MSI Announces 7950 Twin Frozr III Graphics Cards

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 31, 2012 - 05:48 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: msi, HD7950, hd 7950, graphics cards, gpu, amd

MSI today officially announced their new Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards with Twin Frozr III coolers. Specifically, the new cards are part of the "R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC" series. The new Twin Frozr III cooler features a nickel plated block, two 8mm Superpipes (heatpipes), and dual 80mm propeller blade fans that, according to MSI, delivers up to 10 degrees Celsius lower GPU temperatures versus reference coolers. Further, the dark gray Twin Frozr III cooler reduces noise by 13.7dB by using two slower spinning fans versus the single reference design fan spinning twice or more as fast. This extra bit of overclocking headroom has allowed MSI to claim a large "core and memory voltage potential providing up to 37.5% overclockability" Just like the company's motherboards, they are advertising the new graphics cards as being built with Hi-c CAP Super Ferrite Choke and solid capacitors that pass MIL-STD-810G testing. Based on the AMD 28nm Radeon HD 7950 reference design, the card supports the PCI Express 3.0 interface.  Also, the card features 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, and two Mini-DisplayPort video outputs.

Further specifications include 3 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 384 bit bus, a core clock speed of 880 MHz, and memory clock of 5,200 MHz (effective, 1,300 MHz base). The card itself measures 261mm x 111mm x 38mm, (just under 10.3") which means that it should fit comfortably inside most Mid Tower (or larger) cases. While the 80 MHz increase in GPU clock speed over the reference design is not saying much, the cards themselves should have plenty of overclocking headroom beyond what MSI does at the factory. In our review of the AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card with reference cooler we achieved a nice 1050 MHz clock speed, and the "Supa-pipe" (as Josh likes to say) powered Twin Frozr III 7950 cards should be able to go even further beyond that, specific GPU permitting of course.

In addition to the new Twin Frozr III cooler powered cards, MSI is releasing a version of the Radeon 7950 with a reference design cooler and another Radeon 7970 card with a reference cooler to provide gamers with plenty of alternative options. Unfortunately, there is no word (yet) on pricing or availability.  The Twin Frozr III version of the 7950 sure looks a lot cooler, so it will be interesting to see if it actually keeps the GPU cooler (heh).

Faster than a speeding GTX 580; the HD7950 arrives

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 31, 2012 - 05:22 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: tahiti, southern islands, radeon, pcie 3.0, HD 7970, hd 7950, dx 11.1, amd, 28nm

A smattering of reviews of the newly released HD7950 have arrived to the web as the card that many enthusiasts have been waiting for finally arrives.  The card does not differ significantly from the HD7970 with 1,792 Stream Processors down from 2,048, 112 Texture Units versus 128, a core clock 125MHz lower at 800MHz and 5GHz effective on memory versus 5.5GHz for the HD7970.  Apart from those changes it is still the same silicon and the same 4.31 billion transistors which raises hopes that a similar BIOS mod to the one which allowed you to turn some HD6950s into HD6970s will exist for this card as well.  [H]ard|OCP's testing shows the card to be better than a GTX580 but not enough to be an upgrade for current owners of that card but anyone with the ~$450 and an older card would do well to consider this car.

You can also see Ryan's take on this card alone as well as how it scales in CrossFire in our review here.

"The new Radeon HD 7950 marks the launch of AMD's more affordable Radeon HD 7900 series GPU. The Radeon HD 7950 is priced to compete with the GeForce GTX 580. We'll look at performance in comparison to several video cards in single-GPU, dual-GPU CrossFireX, Eyefinity, and Overclocking to see where it truly lands."

