It's a bit early for 11.12, but how about Catalyst 11.11c?

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 2, 2011 - 11:28 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, catalyst, radeon

AMD has pushed out a third performance driver built off of their Catalyst 11.11 driver build.  In this release you get all of the improvements from both 11a and 11b, along with new improved CrossfireX performance in Skyrim.   If you have skipped the two previous updates it is probably worth grabbing this release if you are having any performance issues with the games listed below.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim

• New in Catalyst 11.11c: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for the AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations
• Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

• New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling

Batman Arkham City

• Improves DirectX 11 performance for single GPU configurations

Rage

• Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling Resolves a number of image/stability issues seen with the title: Fix geometry corruption, sometimes seen in Bash TV entrance
• Fix issues with Low-memory conditions on 32bit systems.
• Fix issue with extreme corruption with missing textures on 32bit systems.
• Fix memory leaks when deleting/reusing sync objects.
• Fix hitching and pausing, especially noticeable on some Quad Core systems when doing races and Stanley Express runs.
• Fix some missing shadows

Battlefield 3

• Resolves intermittent corruption seen when playing the game at specific camera angles

Download and install the Driver from the following location: (direct links)
AMD Catalyst 11.11c Performance Driver for Windows vista & Windows 7
AMD Catalyst 11.11c Performance Driver for Windows XP

Algorithms, Voxels, and Octrees - Oh my indeed!

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards | December 2, 2011 - 03:45 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: nvidia

Even back around 2005 when the rush was still getting higher and higher resolutions to fill the finally high-resolution TVs, I always assumed that the next trail blazed in the graphics war would be lighting. Lighting is a complicated process which we are all very accustomed to it being done perfectly due to our living in the real world. Technologies such as Unreal Lightmass, PureLight, and Autodesk Beast have created more realistic lighting profiles that account for multiple bounces but cannot change in games like Mirror’s Edge. Battlefield 3, thanks to Geomerics, is one of the first games to take this problem on in semi real time such that if you alter a light the indirect lighting changes with it. The advancement does not stop there according to a recent NVIDIA blog which details research into better real time lighting.

That hand has got to be illegal in all 50 states.

P.S. -- For a 3d Technology company, just 480p Youtube -- really?

While the blog is quite vague in how the technology actually is producing its results, those results appear to be quite spectacular in quality. Unfortunately, while the quality looks amazing for being rendered at 25-70 FPS, there is no mention of what system is required to achieve those 25-70 FPS. Back to the vagueness: the demonstration is apparently not being performed upon triangular meshes relying on voxels instead. According to their explanation, their second lighting bounce is approximated to a single cone rather than multiple rays. If I understand their cone method enough, this approximation is incapable by design of expanding to third bounces and beyond; it appears to be a simplification that falls out of restricting yourself to just two lighting bounces in a voxel environment.

Regardless of when and how it will influence our technology; does the demonstration excite you for technologies to come? Place your predictions in the comments.

Gear Up with MSI: Win Intel Motherboards, GeForce Graphics Cards

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards, Motherboards | November 30, 2011 - 11:13 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: z68, x79, sandy bridge-e, msi, GTX 580, GTX 560, giveaway, contest

This is a pretty big week here at PC Perspective as we released our highly anticipated review of the Intel Sandy Bridge-E and X79 platform.  If you haven't read that over, you need to do so, right away!!  But we also have some impressive gear to giveaway thanks to our friends at MSI and their "Gear Up with MSI" campaign!

What are the prizes?  I know that's what you want to know first...

• 1st Prize
  • MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 Lightning
  • MSI Intel X79A-GD65 (8D) Motherboard

• 2nd Prize
  • MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II
  • MSI Intel Z68A-GD65 with PCIE 3.0 & 5 year warranty

Wow, these are some stellar prizes!  First prize basically gets the components required for one of the fastest gaming rigs on the planet while the 2nd prize will be able to play Batman: Arkham City with all the top settings! 

