MSI GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II 1 GB

NVIDIA's GeForce 500 Juggernaut is sinking deep into the market's key business area, the mainstream, where most money is made, with the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, reviewed today. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti launched last month rattled the "gamer's sweet spot" ($200~$250) price-range, and it's now up to the GTX 550 Ti to capture the sub-$200 market as the best option available. A huge task, in a market almost saturated with options. The $5 you paid to the toll-booth on your way to the PC hardware store could determine what graphics card you end up buying!

NVIDIA GeForce 550 Ti is technically a successor to the GeForce GTS 450. Its purpose is to provide gamers with a graphics card that lets them game at 1680x1050 or 1600x900, that 17-22-inch monitor that they never bothered to change, with a lot of eye-candy turned on. Then when they decide to go big with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, adding a second GTX 550 Ti in SLI should give them high-end performance that lets them play anything at HD resolutions.

To accomplish this task, the GTX 550 Ti is based on the new 40 nm GF116 silicon, which packs 192 CUDA cores, and a 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface. 1 GB is the standard memory amount, and is spread across the 192-bit bus using memory chips of variable densities. A smart design move to achieve as much as 70% higher memory bandwidth than GTS 450 with its 128-bit interface. The GF116 allows for very high clock speeds, including 900 MHz core, 1800 MHz CUDA cores, and 1025 MHz (4100 MHz GDDR5 effective) memory.

MSI's GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II comes with increased clock speeds out of the box and is equipped with MSI's new Cyclone II cooler that promises more airflow with less noise. In terms of pricing, MSI offers their card at the reference design price of $159.

from: www.techpowerup.com

ASUS GeForce GTX 590 3 GB, With Asus's Tweak and SmartDoctor Technology

Being the vendor behind the fastest graphics card money can buy means a lot for both NVIDIA and AMD, in equal measures, as neither is willing to accept the "second best" spot while trying to spin off their mediocrity with "performance/features to price" (unlike the desktop CPU industry). NVIDIA has been a company traditionally seen as being behind the fastest GPUs for longer periods of time, and with higher standards in product quality. Its GeForce GTX 580 single-GPU was very fast, but its competition was inconclusive with the Radeon HD 5970, the red team's lead extended with the launch of Radeon HD 6990, a couple of weeks earlier, but now NVIDIA got the GeForce GTX 590.

We in the media had written off the possibility of a dual Fermi graphics card, like GeForce GTX 590, using two GF100 GPUs after seeing the GeForce GTX 480's obnoxious thermal/electrical figures. GF110 is worlds apart from GF100 in terms of thermal and electrical characteristics, but even that left a bit of a doubt if NVIDIA can actually pull of a dual-GPU graphics card design based on it, let alone a single-PCB dual-GPU design. Well, NVIDIA's engineers shut us up with their GeForce GTX 590. But that's only a part of the story. Whether this 6 Billion transistor, 1024 CUDA core, 3 GB over 384 GB/s monstrosity keeps its cool and checks its appetite while it performs well is the business-end of it and we will test this in our GTX 590 review.

We have today with us a GeForce GTX 590 by ASUS, which sticks to NVIDIA's reference design, and combines it with ASUS' high quality packaging and bundle. ASUS' Voltage Tweak technology and SmartDoctor software that lets you up voltage is very much part of the package, ready to enhance your GTX 590 with overclocking. Boy oh boy.

MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozr III 2 GB

AMD recently released their Radeon HD 6900 Series which delivers high-end 3D performance based around the new Cayman GPU. The new Series boasts improvements in power consumption while increasing performance over last generation. Most noteworthy, however, is the possibility to unlock a Radeon HD 6950 into a HD 6970 by a simple BIOS flash.