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

Graphics Cards

• AMD's Radeon HD 7950 @ The Tech Report
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market @ AnandTech
• XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Overclocked 3GB Graphics Card Video Review @ eTeknix
• XFX Radeon R7950 Black Edition Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
• XFX & Sapphire HD 7950 3GB Review @ OCC
• XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation 3GB @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire 7950 Overclocked Edition Video Card Review @ Techwarelabs
• Sapphire HD 7950 OC @ Modders-Inc
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 & XFX R7950 Black Edition Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• PowerColor, Sapphire, XFX HD 7950 Review @ Neoseeker
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 Launch Review @ Neoseeker
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB DDR5 Overclocked Version DX11.1 Video Card Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• Powercolor HD 7950 PCS+ @ Overclockers.com
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 Video Card Review @ Hardware Secrets
• Sapphire HD7950 Overclock Edition @ OC3D
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 Launch Articles @ HardwareHeaven
• XFX HD 7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Sapphire HD 7950 Dual Fan OC Review @ Hardware Canucks
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review; Tahiti Pro Arrives @ Hardware Canucks
• XFX HD7950 Black Edition Overlocked @ Kitguru
• PowerColor HD 7950 PCS+ 3 GB @ techPowerUp
• XFX R7950 Black Edition @ OC3D
• HIS HD7950 @ Kitguru
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 3 GB @ techPowerUp
• HIS HD7950 @ OC3D
• XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Overclocked 3GB Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix
• HIS Radeon HD 7950 @ Guru of 3D
• PowerColor Radeon HD 7950 PCS+ @ Guru of 3D
  

  ---

• Radeon HD 7950 Crossfire review 2 and 3-way @ Guru of 3D
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
• Sapphire HD7950 Overlock Edition Crossfire @ Kitguru
• Overkill 3D - HD7950 Quadfire @ OC3D
  

  ---

• XFX HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation 3 GB Review @ OCC
• The Radeon HD 7970 Reprise: PCIe Bandwidth, Overclocking, & The State Of Anti-Aliasing @ AnandTech
• Catalyst 12.1 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Deepcool Gamer Storm Dracula VGA Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
• Swiftech Apogee HD Water Block Review @ OCIA
• Galaxy MDT GeForce GT 520 Review: Quad-Display Budget Card @ Techspot

NVIDIA Updates CUDA: Major Release for Science Research

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | January 29, 2012 - 02:53 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: nvidia, gpgpu, CUDA

NVIDIA has traditionally been very interested in acquiring room in the high-performance computing for scientific research market. For a lot of functions, having a fast and highly parallel processor saves time and money compared to having a traditional computer crunch away or having to book time with one of the world’s relatively few supercomputers. Despite the raw performance of a GPU, adequate development tools are required to bring the simulation or calculation into a functional program to execute on said GPU. NVIDIA is said to have had a strong lead with their CUDA platform for quite some time; that lead will likely continue with releases the size of this one.

What does a tuned up GPU purr like? Cuda cuda cuda cuda cuda.

The most recent release, CUDA 4.1, has three main features:

• A visual profiler to point out common mistakes and optimizations and to provide instructions which detail how to alter your code to increase your performance
• A new compiler which is based on the LLVM infrastructure, making good on their promise to open the CUDA platform to other architectures -- both software and hardware
• New image and signal processing functions for their NVIDIA Performance Primitives (NPP) library, relieving developers the need to create their own versions or license a proprietary library

The three features, as NVIDIA describes them in their press release, are listed below.

New Visual Profiler - Easiest path to performance optimization
The new Visual Profiler makes it easy for developers at all experience levels to optimize their code for maximum performance. Featuring automated performance analysis and an expert guidance system that delivers step-by-step optimization suggestions, the Visual Profiler identifies application performance bottlenecks and recommends actions, with links to the optimization guides. Using the new Visual Profiler, performance bottlenecks are easily identified and actionable.

LLVM Compiler - Instant 10 percent increase in application performance
LLVM is a widely-used open-source compiler infrastructure featuring a modular design that makes it easy to add support for new programming languages and processor architectures. Using the new LLVM-based CUDA compiler, developers can achieve up to 10 percent additional performance gains on existing GPU-accelerated applications with a simple recompile. In addition, LLVM's modular design allows third-party software tool developers to provide a custom LLVM solution for non-NVIDIA processor architectures, enabling CUDA applications to run across NVIDIA GPUs, as well as those from other vendors.

New Image, Signal Processing Library Functions - "Drop-in" Acceleration with NPP Library
NVIDIA has doubled the size of its NPP library, with the addition of hundreds of new image and signal processing functions. This enables virtually any developer using image or signal processing algorithms to easily gain the benefit of GPU acceleration, with the simple addition of library calls into their application. The updated NPP library can be used for a wide variety of image and signal processing algorithms, ranging from basic filtering to advanced workflows. 

