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ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series represents a new milestone in graphics architecture, with 800 cores driving cinema-quality realism in all aspects of visual computing . AMD (NYSE:AMD) today achieved two world firsts in visual computing: the launch of the first teraFLOPS graphics card, the ATI Radeon™ HD 4850, and the launch of the first graphics card featuring ultra high bandwidth GDDR5 memory, the ATI Radeon HD 4870.
These two innovations combine with trademark AMD energy-efficient design and powerful DirectX® 10.1 compatibility to deliver superior performance at the high-volume mainstream and performance price points. Both the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 are immediately available. “The ATI Radeon 4800 series represents a 2X performance jump over the ATI Radeon™ HD 3800 GPU, the biggest generational increase since the game-changing launch of the Radeon™ 9700 in 2002,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “AMD made a strategic decision to focus on GPU designs that maximized our efficiency and allowed us to provide enthusiasts, performance and mainstream users with the most compelling value proposition at every price point. The ATI Radeon 4800 series sets a new industry standard in key metrics such as performance-per-watt, performance-per-mm2 of chip die size, and performance-per-dollar.
” AMD customers expressed excitement with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series. “The new ATI Radeon HD 4800 series cards have really impressed us in a lot of areas,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest. “In performance, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 just blew past competing cards at their respective price levels. Each draws less power and produces less fan noise for this level of performance as well. To cap it off, the driver support is solid. The ATI Radeon HD 4800 series represents a huge leap forward for AMD.”
“It is remarkable that we are now able to build high performance gaming PCs with over one teraFLOPS of compute power inside,” said Patrick Cooper, director of Product Planning, Alienware. “With that kind of performance and the addition of visual enhancements made possible by DirectX 10.1 and tessellation, gamers can now achieve cinema-quality realism. It’s an incredible step forward in gaming and Alienware is looking forward to introducing the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series in the near future.
” ATI Radeon HD 4870 introduces GDDR5 performance, pushes 1.2 teraFLOPS The ATI Radeon HD 4870, available immediately with a suggested retail price of USD$299, represents an unprecedented 1.2 teraFLOPS of visual compute power. It features a stock GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR5 memory rated at 3.6 gigabits/second, and comes in a dual-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 160 watts. ATI Radeon HD 4850: one teraFLOPS of visual compute power The ATI Radeon HD 4850, immediately available with a suggested retail price of USD$199, received an enthusiastic welcome from global graphics reviewers. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 is the world’s first teraFLOPS graphics chip, with 800 stream processing cores (identical to the ATI Radeon HD 4870), a stock GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR3 memory rated at 2 gigabits/second, and comes in a single-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 110 watts. Industry excitement for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series is evidenced in one dozen AIB (Add-In-Board) companies offering custom designs of the products, a record number for AMD.
Building high-performance versions of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series are VisionTek, ASUS, PowerColor, MSI, GIGABYTE, GECUBE, Force3D, SAPPHIRE Technology, Diamond Multimedia, Club 3D, HIS (Hightech Information Systems) and Palit Multimedia. Systems integrators launching ATI Radeon HD 4800 series include ABS, Alienware, AMAX, Canada Computers, CyberPower, Extreme PC Corporation, Falcon-Northwest, iBUYPOWER, Maingear, Systemax, Ultra Gaming and Velocity Micro.
AMD’s Radeon 4800 series launches a bit later than originally expected, but AMD promises a huge jump in performance, especially in number crunching horsepower: The Radeon 4870 delivers 1.2 TFlops, which would be at least 20% above the rating of Nvidia ’s GT200 series.
This time, AMD needs a winner. The company has been trailing its green rival for quite some time, gave up market share, customers, credibility and – most of all – lots of cash. If early reviews are any indication, the new Radeon 4800 should put the former ATI back on the map with products that may not quite reach the gaming performance of Nvidia in all benchmarks, but offer a convincing speed at mainstream price points. ATI Radeon HD 4850 cards are selling for about $200 and 4870 versions for $300. AMD itself claims that “the ATI Radeon 4800 series represents a 2X performance jump over the HD 3800 GPU,” which would be “the biggest generational increase since the game-changing launch of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.