MSI's HD 6950 Twin Frozr III introduces their new Twin Frozr III cooler and acts as successor to the HD 6950 Twin Frozr II. It offers higher clock speeds out of the box and also comes with AMD's dual BIOS switch.

source:www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon HD 6450 1 GB

Last week AMD introduced their Radeon HD 6450, which is based on their all-new Caicos graphics processor. HD 6450 is an evolutionary step forward from HD 5450, improving performance and media playback features. The Caicos GPU comes with 160 shaders which is twice that on the previous-generation HD 5450, which really had a hard time competing with integrated graphics lately. Instead of (G)DDR3 memory, the Radeon HD 6450 also uses fast GDDR5 memory which will help with available memory bandwidth.

AMD Radeon HD 6450 is targeted at the entry-level market with OEMs and office system builders in mind. Support for DirectX 11, EyeFinity and accelerated HD video decode are features that offset it from the integrated graphics competition.

source: www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon HD 6670 1 GB, “Jack of All Trades”

Here you are, the AMD Radeon HD 6670. The new mainstream chip from AMD called "Turks" is looking to be a trusty "Jack of all trades" at a valuable market price-point. Microsoft's DirectX 11 API has once again elevated the standards of PC game graphics, but is still a new development, as DirectX 9 based self-proclaimed "Blockbuster" titles such as Crysis 2 are being released even today. In this backdrop, all of a sudden it makes sense to buy graphics cards that are under US $100, and have been moving along with market dynamics and the GPU's natural compute power growth rate.

Perhaps targeting that segment while maintaining some feature-set cushion with "100% DirectX 11 compliance," AMD is releasing its new Radeon HD 6670 graphics card. The HD 6670 is geared to be a little bit of everything, a rockstar when it comes to HD media acceleration and productive multi-display setups, but something that can smoothly run DirectX 9/10 titles at close to 1080p, and DirectX 11 at 720p. Based on the 40 nm Turks silicon, the HD 6670 features 480 stream processors, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 1 GB of memory typically. It supports 3-display Eyefinity output, and is backed by HydraVision display head manipulation software. Let's put HD 6670 through its paces.

source:www.techpowerup.com

AMD's Bulldozer Offer 50% Higher Performance than Core i7, Phenom II Chips?

The next-generation desktop central processing units (CPUs) from Advanced Micro Devices with Bulldozer micro-architecture are projected to offer around 50% higher performance compared to existing chips from AMD and Intel. While the alleged promises presumably from confidential documents seem very "promising", they should be considered as extremely rough performance estimates.

An AMD document obtained by Donanimhaber web-site claims that an eight-core Bulldozer microprocessor offers 50% higher performance compared to quad-core Intel Core i7-950 with HT microprocessor in games, rendering and multimedia applications. The web-sites does not specify which benchmarks were used. In fact, 50% higher performance versus a quad-core chip does not seem to be bad, especially in games that do not usually take advantage of multi-core chips.

The web-site claims that AMD compares performance of the Core i7-950 with performance of AMD Phenom II X6 1100T chip, which is considerably slower than its rival, according to performance tests conducted by X-bit labs. It is unclear whether AMD showed the model 1100T being slower or faster than the i7-950. Test settings were not revealed. Typically, AMD publishes so-called "simulated benchmark results".

Rumours published earlier this month suggested that AMD plans to return the FX products family with extreme performance. Indirectly, this information confirms very high performance of new microprocessors from AMD.

Engineering samples of code-named Zambezi (desktop Bulldozer) chips became available for AMD's partners for testing in December, 2010. Production candidates should be ready by February '11 and the initial production of the company's first desktop microprocessors powered by the long-awaited Bulldozer micro-architecture is scheduled to start in April next year. Probably, the launch of the chip will occur around the same timeframe.

Eight-core Zambezi features four dual-core Bulldozer modules, each of which is believed to have 2MB of shared level-two cache, that will share 8MB L3 cache. In total, the whole chip will pack in whopping 16MB of SRAM, a 77% increase from the current six-core microprocessors that have 9MB of cache in total. Clock-speeds of the chip may be as high as 3.50GHz or even higher.