So what do you have to do to win these prizes?  The steps are simple:

1. Make a comment on this post thanking MSI for this kick ass contest!!  That's pretty simple right?  You don't have to register, though we would appreciate it!
2. Like MSI on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MSI.ComputerUS
   1. (Just a hint, they have a lot of Facebook-specific contests throughout the year!)
3. Like PC Perspective on Facebook: http://facebook.com/pcper
4. Follow PC Perspective on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pcper
5. Circle PC Perspective on Google+: http://gplus.to/pcper
   1. (Another hint, comments on our G+ post about this contest get another entry!)

We will pick random winners in our pool of entries on Wednesday, the 7th of December!  Sorry, US and Canada residents only for this one!  If you don't have a Facebook/Twitter/Google+ account commenting here will still enter you.

Oh, and if you haven't seen the other contest MSI is running around the release of Batman: Arkham City, you should check out this page on their site.  Posting a photo of yourself dressed up like Batman has never been so lucrative! 

The Grand Prize for MSI's Batman Photo Contest!!

Winners Announced!!  Sorry about the late update, but we did pick our winners!  The first prize went to use "Equinox2355" and the second prize went to "Deman".  Thanks to everyone for participating and we'll have more contests very soon!!!

1 GTX 580 - 2 Shader Multiprocessors = 1 GTX 560 Ti 448

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 29, 2011 - 02:08 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, gtx 560 ti 448, GF114

NVIDIA has released a new Titanium series card, the GTX 560 Ti 448 which is essentially a GTX 570 with two disabled shader multiprocessors which brings the count of those CUDA cores down to 448, hence the name.  This may cause some confusion as there is already a GTX 560 Ti on the market which is based on the GF114 chip, not the GF110 which this new GTX 560 Ti 448 is based off of which offers better performance and the possibility of triple SLI.  The card sports 1280MB of memory running at 3.6GHz effective and a 732MHz GPU, and as The Tech Report points out this card will have a very limited release.

Catch Ryan's full performance review here.

"In fact, the difference between the GTX 570 and the GTX 560 Ti 448 is simple. In the GTX 570, one of the GF110's 16 shader multiprocessor clusters has been disabled, while in the GTX 560 Ti 448, two of the 16 SMs have been disabled. As a result, the GTX 560 Ti 448 has slightly lower peak shader arithmetic and texture filtering rates. In virtually every other respect, including clock speeds and memory bandwidth, the two products are the same. Here's a quick look at the key graphics throughput rates versus other current video cards ..."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti w/448 Cores: GTX 570 On A Budget @ AnandTech
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 TI 448 Core Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti 448 Cores Classified Video Card Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• MSI GTX 560 Ti-448 1280MB Twin Frozr III Power Edition @ Tweaktown
• ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Direct CU II 1280 MB @ techPowerUp
• MSI GTX560Ti 448 @ OC3D
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores 1280 MB @ techPowerUp
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Gigabyte GTX560Ti 448 Core @ OC3D
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Roundup (EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI) @ Hardware Canucks
• MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Twin Frozr III 1280 MB @ techPowerUp
• MSI N560GTX-448 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Review @ OCC
• EVGA GeForce GTX560Ti FTW 448-Core @ Benchmark Reviews
• Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo 1 GB @ techPowerUp
• PNY GTX580 Liquid Cooled @ OC3D
• EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified: Overclocked @ Benchmark Reviews
• Intel SNA With The 2.17 DDX Driver @ Phoronix
• Sapphire HD 6970 2GB Dual Fan Graphic Card @ Pro-Clockers
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 Dual Fan Reviiew @ TechwareLabs
• PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13 2GB @ kitguru
• Sapphire HD 6970 2GB Dual Fan Video Card Overclocked @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X @ XSReviews

Mid-range cards take on snow and fire in Skyrim

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 25, 2011 - 12:55 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: sky, elder scrolls V, gtx 460, hd6850, GTX 560, hd6870, GTX 560 Ti, hd6950

The Tech Report, who hasn't been having a problem with Skyrim on their i5-750 system, tried out six mid-range cards to determine the best settings to provide decent performance.  Following their new practice they do not measure frame rate but rather frame time, to find a level of performance where the frames are drawn in a consistent manner instead of varying from 100ms for one frame to 5ms for the next.  Take a look and see how well these mid-range cards can manage the latest Elder Scrolls game.