XFX has a PSU for those looking to power multiple GPUs

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 27, 2012 - 03:13 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: PSU, kilowatt, 80 gold, modular psu, xfx, ProSeries 1250W

It seems a short while ago that we joked about 240V 10 amp plugs soon being required for high end machines which pull more than 1000W at peak usage.  Now most major vendors offer at least one unit which can provide 1kW of power or more, and thankfully doesn't need you to hire an electrician to install it.  XFX, who more often produce the video cards which require powering, has released a new PSU called the ProSeries 1250W.   It is rated as an 80 PLUS Gold PSU,  which testing showed to be accurate at high loads but not so much at lower power loads.  As with most PSUs in this class it has as single 12V rail which is capable of delivering an impressive 104 amps.  If you need this kind of wattage to power your next dream machine, check out TechPowerUp's review.

"XFX is well known for their graphic cards but for quite some time they are also into the PSU market with two series called classic and Pro. Today we will test the flagship unit of the Pro series which with 1250W capacity will easily power even the most demanding systems."

Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:

CASES & COOLING

• NZXT HALE82 650W and 750W @ AnandTech
• NZXT HALE82 750-watt Power Supply @ Tweaktown
• FSP Aurum CM Series Gold 650W @ kitguru
• NZXT HALE82 850-watt Power Supply @ Tweaktown
• Antec High Current Gamer 620W Power Supply Review @ OCC
• Antec EarthWatts Platinum 650 W @ techPowerUp
• Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 800W Power Supply Unit Review @ eTeknix
• Super Flower Golden King 1000 W @ techPowerUp
• Lepa G500 Power Supply Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• Corsair Individual Sleeved Modular PSU Cables @ Legit Reviews

HD7970 from ASUS and XFX, who offers the most impressive card?

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 26, 2012 - 05:12 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: xfx, GCN, asus, southern islands, radeon, pcie 3.0, dx 11.1, amd, 7970, 28nm

[H]ard|OCP recently came out with two HD7970 reviews, one made by ASUS and one by XFX.  The ASUS Radeon HD 7970 is currently one of the least expensive choices at $559 and runs at the default speeds of 925MHz and 1375MHz.  It does ship with ASUS' GPU Tweak utility to allow for easy overclocking if you wish to push the card like [H] did, in their case to 1125MHz on the GPU core, and 1695MHz GDDR5.

The other choice is the XFX R7970 Black Edition which is a custom card, overclocked to 1GHz on the core and 1425MHz GDDR5 but costs $50 more than the offering from ASUS.  At the out of the box speeds, XFX's card both draws less energy and runs much cooler and was silent compared to the ASUS offering.  Even after [H] overclocked the card to 1125MHz core and 1575MHz GDDR5, which was the maximum possible using AMD's Overdrive, it was almost silent when running full out. 

The decision seems to be how much it is worth to you to have a quiet card and if you are willing to find a way to overclock beyond what the Catalyst Control Center can manage.

"We have the new XFX R7970 Black Edition video card to evaluate, which is XFX's current flagship Radeon HD 7970 based video card. With a custom PCB, custom hardware components and custom cooling fan, will it take us to new heights in overclocking, or leave us wishing we had just purchased a "reference" card?"

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

Graphics Cards

• Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6670 @ TechwareLab
• Sapphire HD 7970 3GB Video Cards in CrossFire Overclocked @ Tweaktown
• Asus HD7970 Tri Crossfire @ Kitguru
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Top Video Card @ Legit Reviews
• HIS Radeon HD 6570 IceQ @ Funky Kit
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Cards in 3-Way CrossFireX @ Tweaktown
• HIS 6670 1GB Fan @ XSReviews
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 3GB CrossFire Review @ Legit Reviews
• An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver @ Phoronix
• Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II VGA cooler Review @ XtremeComputing
• Graphics Card Overclocking: Is it really worth it? @ TechSpot
• KFA2 MDT X4 – GTX580 @ Kitguru
• Galaxy GeForce GT 440 2GB Review @ Neoseeker
• Galaxy GT 520 MDT Review @ OCC
• Nouveau For A $10 NVIDIA Graphics Card @ Phoronix

AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Cards In Stock - For Now

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 25, 2012 - 07:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: amd, radeon, HD 7970, 7970, southern islands, tahiti

If you have been looking for a Radeon HD 7970 graphics card since its official release on January 9th and our review on December 22nd, then you better hurry up, as Newegg is showing the cards as in stock as of today.