” $200 will buy 800 stream processors, a “stock” GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR3 memory rated at 2 Gb/s, and comes in a single-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 110 watts. Expect overclocked boards with about 675 MHz to be introduced by varies vendors in the near future. The upgrade to a 4870 version will deliver a stock GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR5 memory rated at 3.6 Gb/s, and comes in a dual-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 160 watts. AMD claims that, compared to the 3800 series, twice the speed is achieved with an increase of 20% in power. Especially impressive is, if correct, AMD’s claim of a maximum performance of 1.2 TFlops. Four GPUs and 3200 stream processors in CrossfireX configuration could yield close to 5 TFlops, taking an enthusiast PC into supercomputer territory. It will be interesting to watch the impact of such systems in applications such as Folding@Home as well as desktop GPGPU applications that can take advantage of this hidden potential in graphics cards.
Both the 4850 and 4870 are available now, AMD said. According to the company one dozen add-in-board companies will be offering custom designs of the products. “High-performance” versions of the 4800 series will be offered by are VisionTek, Asus, PowerColor, MSI, Gigabyte, GeCube, Force3D, Sapphire, Diamond, Club 3D, HIS and Palit.
Systems integrators launching ATI Radeon HD 4800 series include ABS, Alienware, AMAX, Canada Computers, CyberPower, Extreme PC, Falcon-Northwest, iBuyPower, Maingear, Systemax, Ultra Gaming and Velocity Micro.
Early last month Nvidia released the GeForce 9800 GTX which today stands as the fastest single GPU graphics card money can buy. With an average retail price of $300-350, the GeForce 9800 GTX may not have been revolutionary in terms of performance, but it's still a reasonably good value solution for those willing to spend a bit more. However, after almost sixty days of its release and with an eventual appearance of next-generation cards from both ATI and Nvidia, few manufacturers seem to be making pronounced efforts on modifying or improving the original Nvidia reference design. What we are seeing the most are modest factory overclocking, but no manufacturers that we know of have upgraded the cooler anyway.
That is until we received the iChiLL 9800 GTX Accelero Xtreme from Inno3D, which features a mammoth heatsink that is cooled by no less than three fans. Admittedly the reference Nvidia cooler worked very well already, as we saw how our early sample from Asus never got past the 67 degrees when stressed. This made the GeForce 9800 GTX comparatively cooler than other performance graphics card we had tested. Nevertheless, Inno3D has seen a means to improve on this and have evidently done so. Those of you more educated in the arts of PC cooling have probably recognized by the name of this product that Inno has employed the new Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 9800 cooler.
This cooler alone retails for ~$55 which is only good news for prospective buyers of this graphics card since it's retailing on par with other standard-equipped products at just $315. Based on our previous experiences with the original Accelero Xtreme 8800 cooler we know this newer version is going to be an excellent addition to this powerful graphics solution. As logic would suggest, Inno3D has justified the extra cooling with a little overclocking of their own. For now let's move on to see the card in more detail.
While admittedly I spend much of my time testing high-end motherboards that come at astronomical prices, and graphics cards that cost more than some people's first cars, I never forget about the importance of value. In fact, the one thing that I constantly keep in the back of my mind when evaluating any product is how well it stacks up in terms of value and its competitors.
Talking specifically about graphics cards, let's take the super fast GeForce 9800 GX@ as an example. While this is an impressive product in terms of performance, it is not a great value solution. On the other hand, the mid-range GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards are exceptionally good value products. Then we have the budget-minded cards which mainly consist of previous generation ATI and Nvidia products, with the recent addition of the Radeon HD 3650. The Radeon HD 3650 looks to be an attractive product on paper, it is the latest member of the Radeon HD 3000 series, and can carry up to 1GB of memory on-board. The 3650 is also a Direct X 10.1 compliant card that supports the PCI Express 2.0 bus.
