Websites like the Wide Screen Gaming Forum.There are also third-party programs like Widescreen Fixer and Flawless Widescreen that fix support in a range of titles

by joel hruska

Former AMD Chief’s Book Describes Fight Against Intel

2013-02-16T12:38:00.002-05:00

Advanced Micro Devices AMD for years accused Intel of illegal tactics in the market for microprocessor chips, a dispute that many people may have forgotten. Hector Ruiz wants the story remembered.

The former AMD chief has written a book that memorializes his bet-the-company decision in 2005 to file an antitrust case against its much larger rival, a volume of roughly 200 pages that comes with heavy doses of David versus Goliath imagery. It’s called “Slingshot,” and subtitled “AMD’s Fight To Free An Industry From The Ruthless Grip Of Intel.”

Intel never admitted wrong-doing, either in the suit brought by AMD or in other antitrust cases or investigations pursued by multiple government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission. It did pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of a 2009 settlement, after Ruiz had left the company.

“We don’t believe that we violated any law and consumers benefited from our business practices,” said Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman.

Ruiz, who hails from a small town in Mexico, elaborates on his humble upbringing as well as advice and lessons learned from relatives and teachers. Despite early difficulties mastering English, he did well in Texas schools–including a doctorate from Rice University. He worked at Texas Instruments TXN -0.61%and Motorola Inc. MSI +0.51%before joining AMD in 2000.

Much of the book deals with why Ruiz took the risk of attacking Intel in court, an effort called Project Slingshot. The companies had legal battles as early as the 1980s, but the conflict in the last decade came after AMD introduced a particularly strong lineup of chips but failed to gain as much market share as expected. The book cites multiple examples of big U.S. and Asian PC makers getting excited about using AMD’s products, only to back away or reduce their commitments under what Ruiz describes as Intel financial inducements or threats.

The examples, and quotations from internal company emails, may seem familiar to those who followed the various legal documents released by AMD, the FTC, the state of New York and antitrust regulators in Europe, Japan and South Korea. But the book adds details on how Ruiz and other AMD executives developed their legal strategies.

There are also insights into other developments during Ruiz’s tenure. “Slingshot,” for example, states that Nvidia NVDA +0.01%had been AMD’s first preference to buy to add graphics-chip expertise, a possibility Ruiz says foundered on high price and the requirement that Nvidia’s chief take over leadership of AMD. (An Nvidia spokesman declined comment). AMD eventually purchased ATI Technologies.

Other details concern AMD’s negotiations for financial help from Abu Dhabi, an effort that stalled until some helpful match-making by a member of the Ferrari sports car family (Investors in the oil-rich country had purchased a stake in Ferrari, and AMD had sponsored one of its race cars).

The introduction helped lead to a meeting with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and lengthy negotiations with others there, aimed at spinning off AMD’s manufacturing operations and making the country a new force in global chip production. It also led to what Ruiz says was one of the most difficult moments in his career; he decided he had to join the manufacturing company to reassure the investors about his commitment.don clark

Windows 8 Is Not Catching On

2013-02-05T22:14:00.001-05:00

Windows 8 is having a hard time exciting the masses .many people shopping for a new PC just want the familiarity of Windows 7.
Pay a visit to Best Buy, and you'll find that if you hope to stick with Windows 7, you may be in for a rude awakening. "We don't carry Windows 7 anymore. It was phased out last year," a blue-shirted salesperson told us at a Dedham, Massachusetts, store.
That may be true at the Best Buy we visited, but when it comes to the availability of Windows 7 PCs, you still have options. You just need to know where to look.

Windows 7: Alive but fading

It's true that new Windows 7 PC options are vanishing to make room for Windows 8 machines. Net Applications reports that in January, for the first time since Windows 7 went on sale, the operating system lost market share. But there's no need to panic quite yet if you want a new PC that runs the older OS. Microsoft claims that its plans for ending the sale of PCs preinstalled with Windows 7 are "to be determined." However, the company does say that it will end mainstream support for Windows 7 in January 2015.

Way back in 2010, Microsoft shed light on what its commitment to support past Windows operating systems was going to be. "We are confirming our current policy of allowing retailers to sell the boxed version of the previous OS for up to one year after release of a new OS, and that OEMs can sell PCs with the previous OS pre-loaded for up to 2 years after the launch date of the new OS," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc on a company blog.

If this policy first stated in 2010 holds true, it means that retailers can sell boxed copies of Windows 7 until October 26, 2013, and that Dell, HP, and Lenovo can sell Windows 7 PCs until October 2014.tom spring

2013-02-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

AMD has decided to drop the ATi brand name after long consideration. The “AMD” and “Radeon” brands will remain, but the ATi part will be removed from future Radeon cards. Part of the decision was influenced by AMD’s move to integrate AMD CPU and graphics technology onto the same chip, similar to Intel’s Core i3 processors. According to thetechreport.com, the AMD Ontario will combine two Bobcat cores with Radeon graphics and the more powerful Llano will bring a quad-core Phenom II with a GPU that also does it justice.

AMD acquired ATi in 2006 after it operated for over 20 years as an independant and renowned graphics card manufacturer. You can read more ATi and the upcoming 6000-series of Radeon graphics.by ben biggs

GeForce GTX 660 Graphics Cards

2013-02-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

Performance

3DMark 2011

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

The resource-consuming Metro 2033 shows no difference between the pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 660s and the reference sample from Nvidia. The more expensive GeForce GTX 660 Ti isn’t much different, either. But the two GeForce GTX 660s in SLI mode sport a 90% performance growth and enjoy a 40% advantage over the GeForce GTX 680.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai

The four GeForce GTX 660s deliver similar performance in Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai. As opposed to Metro 2033, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti enjoys a larger advantage whereas the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 are the fastest single-GPU cards in this test. The SLI tandem built out of two GeForce GTX 660s is impressive again, beating the single such card by 85 to 90% and the GeForce GTX 680 by 27% in either graphics quality mode.

Crysis 2

The three original GeForce GTX 660s and the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti have a low bottom frame rate although the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 is better in this respect. The GTX 660 tandem improves the average frame rate by 83 to 84%, but its bottom speed remains as low as that of the single card. Same-class GeForce and Radeon products are comparable to each other in this test.

Battlefield 3

This game shows the same picture as the previous tests.

Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark

The AMD-based solutions are preferable in this test whereas the four GeForce GTX 660s don’t differ at all. The GeForce GTX 660 tandem is good in terms of average frame rate (90% higher compared to the single card) but fails in terms of bottom speed. Indeed, this benchmark was jerky, especially in the high-quality graphics mode with antialiasing.