"We've followed up our look at Battlefield 3 performance with a similar comparison of mid-range graphics cards in The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• ASUS Radeon HD 6950 DirectCU II Video Card @ Pro-Clockers
• Eyefinity Examined with Sapphire HD 6970 x4 and Core i7 3960X @ Tweaktown
• X79 / Z68 / 990FX CrossFireX HD 6970 x3 Performance Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Core i7 3960X with 4-Way CrossFireX HD 6970 Performance Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire HD 6970 FleX Battlefield 3 Edition Review @ OCC
• VTX3D Radeon HD 6850 X-Edition Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix
• HIS 6950 IceQ 2GB @ XSReviews
• PowerColor DEVIL 13 HD 6970 2GB @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire HD6670 (low profile/single slot cooler) @ kitguru
• HIS HD6950 IceQ Crossfire @ OC3D
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme Plus II @ Phoronix
• Koolance VID-NX580 GeForce GTX 580/570 Water Block Review @ Legit Reviews
• MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition 3 GB @ X-bit Labs

Batman: Arkham City DX11 Stuttering Issue

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | November 23, 2011 - 03:50 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: dx11, batman

We have been waiting for Batman: Arkham City for quite some time on the PC, and after weeks of delays, the game was finally released this week, to quite a bit of fanfare.  NVIDIA has been touting the game as the poster child for several technology features like DX11, 3D Vision, PhysX, etc.  It appears that the developers have had some issues though with the release - DX11 features are causing significant stuttering even with high end hardware.

Batman doesn't like it when his games are late...and broken.

I put together a quick video comparing the gameplay experience with and without DX11 enabled; you can see it below.  The system specifications for our test bed for this video were:

• Intel Core i7-965
• Intel X58 motherboard
• 6GB DDR3-1600 memory
• GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB graphics card
• Driver version: 285.79
• Windows 7 SP1 x64

The DX11 settings that are causing the issues are tessellation, ambient occlusion and a new type of soft shadow rendering.  When these features are enabled the game experiences noticeable, repeatable and quite annoying stutters both in the actual gameplay and during the integrated benchmark. 

In our video below you can clearly the see the phenomenon in action. 

On the official Batman: Arkham City forums, the publisher gave the following statement, confirming the broken DX11 implementation.

PC DirectX 11 Issues Please Read
We have received reports of performance issues from players of Batman: Arkham City on PC. After researching the matter, we found that running the game with DX 11 is causing the performance issues. We’re working on a title update to address this matter and expect to make it available in the near future.

In the meantime, a workaround for this issue is to run the game with DX 9 instead of DX 11. Instructions on how to turn off DX 11 are listed below.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience with your gameplay experience and thank you all for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

While we love to see new technologies implemented in games that improve our gameplay experience, we HATE it when it delays games or causes issues like this when released.  Here is hoping that the developer, publisher and driver teams from AMD and NVIDIA can fix this quickly.

Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Core i3-2105 on Modern Warfare 3

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | November 21, 2011 - 10:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, mw3, modern warfare 3, Intel, APU, amd

There is little denying that Call of Duty: Modern Warfar 3 is a success; I think it sold like 19 billion copies on the first night.  Something like that.  So, as we have done quite a bit in recent months, we wanted to see how our processor-graphics based solutions compared to each other in the title.  We recently took a look at how Battlefield 3 performed and we had a lot of great feedback on that post - so let's try this again!  

Luckily for gamers (or not, depending on your point of view), MW3 is pretty light on graphics hardware.  We did our testing at 1920x1080 with the following quality settings:

With 2x anti-aliasing enabled and most quality settings turned up to their highest options, the game still looked pretty good during our testing.  No, it's no Battlefield 3, but very few titles are.