There are three listed, all at stock clock speeds:

• MSI - $579
• Sapphire - $559
• PowerColor - $549

Also, Amazon.com lists a few but only one as currently in stock (with 8 remaining!!).  In reality, there aren't that many people interested in buying $550+ graphics cards but those of you that want the absolute fastest single GPU card on the planet, this is it.

You can check out review of the HD 7970 reference card right here!!

AMD Catalyst 12.1 and AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview drivers

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 25, 2012 - 03:21 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Catalyst 12.1, catalyst, amd radeon

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 driver:

AMD HD3D technology support enhancement

• Enables support for AMD HD3D technology in conjunction with AMD CrossFireX configurations
• Delivers a new Stereo 3D mode over HDMI 1.4a connections - 1080p at 30Hz is now enabled on supported displays.

AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements

• Application Profiles 
  • AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver enables users to create per application profiles to individually control 3D and CrossFireX settings for Direct3D applications
  • Please be sure to select the “Restore Factory Defaults” option under the Catalyst Control Center Preferences menu before using the new application profiles feature – this ensures there are no compatibility issues between previous drivers and the new AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver with regards to application profiles

AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements – Video UI improvements

• AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver includes user interface enhancements to simply adjustment of video color and video quality controls

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Linux driver:

• SLED 11 SP2 early look support
• Ubuntu 11.10 production level support

If you already have the 12.1 Preview Driver installed and are looking for something new to test then grab the AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview:  http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst122Previewdriver.aspx . 

That is unless you already managed to find and purchase a Radeon HD 7900 users should keep using the 8.921.2 RC11 driver found here since the 12.2 preview does not support the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series.

If you do upgrade you can check out the new AMD Eyefinity 2.1 which allows you to choose from a larger set of resolutions when running AMD Eyefinity.

In addition you can also take advantage of:

• Dynamic Configuration Changes:  Switching between different display configurations will occur automatically when physically plugging/un-plugging displays
• HydraVision enhancements:  The Windows Task bar can now be moved and resized based on users preference
• Profile Manager improvements:  Increased support for Display Groups (including 5x1) and Extended configurations within the Profile Manager

Happy gaming!

500 people attend AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors, Shows and Expos | January 22, 2012 - 01:09 AM | Steve Grever
Tagged: overclocking, hardocp, ati, amd, 7970

More than 500 people made the trip to Eddie Deen’s Ranch in Dallas, Texas to attend AMD and HardOCP’s FX Game Experience event today. Many of the tech industry’s heavy hitters were on hand with interactive booths to showcase their latest PC hardware and provide people with around $50,000 in giveaways and prizes. 

Check out our video coverage of the AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012 event!

ASUS, MSI, and Sapphire each brought their latest respective AMD-based motherboards and performance graphics cards to showcase at the event, including their HD Radeon 7950 and 7970 offerings. ASUS also gave the audience a closer look at some of their other PC gaming peripherals, wireless routers, and Blu ray burners.

HardOCP founder Kyle Bennett put on a show for the crowd with numerous raffle drawings and crazy contests for people to win new AMD processors and other hardware from MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, Corsair, Ergotech, Antec, Maingear, Optoma, Patriot Memory, Astro, Sapphire, Western Digital, ArcSoft, ASRock, vReveal, Diamond Multimedia, and Zotac. 

Check out all of our coverage of the AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012!!

Are AMD's Southern Islands about to be swamped by a Kepler tidal wave?

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 19, 2012 - 03:06 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, GK104, amd

AMD had better hope that SemiAccurate lives up to their tongue in cheek name because according to their sources NVIDIA's new Kepler GPU line is going to better AMD at everything.  The variety of negative rumours about Kepler are contradicted by the news that the A2 silicon has arrived, trouble free, at NVIDIA's door step so the early arrival of Kepler in May now seems reasonable. 