Sleeping Dogs

The four GeForce GTX 660s are also close to each other in Sleeping Dogs. And they are all inferior to the Radeon HD 7870. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is 13 to 19% ahead of the GTX 660s, depending on the graphics quality settings, and there’s the same gap between it and the faster GeForce GTX 680. It is the GeForce GTX 660 tandem that’s the fastest solution again. Its bottom speed is okay, unlike in the previous test.

F1 2012

F1 2012 is the only game in this test session where the 2-way GeForce GTX 660 SLI doesn’t work very well. With antialiasing turned off, its performance growth is so small that the two GTX 660s cannot beat the single GeForce GTX 680 although they easily did that before. With 8x MSAA enabled, the SLI mode cannot be activated at all, making the SLI tandem somewhat slower in comparison with the single such card.

Hitman: Absolution

Conclusion

The GeForce GTX 660s from EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI have turned out to be very much alike to each other. We can’t name a clear winner or loser among them. Being pre-overclocked, they all deliver similar performance, beating the reference GeForce GTX 660 by 4 to 5%. The MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr III is close to the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ultra Durable in terms of GPU temperature while the original. of the hotter EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 copes well, too, especially as the EVGA has the highest GPU clock rate. When their fans are regulated automatically, they produce about the same amount of noise, even subjectively. Added to this are reference PCBs with some exclusive features, the same amount and clock rate of onboard graphics memory, identical overclocking potential, and scanty accessories.Moreover, they all cost the same amount of money, so we can’t really choose the best card of the three - EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ultra Durable and MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr III.xbit.com sergey lepilov

GeForce Titan Might Outperform GTX 690

2013-01-31T23:45:00.002-05:00

GeForce Titan might actually exceed the performance of the GTX 690.
Nvidia's GeForce Titan will be based on the GK110 GPU, a GPU previously only found on Nvidia's Tesla cards, the K20 and K20X.

The rumors haven't been verified since PCOnline has not named their source, but claim that it is a reliable source. Their source says that the GeForce Titan scores X7107 points in 3DMark11, in extreme mode, a massive jump above the GTX 690. The GTX 690 alone already scores just shy from X6000 points with the same benchmark under the same conditions. The most staggering part though is that the Titan, a single GPU part, outperforms the GTX 690, a dual-GPU part.

reports suggest that the upcoming GeForce Titan will also not be called the GeForce GTX 780, nor will it take a GTX 600 series name. It will simply be called the GeForce Titan, likely inspired by the by the Cray Titan supercomputer, which houses nearly 19 thousand Nvidia Tesla K20X cards.
Availability is rumored to be around the end of February with a hefty MSRP of $899.toms hardware

AMD Radeon HD 8950 Listed in Catalyst 13.1

2013-01-26T13:05:00.000-05:00

ATIR300=”WDDM (R300)”
AMD68B8.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series”
AMD6898.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series”
AMD6798.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series”
AMD6818.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8800 Series (OEM)”
AMD679A.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8900 Series (OEM)”
AMD68F9.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6350″
AMD683D.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8760″
AMD68F9.2 = “ATI Radeon HD 5450″
AMD68F9.3 = “AMD Radeon HD 6350″
AMD683D.2 = “AMD Radeon HD 8760″
AMD689C.1 = “ASUS ARES”
…
AMD6778.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8470″
AMD679A.2 = “AMD Radeon HD 8950″

But wait, there’s more, which is surely an indicator — AMD Radeon HD 8950. The puzzling part is that we are not sure yet, whether this is a reference to a rebranded Radeon HD 7950 for OEMs or something special. Charlie at SemiAccurate made a post where he claims to have a ‘picture of HD 8950′.Some say it’s just a screen grab of Catalyst Control Center with some basic information about HD 8950. Most probably it’s just nothing worth 50 bucks.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding the Radeon HD 8000 story, which started this year. As I said in my previous post, there’s are two very important questions. The first one: how will the new Radeon flagships be called? And the second one: when are we going to see these cards? This new ‘addition’ to the drivers might give some clarity and hope for the latter question. As for the first one, you can clearly see that the filenames of the official datasheets of recently announced OEM cards like HD 8950 are missing an OEM part. Like there is no chance of preparing the same files for OEM market, since it would require overwriting. So is there a Radeon HD 8960 coming along with HD 8980? videocardz.com

HIS HD 7970 IceQ X2 HD 7950 IceQ X2 Review

2013-01-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

GPU architectures age gracefully, board partners have gone through the process of releasing many overclocked, custom cooled cards with upgraded components which enhance their appeal for overclockers and gamers alike. Amongst all of these new and improved versions of current graphics technology, a few stood out to us. Among them was HIS’s new IceQ X² series which updates the original IceQ heatsink design with additional thermal capacity and a completely revised fan design.

Battlefield 3 (DX11)

we used a sequence from the Rock and Hard Place mission. The results may seem lower than normal and this is due to the fact that after playing through the game multiple times, this one are was found to be the most demanding on the GPU. As with all of the tests, we try to find a worst case scenario in order to ensure a given card can properly play through the whole game instead of just a “typical” section.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

Crysis 2 (DX11)

Crysis 2 with the DX11 and Texture Package installed not only looks great but it is a strain on any GPU. For this benchmark, we used a classic runthrough which includes far views, explosions, combat and close-in knifing; basically every hallmark of gameplay.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

Metro 2033 (DX11)

For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

uniqueness usually garners a great amount of interest but it rarely sells graphics cards. The reason behind this is quite simple: gamers may love looking at the newest Matrix, Classified, Lightning or Super Overclock card but they can rarely afford such an expensive upgrade. So while there may be very little to differentiate the HIS HD 7970 IceQ X² and HD 7970 IceQ X² from their immediate competition due to a true lack of game changing features, there’s still plenty to like.

Without taking any risks or building additional cost into their IceQ X², HIS was still able to release a pair of highly appealing products. They accomplished this by combining a top notch heatsink and great overclocking abilities with decent software by way of the new iTurbo application. The result is a pair of cards which overclock extremely well without a substantial increase in fan noise or heat.