Both systems come in with a total cost of about $450 with the Core i3-2105 and A8-3850 at the center of each configuration. 

As you might guess, the integrated graphics on the AMD Llano APU outperforms the Sandy Bridge graphics, but by how much?  Check out the video for all the details!

NVIDIA driver support on Linux

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 18, 2011 - 02:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: linux, nvidia

We have seen benchmarks of the graphical performance of the GPU portion of Sandy Bridge as well as Llano for Linux users but NVIDIA has been quiet as of late.  That changes with this huge round up from Phoronix which assembles more than a dozen NVIDIA GPUs and associated drivers, the open-source Nouveau driver and the official NVIDIA Linux driver.  This is more than just a comparison of pure performance, there are a variety of features that are unavailable on the Nouveau driver that are present in NVIDIA's.  That can make a big difference to someone looking to transcode video or optimize certain tasks.  It is 24 pages of dense information, consider yourself warned.

"Back in September I provided the most comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux graphics comparison that took 28 graphics cards from all supported ATI/AMD Radeon product families and tested them under Linux using the latest Catalyst driver as well as the open-source Mesa/Gallium3D driver. In this article is a similar comparison on the NVIDIA side as I take most of the GeForce graphics cards at my disposal and try them under the NVIDIA binary Linux driver and the community-developed open-source "Nouveau" driver. Not only is the OpenGL performance looked at for multiple generations of NVIDIA hardware, but the thermal and power consumption is compared too. In certain OpenGL workloads, the open-source Linux driver is now faster than NVIDIA's own driver for select graphics cards in a fair comparison, but overall the NVIDIA blob still reigns supreme."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 Super Overclock Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Catalyst 11.11 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
• MSI Twin Frozr III 6950 1GB @ Overclockers.com
• PowerColor HD 6970 Devil 13 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
• PowerColor Devil 13 HD6970 Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• Sapphire HD6670 Low Profile Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven

Heard of the AMD VISION Engine?

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | November 15, 2011 - 05:22 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: AMD VISION Engine, amd, fusion, APU, steady video

The AMD VISION Engine is the name that AMD is using to describe the new features they are offering for users of their GPUs, APUs and those with both.  One example is the AMD Steady Video feature that Ryan and Ken showed off in July.  That is not all, this encompasses the hybrid Crossfire that exists in Llano laptops with discrete GPUs straight through to support for 30bit colour depth (aka 10bit per channel, 10 bit per pixel) and the GPU accelerated Flash. 

If you are interested in getting more from your APU then head to the AMD VISION site to download their driver package, think of it as a Catalyst with benefits.

This one goes all the way to 11! The November Catalyst update is here.

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 15, 2011 - 05:06 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: catalyst, catalyst 11.11, amd

Head to AMD for your newest version of Catalyst as the November update arrives for download.  

Highlights this month include:

NEW FEATURES

• Adobe Flash Player 11 support
• Enables full support of the GPU accelerated Stage 3D API and Stage 3D applications
• Supported on the AMD Radeon HD Series of GPUs, A-Series APU and E-Series APU

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System:

• Images and textures are no longer corrupted (Blue) in Rage.
• Bezel compensation now works correctly with Far Cry 2.
• Screen tearing is no longer randomly observed while moving a window on the desktop while in Clone mode or Eyefinity mode.
• A black screen is no longer observed when extending displays. 
• Homefront no longer crashes randomly when Crossfire is enabled.
• DC – Universe Online no longer hangs soon after selecting a character and entering the game.

AMD Catalyst Linux introduces:

• OpenSUSE 12.1 early look support
• Seamless GPU Compute support
• The AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is now enabled by default within the AMD Catalyst driver for Linux.  Applications that leverage OpenCL for GPU based compute tasks will automatically benefit from the significant performance boost that this provides

The rest of the release notes can be found here.

