AMD is still the graphics market leader ... except for that SandyBridge problem

Subject: General Tech | May 4, 2011 - 11:19 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: peddie, nvidia, market share, Intel, gpu, amd

SemiAccurate got hold of Jon Peddie's most recent look at the GPU market and how it is divvied up between the major competitors; which doesn't include SIS who hit 0% this year. The two current discreet GPU makers swapped positions last quarter with AMD in the lead and that remains true this quarter as they have grown to 24.8% while NVIDIA fell to 20%. Last year at this time NVIDIA had a comfortable 8% more of the market than AMD, but with a Fermi launch that just didn't go as well as hoped and AMD coming out strong and generally less expensive, that lead has evaporated thanks not only to the discreet GPUs but also Brazos.

Speaking of APUs, the more mathematically inclined readers may notice that a large chunk of the graphics market is missing in those figures. 54.4% of that missing market belongs to Intel who have seen their share of the market jump by alnost 10% since Q1 2010. The vast majority of their market share belongs to the embedded GPU present in many Intel systems but at least some of that growth is thanks to the new SandyBridge platform which many enthusiasts are purchasing and which counts towards market share even if it is only being used for transcoding in a system with a discreet GPU.

"The latest GPU marketshare numbers from Jon Peddie are out, and it looks like we have a new leader in GPUs, AMD. According to the numbers released today, Q1 saw AMD overtake Nvidia in year over year GPU marketshare, and the turn-around promised last February fizzle."

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Source: SemiAccurate

AMD's new DX11 compatible embedded E6760 GPU can handle 6 displays

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | May 3, 2011 - 11:54 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: e6760, embedded, gpu, amd, eyefinity

Usually reading off a list of the abilities of an embedded GPU are fairly quick ... determine if it can handle YouTube in high definition and maybe play WoW and move on. APUs offer a bit more interest for enthusiasts with interesting load sharing applications with a discreet GPU and the rise of SandyBridge and Bobcat seem to spell the end of the GPU embedded on a motherboard. However there are still a few tricks left before the end of the line, the new Radeon E6760 isn't going to win many speed races but it can support up to 6 monitors, a nice trick when you consider that many of these chips will be running displays in casinos, airports and medical imaging. The E4690 is finally retiring, meet the new E6760 at AnandTech.

"Kicking off our coverage of embedded GPUs is AMD’s Radeon E6760, which is launching today. The E6760 is the latest and greatest AMD embedded video card, utilizing the Turks GPU (6600/6700M) from AMD’s value lineup. The E6760 isn’t a product most of us will be buying directly, but if AMD has it their way it’s a product a lot of us will be seeing in action in the years to come in embedded devices."

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Source: AnandTech

EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2WIN 2GB dual-GPU Graphics Card Review

Author: Ryan Shrout

Date: April 27, 2011

Subject: Graphics Cards

Manufacturer: EVGA

Tagged: nvidia, gtx 460, gpu, evga, 2win

A Card Unlike Any Other

Introduction

In all honesty, there aren't many graphics cards that really get our attention these days. There are GPUs that do that - releases like the Radeon HD 6990 and the GeForce GTX 590 get our juices flowing to see what new performance and features they can offer. But in terms of individual vendor-specific designs, there are very few that make us "perk up" much more than just seeing another reference card come across the test bed.

The ASUS ARES dual-5870 card was probably the last one do to that - and for $1200 is better have! EVGA is ready with another card though that definitely made us interested, and for a much more reasonable price of $419 or so.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2WIN is a custom built card that combines a pair of GTX 460 1GB GPUs on a single PCB to create a new level of performance and pricing that we found was unmatched in the market today. And even better, the features improved as well by utilizing the power of both GPUs in an SLI configuration.

Read on and see why the GTX 460 2WIN might be my new favorite graphics card!

NVIDIA Synergy will offer discrete and integrated GPU support on Sandy Bridge

Subject: Graphics Cards, Motherboards | April 26, 2011 - 02:19 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: virtu, synergy, optimus, nvidia, lucid, gpu

Remember when we previewed a piece of software from Lucid called Virtu that promised the capability to combine processor graphics features of the Intel Sandy Bridge lineup with the performance and DX11 support of discrete graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD? The ideas was pretty simple but it addressed one of our major complaints about the initial Sandy Bridge processor launch: the IGP features like fast video transcode acceleration and ultra-low-power video acceleration were unavailable to users that chose to also use a discrete graphics solution.

Lucid's Virtu software running in our previous testing

Lucid's solution was to "virtualize" the GPUs and use a software layer that would decide which applications to run on the discrete GPU and which to run on the integrated processor graphics on the Intel CPU. There were some limitations including the need to have the displays connected to the IGP outputs rather than the discrete card and that the software worked on a rather clunky white-list implementation. Also, discrete graphics control panels were a bit of a headache and only worked with NVIDIA cards and not in all cases even then.

Virtu was to be distributed through motherboard vendors starting with the release of the Z68 chipset (as it was the first mainstream chipset to support overclocking AND display outputs) but now it appears that NVIDIA itself is diving into the same realm with a new piece of software called "Synergy".

Check out more after the break!

Source: VR-Zone

Adding to the sub-$100 GPU market with the Radeon 6670 and 6570

Subject: Graphics Cards | April 19, 2011 - 01:08 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: turks, northern islands, gpu, amd

The new Turk based Radeon HD 6670 and HD 6570 are intended to replace the Redwood-based HD 5670 and HD 5570 at a price of $99 and $79 respectively. The cards are very similar to the cards they replace so you should not expect miracles from them. They do have reduced power draw and are both low profile cards making them a good choice for HTPCs and AnandTech is quick to point out that these are the fastest cards not requiring an external power supply on the market right now.

"Two weeks ago we saw the paper launch of the Radeon HD 6450, the low-end member of AMD’s Northern Islands family of GPUs. It was a solid product for HTPC use and a very notable improvement over the 5450 it replaced, but it was an uncharacteristically delayed launch for AMD. At the same time we noted that the Northern Islands family had one more GPU we had not seen: Turks."

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Source: AnandTech

ASUS' EAH6950 & ENGTX570 DirectCU II, twins with different parents

Subject: Graphics Cards | April 18, 2011 - 01:24 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, gpu, asus, amd

ASUS has released two new cards with their DirectCU II custom cooling solution and accompanying overclock. The are very different as one is a NVIDIA GTX570 and the other an AMD HD6950. [H]ard|OCP was less than impressed with the out of the box overclock of 10MHz on the GPU and simply reference speeds for the GDDR5, so they overclocked the cards to speeds much higher.

"ASUS has released two enthusiast friendly overclocking video cards: the EAH6950 DirectCU II and the ENGTX570 DirectCU II. The question is which one is better, and does overclocking these change the victor. We test each out of the box and overclocked in Lost Planet 2, F1 2010, Civilization V, and Battlefield Bad Company 2."

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Source: [H]ard|OCP

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