While we actually achieved some reasonably high clock speeds sans voltage changes, HIS’ iTurbo application was more than willing to take things to the next level. With slight modifications to the core and memory voltages, the HD 7970 IceQ X² and HD 7970 IceQ X² were really able to fly.by skymtl harware canucks

Netgear R6300 router review

2013-01-04T01:35:00.000-05:00

R6300 looks very different from Netgear's other routers, including the previous top-shelf WNDR-4500. The R6300 has a broad face that reclines back on its base, whereas the routers in Netgear's WNDR line stand straight up and present a narrow profile to the user. Both have internal antennas, and neither can be wall-mounted. The glossy black plastic enclosure is a fingerprint magnet, so you'll want to avoid handling it once you've set it up. The R6300 is a concurrent dual-band 802.11n/802.11ac model, delivering three spatial streams on the 2.4GHz frequency band with maximum theoretical throughput of 450 megabits per second, and another three spatial streams with maximum theoretical throughput of 1.3 gigabits per second on the 5GHz frequency band.
Netgear isn't manufacturing a media bridge; instead, the company recommends that consumers obtain two R6300 routers and configure one as a wireless bridge. That's what I did for this review. The R6300 comes with two USB 2.0 ports to support sharing a network-attached USB storage device and a USB printer simultaneously. I didn't test printer sharing, but the router turned in a solid performance on the storage front.
The R6300 doesn't offer quite as many features as Asus's 802.11ac router. It comes with a DLNA-certified media server, built-in Samba and ftp servers, and parental controls via OpenDNS (much like the D-Link DIR-865L); but it lacks an iTunes server or VPN pass-through. Like the RT-AC66U, the R6300 does provide guest networks on both bands (Buffalo's WZR-D1800H doesn't provide a guest network at all).

Benchmarking 5GHz 802.11ac performance

I used an AVADirect laptop equipped with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, 4GB of memory, and an integrated Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter to run my benchmark tests. The Ultimate-N 6300 can send and receive three simultaneous 150-mbps spatial streams (450 mbps in total); most adapters are limited to handling two (300 mbps in total). This was all the streaming I needed to evaluate the Netgear's 802.11n performance (on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands). To measure the router's 802.11ac performance on the 5GHz frequency band, I configured a second R6300 as a wireless bridge and connected it to the AVADirect's ethernet port.
To test the router, I positioned the client successively at five spots inside and outside a 2800-square-foot, ranch-style home (distances from the router are noted in each chart below). I used the open-source IPERF benchmark (and the JPERF Java graphical front end designed for it). To measure the router's downlink TCP throughput, I set up the laptop as a server and used a desktop PC hard-wired to the router as the client.
The R6300 finished in first or second place in most of my test locations, and it delivered impressive wireless TCP throughput of 473 mbps in the bedroom, where the client is in the same room, just 9 feet from the router.

The Netgear router's performance dropped slightly, to 432 mbps, when I moved the client and bridge to the kitchen, which is 20 feet from the router and separated by one wall. The Asus RT-AC66U performed better in this location than it did in the bedroom, and captured first place on this measure.

The next two benchmark runs took place inside my home theater. This is a room-within-a-room design, with four walls of 2-by-4 framing and drywall inside four walls of 2-by-6 framing and drywall, with about 6 inches of dead air and fiberglass insulation separating them. My intent was to optimize the room's acoustics, not to build a Faraday cage, but many lesser routers and other wireless devices have had trouble penetrating it. However, none of the 802.11ac routers I tested had any difficulty reaching the client in this room. The R6300 managed to perform just a wee bit better than the Asus RT-N66U and the D-Link DIR-685L to earn a first-place finish here.

Since many people will want to connect the gear in their home entertainment system to an 802.11ac network, I decided to measure TCP throughput with the wireless bridge inside the built-in equipment cabinet in my home theater (the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall cabinet is constructed from cabinet-grade plywood, including the back). The R6300 took a much bigger hit in TCP throughput performance at this location than did the other two routers I just mentioned, with wireless TCP throughput dropping down to 129 mbps. I suspect that the orientation of the wireless bridge is responsible for this. When it was sitting on the coffee table in this room, it obliquely faced the router. When it was in the cabinet, it was perpendicular to the router. Still, the R6300 delivered enough bandwidth to allow me to wirelessly mount and stream a Blu-ray ISO image of the movie Spiderman 3 from a Windows Home Server 2011 machine in my home office to a home-theater PC in that entertainment center, including the movie's high-definition multichannel soundtrack.

The R6300's performance bounced back when I moved the client and the media bridge to the first of my two outdoor test locations, an exterior patio enclosed by three walls and one half wall with glass windows. The signal from the router travels a more direct path to this location, even though it must pass through two insulated walls. In the real world, I doubt that anyone would try to set up a media bridge outdoors because dragging the bridge and finding an outlet (and likely an extension cord) are too inconvenient. The R6300 performed slightly better here than it did in the kitchen, delivering wireless throughput of 435 mbps for a first-place finish at this location.

TCP throughput dropped to 122 mbps when I moved the client and bridge to my second outdoor test location, a picnic table 75 feet from the router with four insulated walls in between. That data transfer rate was only good enough for a third-place finish on this measure, but achieving such high throughput that at so distant a range is pretty amazing. Most 802.11n routers operating on the 5GHz frequency band can't reach the client at all here

Benchmarking 2.4GHz 802.11n performance

The R6300 delivered a middle-of-the-road performance on the 2.4GHz frequency band, but it was twice as fast as D-Link's DIR-685L when I moved the client to the farthest test distance from the router. Both devices can deliver perfectly acceptable performance for Web browsing here, but the Netgear is much quicker when transferring files across the network.
Netgear's R6300 lagged slightly behind the rest of the field with the client hardwired to its four-port gigabit switch, but the difference was negligible.

To evaluate the R6300's performance as a network-attached storage device, I connected a 500GB Western Digital My Passport USB drive to one of the router's USB ports. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took the unit to copy a few files from a PC to the drive over the network (a write test), and then I copied a few files from the USB drive to the networked PC over the network (a read test). The PC was hardwired to the network.
I created a large-file test by ripping a DVD (Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk to Dawn) to the PC's hard drive. Copying this 4.29GB file from the PC to the portable hard drive required slightly more than 6 minutes, while reading it from the drive required a little less than 7 minutes. These scores put the R6300 in the middle of the pack on this benchmark. I couldn't test the Buffalo WZR-D1800H on this measure, because that router recognizes only drives formatted in FAT32 or XFS.

Unless you rip a lot of movies from DVD or Blu-ray discs, you'll rarely move a single large file to a hard drive attached to your router. A more common task is to move batches of small files back and forth across your network. To evaluate each router's performance in this scenario, I created a single folder containing 595MB of small files (subfolders containing music, graphics, photos, documents, spreadsheets, and so on).
The Netgear R6300 was very quick at writing this batch of small files to and reading them back from the attached USB disk drive, performing each tasking in about 1 minute, as the charts below indicate.

Bottom line

In the competition for the title of best 802.11ac router on the market today, Netgear's R6300 finishes a very close second to the Asus RT-AC66U. It's not quite as fast as the Asus in most benchmarks, and it doesn't offer as many features as the Asus does. The performance gaps, however, are not huge.
The one area where Netgear has a leg up on Asus is in apps. Install Netgear's Genie app on your smartphone, and you can use it to monitor and manage your network. Asus was getting ready to launch their AiCloud service as I was wrapping up these reviews, however, so Netgear's advantage may be short-lived. And Netgear will never be able to overcome the RT-AC66U's removable, upgradable antennas.by michael brown pc world

NVIDIA GTX 780 COMING IN MARCH 2013?