From the limited description we have it seems that NVIDIA's Achilles Heel, multi-monitor support on a single card is no longer a problem as there are two DVI plugs, a single HDMI, and a DisplayPort connector present.  With all of those plugs it seems obvious the card is designed to handle NVIDIA Surround all by its lonesome.  From the GDDR5 count the cards bandwidth of 256 bits and total memory size of 2GB is lesser than AMD's 384-bit, 3GB card but from the description at SemiAccurate that is not going to be enough to save AMD's biscuit. 

^Ex-cellent

"The short story is that Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) will win this round on just about every metric, some more than others. Look for late March or early April availability, with volumes being the major concern at first. GK104 cards seen by SemiAccurate all look very polished and complete, far from rough prototypes or “Puppies“. A2 silicon is now back from TSMC, and that will likely be the production stepping barring any last second hitches. Currently, there aren’t any."

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

Graphics Cards

• AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]ard|OCP
• Radeon Gallium3D: A Half-Decade Behind Catalyst? @ Phoronix
• Muscle-Flexing: AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB @ X-bit Labs
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB @ Tweaktown
• Workstation Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Zotac GTX 560 Ti with 448 cores @ Hardwareoverclock
• Zotac GeForce GTX 550 Ti AMP! Edition Review @ Tech-Reviews UK
• Galaxy GTX 560 Ti Super OC White Edition Review @ Hardware Canucks

Alienware X51 Desktop -- Console Sized PC, $700 and up.

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards, Systems | January 18, 2012 - 07:25 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: GTX 555, GT 545, dell, alienware

Alienware has been long known for two things: having interesting case designs, and being prohibitively expensive. For the last five years or so, Alienware has been a subsidiary of Dell to displace their gaming XPS product line into a non-gaming higher-end line. They have recently announced their X51 product line as Jeremy noted earlier, but what does that mean for someone interested in PC Gaming?

Like how it looks? Dude, you’re getting a Dell!

Jeremy’s post went through the range of base models and their associated prices. The main product page listed the features of the higher-end base unit along with two other points: the chassis can be vertically or horizontally mounted; and you can upgrade your core components easily. While the latter statement is great to make, it should also be noted that with a maximum 330W power supply, your upgrade options -- while potentially easy -- are quite limited.

The choice in video cards is split between the GeForce GT 545 and the GeForce GTX 555: these are both OEM-only GPUs and thus benchmarks are at this time difficult to find. The GT 545 contains 144 CUDA cores clocked at 870/1740 MHz with the memory clocked at 1998 MHz. Should you opt for the higher-end GTX 555, your GPU contains exactly twice the CUDA cores (288) clocked slightly slower at 776/1553 MHz and a slightly lower memory clock of 1914 MHz.

Dude, you regretting a Dell?

In terms of Alienware-specific perks, Alienware has developed the “Alienware Command Center”; this application allows you to customize the lighting on your chassis as well as control programs and tweak your system. While a nice value-addition, it is obviously more gimmicky than practical; but really, isn’t that a large portion of why you are purchasing an Alienware computer? At least they look to be decent gimmicks. The price also does not appear to be too high compared to what you are getting from what I can tell. You would obviously be in a better position to assemble a desktop yourself and probably even commission your local small business computer store to do it for you, but the Alienware’s price does not appear to be in a distant galaxy.

So what do you think?

Lucid Cloud Gaming (VGWare) and XLR8 on Tablets Demo

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards, Shows and Expos | January 18, 2012 - 03:29 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: CES, lucid, xlr8, vgware, cloud

Even though CES 2012 is behind us, there are still some things we took photos or video of that we wanted to show you.  First up, Lucid had a suite off the strip to demonstrate a couple of new technologies coming from the company in 2012.  VGWare is the current name for the cloud-based gaming technology based on the Lucid GPU virtualization technology that allows for games to be rendered on a server and played on a remote machine with only minimal hardware.

In the video above you see two integrated-GPU based notebooks playing Modern Warfare 2 (two instances) and Madagascar being rendered on a machine running an NVIDIA GTX 480 GPU.  

Lucid intends to offer this technology to larger-scale companies that would want to compete with someone like OnLive or maybe even software developers directly.  While that is what we expected, I told them that I would like to see a consumer version of this application - have a single high-powered gaming PC in your home and play games on multiple "thin client" PCs for LAN parties, etc.  What do you all think - is that something you see as useful?

