Doom 3 Out Early!!

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 31, 2004 - 09:14 AM | Ryan Shrout
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If you were waiting for Tuesday to pick up a copy of probably the most anticipated game of all time, wait no more, go out this Saturday morning and pick you up a copy!  That's right, the Doom 3 street date has been broken!!!

To quote one excited gamer:

Activision just gave my best buy authorization to break the embargo. IT IS ON THE SHELVES NOW! I am typing this with a COPY IN MY HAND! YMMV, GO GO GO!

Official Doom3 Benchmarks at HardOCP

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 22, 2004 - 03:15 AM | Ryan Shrout
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These are the first official, final benchmarks from the retail Doom3.   Kyle has one-upped the rest of the industry here with this exclusive!

Talking to John briefly about his overclocking comments made some things clear to us that many enthusiasts will need to be aware of. When he speaks of "new usage patterns" he is literally talking about transistors on some of new GPUs that are going to be used for the first time when you play DOOM 3 on your video card.

ATI Headquarter Tour

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 15, 2004 - 05:34 PM | M. Pulliam
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A small but very interesting article about touring the ATI Headquarters in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

"...Along the walls of ATI's performance labs are boxes of video cards, arranged by product families. ATI has a collection of cards going back to Nvidia's GeForce 256 line all the way up to last year's Geforce FX cards.

Review - AOpen GeForceFX 5900XT

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 14, 2004 - 11:21 AM | M. Pulliam
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The battle between the 9800 camp and the 5900 troop continues into the newly drawn mainstream arena where last years "High End" GPUs can now be had for under $180 USD.

Review - HIS Excalibur X800XT IceQ II VIVO LE

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 13, 2004 - 12:15 PM | M. Pulliam
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Hightech Information System {HiS} Excalibur x800 XT IceQ II VIVO 256 MB GDDR3 (Limited Edition) - Watch jaws drop as you run that card name past your next LAN party. Guru3d runs one of the current "cream of the crop" cards through its paces, as well as answer any questions pertaining to the purchase of a card with the MSRP of $575.00 USD.

"...According to HiS, IceQ-II cooling will bring you a 11 °C lower temperature compared to the reference cooling solution.

Review - ATI Radeon X800 XT PCIe

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 12, 2004 - 01:12 PM | M. Pulliam
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The X800/R420 GPU series from the ATI camp is winding up for a great summer. But before we get too far into the decision process of buying a new video card - dont forget to check out the differences between the R420 and its little sister, the R423 PCIe.

"...at texture sizes of 1024x1024, which will certainly require some texture addressing over the bus, the PCIe X800 XT manages to outperform the AGP boards by a fairly significant margin..."

Review - 12 Pipeline Nvidia GeForce 6800

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 10, 2004 - 04:57 PM | M. Pulliam
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The referance model of Nvidias newest GPU - the GeForce 6800 series - leaves a definite impression upon those wanting the cutting edge technology as well as remain on a budget.

"...The GeForce 6800 is a 12-Pipeline version of the NV40. It has all of the same features as the 6800 Ultra, minus 4 pixel pipelines, and its core and memory are clocked considerably lower at 325MHz / 350MHz (700MHz DDR). But with fewer pixel pipelines and lower clock speeds also comes a lower price.

Review - BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 9, 2004 - 02:26 PM | M. Pulliam
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Wednesday, July 7th, 2004 - Just in time for the fresh GPU battle about to begin this summer, BFG once again produces a top-notch Nvidia-based card aimed at taking the Best-Bang-for-your-Buck catagory.

"...the BFG 6800 GT OC is nearly perfect- single slot solution, single molex connector and 6800 Ultra level performance (and beyond if overclocked)..."

ATI Releases Catalyst 4.7 Drivers

Subject: Graphics Cards | July 7, 2004 - 09:39 PM | Ryan Shrout
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ATI has released the new Catalyst 4.7 drivers, with some fixes and performance improvements of course.  No word on whether this release fixes the issues with the FarCry 1.2 patch yet.