2012-12-31T01:40:00.000-05:00

The GTX 700 series will come by March 2013 Source say at the earliest and will offer around 25-30% better performance and power efficiency as the 28nm process is refined. The legendary GK110 part that is speculated about so much is expected to remain in the non-consumer realm only – in the Tesla K20 and Quadro K6000 cards
.
AMD’s Sea Islands aka HD 8000 will probably debut slightly earlier than Nvidia’s GTX 700 series but they will be having the same process yield problems as Nvidia.

GeForce 310.64 Beta Drivers: An Essential For Far Cry 3

2012-12-01T15:01:00.001-05:00

nVidia released the new set of beta drivers for their GeForce cards, which contain substantial improvements to help prepare for Far Cry 3.

The new beta drivers contain all the same improvements that 310.54 and 310.61 beta drivers had, the new set optimizes performance in preparation for Far Cry 3′s release in North America.
Release notes indicate a performance boost of up to 38% in Far Cry 3 using a GeForce GTX 680 and up to 6% using a GeForce GTX 660.

Along with this are the optimizations added previously for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed II, and some updates to the nVidia 3D Vision profiles to a handful of games, notably 007 Legends, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. In their release, nVidia has also stated that they are actively working on fixing issues that have been reported in games such as Battlefield 3 and Assassin’s Creed III.

Far Cry 3 was released today in Europe but doesn’t hit shelves in North America until Tuesday, but nVidia is keeping up-to-date and constantly testing to ensure that the release goes over smoothly for PC gamers, and that GeForce cards can efficiently handle such a performance-driven game.by omegaphoenix

NVIDIA Releases New 310.54 Driver, Up to 16% Performance Improvement

2012-11-13T15:38:00.000-05:00

NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate by offering their GeForce customers something similar. While the primary focus of their new 310.54 drivers are to offer optimal release-day performance and DX11 optimizations for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III, there are some additional benefits included as well. According to the driver’s release notes, many games will see up to 16% better framerates even though the lion’s share of improvements are reserved for the aforementioned big-name titles.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III are likely going to be two of this holiday season’s hottest titles and NVIDIA worked with both game’s developers to include TXAA support. This should lead to high quality anti-aliasing without a significant framerate reduction. Additional optimizations for these titles are included within the 310.54 driver as well, allowing for an approximate 26% framerate increase over the WHQL version currently posted on NVIDIA’s download page. If you have an NVIDIA card and will be buying Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or Assassin’s Creed III, be sure to install this driver.

Source: GeForce.com

Alongside the aforementioned items, NVIDIA has added an automatic LOD bias for SGSSAA which can be applied through NVIDIA’s Inspector tool. The passage below is from a GeForce.com post which details the changes to this ultra-high quality AA routine:
Several years ago Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing was added to the GeForce drivers as an advanced anti-aliasing option for those with high-end systems. When enabled and correctly configured, SGSSAA significantly increases the quality of Multisample Anti-Aliasing, helping remove aliasing that even 8xMSAA struggles with.
Configuring SGSSAA to reach this level of detail can at times be tricky due to the need to counteract texture blurring that occurs when using the technique. With a Negative LOD Bias, applied via NVIDIA Inspector, texture quality can be restored, but unfortunately the correct value can only be ascertained through trial and error.
Following repeated calls from users for a solution, we silently introduced an automatic LOD Bias feature in last month’s 310.33 beta driver, which we’re pleased to officially announce today. Now, users need only enable Sparse Grid Supersampling in the profile of a compatible game in NVIDIA Inspector, and the new feature will do the rest.
NVIDIA continues their work on improving multi card scaling and the 310.54 stack adds SLI profiles for Hitman: Absolution, Hawken, Natural Selection 2 and Primal Carnage.by skymtl

Danger Den to Close its Doors, Cuts Prices by 75%

2012-11-05T14:20:00.002-05:00

After being in the business of supplying PC enthusiasts for over a decade, water cooling product manufacturer Danger Den is in the process of closing its doors and winding down operations.
Long thought of as a pioneer in the water cooling business, Danger Den has announced that its time as a leading manufacturer of everything from CPU blocks to reservoirs to PC cases is coming to an abrupt end. It looks like the viability of supplying and developing new products for an ever-shrinking market was no longer financially viable.

In a short post on their site, Dan, Jeremy, Dennis and Rokk announced their decision:
“After 12 years our hobby has come to an end. It’s time to pursue other interests and Danger Den will be closing its doors. Thank you for all your support over the years, we’ve enjoyed being part of your modding community.”

To many, this will be a particularly sad day as Danger Den was always thought of as one of as a major player within the water cooling niche. They have been around since the dawn of liquid cooling and their products were well received by enthusiasts all over the world.

In order to get rid of in-stock merchandise, their online store is offering 75% off every single item until Monday. At this time, there isn’t much left but this could be an opportunity for some people to stock up on parts that won’t be available anymore.by skymtl

I Pad Mini Hands On

2012-11-03T15:06:00.001-04:00

We just spent a good amount of time with the iPad mini and the easiest way to describe the device is that it's lighter than you'd expect. The build quality and finish both feel good as you'd expect, but the device is just considerably lighter than the iPad which results in superior in hand feel.
The display doesn't feel cramped either thanks to the reasonably large diagonal size. It's clear that the iPad mini is a nod to those who want something even more portable than the standard iPad.
In terms of performance, there's a pretty noticeable difference between the A5 in the iPad mini and the A6X in the 4th gen iPad as you'd expect. I do wish that Apple had brought the A6 to the mini, however something has to give in pursuit of the lower price point.

The LTE version of the iPad mini has an RF window at the top of the unit similar to the standard iPad, although it does blend in a bit better on the black model. by lai shimpi

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October

2012-11-02T23:24:00.000-04:00

Since our last monthly update, Nvidia launched three new graphics cards: the GeForce GTX 650, 650 Ti, and 660.

The GeForce GTX 650 is essentially a GeForce GT 640 with a higher-clocked 1058 MHz core and 1250 MHz GDDR5 (instead of 891 MHz DDR3 memory). That increased memory bandwidth immediately uncorks this card's performance, putting it head-to-head against the Radeon HD 7750. A $120 price point sounds about right until you hop online and see AMD's Radeon HD 7750 selling for $105. The notably faster Radeon HD 7770 goes for $125. After a series of price drops from AMD, the GeForce GTX 650 needs to get closer to $105 before it's really competitive.

