techETA » Graphics Cards

NVIDIA Quadro 5000 tesselates like no other

Rafael Hernandez — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:15:25 +0000

The professional graphics card market is filled with all sorts of technological wizardry that makes creating 3D worlds a whole lot easier. These cards don’t come cheap of course but if you’re dealing with triangles day in and day out you’ll no doubt be glad you’re running a GPU that can handle complex scenes.

Enter the NVIDIA Quadro 5000 GPU and its 2.5GB memory capacity. Sure it’s built off the Fermi chip commonly found in the high end gaming cards but its got some seriously tuned drivers to make sure your fancy CAD/CAM/industrial/3D modeling and rendering software has properly anti aliased lines and whatnot. I’m sure it’ll run some mean framerates on your favorite games while you’re on a break as well.

NVIDIA Quadro 5000 2.5GB Fermi-based Professional Graphics Review @ PC Perspective

EVGA GTX 460 Superclocked EE dumps the heat load outside

Rafael Hernandez — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:45:52 +0000

The majority of mid-range graphics cards are created with a reference cooler design that has cost cutting in mind over other factors which can lead to a whole heck of a lot of heat being dumped back into your PC’s case increasing the temperature of every other component in your system.

EVGA’s GTX 460 Superclocked EE increases the clock speeds over the reference design and includes a heatsink that’s closer in design to its bigger brothers which pushes the heat through the back vents of the card leading to some lower system temperatures overall. A swell idea given the amount of heat every other component in a modern rigs is pumping out.

EVGA GTX 460 1GB Superclocked EE (External Exhaust) Review @ Hardware Canucks

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 brings raw power to the mid-range gamer

Rafael Hernandez — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:00:47 +0000

The problem with purchasing top of the line cards, besides the price aspect, is the fact that they require a huge system overhaul in order to make them run optimally and you’ll need a new power supply to get them running.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 sports a bit less bandwidth and isn’t as power hungry as its older siblings but at its $199 MSRP (for the 768MB version, 1GB configurations will no doubt run costlier) its brute force pedigree is still in full effect and should keep you in the game without any of that messy whole system upgrade mess.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB Graphics Card Review @ bit-tech
NVIDIA GeForce GTX-460 768MB Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
NVIDIA GeForce GTX-460 1GB Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
GeForce GTX 460 review (roundup) @ Guru3D
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Review @ HardOCP
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB & GTX 460 768MB Review @ Hardware Canucks
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB and 1GB Video Card Reviews @ Legit Reviews
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Review – GF104 and the budget Fermi @ PC Perspective
MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone OC 768 MB @ techPowerUp

Radeon HD 5870 + 5850 CrossFireX pushes framerates quite nicely

Rafael Hernandez — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:00:20 +0000

Aside from the Hybrid CrossFire or Lucid Hydra multi-GPU coprocessor you don’t see many people delving into mis-matched graphics card pairs since they usually aren’t supported or they’re thought to be an inefficient usage of a high-end gamer’s time.

Interestingly the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 seem to pair up quite nicely, given their somewhat similar specifications, improving performance while saving you a bit of cash which is always a plus.

Asus 5870 + XFX 5850 CrossFireX Mismatch @ techREACTION

ASUS GeForce ENGTX480 comes prepped with voltage tweaking action

Rafael Hernandez — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:45:47 +0000

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much cooling you’ve got on your graphics card, you’re going to have to dig in there if you want to get the most out of it and without the proper tools you’ll be facing some difficult soldering ahead.

The ASUS GeForce ENGTX480 is a fine card when run at its stock settings but its extra special voltage tweaking software lets you pump those clock rates higher than you ever imagined. Just be sure to get the airflow to match those speeds.

ASUS GeForce ENGTX480 w/ Voltage Tweak! @ TechREACTION

NVIDIA Fermi SLI scales quite nicely thank you very much

Rafael Hernandez — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:50:20 +0000

The biggest question you would face when looking for a gaming performance improvement was which graphics card was the one to buy, now you’re faced with which platform to choose for that extra special multi-GPU performance push as well as which graphics cards to buy. You just can’t win.

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 470 and 480 graphics processors each pack in billions of transistors that can effectively run as a second furnace for your home but its scaling capabilities when being run in SLI mode is hard to deny especially when running today’s latest and greatest gaming titles.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 SLI Testing @ PC Perspective

ASUS Radeon EAH5870 V2 is a whole revision better

Rafael Hernandez — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:00:43 +0000

All of that time spent on building graphics cards is sure to give you some sort of insight on what works and doesn’t work when putting together a brand new product…and why you might want to wait for later revisions if you’re the perfectionist type.

ASUS steps up with its new Radeon EAH5870 V2 graphics card which pulls together their massive amount of experience in making 5870 based graphics cards for the past 9 months and results in a card with a tweaked design that sports more efficient cooling and a reworked power supply and voltage tweaking system that should lead to a whole heck of a lot of headroom when overclocking that fine new card of yours.

ASUS Radeon EAH5870 V2 Video Card Review @ Benchmark Reviews

Gainward GeForce GTX 465 is mad about airflow

Rafael Hernandez — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:19:41 +0000

The mid-range of the graphics card market offers some impressive performance and gives you most of the same features found on their higher end siblings without having to break your budget on an upgrade.

The Gainward GeForce GTX 465 puts on a show with a snazzy non-reference dual-fan cooler and quite a bit of headroom if you’re interested in overclocking. Fudzilla has the review:

Since there’s not much airflow around the I/O panel and thus no need to convert one slot into an air outlet, Gainward pounched on the chance to put a DisplayPort video out. This makes Gainward’s GTX 465 Good is a video-out champ among Fermi cards, but unfortunately the GF100 will still limit you to two outs at the same time. If, however, you’re adamant to get that third video out, you’ll have to purchase another card.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 blitzes through more than just games

Rafael Hernandez — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:00:36 +0000

While keeping up with the latest gaming titles is usually the biggest reason people pick up a new graphics card there’s also an increasing number of applications making use of the processing power on modern graphics chips.

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 features CUDA, OpenCL, and Microsoft DirectCompute support for your GPGPU tasks as well as super-charged gaming performance. ITShootOut has the review:

The GTX 480 is late. The GTX 480 is hot. Both of these facts have now been established by both ourselves and a gazillion other review sites. We will therefore not dwell upon these factors in this review of the first Fermi card from Zotac to enter the ITShootout.com labs. Clocked at 750MHz for the core and 3600MHz for the memory, the Zotac is a reference model card in every sense.

SAPPHIRE Ultimate HD5550 works its magic quietly

Rafael Hernandez — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Building a home theater PC means making a few concessions here and there in order to enjoy your movies and music without an insane amount of noise coming from your setup.

The SAPPHIRE Ultimate HD5550 uses a passive cooling solution which means you have one less component to worry about silencing. LANOC has the details:

The HD5550 Ultimate being a silent card I couldn’t let it get away without letting it do a little decoding. I swapped out our DVD burner for a BluRay drive and watched a few movies (with hardware acceleration turned on of course). At no point did the card have any trouble with the full HD movie decoding.