The second demo was for Lucid's XLR8 software that promises to improve performance of gaming on PCs, phones and tablets by intelligently managing display synchronization and GPU performance.

The really interesting part about XLR8 is the flexibility it offers - in our video you see it running on an ASUS Transformer tablet via the NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC.  Frame rates jumped about 40% but we didn't get enough hands on time with the configuration to truly make a decision on whether or not it was an improved gaming experience.  Hopefully Lucid will get this technology to us soon for some hands-on time.

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

Nvidia May Launch GK104 "Kepler" GPUs Ahead Of Schedule

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 17, 2012 - 06:08 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 680, gf104

AMD's latest graphics cards are already hitting the street, but Nvidia's high end GPUs are nowhere to be seen. Late last year, we heard rumors that Nvidia's GK104 "Kepler" graphics cards may be delayed to an early summer or late spring launch. If the latest rumors reported by Maximum PC hold true; however, Nvidia's Kepler cards' release may be leaning more towards a late spring launch instead of an early summer window.

They report that sources from Chinese website ChipHell.com have indicated that Nvidia's new high end GTX 680 graphics cards may be released as soon as February 2012. This is a relatively big push forwards compared to the previously rumored March or April launch window, and is likely being accelerated in response to AMD's successful launch of their GCN (Graphics Core Next) based Radeon 7970 graphics cards.  Although we do not know much about the upcoming cards, the general consensus is that the GTX 680 cards will have 2 GB of video memory on a 256-bit bus.  Further, the Kepler cards' core will run at 780 MHz, and the GK104 cards will have TDP (thermal design power) ratings of 225 Watts.  

Whether the company will have actual hardware to sell or if it will be more of a "paper launch" remains to be seen. If I had to venture a guess, the cards will likely see limited availability in a late February launch but will not be around in significant quantities until later this year. With the delays caused by manufacturing the 28nm Kepler cards over at TSMC, the company is not likely to have all that big of a stockpile on hand.

Check out the speeds on this air cooled HD7970

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 16, 2012 - 06:11 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: trixx, sapphire, overclocking, hd7970

The HD 7970 is nice but not nice enough for Kyle and the gang over at [H]ard|OCP who started overclocking the card as soon as they polished off the review at default settings.  If they were hoping for a challenge, the card was a bit of a disappointment as they cranked the overdrive frequencies to their maximums of 1125MHz GPU and 1575MHz RAM only to find that the card remained 100% stable.  Discouraged but not defeated, they reached out to Sapphire for a custom version of the TRIXX Utility, which allows more control over voltages as well as significantly higher clock speeds.  The resulting tests pegged the card at 1.26GHz GPU and 1725MHz for the memory, not too shabby for air cooling!

"We overclock the Radeon HD 7970 in Overdrive and show you what 1.125GHz of performance looks like. Then, we go to the edge and overclock the voltage and take this GPU past 1.2GHz for stellar overclocked gaming performance. We compare this to an overclocked GeForce GTX 580 and see how performance stacks up."

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

Graphics Cards

• Sapphire Radeon 7970 Quad-CrossFire First Look Performance @ HardwareHeaven
• AMD Radeon HD7970 versus NVIDIA GeForce GTX460 SLI @ NitroWare
• HIS HD 7970 3GB Overclocked @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X OC 1GB Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix
• Sapphire Radeon HD6450 Flex Edition Video Card Review @ TechwareLabs
• Radeon Gallium3D With Mesa 8.0: Goes Up & Down @ Phoronix
• Arctic cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II @ Hardwareoverclock
• Inno3D GTX560Ti 448 Core @ OC3D

CES 2012: MSI GUS II External Thunderbolt Graphics Upgrade System

Subject: Graphics Cards, Mobile, Shows and Expos | January 10, 2012 - 07:41 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: CES, thunderbolt, msi, gus ii, gus, external graphics

While wandering around the MSI suite at The Venetian today I came across a very interesting new device.  The GUS II is an external discrete graphics card dock that connects to a notebook PC (or small-form factor, etc) via a Thunderbolt connection. 

