NVidia GTX 480 Vs ATI 5870

If I was a betting man, I would have put all my cash on the GTX 480. Luckily I’m not a betting man.
NVidia have published an official video of its GTX 480 against ATI’s own heavy weight 5870. While the are results pretty even, it is a little disappointing the NVidia (which hasn’t been released as yet) didn’t bring home the punishment. Maybe with some real gaming benchmarks and some pricing we may get a better idea of NVidia’s plan is.

Check Engadget for the full video

Say Hello To The Sony Vaio EB Series

Looks like Sony has released another model to their ever going product line up. This time it is the EB series (E = Entertainment?).
It is a 2.7KG, 15.5″ entertainment machine from the looks of it, with a off center keyboard and touch pad, and options for very powerful ATI graphics cards (both the 5470 and 5650). The EB also seems to be inspired by Skittles for colours, with options for bright green, pink and blue.
The series starts at $US799 and ships somewhere in the future. Lets hope that though we get Acer pricing, we still get Sony quality.

Via [Sony]

ATI HD 3870X2 Gets Benched

It is time for the top of the range video cards to battle to the death for our viewing pleasure. This time it was about 20 difference websites. That is a lot of people with some down right impressive HD 3870X2 cards lying around. What do they all think? It’s damn fast and will take the seat at the head of the table, but with the upcoming 9800 from NVidia with a very similiar dual GPU setup, the 1 TeraFLOPS beast might not be there for long.

For the Inquirers massive list of benchmarks go here.

New ATI Cards Official

If you have been a budget video card purchaser, it has been fantastic for you of late, with all the prices flying south. To make matters even harder for you (to choose the card you want that is), ATI have officially announced their 3450, 3470 and 3650 GPU. For the power user, there isn’t much to see here, with full PCIe 2.0 compliant, support for DirectX 10.1 and fabricated on a 55nm process (use less power and stay cooler). All the cards are under $US100, so expect to get what you pay for.

For a ton more info, jump over to The Inquirer.

DirectX 10.1 On An AGP Board Thanks To ATi

If you thought your aging machine was ready for the heap, because it doesn’t have a PCIe-X slot, think again. The 3850 series of ATi video card’s are coming your way, and in theory, will blow away all existing AGP cards. If you don’t know about the ATI 3850, you should read this review. If you are excited, and want DirectX 10.1 support (you need it to get the most out of Vista you know), expect to see these boards sprouting from Powercolor and Sapphire very soon.

For more info, click over to The Inquirer.

ATI Demo Hybrid Power Saver

One of the things that is always using more and more power as time goes on is your video card. There are even dedicated power supplies made especially for the purpose of powering your behemoth configurations. Didn’t the graphics card industry get the memo? We are suppose to be aiming to use less power!
That is exactly what ATI aim to do with a new Hybrid Crossfire system. The concept is very simple, when you don’t need high end gaming graphics, the top end card will be disabled, therefore saving power. When you need that power again it is there for the taking.
This concept has been done previously on Sony Vaio notebooks, with the ability to disable the addon Nvidia video card, and use the onboard Intel card. Difference this time, is it seems it is made for desktops and more focused at the people who want to lower the power bill for those PC’s (like mine) that are left on all the time.
ATI has shown off its capability to PC Perspective, with a test system containing a 2.2GHz Phenom processor, a RS780 (never heard of it) integrated graphics chipset and a RV620-based card labeled HD Radeon 3450. The configuration was quite impressive with frame rates of 30-35fps for Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, which then jumped to around 55fps when hybrid mode was enabled.
AMD are aiming for a 2008 release, with the initial batch of hybrid CrossFire-capable cards to be priced around $50. It is not yet known whether it will be available in notebooks, but my magic 8 ball says the chances are good.

For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.

Register Review ATI 3850 And Like It Lots

The Register really like the ATI 3850, especially in Crossfire mode. They have done a fantastic and in depth review with lots of taste benchmarks comparing it to its older sibling (2600) and its bigger brother (3870), and decided that, for its price can’t be beaten. The Register gave it a 90% mark and said “AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 3850 sets an incredibly high standard for £100 graphics cards and that has to be good news for the casual gamer who demands value for money.” Sounds good enough for me.

For the complete review, click over to The Register Website.

ATI Mobile Radeon 2700 Coming To A Notebook Near You

I don’t care who win this whole ATI/AMD Vs Intel battle (Intel is killing them at the moment), as long as it is ATI/AMD. Their newest weapon, which is more focused at Nvidia, is the Mobile Radeon 2700. It features 120 stream processors and a 128-bit memory bus, making it a competitor for the M8600 from Nvidia (I thought the HD2600 was the competitor for the M8600?). No one other then Fujitsu seems to have picked it up, but there really hasn’t been an official announcement so only time will tell. It will be interesting to see what the performance gains over the 2600 are, and if anyone actually makes a notebook featuring it. Good luck ATI.

For more info, click over to the Inquirer Website.

ATI Has Another Surprise, The HD 3600 Series

I have to say I feel sorry for anyone who just forked out for a new video card, because you can guarantee that in the next couple of weeks there are going to be big changes. It was only a few days ago that AMDATI did the big HD 3800 series release and there is already news of a HD 2600 series replacement.
The new series, which you could have guessed already, will be titled the HD 3600 series, and will come in 2 flavors. The first having 512 MB of DDR2 (they still make that stuff?) and the second will be a 256 MB DDR3 version. It isn’t known yet if they will keep the old branding of XT and Pro, but considering the introduction of the 3850 and 3870, I would guess them to be the 3650 and 3670. The new series will based on the ‘RV635′ GPU and will support DirectX 10.1.
Apart from that, there is also talk of a 2400 series replacement (I guess the 3400).

For more info, click over to The Register Website.

ATi Radeon HD 3800 Is Here To Play

It wasn’t long ago, in the scheme of things, that ATI released their HD 2000 series of video cards that brought in a budget DirectX 10 era, and now that have pushed a new product to the budget buyer, the HD 3800 series.
The series will come in 2 flavors, the HD 3850 and 3870, which main difference’s are DDR3 on the 3850 and DDR4 on the 3870. Otherwise, both cards support full 10.1, are built on the – world’s first – 55nm manufacture process, 666 million transistors, run on PCI Express 2.0 and the list just goes on. There is a million things to read about it, and there is no better place to read it then at the Reg Hardware Website.
Now to what the rest of us are after, the benchmarks. It is hard to say currently (different on every site), even though it is no limit to the amount of reviews already found around the net, but currently it sits around the HD 2900 series mark. Not bad when you consider the cards are going to sell for around the $US150-200 range.
It seems that AMDATI have gone all out on this offering, and it looks like it could do well. We will have to wait and see what NVidia have lying in wait before we give it the crown, but I personally have to say that this would be the next video card I put in my system.

For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog, or for a list of reviews, go to the DailyTech Website.

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