Furthermore, like all Radeon HD 3000 series products, this new low-end graphics card is built using a 55nm design process. Topped off with a 725MHz core speed, the Radeon HD 3650 sounds like quite a gutsy little graphics card. But of course the card had to fell short in other places, otherwise we wouldn't be calling it a budget product. For example, it is limited to a 128-bit wide memory bus, and when combined with rather sluggish GDDR2 memory, the Radeon HD 3650 produces a memory bandwidth of just 16GB/s. To put this figure into perspective, it is comparable to the Radeon X700 XT which was released back in 2004. This goes to remind us what is the Radeon HD 3650 is targeted to a certain less demanding crowd and that we shouldn't expect spectacular results on the gaming front.
Other interesting features of the Radeon HD 3650, many of which are inherited from its bigger brothers, include CrossFireX multi-GPU support, an unified video decoder, and integrated digital outputs. While CrossFireX is aimed at gaming, the video decoder and digital outputs are more focused on home theater use.
The Radeon HD 3650 currently costs roughly $75 for the 512MB version and $95 for the 1GB version, making this a sub-$100 graphics card on all of its available versions.
This is the day that all PC gamers dread. The graphics card they just sank a couple hundred dollars into is no longer the graphical king of the hill. The new heir to the throne: Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GX2. And it'll only cost you between $600 and $650. So what makes this card such a big deal? The 9800 is a powerhouse. In fact, it physically feels like two 8800 GTX's sandwiched into a single card and the specs justify that notion -- it has two 128 Processor Cores (256 advertised on the box), two times the 512MB GDDR3 memory (512MB per GPU). With a 600-MHz core clock, 1500-MHz shader clock and 1000-MHz memory clock, it promises to crush benchmark scores.
I say "promises" and not "definitely" because final retail cards are only now trickling into the office (first out the gate: cards from Asus and EVGA) and we weren't able to get testing done in time for this morning's announcement. Stay tuned for some definitive answers on who can build the better graphics-chugging hotrod.
Why Should You Care? The 9800 GX2 will no doubt eat benchmarks for breakfast and do all sorts of nifty things like support DirectX 10, and the company uses buzzwords to talk about the GPU's 16X antialiasing performance, 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range lighting, and ability to run physics computations.
Beyond generating top-flight graphics, the 9800 GX2 also delivers 2560-by-1600-pixel video with support for High-Definition Content Protection (HDCP) over both the card's DVI and HDMI outputs. The card bears the brunt of video decoding for H.264, VC-1, WMV, and MPEG-2 high-definition (and standard-definition) movies; plus, it will handle the all-important 3:2 and 2:2 pull-down corrections for videophiles that crave accurate video reproduction. (Also referred to as motion judder, the pull-down is a ratio correction for frame rates when you transfer film to video. It introduces a slight image lag.)
As an environmentally conscious gamer, I'm actually happy to see this PCI Express 2.0-ready board show off Nvidia's HybridPower technology. This cuts down on wasted wattage: When you're performing tasks that don't require the card's full-blown horsepower, it'll throttle down the GPU and switch over to the integrated graphics card on Nvidia-branded motherboards.
Nvidia jumped into the market for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) on Monday with the introduction of a processor family based on the Arm processor core Tegra will primarily compete against Intel, which released a chip platform called Centrino Atom in April. Atom is designed for MIDs, a general name for portable computers that can be used for Web access and other activities while being small enough for users to carry them around in a pocket. The Tegra line comprises three chips, including the 800MHz Tegra 650 and 700MHz Tegra 600. The lineup will also include the APX 2500, an Nvidia processor designed for cell phones and smartphones that was announced earlier this year. The heart of the Tegra chips is an Arm11 processor core from Arm. The chips also include a GeForce graphics core, high-definition video decoder and other components, allowing them to perform functions normally carried out by several different chips. Putting all of these capabilities in a single chip allows system makers to produce smaller devices and reduces the amount of power these devices consume, allowing longer battery life. To illustrate how Tegra can save space, Nvidia showed an Eee PC from Asustek Computer with the motherboard removed and replaced with a Tegra-based board that measured 43 millimeters square. The only other component required for the computer to function was a battery.