Thunderbolt is a somewhat new interface that extends the PCI Express bus outside of the machine allowing for performance as high as 10 Gb/s per channel in its full implementation.  Current Intel implementations that ship with the Macbook Air and likely included in the first batch of Thunderbolt-capable Ultrabooks are built around Eagle Ridge that offers two bi-directional channels.  Still, even with a 10 Gb/s rating, we are seeing more than enough bandwidth for a discrete graphics card.

You can see that device obviously won't fit your new Radeon HD 7970 3GB in there but the GUS II will support cards with as much as 150 watts of power consumption via the included external power brick.  75 watts of power is supplied by the internal PEG slot while the internal 6-pin ATX power connector supplies another 75 watts.

MSI was running an HD 5770 inside the GUS II on a MacBook Pro running Windows 7.  Unigine Heaven was playing on the graphics card outputs and it was definitely running at speeds and quality settings that the GPU in the Macbook would not have been able to.

MSI mentioned they were hopeful the price would be in the $150 range which is actually quite a good surprise considering they are going to be including the Thunderbolt cable in the box - an accessory that is notoriously expensive today. 

All that is holding up the GUS II from release at this point is compatibility and driver support from AMD and NVIDIA.  Because you are essentially adding in another PCI Express graphics card to system that might only have been prepared and QA'd for a single one, there are some issues to work out.  Even with the hardware in a basically complete state, there is no time table for release though hopefully we can get this pushed into the mainstream soon.

Thunderbolt might finally bring us the dockable and upgradeable graphics we have always envisioned for notebooks.

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

The 7970's are here and some are even customized

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 9, 2012 - 12:03 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, hd7970, gigabyte, GV-R7970C-3GD

[H]ard|OCP got their hands on Gigabyte's first HD7970 and it is a completely custom job, just like we hoped would be the result of AMD opening up the specification limitations for this card.  The GPU was given a 75MHz bump to make it an even 1GHz, while the memory remains at stock speeds though obviously will run at a cooler temperature thanks to the three fans.  They haven't yet had the time to get into serious overclocking but did confirm that the card runs cooler than the reference model and does so with lower fan speeds, good news for those who want to push this card further.

You can also catch Ryan's take on XFX's HD7970 3GB Black Edition which runs at 1GHz on the GPU and 1425 MHz GDDR5 and also sports a custom cooling solution.

"An early first look at a custom built Radeon HD 7970 based video card. The GIGABYTE GV-R7970C-3GD sports a custom design, custom heatsink, and a custom fan all with an out-of-box 1GHz GPU frequency. The future of Radeon HD 7970 based video cards is looking good. "

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

Graphics Cards

• The Radeon HD 7970 GPU @ The Tech Report
• XFX R7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation @ Benchmark Reviews
• PowerColor HD7970 Overclocking & Eyefinity @ OC3D
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB @ Tweaktown
• HIS HD7970 Crossfire @ kitguru
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
• HD7970 Quadfire Eyefinity @ OC3D
• HIS HD7970 Crossfire & Eyefinity @ OC3D
• XFX R7970 Double Dissipation @ Kitguru
• PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• HIS HD 7970 @ Overclockers.com
• XFX HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation 3GB @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Tri-CrossFire Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation: The First Semi-Custom 7970 @ AnandTech
• XFX Radeon 7970 Black Edition Overclocked vs GTX 580 OC vs Radeon 6970 OC @ HardwareHeaven
• Sapphire HD 7970 3GB Review @ OCC
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Crossfire @ Guru of 3D
• HIS Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• VTX3D HD7970 PCIE2 vs PCIE3 @ OC3D
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB Dual Fan Review @ Hardware Canucks
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 Quad CrossfireX: The Stock Air Cooling Champion @ VR-Zone
• AMD ATI Chips Comparison Table @ Hardware Secrets
• i3DSpeed @ iXBT Labs
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Born to Win: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win Dual-GPU @ X-bit Labs
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• Galaxy MDT GeForce GTX 580 @ [H]ard|OCP

Stock Check: Radeon HD 7970 Day 1

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 9, 2012 - 12:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: amd, radeon, 7970, HD 7970

Well, today is the day!  You should be on the lookout for the brand new AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics cards that we first were able to show you on December 22nd!  And today we posted our review of the retail-ready XFX Black Edition Double Dissipation card with overclocked speeds - be sure to give it a read as well. 

Scheduled to be on sale today, I decided to take a quick look around the Internet...