Next, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is built around the same GK106 GPU found on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660, but with a single GPC cluster disabled. The result is a processor with 768 shaders, 64 texture units, and two ROP partitions capable of 16 raster operations per clock. The card's core operates at 925 MHz, and its GDDR5 memory runs at 1350 MHz. All told, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti outperforms AMD's Radeon HD 6850 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460, nearly reaching the same performance levels as the GeForce GTX 560 and Radeon HD 6870. Unfortunately, a rather narrow 128-bit memory interface hampers frame rates at higher resolutions with MSAA enabled. Nevertheless, GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the highest-performing $150 card on the market
.
You might think that this fact alone would earn the GeForce GTX 650 Ti an easy recommendation. But AMD's counter-strike cannot be ignored. A discounted 1 GB version of the Radeon HD 7850 for $170. The 650 Ti is quite a bit slower, and saving $20 doesn't make up the difference. Nvidia's other issue is that street prices on the GeForce GTX 650 Ti are notably higher than $155. We'd want to see wider availability in the $140 to $150 range for this new card to earn more than an honorable mention.
Finally, the GeForce GTX 660 employs an uncut version of the same GK106 processor, giving it 960 cores, 80 texture units, and three ROP partitions. It sports a 980 MHz core clock rate and 1502 MHz GDDR5 memory on an aggregate 192-bit interface. Selling for $230, it's very attractive next to a $250 Radeon HD 7870. But because it takes a performance hit when MSAA is applied, it shares our recommendation around $240 with AMD's Radeon card.by don woligroski

Nvidia announces GeForce GTX 650 Ti and Assassin's Creed 3 bundles

2012-10-15T12:36:00.002-04:00

PC gamers looking to improve their graphics quality without emptying their wallets can check out graphics cards based on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti available Tuesday at a starting price of $150. The GTX 650 Ti uses the same Kepler architecture found in other GTX cards such as the $380 GTX 670, but at a far lower price point. You could get an even lower price by snapping up the GTX 650, but for about an extra $30 Nvidia says the GTX 650 Ti is up to 40 percent faster than the regular 650. Select versions of the GTX 650 Ti also come with a free copy of Assassin's Creed 3.

Nvidia

Assassin's Creed 3

The reference design for Nvidia's new GTX 650 Ti features a 925 MHz core clock, 768 CUDA cores (double the amount in the GTX 650), and 1 GB of dedicated memory. The card uses one 6-pin PCI Express connector, and offers one HDMI and two dual-link DVI ports. Nvidia says you can expect the GTX 650 Ti to offer performance of about 42 frames per second on Battlefield 3, and around 40 frames per second on Borderlands 2 and similar games, on a 1920 x 1080 display. The GTX 650 Ti can support up to four separate monitors simultaneously depending on the version you purchase.

Nvidia

The reference design is only six inches long and takes up one slot.

Card manufacturers may ship versions of the GTX 650Ti in different configurations. One example is Zotac's ZT-61103-10M, which will include 2GB of frame buffer memory and a DisplayPort connector. Clock speeds of different cards may also vary from one model to the next.

Nvidia

Zotac ZT-61103-10M

The reference design is one slot wide and less than six inches long, so may fit in compact cases. Power consumption is rated at 110 watts, so most PC power supplies should be able to handle the load.
Not every card will be as small as Nvidia's reference design. Gigabyte's GV-N65TOC-2GI will offer dual cooling fans to help cool down an overclocked GPU. Overclocked cards may also draw more power, but power consumption is still low enough to enable them to run in most PC systems with 350W or greater power supplies.

Nvidia

Gigabyte GV-N65TOC-2G

Nvidia is aiming the GTX 650 Ti at users who may be stepping up from older 9600 GT budget cards. At well under $200, the GTX 650 Ti is aimed at price conscious gamers who only upgrade every couple of years, and aren't willing to spend more than $200.
The Assassin's Creed 3 bundle offering won't be offered with every version of the GTX 650 Ti, so you need to check that the card you're buying includes a download coupon for the game. A quick check on Newegg showed versions of the GTX 650 Ti from Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, and Zotac all included the Assassin's Creed 3 bundle. Prices on Newegg started at $155.

Best Gaming CPU: $200 And Up Price Range

2012-09-29T10:13:00.001-04:00

Core i5-3570K
Codename:
Process:	22 nm
CPU Cores/Threads:	4
Clock Speed (Max. Turbo):	3.4 GHz (3.8 GHz)
Socket:	LGA 1155
L2 Cache:	4 x 256 KB
L3 Cache:	6 MB
Thermal Envelope:	77 W

The Core i5-3570K is 300 MHz faster than the Core i5-3450 at stock speeds,The K-series' unlocked ratio multiplier is a must-have for overclockers looking to unleash significant performance improvements. It is for this reason alone that a gamer should shell out the extra $30 over Intel's slower model. After all, the pricier chip's HD Graphics 4000 is hardly relevant when you plan to use a discrete card anyway.
If you don't plan to overclock, then we think that there's little reason to look past the Core i5-3450.
Read our review of the Ivy Bridge-based CPUs
CPUs priced over $230 offer rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to game performance. As such, we have a hard time recommending anything more expensive than the Core i5-3570K, especially since this multiplier-unlocked processor can be overclocked to great effect if more performance is desired.,it meets or beats the $1000 Core i7-990X Extreme Edition when it comes to gaming.

But now that LGA 2011 is here, there's certainly an argument to be made for it as the ultimate gaming platform. LGA 2011-based CPUs have more available cache and as many as two more execution cores than the flagship LGA 1155 models. Additionally, more bandwidth is delivered through a quad-channel memory controller. And with 40 lanes of third-gen PCIe connectivity available from Sandy Bridge-E-based processors, the platform natively supports two x16 and one x8 slot, or one x16 and three x8 slots, alleviating potential bottlenecks in three- and four-way CrossFire or SLI configurations.

Although they sound impressive, those advantages don't necessarily translate into significant performance gains in modern titles. Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $225 LGA 1155 Core i5-2500K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-3960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don't hold back the performance of existing Sandy Bridge-based machines.
Where we do see the potential for Sandy Bridge-E to drive additional performance is in processor-bound games like World of Warcraft or the multiplayer component of Battlefield 3. If you're running a three- or four-way array of graphics cards already, there's a good chance that you already own more than enough rendering muscle. An overclocked Core i7-3960X or -3930K could help the rest of your platform catch up to an insanely powerful arrangement of GPUs.

while we generally recommend against purchasing any gaming CPU that retails for more than $220 from a value point of view (sink that money into graphics and the motherboard instead), there are those of you who have no trouble throwing down serious money on the best of the best, and who require the fastest possible performance available. If this describes your goals, the following CPU is for you:

Best Gaming CPU for $570:
Core i7-3930K

Core i7-3930K
Codename:	Sandy Bridge-E
Process:	32 nm
CPU Cores/Threads:	6/12
Clock Speed (Max. Turbo):	3.2 GHz (3.8 GHz)
Socket:	LGA 2011
L2 Cache:	6x 256 KB
L3 Cache:	12 MB
Thermal Envelope:	130 W