The Arm processor core uses a different instruction set than x86 processors made by Intel. This means that software written for a PC or laptop cannot run an Arm-based computer. But Arm processors have long been used in mobile devices and generally consume far less power than x86 processors, making them ideal for small, portable devices. Indeed, two of the most successful devices that fit Intel's description of a MID are based on Arm processors: Apple's iPod Touch and Nokia's N800.
Highlights : -->Dual Dual-Link TMDS Connector allows resolutions of up to 2048x1536 pixels
-->Features a 1620 MHz Shader Clock -->Incorporates nView Multi-Display Technology
-->Provides 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
-->Offers 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting.
Overview : Explore a stunning combination of power and performance with the e-GeForce™ 8800 GT Superclocked™ PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card from EVGA®. Powered by NVIDIA® nView® multi-display technology, this card offers flexibility for multi-display options, and provides a high level of end-user control of the desktop. The featured NVIDIA PureVideo™ technology helps ensure high picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color and precise image scaling for almost all video content to turn your PC into a high-end home theater. Additionally, this card boasts of a 512 MB 256-bit GDDR3 memory to deliver a dazzling visual experience optimized to support compelling next-generation 3D gaming environments. The 8800 GT also features the NVIDIA SLI™ Technology that helps scale performance by allowing two graphics cards to be run in parallel. In addition DVI-I and HDTV connectors offer high speed connectivity and let you experience sharp, vivid images and text without sacrificing frame rates. This card supports Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL® 2.0 optimizations, allowing for high-quality graphics and 3D textures that add a natural and realistic look to your games. With a host of other features like NVIDIA unified architecture with GigaThread™ technology and NVIDIA Quantum Effects™ physics processing technology, the 8800 GT indulges you in a breath-taking visual treat.
Highlights:
-->Uses ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology for crisp image detailing
-->Built-in HDMI with multi-channel 5.1 surround audio lets you enjoy Blu-ray™ and HD DVD movies . -->Optimized for Windows Vista with DirectX 10 support -->Features dual dual-link DVIx2 with full resolution HDCP support.
-->Up to 24X custom filter anti-aliasing with hardware crossfire capability.
Overview: Enjoy real life gaming experience and enhanced graphics with the Radeon HD 2600 PRO Graphic Card from VisionTek®. This Windows Vista ready card incorporates plug-n-play CrossFire™ upgradeability making it easy to scale up graphics performance even in demanding environments. The HD 2600 PRO features advanced hardware HD video processing and HDMI with built-in 5.1 surround audio for stunning big-screen entertainment. Additionally, it’s ATI Avivo™ HD technology mesmerizes home theater aficionados by delivering sharp images and vibrant color fidelity from high resolution playback of Blu-ray™ and HD DVDs movies. Engineered to further enhance the stunning Windows Vista Aero™ interface, this graphics card unleashes an altogether different level of entertainment for tech savvy gamers.