Win a Free Copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from PC Perspective

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards | November 11, 2011 - 12:09 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: skyrim, giveaway, contest

Want to play Skyrim?  Want to play Skyrim...for FREEE??  Well to celebrate the release of the new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim game this week we are giving away a free retail Steam code for it right here on PC Perspective.  

What do you have to do to enter?  There are a handful of ways:

1. Make a comment on this post.  That's pretty simple right?  You don't have to register, though we would appreciate it!
2. Like PC Perspective on Facebook: http://facebook.com/pcper
3. Follow PC Perspective on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pcper
4. Circle PC Perspective on Google+: http://gplus.to/pcper

If you do all four, you'll have four entries into the contest.  If you already follow @pcper on Twitter, then you are already entered.  (And likely you'll be entered for future contests as well!)  If only do one or two, then you are still entered, just with fewer shots at the goal.

The contest will run through tomorrow (November 12th) at 4pm EST so get your entries in SOON!!  Good luck!

UPDATE!!  We have our winner.  Picking from a random.org number between 1 and 3850 (combined entries on comments, Google+, Facebook and Twitter) the winner was....Jared H!!!  Congratulations!  I have sent off an email to verify and pass on the Steam code.

Make sure you stay tuned for Monday morning when we should have another BIG contest starting around a certain processor launch...

Godly graphical domination can be yours; for about $3000

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 8, 2011 - 06:20 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: asus, ROG MARS II Limited Edition

If you can find an ASUS ROG MARS II Limited Edition card for sale, without having to buy the whole system that is, you would have a pair of GTX580 class GPUs on a single PCB.  That is hard, but not [H]ard enough for a certain hardware review site.  They decided that the only way to satisfy their overwhelming graphics lust was to get two cards, giving them the power of quad SLI in just two cards.  That might seem a little greedy when only 999 of these cards were produced but there is only one way to utter graphical domination ... until you realize the competition is a pair of HD6990s.  Either way you will be seeing over 70fps in Battlefield 3 at a resolution of 5760x1200.  You will need more than a 1000W PSU to run stable but you will be able to laugh at those poor GTX590 owners.

"The ASUS ROG MARS II Limited Edition video card brings true dual-GeForce GTX 580 GPUs to the table. Take two of these and you can have a true GTX 580 Quad-SLI system. We'll dive into performance, including Battlefield 3, and see what these can do directly compared to 4-way CrossFireX."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win @ Guru of 3D
• EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs @ AnandTech
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2 WIN 2GB DirectX11 Video Card Review @Hi Tech Legion
• ASUS ENGTX570 DirectCU II Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win Dual GPU Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Sparkle X560 Ti DF Calibre @ OC3D
• Mobile GPU Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• HIS Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X PLUS Edition @ Guru of 3D
• ASUS Radeon HD 6770 DirectCU Silent @ Guru of 3D
• Sapphire HD6970 2048MB @ kitguru

Alienware Lowers Price on GTX 580M and Changes Our Opinion in the Process

Subject: Graphics Cards, Mobile | November 7, 2011 - 01:16 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: m18x, m17x, hd 6990m, gtx 580m, alienware

If you read our recent mobility GPU comparison using the Alienware M17x, you might have wondered why the price on the GTX 580M was $300 more than that of the Radeon HD 6990M when performance was so close.  Well, I guess you can no longer say we didn't do anything to help the consumers (you wouldn't say that, would you?) because today Alienware has dropped the price of the GTX 580M by $225!!

It looks like Alienware and NVIDIA have listened to our feedback and decided to drop the price on the GeForce GTX 580M on the M17x, M18x and others - and by quite a bit!  As of this writing you can go to the Alienware.com website and now upgrade from the HD 6990M to the GTX 580M for only $75 - that is a $225 price drop compared to last week.  

What does this do for our opinions and thoughts on the battle between the HD 6990M and the GTX 580M?  I think it makes the added benefits of the NVIDIA ecosystem (Optimus, 3D, Verde driver updates, PhysX) much more attainable and in my book well worth the additional cost.  With this price change, Alienware has really shifted my view on the mobile GPU of choice.