The first Zambezi microprocessors to be launched are expected to be eight-core products with 95W and 125W thermal design power as well as 8MB L3 cache. Later in the second quarter of 2011 AMD, according to sources with knowledge of the company's roadmap, will release six-core chips with 8MB L3 cache and four-core products with 4MB cache. All of the processors will feature TurboCore 2.0 technology, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller with up to 1866MHz memory support and will be compatible with AM3+ mainboards.

source: www.xbitlabs.com

AMD: APUs Will Challenge Traditional Microprocessors (CPU)

Standalone central processing units (CPUs) for client computers will be challenged by accelerated processing units (APUs) with integrated graphics core, a high-ranking officer at AMD said in an interview. APUs provide better performance because of its ability to efficiently process both parallelized and serialized data.
"I think APUs will definitely challenge standalone CPUs. I believe that the future of consumer as well as commercial computing environments are characterized by the ability to present a compelling visual experience. Taking a GPU core and a CPU core and using them together on one chip will definitely challenge standalone CPUs," said Neal Robison, senior director of content and application support, in an interview with X-bit labs published on Sunday.

 Accelerated processing units integrate many parallel GPU processing elements as well as several "fat" x86 CPU cores that can efficiently process typical data. Many performance-demanding applications nowadays use parallel processing and receive benefits from both multi-core CPUs as well as many-core CPUs. Nonetheless, there are loads of programs that use advanced microprocessors and have no need for GPUs.
But while APUs will confront low-cost systems, they will not challenge and will not become part of advanced personal computers with discrete graphics cards.
"I do not think that APUs will challenge discrete GPUs on anything, but on the lowest-end systems. When you look at adding a discrete GPU that enhances performance of the graphics side, it makes a huge amount of sense as it scales [performance] on a wide amount of applications because of the rich visual experience that everybody expects now when they are actually using their computing device," added Mr. Robison.
source: www.xbitlabs.com

MSI's AM3 Motherboards to Support AM3+ "Bulldozer" Microprocessors

MicroStar International (MSI), a leading maker of mainboards, on Monday said that select platforms originally designed for current-generation central processing units (CPUs) in AM3 form-factor will support the forthcoming AMD FX-series chips with Bulldozer micro-architecture in AM3+ package.

Various AM3 mainboards from MSI based on various AMD 7-series and AMD 8-series chipsets will support AM3+ microprocessors after a BIOS update. This will allow end-users, who own appropriate platforms, to upgrade to multi-core AMD FX-series CPUs code-named Zambezi once they become available in the coming months. At present MSI offers BIOS updates for three mainboards, but the list contains fourteen models and will be updated.

The maker of motherboards implied that the AM3 mainboards will support all the advanced capabilities of chips based on Bulldozer micro-architecture, including technologies that improve power efficiency as well as Turbo Core 2.0 technology that can dynamically overclock CPUs by up to 500MHz.

Earlier on Monday Gigabyte became the first company in the world to release mainboards with AM3+ socket, which support the next-generation 32nm chips offficially. Meanwhile, Asustek Computer - just like MSI - claims that even its AM3 motherboards will fully support AMD FX-series "Zambezi" processors with Bulldozer micro-architecture.

The first breed of AMD FX8000, FX6000 and FX4000 currently known under Zambezi code-name will completely support all the advantages that the Bulldozer micro-architecture is supposed to bring, including new Flex FP floating point processing unit. The new chips in maximum eight-core configurations are projected - by AMD's internal documents - to offer roughly 50% performance improvement over Phenom II-series microprocessors in multimedia applications.

The Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer plans to introduce AMD 900-series chipsets compatible with Zambezi processors in Q2 2011. The Bulldozer processors, Radeon HD 6000 "Northern Islands" discrete graphics cards  and AMD 900-series core-logic sets will power AMD's next-generation enthusiast-class platform code-named Scorpius.

source:xbitlabs.com

Four AMD's FX "Bulldozer"s Approaching, Set to Consume 125W, 95W

 The initial family of AMD's FX-series microprocessors based on Bulldozer micro-architecture will include four models with eight, six or four cores and 95W or 125W thermal design power (TDP).