Advanced Micro Devices' bet on a new approach to graphics chip design appears to be paying off, according to analyst Jon Peddie. This could put AMD's ATI graphics chip unit on top again--or at least on equal footing with Nvidia, the graphics leader over the last few years.Peddie heads Tiburon, Calif.-based Jon Peddie Research, which specializes in graphics chip market research. Test reports on AMD's and Nvidia's newest graphics chips are pouring in. Both companies are racking up good scores. (See Diamond Viper Radeon HD 4850 review here.) But beyond the day-to-day test scores, AMD's ATI graphics chip unit may be winning the longer strategic battle. ATI has gambled on a radically different strategy for its latest series of chips--the HD 4850, HD 4870, and upcoming dual-chip R700. "(AMD) is starting in the middle of the market and scaling up. That's a break with tradition," said Peddie. "We always started at the very, very tippy-top and build the most powerful thing you could and then let it scale down over time." But Peddie said this traditional approach just isn't practical anymore. "The chipsets keep getting larger and larger despite the fact that we were going to smaller and smaller (manufacturing) process nodes. The chips grew faster than the process nodes shrunk and the consequences of that is that the power consumption went up, the costs went up, and it got to the point where it's kind of impractical to continue along that way," he said. In essence, AMD's ATI unit strategy is to build smaller, less power-hungry chips and then gang them up to get better performance. Nvidia's strategy has been to build one large, extremely fast--and extremely power hungry--chip. For ATI, the execution of this chip-ganging strategy is the key. And this is where ATI appears to have been successful. "The inter-processor communications. Getting that to work has been the trick. This is what ATI has done. They've come up with this stellar way of doing inter-processor communications so they can in fact get the scaling," according to Peddie. And there's more than meets the eye. ATI has also cut in half the number of bits in the memory interface, Peddie said: down to 256 bits while Nvidia has remained at 512. "That has the benefit to ATI of reducing a big hunk of the power consumption." Peddie said in the past this kind of approach would have been suicidal because it would have decimated ATI's test scores. "The argument against this is that graphics performance is a function of memory," he said. "Typically you want wider and wider (bit width)." But ATI has countered this by using the fastest memory standard available. "So to compensate for shrinking down the bit width, ATI has jumped to the next-generation in memory design called GDDR5. GDDR5 is approximately three times faster than GDDR3--which is what Nvidia is still using and what ATI uses on their smaller cards," according to Peddie. "So with three times the speed but half the width, they end up with 1.5 times the processing capability with the memory." "A very clever thing that they did but mind you it was a gamble that looks like it's going to pay off," he said. ATI has more processing units than Nvidia inside its chip too. "The other thing is that ATI has 800 processors in their chip and Nvidia has 240. That has a processor count advantage," Peddie said. Though it remains to be seen if this advantage is borne out in testing over time, he added. "Nvidia and ATI keep improving their drivers so they'll seesaw back and forth with their scores, almost from week to week." But in the long run, Nvidia may be forced to adopt ATI's strategy to keep pace in these week-to-week battles. "If ATI is successful, as we expect that to be, then Nvidia will have no choice but to adopt (ATI's) approach, just out of practicality," Peddie said. "It just makes a whole lot of sense." AMD-ATI's upcoming R700 (rumored to be called the 4870 X2) two-chip graphics board will be the ultimate test of this strategy. "It's a new proprietary inter-processor communication technology. If they put these two chips on one board and it does scale properly, then they have pulled off a coup," he said. "When you gang up graphics chips (using the traditional Scalable Link Interface or CrossFire technologies) they roll off pretty fast. ("Roll off" implies that performance doesn't scale up well.) "So when you put two boards in, you don't get twice the performance but you (only) get one and a half. You put four boards in and you (only) get about 1.7, 1.8. What ATI is saying is that with two chips using (their) proprietary inter-bus, they will get 1.8 (the performance) with two chips. If that's true, you can expect to see four of them giving you something around 2.5." Getting 2.5 times the performance from four boards would be a masterstroke for ATI. The previous ATI dual-chip solution was very different, Peddie said. "The HD 3870 X2 was not a proprietary bus but a CrossFire connection. The CrossFire connection and the SLI connection are at the very, very end of the pipeline. Not the most efficient place to do an inter-processor communication. That's one of the reasons ATI has abandoned it." AMD's ATI unit is also better positioned than it was before in manufacturing. "Part of the reason that Nvidia has been ahead is that ATI has been suffering over the last three or four years with manufacturing problems. It's not that ATI didn't have a good chip, the problem was that ATI couldn't build enough of them." This should change with the newest series of chips. "This (design)--so they say--will really go into high-volume production." Though he cautioned this still remains to be seen. "The (new ATI chip) is a really efficient, tight design. They used to do this all the time but they kind of got off that trail. And now they're back on it."