I am going to update my award from the Gold to the Editor's Choice for NVIDIA's GTX 580M for this specific reason - be sure to read the full review if you haven't already!  Happy gaming!

A sub $200 AMD FirePro benchmarked on Linux

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 3, 2011 - 01:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, firepro, V4900, linux, turks

Workstation graphics cards tend to be significantly more expensive than their desktop counterparts, something the new AMD FirePro V4900 seeks to overcome.  The card is available for less than $200 but still comes with the advantages of the FirePro series, workstation application certification, a three-year hardware warranty and greater technical support than with a desktop GPU.  Performance wise, the benchmarks that Phoronix ran showed the card to be nicely between the V4800 and V5800 so perhaps not worth immediately running out and upgrading from the previous low end model but definitely worth considering for new machines.

"AMD is announcing today a new FirePro workstation graphics card. What is being announced is not a new ultra high-end creation, but instead it's a new entry-level graphics card to fit in between the FirePro V4800 and FirePro V5800 / V5900: it's the AMD FirePro V4900. The FirePro V4900 will retail for less than $200 USD while offering up some nice capabilities for the price. Here is a launch-day look at the FirePro V4900 along with the first Linux benchmarks of this latest AMD workstation graphics creation."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ 1GB @ Legion Hardware
• VTX3D Radeon HD6770 & HD6670 Streamer Edition @ Kitguru
• Catalyst 11.10 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire HD6970 Battlefield 3 Flex Edition @ Guru3D
• i3DSpeed, October 2011 @ iXBT Labs
• The Effect of GPU Memory on Surround & Stereo 3D Performance @ Hardware Canucks
• KFA2 GeForce GTX 580 Anarchy Edition SLI @ kitguru

Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Core i3-2105 on Battlefield 3

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | October 31, 2011 - 02:22 PM | Matt Baynum
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, Intel, bf3, battlefield 3, APU, amd

Everyone is playing Battlefield 3 these days; we even had a virtual LAN party this weekend where forum members and PC Perspective team members played from about 10am until well after 1am ET. We have done more than our fair share of Battlefield 3 articles as well including hardware performance on high end graphics cards, multi-GPU scaling and more.  

We had some requests and questions about what was the lowest priced hardware you could play the game on and while we had run some tests on the GeForce 9800 GT, I decided to take a stab at running BF3 at its lowest settings with integrated graphics on Intel's Sandy Bridge processor and AMD's A-series APU.  Here were our test settings:

We ran at a fairly low resolution of 1366x768 (both indicative of mobile resolutions as well as low-end hardware restrictions) and the Low in-game preset.  As it turns out this was the level at which the A8-3850 Llano APU was able to maintain an average around 30 FPS while the Intel Core i3-2105 (both priced around $140) was able to reach only a third of that. 

With both systems coming in at the ~$450 mark, this could qualify as the lowest priced PC that is capable of getting you into the BF3 action!

You can see our full comparison right here in this short video!

NVIDIA Upgrading GTX 560 to 448 CUDA Cores?

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 27, 2011 - 07:41 PM | Matt Baynum
Tagged: nvidia, GTX 560, geforce

A rumor that I read over at Guru3D seems to think that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, a card that has been very successful in the ~$230 graphics market, might be getting an upgrade just in time for the pending holiday buying season.  According to the report, the new version would move from the current 384 CUDA core count to 448 cores, essentially adding another full SM (symmetric multiprocessor) to the GPU.

A collection of current GTX 560 Ti cards...

Guru3D notes though that the "new" GTX 560 Ti would be based on the GF110 GPU (same as the GTX 580 and GTX 570) simply because the GTX 560 Ti uses all the available processing cores of the GF114 design.  The GPU on this new card would be a GTX 580 with two SMs disabled, rather than the single SM disabled on the GTX 570.