Take the $1000 Core i7-3960X, remove 3 MB of L3 cache, and drop the base clock rate by 100 MHz. What do end up with? Four hundred dollars and change left over, and an Intel Core i7-3930K.
The 100 MHz difference in clock rate is hardly relevant, given unlocked multiplier ratios benefiting both CPUs. And you'd be hard-pressed to quantify the advantage of 15 MB of shared L3 cache over 12 MB. Moreover, a greater-than-$400 savings lets you buy a nice motherboard and cooler, while still getting the same four-channel memory subsystem and 40-lane PCI Express 3.0-capable controller.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB

2012-09-24T22:12:00.002-04:00

Just a month ago, NVIDIA released its GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which was received to rather critical acclaim. Specs-wise, the card isn't too far off from the GTX 670 which costs $100 more. But at $300, the card wasn't exactly "affordable" by all standards. NVIDIA knew it had a duty to finally deliver a mainstream Kepler part as close to $200 as possible, and that's resulted in the $229 non-Ti GTX 660.
The GTX 660 is equipped with 960 cores, vs. 1344 with the Ti. That comparison alone can give us an idea of what to expect here. Well, it would be easy if NVIDIA, in its usual way, didn't give the core clock a nice boost on the non-Ti edition. Lesser cores, but +65MHz to the clock. An interesting move, and not one that anyone will complain about.

Memory density and general architecture layout remain similar between the two cards, although while the 660 Ti is based on the GK104 chip, this non-Ti version uses GK106. Whereas typical GPCs, or Graphics Processing Cluster, have two SMX units per, GK106 splits one right down the middle, as the following diagram shows:

This is an odd design, but won't result in some sort of bottleneck as all SMX modules interface with their respective raster engine rather than each other.
Though this non-Ti edition of the GTX 660 drops the core count quite significantly, its increase in core frequency negates some of the additional power savings we would have seen. For that reason, the non-Ti is rated at 140W, vs. 150W of the Ti.

	Cores	Core MHz	Memory	Mem MHz	Mem Bus	TDP
GeForce GTX 690	3072	915	2x 2048MB	6008	256-bit	300W
GeForce GTX 680	1536	1006	2048MB	6008	256-bit	195W
GeForce GTX 670	1344	915	2048MB	6008	256-bit	170W
GeForce GTX 660 Ti	1344	915	2048MB	6008	192-bit	150W
GeForce GTX 660	960	980	2048MB	6000	192-bit	140W
GeForce GTX 650	384	1058	1024MB	5000	128-bit	64W
GeForce GT 640	384	900	2048MB	5000	128-bit	65W
GeForce GT 630	96	810	1024MB	3200	128-bit	65W
GeForce GT 620	96	700	1024MB	1800	64-bit	49W
GeForce GT 610	48	810	1024MB	1800	64-bit	29W

Alongside the GTX 660, NVIDIA has also launched the GTX 650, although availability at this point is nil. Despite being briefed on both of these cards at the same time, I haven't found a single review online of the GTX 650, so it's to be assumed that NVIDIA isn't rushing that product out too fast, and if I had to guess, it's a card that exists only to finish off the sequential numbering system. Laugh all you want, but imagine the table above without the GTX 650. That'd look rather odd, wouldn't it?
That aside, for NVIDIA to call it the GTX 650 is a bit of an insult to the GTX name. In no possible way does this GPU deserve it - GTX has traditionally represented cards that could more than handle games being run with lots of detail and at current resolutions. "GTX" is certainly suitable for the 660, but how did NVIDIA deem the 650 worthy when it slots just barely in front of the $100 GT 640? Maybe next we'll see Porsche release a 4 cylinder 911 Turbo S.
Rant side, the vendor to provide us with a GTX 660 sample is GIGABYTE. Unfortunately, it's an "OC Version", which means we are unable to deliver baseline GTX 660 results (I am not keen on forcing turbo adjustments). Making matters a bit worse, the OC isn't that minor. Memory remains the same, but the core gets +73MHz tacked on. An OC like this is great for consumers, but tough on reviewers who'd like to compare GPUs fairly.

With all of the launches NVIDIA's done in the past couple of months for Kepler, it was difficult to explore GTX 660 with anything more than minimal enthusiasm. However, from what we've seen throughout all of our testing, the GTX 660 is actually quite an impressive card, and possibly one of the most important to NVIDIA's entire 600 series line-up.
The reason for that boils down to the affordable price-point, and the performance it delivers. A $229 card that can handle a graphically gorgeous game like Battlefield 3 at Ultra detail at 1080p? Do I really need to explain why that's awesome?
Unfortunately, we didn't have a GPU that was directly comparable to this one, so there's really no apples to apples comparison. AMD's Radeon HD 7850 comes closest, at about $200. In that match-up, we saw the GTX 660 consistently perform better than the HD 7850, with the lowest gains being seen in the heavily AMD-favored DiRT: Showdown. Performance increases of 10-20% were not uncommon. In the also AMD-favored SHOGUN 2, the GTX 660 averaged 50% faster.

EVGA GTX 680 SUPERCLOCKED SIGNATURE 2

2012-09-22T22:58:00.000-04:00

we are going to talk about a graphics card which is called EVGA GeForce GTX 80 SC Signature 2:

Interestingly, the official EVGA website says that this product can only be ordered singly. Only one device for one buyer. The company seems to regard this graphics card as something special if they take such a careful approach to its distribution. So, let’s see what secrets are hidden under the name of EVGA GeForce GTX 680 SC Signature 2.

Technical Specifications

The detailed technical specifications of the new EVHA GeForce GTX 680 SC Signature 2 card are summed up in the table below side by side with those of the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 (the differences are marked with bold font):

Performance

3DMark 2011

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

Total War: Shogun 2

Crysis 2

Battlefield 3

Do Graphics Cards Need 4 GB of Memory?

2012-08-12T12:09:00.000-04:00

Putting more memory on a graphics card is often not a real improvement but a marketing trick targeted at inexperienced users. Most often it is employed with entry-level solutions, such as GeForce GT630, which do not need more than 1 gigabyte of onboard memory for any applications they can cope with. However, this doesn’t prevent their manufacturers from installing additional memory, up to a fantastic 4 gigabytes, to make them look more attractive in the buyer’s eyes.