Highlights:-->Offers 256 MB of DDR memory for high-quality visuals-->Features Avivo™ Display Enhancement Technology and Shader Model 3.0-->Combines ultra-threaded core architecture with Avivo™ video and display technology-->Ideal for gaming, multimedia, office productivity, and workstation applications-->Certified for Windows® Vista™ devicesOverview:Step-up to serious 2D/3D performance and a high-definition image quality with the VisionTek™ Radeon® X1300 256 MB PCI Graphics Card. For providing enhanced visuals and graphic performance, this card combines ultra-threaded core architecture with ATI's Avivo™ video and display technology. Incorporating 90-nanometer process GPU and an advanced memory controller, X1300 delivers a great gaming experience for all games. Bundled with a DVI-I to VGA Adapter, Radeon® X1300 Graphics Card delivers excellent visual performance for entertainment and productivity applications on all types of PCs.
You might think motherboards using an AGP slot are things of the past, but there's huge chunk of the population still using platforms based on it. Indeed, some motherboard companies, such as Asrock, still offer boards combining Intel’s 775 socket and an AGP slot. One company that offers current graphics technology for AGP users is Sapphire, and its latest card is the HD3850 AGP.
Sapphire also offers an AGP version of the HD3650. Far from being just a half-hearted attempt at simply offering something for this market segment, Sapphire has actually tinkered with the HD3850 AGP and increased its core and memory clocks. As standard, the HD3850 comes with 670MHz core and 825MHz memory clocks.
But for this AGP card, Sapphire has upped the core to 700MHz while the 512MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 846MHz (1,692MHz effective). The rest of the specifications are as per a standard PCI Express card; 320 stream processors and support for both Shader Model 4.1 and DirectX 10.1. There’s also ATI’s Powerplay technology that reduces power consumption depending on what the card is doing. Due to the lack of available bandwidth with AGP, the card doesn’t support recording of HD audio through. However, it still offers support for HDCP thanks to the dual dual-link DVI ports.
Sapphire has used a single-slot cooler on the HD3850 AGP, with a passive heatsink over the power regulators. The AGP bus can’t supply the voltage required by the RV670 core (this uses a eight-pin PCI Express power connector), although a six-pin cable will supply enough power. If your power supply has neither, Sapphire supplies a four-pin Molex to six-pin power adaptor in the box.
Zotac today has released its liquid-cooled, near-silent single GPU graphics card – the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition. Cooled by a custom water-cooling system, the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition delivers high-performance in DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1 titles while keeping thermal and noise levels to a minimum.
Unlike conventional water-cooling units, the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition features a self-contained water-cooling system that requires no end-user maintenance. The self-contained unit comes already attached to the graphics card and only requires the user to mount the 120mm fan and radiator module. The water-cooling system delivers up to 21.5% lower GPU temperatures compared to traditional air-cooled solutions. In addition to the water-cooler, the new card receives a slight performance boost through higher clock speeds. This is done by raising core, shader and memory clock speeds to 700 MHz, 1700 MHz and 2250 MHz, respectively. "Many enthusiasts seek better cooling performance and quieter operation from their graphics card cooler through third party vendors, but maintaining low noise with high-performance using air-cooling solutions is a hard task," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International (MCO) Ltd. "With our ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition, customers can have the high performance and quiet operation of water-cooling without the hassles of regular maintenance or installation, which often voids the factory graphics card warranty." All Zotac cards carry a warranty of 5 years, with the cost of the 9800 GTX Zone edition being available for an approximate cost of Rs. 23,000.
Marking the launch of Nvidia's latest family of GeForce cards the 200 series, Zotac today unveiled two new GeForce 200 series graphics cards - the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 280 AMP! Edition - that come with support for DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1 enabled titles with its 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture and NVIDIA PhysX physics processing capabilities. "NVIDIA Unified Architecture ushered in a new era of performance when it was launched with our Zotac GeForce 8800 GTX over a year ago.