The first breed of AMD FX8000, FX6000 and FX4000 currently known under Zambezi code-name will completely support all the advantages that the Bulldozer micro-architecture is supposed to bring, including new Flex FP floating point processing unit. The new chips in maximum eight-core configurations are projected - by AMD's internal documents - to offer roughly 50% performance improvement over Phenom II-series microprocessors in multimedia applications.

The intrigue remains about exact clock-speed of Bulldozer chips. Based on estimations, frequencies of such chips may be as high as 3.50GHz. What should be noted is that modern CPUs can include units that work at different clock-speeds and the highest one will hardly determine actual performance.
Four chips are not a large number and they will hardly be able to properly compete against rather huge Intel Core i7-series microprocessors, which includes quad-core and six-core offerings. But this - initial offering by AMD - may not be the "army" to attack Intel, but rather than a lineup to show what AMD is capable of: creation of a competitive high-end microprocessor. The second breed of Bulldozer-based chips due in Q4 is supposed to really improve AMD's positions on the market of expensive central processing units. By the end of the year AMD, based on a document seen by X-bit labs, expects approximately 10% of its CPUs to be FX-series in AM3+ form-factor.

AMD FX-series of Microprocessors Due in 2011
Model	FX-8130P	FX-8110	FX-6110	FX-4110
Cores	8	8	6	4
L2 Cache	8MB	8MB	6MB	4MB
L3 Cache	Up to 8MB	Up to 8MB	Up to 8MB	Up to 8MB
TDP	125W	95W	95W	95W
Memory	1866MHz	1866MHz	1866MHz	1866MHz
Black Edition	+	+	+	+
Turbo Core	+	+	+	+
Packaging	AM3+	AM3+	AM3+	AM3+
Process Technology	32nm SOI	32nm SOI	32nm SOI	32nm SOI

AMD Orochi design is the company's next-generation processor for high-end desktop (Zambezi) and server (Valencia) markets. The chip will feature eight processing engines, but since it is based on Bulldozer micro-architecture, those cores will be packed into four modules. Every module which will have two independent integer cores (that will share fetch, decode and L2 functionality) with dedicated schedulers, one "Flex FP" floating point unit with two 128-bit FMAC pipes with one FP scheduler. The chip will have shared L3 cache, new dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and will use HyperTransport 3.1 bus. The Zambezi chips will use new AM3+ form-factor and will require brand new platforms.
The Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer plans to introduce AMD 900-series chipsets compatible with Zambezi processors in Q2 2011. The Bulldozer processors, Radeon HD 6000 "Northern Islands" discrete graphics cards  and AMD 900-series core-logic sets will power AMD's next-generation enthusiast-class platform code-named Scorpius.
AMD did not comment on the news-story.
source:www.xbitlabs.com

Gigabyte Announce Mainboards for Future AMD FX "Bulldozer" Microprocessors.

Gigabyte Technology, one of the largest makers of mainboards in the world, on Monday unveiled a lineup of mainboards with AM3+ socket designed for AMD FX-series microprocessors code-named Zambezi and powered by AMD's next-generation Bulldozer micro-architecture.

Gigabyte AM3+ "Black Socket" mainboards are powered by AMD's current-generation core-logic sets, including AMD 7-series and AMD 8-series. The new motherboards - which feature a black CPU socket - fully support AMD's next-generation FX-series microprocessors with up to eight cores and made using 32nm process technology. the platforms also support existing AMD Athlon II and AMD Phenom II chips in AM3 form-factor with dual-channel DDR3 memory controllers.

Gigabyte is the first company in the world to release mainboards with AM3+ socket. Meanwhile, Asustek Computer claims that even its AM3 motherboards will support AMD FX-series "Zambezi" processors with Bulldozer micro-architecture.