It’s different with top-end solutions such as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680 and 670 and AMD’s Radeon HD 7950 and 7970. The AMD cards have 3 gigabytes of memory by default, which seems to be quite enough, but Nvidia is already criticized for equipping its Kepler-based GeForce series products with only 2 gigabytes of GDDR5 memory. Meanwhile, the GK104 Kepler GPU can actually work with either 2 or 4 GB of memory, according to its specifications, and some manufacturers have used this opportunity. One of them is EVGA whose GeForce GTX 670 4GB Superclocked+ w-Backplate is going to be reviewed in this article.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked with 4 GB of memory is three times as fast as the regular GeForce GTX 670 and twice as fast as the overclocked GeForce GTX 680. That would be perfect if its frame rate were not as low as 14-15 fps, bottoming out to 5-6 fps. Of course, there’s no talking about smooth gameplay at such a low speed. Still, we can note that the double amount of memory does provide some benefits here.

Conclusion

Increasing the amount of memory on board of GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 680 cards translates to obvious performance benefits only in specific unique cases, such as triple-monitor set-ups with 3240x1920 resolution and enabled antialiasing. Metro 2033: The Last Refuge and Sniper Elite V2 are the only games that need more than the standard 2 GB of graphics memory, but the contemporary High-End graphics cards are anyway too slow in these games even with 4 GB of video memory. In the rest of our games we could hardly see any difference between GeForce GTX 670s with 2 and 4 GB of memory in 3240x1920 and no difference at all in 2560x1440. So, purchasing a 4GB card wouldn't be worth the investment unless you've got a triple-monitor configuration. But if you do have one, 4GB graphics cards really make sense for 2-, 3- and 4-way SLI configurations and playing contemporary games at high resolutions.by sergey lepilov

Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 ti Finally Here?

2012-08-06T23:19:00.000-04:00

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Zoom

A Swedish retailer posted a pre-order opportunity of the Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II graphics card a price of just under $400 for this card.

Based on Kepler architecture, the 660 Ti will run on 1,344 cores and integrate 2 GB of GDDR5 memory using a 192-bit memory bus (with 144.2 GB/s bandwidth). The card is nearly identical in its specs to the GTX 670 (which has a 256-bit memory interface with 192.2 GB/s bandwidth), which sells in the $400 neighborhood as well, but we expect the new card to use less power and distance itself in price. The price mentioned on the Swedish site may be a pit premature and optimistic. A $350 target for volume cards seems more realistic to us, but we'll find out soon.by wolfgang gruener

Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 SLI Benchmarks

2012-08-02T09:30:00.000-04:00

Performance

The two semi-synthetic benchmarks and tech demo ran at their default settings in two graphics quality modes.whereas Unigine Heaven doesn't permit to set a resolution higher than 1920x1080 pixels. Anyway, we can still compare our graphics subsystems in these benchmarks.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark 2011

We’ve got the same picture in the newer version of 3DMark, except that the two GTX 690s in 4-way SLI mode enjoy a larger advantage over the single GTX 690.

Unigine Heaven Demo

Unigine Heaven is only capable of getting the best from our graphics subsystems at the highest settings with 8x antialiasing. The standings are the same as in the two versions of 3DMark, though.
Now let’s see what we have in real games.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

There’s nothing extraordinary about these results except that the two Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards are ahead of the single GTX 690.

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

Except for the bottom speed, the two GeForce GTX 690s are just splendid here. No other graphics card or multi-GPU subsystem has ever delivered such a high frame rate in Metro 2033: The Last Refuge.

Just Cause 2

The results of this test are more predictable and easier to explain:

We can see that the single-GPU flagship products from AMD and Nvidia cannot make the game playable with comfort at 3240x1920 pixels, although Just Cause 2 was released over 2 years ago. The CrossFireX and SLI configurations are most appropriate here

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

The overall picture is like in the previous test:

One top-end graphics card wouldn’t be enough if you’ve got as many as three HD monitors. Take note of the high efficiency of the CrossFireX tandem built out of two Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards. At the highest settings it is almost as fast as the two GTX 690s.

Lost Planet 2

The overclocked GeForce GTX 680 is ahead of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition at 2560x1440 but the latter overtakes it when we switch to the multi-monitor configuration, even though the Lost Planet 2 engine is optimized for Nvidia's architecture. There's nothing we can add about the SLI and CrossFireX tandems except that the GTX 690s seem to be limited by the platform's performance at 2560x1440 pixels.

Sid Meier’s Civilization V

If you thought Civilization V a light application, you may want to reconsider after seeing the results of the single top-end graphics cards at the resolution of 3240x1920 pixels: 23 fps with the GTX 690 and 38 fps with the HD 7970 GHz Edition. So, that's where the SLI and CrossFireX tandems are going to come in handy. And we should also note that AMD routs its opponent here.

Total War: Shogun 2

The same goes for this test:

Nvidia is more or less competitive at the classic resolution of 2560x1600 pixels, but AMD’s solutions are unrivalled with our multi-monitor configuration at 3240x1920. Total War: Shogun 2 obviously needs more memory than 2 gigabytes installed on board the GTX 680 and 690 (per each GPU). Coupled with the 256-bit bus, the memory bandwidth slows the fast Kepler GPU down. Alas, this is not the only game in this test session where Nvidia's solutions behave like that.

Crysis 2

Like Metro 2033: The Last Refuge, this game may occasionally slow down very much, but the standings are overall the same as in most other tests. You need at least a single GeForce GTX 690 for the triple-monitor configuration or, better yet, two Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards which have a much higher bottom frame rate.

Hard Reset Demo

Conclusion
Combined into a 4-way SLI configuration, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 cards are indeed overkill for ordinary users who play their games on a single monitor, even a high-resolution one. Well, we couldn't have any doubts about that really. The more surprising outcome of this test session is that such a tandem can indeed be helpful for a triple-monitor setup with a resolution of 3240x1920 pixels because a single GTX 690 wouldn’t cope. Such a high resolution translates into a very high load on the graphics subsystem, especially if you also enable full-screen antialiasing.
But the biggest surprise is that Nvidia isn’t quite ready for that resolution with its Kepler-based graphics cards.by sergey lepilov

Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti Specifications and Launch Date Rumored

2012-07-31T15:57:00.000-04:00

Nvidia set to release its new Kepler-based GTX 660 Ti, replacing the GTX 560 Ti. originally reported that the GTX 660 Ti would not hit the market until Q3, but now all signs point to an August 16th release. Nvidia could be using the upcoming GamesCom event as the stage to release its new card.

Specification	Geforce GTX 660 Ti	Geforce GTX 670
Architecture	Kepler	Kepler
Technology	28 nm	28 nm
GPU	GK104 (?)	GK104
CUDA cores	1344	1344
Base frequency	915 MHz	915 MHz
Boost Frequency	980 MHz	980 MHz
Memory Bus	192-bit	256-bit
Amount of memory	GB 2 GDDR5	GB 2 GDDR5
Memory Frequency	6008 MHz	6008 MHz
TDP	150 W	170 W

The GTX 660 Ti looks to be basically the same card as the GTX 670, except with 192-bit memory bus and a lower TDP of 150 W. It is based on the Kepler architecture with 1344 CUDA cores (192*7), and equipped with four video outputs (two DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort), and is powered via two 6-pin PCI Express connectors. We got an early glimpse of what a stock Evga GeForce GTX 660 Ti card looks like from a leaked image coming from Expreview. by doug crowthers source sweclockers

[?]