This release introduces a new feature called Temporal Anti-Aliasing. OpenGL and Direct 3D applications will benefit from this feature when custom settings for Anti-Aliasing are used, and Temporal Anti-Aliasing is enabled.

NVIDIA Reintroduces SLI Technology

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 28, 2004 - 10:50 AM | Ryan Shrout
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HardOCP has a little write up on the announced NVIDIA SLI technology.  Rather than spit out just another rendition of this article on PCP, I decided a link to this quality work would suffice.  The major points are all hit on there and you can see the slides from the presentation that we were shown. 

That said, SLI is coming. We are going to see 6800Ultras in the market for sale this year and we can bet on dual X16 PCI-Express boards to surface as well.

What does PCI Express mean to AGP & a Catalyst Comparison

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 21, 2004 - 01:18 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Sudhain takes a look at the bandwidth needed for graphics cards, to determine just what you can expect to see from PCI-Express.  Also, Legionhardware compares Catalyst drivers to see what has changed over the past few iterations.

"My curiosity piqued, I decided to investigate just how much AGP bandwidth affected modern game and application performance, and, by extension, how much PCI-Express is likely to improve it.  While we won

ATi to Release .11-micron X300 & More

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 28, 2004 - 05:44 PM | Andrew Kaiser
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ATi certainly isn't sitting back and letting nVidia dominate the budget market. Digitimes has some information on ATi's new budget cards.

People are still having a hard time getting their hands on Radeon X800 XT boards, and someone has already discovered how to turn an X800 Pro into an X800 XT.

NVIDIA Criticizes ATi's X800 & More

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 25, 2004 - 04:10 PM | Andrew Kaiser
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Some leaked internal slides intended to be used by NVIDIA's sales teams have been posted on 3DCenter's forums. Kyle at HardOCP has verifed that these slides are indeed real.
"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" comes to mind.

Do You Trust Me?

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 21, 2004 - 12:28 PM | Sean Pelletier
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Tech-Report has just posted an excellent article outlining the tactics behind the recent optimizations discovered within ATI's drivers.

Top Gun Video Card Shootout & More

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 20, 2004 - 03:36 AM | Andrew Kaiser
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Chances are in recent years you have encountered the mentality that the OEM brand doesn't matter, and that the GPU the card is outfitted with is all that matters. While in sectors such as storage brands suddenly become quite important based on their reliability records, for the most part this is a non-issue with video cards these days. Really, how much difference can there be?

ATI's Answer to MXM

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 18, 2004 - 10:16 AM | Sean Pelletier
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Those who thought NVIDIA's new MXM mobile PCI-Express module would make life a bit easier for laptop vendors are in for a suprise. Apparently, ATI is on the verge of announcing their own module.

Tornado GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GDDR3 & More

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 16, 2004 - 05:17 AM | Andrew Kaiser
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It's simply amazing how speedy the development cycle operates at in the IT industry. Here GDDR3 has hardly been out, and GDDR4 has already been revealed! Check the link below to read Guru3D's article.

Don't forget to check out Alienware's Dual PCI-Express technology!

Quote: "Why the use of third generation DDR memory? Simple, it has certain advantages over DDR1/2. First of all, lower voltage is needed to juice up the silicon. Less juice means less heat, so it can be clocked higher.

ATi's X800 (R420) Series Previews

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 4, 2004 - 04:19 PM | Andrew Kaiser
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With the NDA lifted, a flurry of information about ATi's next gen card has been unleashed upon the web. I'll let the reviews speak for themselves, but it is certain that neither side dropped the ball this time around. The back-and-forth battle that has become so familier continues!

"Under the Pixel Shader 2.0 test from 3DMark03 We are seeing much great performance differences between the boards than in previous test The X800 XT PE is up to 65% higher performance than the X800 PRO and very close to being 3 times the performance of the 9800 XT!