The first breed of AMD FX8000, FX6000 and FX4000 currently known under Zambezi code-name will completely support all the advantages that the Bulldozer micro-architecture is supposed to bring, including new Flex FP floating point processing unit. The new chips in maximum eight-core configurations are projected - by AMD's internal documents - to offer roughly 50% performance improvement over Phenom II-series microprocessors in multimedia applications.

AMD Orochi design is the company's next-generation processor for high-end desktop (Zambezi) and server (Valencia) markets. The chip will feature eight processing engines, but since it is based on Bulldozer micro-architecture, those cores will be packed into four modules. Every module which will have two independent integer cores (that will share fetch, decode and L2 functionality) with dedicated schedulers, one "Flex FP" floating point unit with two 128-bit FMAC pipes with one FP scheduler. The chip will have shared L3 cache, new dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and will use HyperTransport 3.1 bus.

The Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer plans to introduce AMD 900-series chipsets compatible with Zambezi processors in Q2 2011. The Bulldozer processors, Radeon HD 6000 "Northern Islands" discrete graphics cards  and AMD 900-series core-logic sets will power AMD's next-generation enthusiast-class platform code-named Scorpius.

source: www.xbitlabs.com

AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Review

The biggest industrial of graphic card called AMD , today they introduces the fastest graphic card which has 4GB memory namely AMD Radeon HD 6990. In this the new generation of graphic card we had something a little bit different that AMD had the fastest “Graphics Card” in the form of the 5970 and had the fastest GPU thorough GTX 580. It is the good combination which provide highest performing part, beside that AMD feel quite happy with the price about the performance and features of their dual GPU model, it can refreshing the product below it. According to AMD that The AMD Radeon 6990 they will put it up against the GTX 570 and GTX 580 same like with the AMD Radeon 5970.

AMD already tests the AMD Radeon HD 6990 as well as the standard 1920×1080 graphic resolution and also cover 5760×1080 resolutions  on all products, GPU computing, 3D blu-ray, noise, power, temps, and overcooking.  As the result from the test, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 becomes the fastest performance graphic card. Not only that, it is also already test with the several pc games such as Dragon Age 2, Bullet storm, Total War: Shogun 2, and many others. The AMD Radeon HD 6990 will give you new experience on plying game, it amazing experience that ever.

source: reviewofcomputer.com

Intel recalls 8 million Sandy Bridge chipsets

Intel has just confirmed a design flaw in the latest generation of its Sandy Bridge chipsets. It's stopped shipments of the new chips, and setting things straight is going to involve recalls and replacements and $700 million or so. Ouch.

The issue that Intel has identified isn't with the Sandy Bridge microprocessor itself, but rather with the SATA ports within the chipset, which are the things that talk to your hard drive or DVD drive. Over time, these ports can degrade, possibly leading to sluggish performance and eventually data loss. Unfortunately, it's not a software bug, it's a problem with the silicon chipset itself, meaning that the only way to fix it is to design a new chip and physically replace all of the effected systems. Intel says that they'll get this rolling by February, implying that the new chips will start shipping in April.

While it's good that Intel managed to catch the issue early, and only chipsets manufactured after January 9th are flawed, this is still some 8 million Sandy Bridge chipsets destined for 500 different personal computer OEMs. If you happen to have a computer with a new Sandy Bridge chipset, there's no need to panic. You'll want to replace it eventually, but you probably won't notice anything in the short term, and even in the long term, there's only about a 5% chance that something will go bad. Intel is going to be working with all of its partners to arrange for modifications or replacements of any affected systems, and although it's probably going to be a hassle for you, Intel is going to do what it can to make the process as minimally inconvenient as possible.

source: http://dvice.com

Intel Sandy Bridge Review

It seems that we’ve been hearing about Intel’s next-gen CPU architecture, codenamed Sandy Bridge, for the past year, and previewing motherboards and revelling in the leaks for at least four months. In fact, it reached the point where we’d said ‘Sandy Bridge’ so often in the office that it started sounded stupid – Intel’s coming in to show us its Sandy Bridge? Wouldn’t a medical professional be more appropriate, we’d joke.