Here are the reports other details:

It features 14 active SMs, which include 448 SP / CUDA Cores and 56 TMUs; 320-bit memory and 40 ROPs - a very similar configuration to the old GTX 470. Along with increased performance, power consumption is expected to rise over the 384 SP GTX 560 Ti. A benefit to using GF110 means the revised 560 Ti will feature 2 x SLI connectors, enabling 3-way SLI.

While I believe this part could definitely exist, I wouldn't think NVIDIA would simply remove the current GTX 560 Ti and replace it; instead I would imagine the company would go for the "GTX 565" route, or something similar to it.  Maybe a GTX 560 Ultra.  Either way, a new card that would fit in to the price slot somewhere between the GTX 560 Ti ($230) and the GTX 570 ($340) would be a welcome addition, especially with games like Battlefield 3 and Skyrim set to take advantage of that horsepower. 

A best of three HD 6950 battle royal

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 26, 2011 - 05:36 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: hd 6950, amd, gigabyte, msi, xfx, factory overclocked

Heading to The Tech Report will bring you to a round up of HD6950's including Gigabyte's GV-R695OC-1GD, the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1G/OC and the XFX HD-695X-ZDDC.  The GPU clocks range from 830MHz to 870MHz and RAM ranging from the stock 1250MHz to 1350MHz, with the MSI and XFX offering their own overclocking tools and Gigabyte relying on the Catalyst Control Center for further overclocking.  MSI's offering came out looking very good, with the best performance and the best power efficiency and thanks to a mail in rebate it picks up the best ratings in the round up.  It is a close race though with the cards performing very similarly, as you can see in the review.

"We've gathered three souped-up Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards from Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX. Which one delivers the most bang for your buck?"

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Great Value from Sapphire: Radeon HD 6870 Dirt 3 Edition and Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X @ X-bit Labs
• Inexpensive Hi-End: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1 GD5 Power Edition/OC @ X-bit Labs
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 DiRT 3 Special Edition Review @ OCC
• AMD’s flagship HD6990: is silent air cooling possible? @ kitguru
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Mobile GPU Comparison Guide @ X-bit Labs
• EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3 GB @ X-bit Labs
• Gigabyte GTX580 Super Overclock @ OC3D
• Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo 1GB @ Tweaktown
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Drawing @ Legit Reviews
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti @ Phoronix
• Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven

Almost Time! Battlefield 3 Release, Is Your Hardware Ready?

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 24, 2011 - 03:06 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: radeon, nvidia, geforce, bf3, amd

I know that you might have Battlefield 3 overload by now, but I wanted to make sure you all remembered to take a look at our BF3 Performance Guide from a couple weeks back to make sure your PC is ready for what might be the most anticipated and talked about PC titles in years. 

Here is a summary of the content we have written based on the game - make sure you know ALL of it so you can get your system prepared for the pending battle!!

• Battlefield 3 (BF3) System Build Guide - What you need to succeed
  • Come see our easy suggestions for building a system for BF3 (or upgrading) based on your target resolution and quality settings.
• Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Testing and Image Quality Evaluation - Day 1
  • We test quite a few graphics cards to see where your setup currently stands with Battlefield 3.
• More Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Results: GTX 460, Radeon HD 5850 and 9800 GT!
  • We added some lower end cards to the performance article as well including the very popular 9800 GT.
• PCPer Live! Battlefield 3 Beta Party and Discussion @ 10:30pm EST
  • You missed it, but it was fun and we are going to be doing more next weekend!
• Battlefield 3 Beta: Caspian Border Performance and Screenshots
  • Come see the performance results from our 64-player testing on the Caspian Border map!
• Battlefield 3 (BF3) Beta Performance: Quality Preset and SLI Scaling
  • Here you can see how performance scales from Ultra to High, Medium and Low presets as well as how much performance gain you can expect from SLI scaling.

Keep checking back at PC Perspective as we are planning on doing some more fun live streaming of our BF3 matches and be sure to sign up for the official PCPer "Fragging Frogs" platoon in Battlelog!