EVGA GTX 680 CLASSIFIED HANDS-ON

2012-07-30T17:18:00.000-04:00

We have recently received several different GeForce cards covering a range of performance levels, prices, and cooler configurations. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be taking a look at such GTX 670 and GTX 680 cards from Asus, EVGA, MSI, and Zotac. NVIDIA is going through a period of tight control over their partners’ designs, but this hasn’t stopped their partners from putting their own unique touches on their cards.
Nowhere is this embodied more than with our first card, EVGA’s GeForce GTX 680 Classified. In EVGA’s product hierarchy the Classified is their top of the line product, where they typically go all-out to make customized products to scratch the itch of overclockers and premium buyers alike. The GTX 680 Classified in turn is EVGA’s take on a premium GTX 680,What has EVGA seen fit to do with their fully-custom GTX 680, and does it live up to the hype and the price tag that comes with the Classified name? .

EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Condensed Product Lineup
	EVGA GTX 680 Classified	EVGA GTX 680 FTW+	EVGA GTX 680 SC	EVGA GTX 680
Stream Processors	1536	1536	1536	1536
Texture Units	128	128	128	128
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Core Clock	1111MHz	1084MHz	1058MHz	1006MHz
Boost Clock	1176MHz	1150MHz	1124MHz	1058MHz
Memory Clock	6.008GHz GDDR5	6.008GHz GDDR5	6.208GHz GDDR5	6.008GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Frame Buffer	4GB	4GB	2GB	2GB
Price	$659	$629	$519	$499

NVIDIA usually turns out solid reference card designs. For their high-end single-GPU cards NVIDIA typically uses balanced designs that are reasonably quiet, reasonably cool, and have some degree of overclocking potential. On the other hand NVIDIA also tends to go conservative in some ways, with NVIDIA favoring blowers so that their reference cards work in most cases, and rarely overbuilding their cards in order to keep the manufacturing cost of the card down.
This is where custom cards come in. NVIDIA’s reference which leads to their partners creating custom products not only to differentiate themselves from each other, but to target specific niches that the reference design doesn’t do a good job of covering. Even just replacing the cooler while maintaining the reference board – what we call a semi-custom card – can have a big impact on noise, temperatures, and can improve overclocking. But at the end of the day there’s only so much you can do with NVIDIA’s reference boards, particularly when it comes to form factors and overclocking. This leads us to fully-custom cards.

Crysis, Metro, DiRT 3, Shogun 2, & Batman
Since the GTX 680 Classified doesn’t bring anything new to the table architecturally, we’ll keep our commentary on its stock performance brief. At stock it’s much like any other overclocked GTX 680 (factory or otherwise), with the only real room for differentiation being the greater amount of RAM and the higher power target. In practice the greater amount of RAM doesn’t make much of a difference in our single-GPU tests, as that much RAM is far more beneficial for the ultra-high resolutions of multi-monitor gaming, at which point you’re going to need a second card to provide the necessary horsepower.
The higher default power target on the other hand is quite interesting. The GTX 680 Classified will hit its top boost bin almost all of the time thanks to the generous power target, something the reference GTX 680 can have trouble with even at stock. So although reference cards can be overclocked to this level, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll match the GTX 680 Classified’s boost clocks in that state.

Starting off as always in Crysis, there’s actually not much to see. Since the reference GTX 680 is already memory bandwidth limited here and since the GTX 680 Classified doesn’t have a memory overclock, the factory core overclock does very little for its performance here.

Batman on the other hand doesn’t do the GTX 680 Classified any favors, which is a bit odd. 3-5% just isn’t what you expect here, since there’s no real evidence that the game is CPU or memory bandwidth bottlenecked.

FINAL THOUGHTS

out of the box the GTX 680 is a very impressive card. EVGA’s various touches such as 4GB of RAM, a larger cooler, a factory overclock, and of course additional VRM circuitry that leads to a higher stock power target, all serve to make the GTX 680 Classified a clearly better card than the reference GTX 680. Furthermore thanks in large part to EVGA’s binning there’s even more overclocking headroom to play with, leading us to reach a 1211MHz core clock without ever increasing its voltage. It’s a very good – if very expensive – GTX 680.by ryan smith

High End Computer Parts And News

New Nvidia Beta Driver Plus Tomb Raider PC Update Helps Performance

GTX Titan, GTX 680, and Radeon 7970 go head-to-head at 5760×1080

Former AMD Chief’s Book Describes Fight Against Intel

Windows 8 Is Not Catching On

Windows 7: Alive but fading

GeForce GTX 660 Graphics Cards

Performance

3DMark 2011

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai

Crysis 2

Battlefield 3

Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark

Sleeping Dogs

F1 2012

Hitman: Absolution

Conclusion

GeForce Titan Might Outperform GTX 690

AMD Radeon HD 8950 Listed in Catalyst 13.1

HIS HD 7970 IceQ X2 HD 7950 IceQ X2 Review

Battlefield 3 (DX11)

Crysis 2 (DX11)

Metro 2033 (DX11)

Netgear R6300 router review

Benchmarking 5GHz 802.11ac performance

Benchmarking 2.4GHz 802.11n performance

Bottom line

NVIDIA GTX 780 COMING IN MARCH 2013?

GeForce 310.64 Beta Drivers: An Essential For Far Cry 3

NVIDIA Releases New 310.54 Driver, Up to 16% Performance Improvement

Danger Den to Close its Doors, Cuts Prices by 75%

I Pad Mini Hands On

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October

Nvidia announces GeForce GTX 650 Ti and Assassin's Creed 3 bundles

Best Gaming CPU: $200 And Up Price Range

Best Gaming CPU for $570:Core i7-3930K

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB

EVGA GTX 680 SUPERCLOCKED SIGNATURE 2

Technical Specifications

Performance

3DMark 2011

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

Total War: Shogun 2

Crysis 2

Battlefield 3

Do Graphics Cards Need 4 GB of Memory?

Conclusion

Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 ti Finally Here?

Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 SLI Benchmarks

Performance

3DMark Vantage

3DMark 2011

Unigine Heaven Demo

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

Just Cause 2

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

Lost Planet 2

Sid Meier’s Civilization V

Total War: Shogun 2

Crysis 2

Hard Reset Demo

Conclusion

Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti Specifications and Launch Date Rumored

EVGA GTX 680 CLASSIFIED HANDS-ON

Best Gaming CPU for $570:
Core i7-3930K