However, that all ended soon after we received our first CPU samples in November and started our own testing. Our conclusions? The Sandy Bridge CPU range is incredible, and has the potential to change the entire PC industry. Intel hasn’t helped at all to convey the significance of its new line-up – the range is still branded Core i3, i5 and i7, making it hard to know whether it’s new at all. The Internet has also been awash with rumours that Sandy Bridge won’t overclock at all, or that it’s so easy to do so and the CPUs are so fast that Sandy Bridge will make the LGA1366 Core i7 range redundant – not bad for a mid-range, mid-priced CPU.

There’s a lot to explain when it comes to the new Sandy Bridge range, so we’ll endeavour to blow away the myths and deliver the facts as clearly and concisely as possible.
 source:www.bit-tech.net

GeForce GTX 590 3GB Specifications

The GTX 590 3GB is equipped with two full size GF110 GPUs. As each has the maximum amount of 512 stream processors possible with the Fermi architecture, this means the GTX 590 3GB boasts a whopping count of 1,024 stream processors. With a core frequency of 607MHz, these stream processors run at 1,214MHz. Both these clock speeds are roughly 20 per cent less than those of the GTX 580 1.5GB.

The use of two full-specification GF110 GPUs also means the GTX 590 3GB boasts eight rasterisers, (2 x 4) and 32 tessellation units (2 x 16). It also sports 120 texture units (2 x 60) and 96 ROPs (2 x 48).

Meanwhile, the 3GB of GDDR5 memory is split between the two GPUs, so each GPU can still only address 1.5GB. The memory is clocked at 853MHz (3,414MHz effective), which is roughly 16 per cent lower than that of the GTX 580 1.5GB and 10 per cent lower than the GTX 570 1.3GB's RAM. The card has a combined memory bandwidth of 327.8GB/sec (2x 163.9GB/sec), running via dual 384-bit memory interfaces.

Certainly on paper it’s a tremendously capable graphics system, with the might of two full GF110 Fermi GPUs offering huge amounts of graphics potential. The fact that Nvidia has clocked the card down quite considerably in comparison to the GTX 580 1.5GB does mean that the GTX 590 3GB won’t be twice as fast as its top single-GPU offering, though. 

source: www.bit-tech.net

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Claimed as World's Fastest Graphics Card

NVIDIA introduced the GeForce GTX 590, the fastest dual graphics card which also happens to be the world's quietest too. Powered by dual NVIDIA Fermi-class GPUs on a single card, the GTX 590 is designed for uber enthusiasts and those looking to build the ultimate PC gaming rig.

With a combined 1024 NVIDIA CUDA architecture cores, 3GB of GDDR5 memory, 6 billion transistors and over 2200 individual components all packed into an 11 inch dual slot card, the GTX 590 delivers a staggering 32 tessellation engines that can power today's cutting edge DX11 games at resolutions of 2560x1600 and higher. With four separate video outputs on each card, consumers can configure their PC with four independent displays, or they can span their gaming across 3 3D displays, at a resolution up to 5760x1080 for an intense, immersive, stereoscopic gaming experience utilizing NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology. Like all NVIDIA "DX11 Done Right" GPUs, the GTX 590 delivers the world's fastest performance for DX11 games

NVIDIA engineered the GTX 590 to be the world's quietest dual GPU product. It features a special cooling system and dual vapor chambers which deliver both astounding performance and acoustics. Measured with a standard decibel meter, the GTX 590 clocks in at 48dB, more than two times quieter than the closest competitive product under full graphics load. To the human ear, this difference means the GTX 590 delivers a 3D gaming experience that is typical of a quiet library. In comparison, the competition's product is more on par with a busy freeway.

With an estimated selling e-tail price starting at $699 USD, the GeForce GTX 590 is available starting today from the world's leading add-in card partners, including Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, POV, Palit, and Zotac. 

source: www.pressroom.nvidia.com