The 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture further builds upon the architecture and takes 3D performance to uncharted territories," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, Zotac International. "The 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture powered Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series is a must-have for gamers and enthusiasts craving maximal performance from their systems." The Zotac GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 280 AMP! Edition pack in 240 processor cores into a single graphics card, with 1GB GDDR3. A wide 512-bit memory interface joins the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series graphics processors with the large frame buffer. The new NVIDIA PhysX technology delivers realistic physics processing capabilities to the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series. PhysX technology allows games to calculate in-game physics with great detail and precision. The Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series also support NVIDIA SLI technology.
A single system can have up to two Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series graphics cards installed in a 2-way SLI configuration for 2x the graphics and physics crunching horsepower. Additionally, the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 series feature PCI Express 2.0 (compatible with 1.1) support, dual dual-link DVI outputs, HDCP compliance, HDTV output and support for NVIDIA CUDA technology. Zotac also bundles the latest racing game by Codemaster's GRID. Pricing and availability is unknown as of right now
Gigabyte has launched their next generation graphic accelerators, the GV-N28-1GH-B and GV-N26-896H-B. Equipped with Nvidia's latest GTX 280 graphics processor, the Gigabyte GV-N28-1GH-B features 1 GB GDDR3 memory and 240 stream processors, while the GV-N26-896H-B is equipped with the Nvidia GTX 260, and features 896MB GDDR3 memory and 192 stream processors.
The GV-N28-1GH-B and GV-N26-896H-B support Nvidia's PhysX Technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience. Both cards are also compliant with CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) Technology, which helps the GT280/260 to accelerate the most demanding system tasks such as video transcoding for up to 7x performance enhancement over traditional CPUs. The cards also offer 3-way Nvidia SLI Technology, 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world's fastest gaming solution under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers, support DirectX 10 and adopt the latest Unified Shader architecture with full support for Shader Model 4.0. Gigabyte products are distributed in India by Avnet (India), Ingram Micro, Redington. The Gigabyte GV-N28-1GH-B is priced at Rs. 49,425 and the GV-N26-896H-B is priced Rs. 29,425.
The first appear of ATI graphic cards: Gainward HD4870/HD4850 512MB, your best way to next generation gaming platform! Gainward officially announced newest products of ATI chipsets – Gainward HD4870 and Gainward HD4850 graphics cards to the market. On performance side, the ATI RADEON HD4870 (RV770 XT) graphics chip designed with 512MB high speed DDR5 memory and 256bit memory bandwidth, supports PCI-express 2.0 interface with 750 MHz core clock, 3600MHz memory clock and 800 units of stream processors. Gainward HD4870 comes can completely run with the high resolution DX10.1 games smoothly and deliver the highest quality of gaming experience, upscale the resolution to Full HD level and still get smooth gaming experience on most of games.
For the mainstream segment, Gainward the ATI RADEON HD4850 (RV770 PRO) graphics chip and 512MB DDR3 memory with 256bit memory bandwidth and supports PCI-express 2.0 with 625 MHz core clock, 1986MHz memory clock and 800 units of stream processors. Gainward HD4850 512MB comes with better performances and memory sizes that can completely run the high resolution DX10.1 games smoothly and can deliver the most unbelievable gaming experience, and only takes 1 slot width with smaller size to fit in your mid size or cube size system as well. Best Mainstream Graphics Card with high resolution gaming. For mainstream gaming, last generation mainstream products can run most games smoothly with 1440*900 resolutions, but for Gainward HD4850 graphics card, you can play most of game on 1680*1050 resolutions or higher, even can open Anti-Aliasing to make images become more smooth but still keep the performance close to original setting. Gainward HD4850 supports dual link DVI output whose resolution can be up to 2560*1600 and 1920*1080.
Furthermore, the mainstream Dual-Link DVI-I and CRT (via the DVI-to-D-Sub dongle) are supported by HD4850 as well. Gainward HD4850 is HDCP compliant and supports ATI AVIVO HD and H.264 decoding to enjoy the ultimate Blu-ray and HD-DVD movie experience. Not only for better gaming experience, but also have the best HD video quality to compete all last generation products.