Newegg is on auto-notify for ALL Radeon HD 7970s...

Amazon shows a single card as in stock, from Sapphire, selling for a staggering $683.  But it has Prime shipping!

Our search at TigerDirect came up empty.

Someplace called ExcaliburPC shows one for sale at $637, but is backordered.

Finally, Provantage shows a whole lot of nothing...

I am hoping that stock will improve as the day goes on and some of these vendors start to show availability in their systems.  Otherwise, AMD is going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Feel free to post below if you find them for sale or not!

... and the winner is Shamino with a world record 3DMark11 score on an HD7970

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 4, 2012 - 05:47 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ROG, overclocking, LN2, HD 7970, asus, amd

ASUS' Republic of Gamers is off to an incredible start this year with the release of the HD7970, though there are always those who cannot leave their GPUs at reference speeds.  For instance Shamino, who is not just a ranger in the Ultima series, but is also now the ultimate champion of extreme GPU overclocking.  Taking a brand new HD 7970, removing the stock cooling and replacing it with LN2 cooling has netted him the record for single GPU performance.  He scored 15,063 on 3DMark11 and 54,725 on 3DMark Vantage with an 84% overclock, the GPU was running at 1700MHz when he hit the record.

It can certainly be hard to get into a game when you need to constantly replace the evapourating LN2 cooling the GPU but for overclocking purposes you simply cannot beat the cooling ability of LN2.  His record may not stand for long, they never do in OCing competiton, but for now he is king of the ring and is looking to move onto bigger and better things ... in this case a quad-CrossFire system which he intends to use to take the grand title of fastest graphics performance on the planet.

Does AMD have a 2304 stream processor GPU in waiting?

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 2, 2012 - 07:23 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: amd, southern islands, rumor, leak

The review for the AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB card based on the Tahiti GPU and the new Southern Islands architecture was released on December 22nd with expected availability on January 9th.  In that review we show a diagram of the Tahiti GPU and its 32 Compute Units (CUs) that combine to form the total 2048 stream processors (SPs).  

We asked and asked, but a die shot was never given to us for our review - a very non-standard practice for new launches.  That started us wondering - was there something AMD was hiding from reviewers about the architecture?  Were there some disabled CUs on the 28nm GPU that they had disabled for business, yield or clock speed reasons?  Think of what Intel has done with Sandy Bridge-E or what NVIDIA did originally with the GTX 480 GPU.  

AMD assured us that was not the case - Tahiti is the full die enabled, 32 CUs and 2048 SPs.  And, based on some of our own internal information, that seems to be 100% the case.

But, an interesting image started floating around last week:

This image from the site ChipHell.com appears to show the development sheets for Sapphire's upcoming Radeon HD 7000 series products and their internal codenames.  There are some really noteworthy things to look at though starting with the Atomic lineup.  

While the Flex 6G is a 6GB card with 6 mini-DP ports on it running at the same clock speeds as our reference designs did initially, the Atomic RX card has a clock speed of 1335 MHz running on 2048 SPs and a pretty good memory overclock as well.  If that is accurate, the performance difference between the Atomic RX and "Da Original" (likely the reference card) would be tremendous!

Here is what is more interesting - another card listed above the HD 7970s that seems to include 2304 SPs, or 36 CUs.  Running at a reference speed of 1000 MHz, this card would have a noticeable advantage over the current HD 7970 cards.  What's more...?

The Toxic ZX, if it exists, would run with 2304 stream processors at 1225 MHz!  The performance of this card could easily beat out the Radeon HD 7970 3GB card by 35-45% with the shader and clock speed differences.

So, what does this all mean?  Probably nothing, but it is fun to speculate on a few things.  It seems possible that AMD either HAD or HAS another GPU waiting in the wings based on Southern Islands to compete with NVIDIA's Kepler when it finally gets released.  Even though these documents seem to indicate that, I kind of find it hard to believe that AMD would have been able to keep this secret from the media and the competition for this long.  It is also equally unlikely that AMD was able to quickly tape out another chip that we are unaware of as even a somewhat moderate change like adding in four very modular CUs takes many months.

And of course, we have to take in the possibility that these are all fake, or a decoy or were written up 18 months ago and plans have changed.  Those are much less fun though.