EXCLUSIVE Smart Control Utility - EXPERTool Gainward's unique EXPERTool is a smart and easy control software which allows users to monitor GPU's temperature and fan speed. The fan speed and GPU/Shader/memory clocks are also adjustable in the EXPERTool. The native alert tool is the best doorkeeper when the GPU's temperature is over the warning value and inform user to clock down the settings or turn off the computer to prevent from damaging the card. You don't have to waste time to find any software for your graphics card any more.
This week, AMD launched two new graphics cards that each give the Sunnyvale- based company two new firsts:. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 is the first teraflop graphic card, while the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is the first to feature GDDR5 memory. Both cards in the 4800 series reportedly represents what AMD describes as a "2X performance jump" over the older Radeon HD 3800 generation; providing one trillion calculations per second, when the previous generation of cards could only offer up to half a trillion calculations. This marks one of the first times the speed of GPUs has been measured in teraflops. The HD 3870 -- whose throughput has retroactively been estimated at 500 gigaflops -- previously was the fastest card in AMD's lineup. Reaching the 1 teraflop level for under $200 is an impressive feat that has not been matched before. In 1996, the first teraflop PC was unveiled, but it required a whopping one megawatt to run; having a teraflop on a single GPU is an impressive feat. The bump up to GDDR5 from GDDR3 enables twice the amount of bandwidth for the next-gen AMD cards. The 512 MB of GDDR5 memory is connected over a 256-bit bus that provides 3.6 Gbps of bandwidth. Furthermore, performance-per-watt has also increased compared to older AMD cards because of a new power-management feature that limits the power consumed by the card when it's idling. The 4800 series supports DirectX 10.1 and 7.1 surround sound in addition to its higher bandwidth and increased energy benefits. Both cards were expected to launch in May, but AMD was forced to push back the date closer to the launch of the NVidia'a high-end GT200 chip last week. The two companies have been battling head-to-head, but this is the best chance ATI has had recently in fighting back against NVidia. Its GT200-based 260 has 192 streaming processor cores and 896 MB of onboard memory, while the 280 card has 240 cores and 1 GB of memory. AMD made sure both cards are able to handle HD video, support Blu-ray movies, and improve HD editing capability. The Radeon HD 4850 is a midrange 3D graphics card that has a 625 MHz GPU core clock speed, 512 MB GGDR3 memory, and a single-slot PCI-E 2. It also has 800 stream processing cores. But early tests show it runs a tad bit hotter than reviewers would like. AMD expects this model, which costs $199, to compete with the NVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ card, which costs $229. By comparison, the ATI Radeon 4870 both offers GDDR5 memory performance while pushing 1.2 teraFLOPS. It has a 750 MHz GPU core clock speed, 512 MB GDDR5 memory, and is a dual-slot PCI-E 2 card. The card is available now for $299. It's now possible for enthusiastic PC gamers to use the Crossfire X configuration to have almost 5 teraflops of power using four GPUs and 3200 stream processors. AMD hopes the 4800 series will be used for real-world applications, such as rendering, encoding and decoding, and compression and decompression. Although some PC manufacturers have begun to question the continuing relevancy of GPUs into the future for anything other than enthusiasts' use, AMD says encoding DVDs using the GPU is more efficient and faster than using a CPU.
Along with OEMs preparing to manufacture both cards, a handful of system integrators also have plans for it, including Alienware, Falcon Northwest, iBUYPOWER, CyberPower, and Extreme PC.
AMD is now aiming for three different markets: $200 for entry-level, $300 for mid-range, and $500+ for specialized graphics cards. But the company is shifting its focus more towards the entry level and mid-range cards, though not at the sacrifice of overall GPU power. Shifting ATI's focus from upper-scale GPUs down to more efficient GPUs with good clock speed at a lower price, could help compel NVidia to lower its prices.
