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<p><span style="font-size: small;">As we know, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 managed to successfully replace the previous flagship solution – GeForce GTX 480. But will it be able to compete against the new leader at least with factory overclocking in place? Let’s find out in our new review of two new graphics cards from Gainward and Zotac. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce-gtx-570-oc.html">Read more...</a><br />
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<p><span style="font-size: small;">As you know, GeForce GTX 560 Ti proved to be faster in most gaming tests than its direct competitor, Radeon HD 6870. But the latter hasn’t yet said its final word. Today we are going to see ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU fighting against GeForce GTX 560 Ti for the ultimate win.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/asus-eah6870-directcu.html" target="_blank">Read more...</a><br />
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The arrival of a new mainstream Nvidia core, GF114, posed a very interesting question: how well will this product perform in SLI mode? Since we‘ve got a pair of graphics cards like that on our hands, we decided to check it out.
Can we make a value graphics accelerator work fast enough to handle contemporary games? We are going to try answering this question with the help of Axle GeForce GT 430.
<p><span style="font-size: small">The replacement of GeForce 400 family with GeForce 500 models continues. Today we are going to introduce to you a new mainstream solution from Nvidia targeted for demanding gamers that should replace GeForce GTX 460. Please meet the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti!</span></p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce-gtx-560-ti.html"><span style="font-size: small">Read more...</span></a></p>
After being AnandTech’s senior GPU editor for nearly a year and a half and through more late-night GPU launches than I care to count, there’s a very specific pattern I’ve picked up on: the GPU market may be competitive, but it’s the $200-$300 that really brings out the insanity. I’m not sure if it’s the volume, the profit margins, or just the desire to be seen as affordable, but AMD and NVIDIA seem to take out all the stops to one-up each other whenever either side plans on launching a new video card in this price range.
Today was originally supposed to be about the newly released GeForce GTX 560 Ti – NVIDIA’s new GF114-based $250 video card. Much as was the case with the launch of AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 series however, AMD is itching to spoil NVIDIA’s launch with their own push. Furthermore they intend to do so on two fronts: directly above the GTX 560 Ti at $259 is the Radeon HD 6950 1GB, and somewhere below it one of many factory overclocked Radeon HD 6870 cards, in our case an XFX Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition. The Radeon HD 6950 1GB is effectively the GTX 560 Ti’s direct competition, while the overclocked 6870 serves to be the price spoiler.
It wasn’t always meant to be this way, and indeed 5 days ago things were quite different. But before we get too far, let’s quickly discuss today’s cards.
As unfathomable as it seems now, at one point in history the product refresh cycle for GPUs was around 6 months. Twice a year NVIDIA and AMD would come out with major refreshes to their product lines, particularly at the high-end where a quick succession of parts brought great performance gains and left us little time to breathe.
Since then things have changed a great deal. GPU complexity has grown by leaps and bounds – although by the time the term “GPU” was even coined GPUs ceased being simple devices, they were still fairly small chips put together at a block level by a relatively small team of engineers. The modern GPU on the other hand is a large, complex entity. Although the development cycle for a GPU is still shorter than the 4+ years for a CPU, GPU complexity has approached the CPU in some ways and exceeded it in others. Meanwhile in terms of die size even midrange GPUs like GF106 (GTS 450) are as big as modern CPUs like Sandy Bridge, never mind high-end GPUs like GF110. As a result the refresh cycle for GPUs has become progressively longer by relying primarily on die shrinks, and in modern times we’re looking at close to a year between refreshes.
The reason I bring this up is because NVIDIA has found itself in an interesting position with the Fermi architecture. We’ve covered the problems NVIDIA had in the past, particularly with the first Fermi – GF100. NVIDIA since corrected GF100’s biggest production flaws in GF110, giving us the Fermi we originally expected nearly half a year earlier. NVIDIA is now in the process of cascading those production improvements down the rest of the Fermi line, churning out the fully-enabled Fermi GPUs that we did not get to see in 2010. Whether it’s intentional or not – and we believe it’s not – NVIDIA has fallen back in to the 6 month cycle.
Late last year we saw GF110, the first of the revised Fermi family. GF110 brought with it GTX 580 and GTX 570, a pair of powerful if expensive video cards that put NVIDIA back where they traditionally lie on the performance/power curve. Now it’s time for GF104 to get the same treatment. Its revised counterpart is the aptly named GF114, and it is the heart of NVIDIA’s newest video card: the GeForce GTX 560 Ti.
Nvidia GeForce 400 family that is slowly becoming history has never got a high-end dual-processor model. Maybe it is destined to be born in GeForce 500 family, and today we will try to find out what we could potentially expect from a hypothetical graphics accelerator with two GF110 onboard.
<p><span style="font-size: small; ">Just four months ago, NVIDIA released their </span><span style="font-size: small; ">top-to-bottom 400M lineup</span><span style="font-size: small; ">.Since the announcement, it took about a month but we then got the ASUS G73Jw (460M), Dell XPS L501x (420M), Clevo B5130M (425M), and ASUS N53JF (425M) in rapid succession. All of these were decent offerings, with a nice blend of performance and features at reasonable prices. Of course, Core 2010 products are last year’s news, and with the launch of Sandy Bridge the whole industry is moving to 2<sup>nd</sup> Generation Intel Core Processors (aka Core 2011). With an improved IGP threatening low-end discrete GPUs, what better time for NVIDIA to refresh their mobile parts?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; ">Unlike the desktop GTX 580, the new 500M mobile parts are all using existing architectures; there are even a couple of new 400M parts to round things out. The major change is that we’re getting higher clock speeds, both on the GPU cores/shaders as well as the memory. In a few cases we also have additional shaders available, as well as clearing up some potentially confusing part names (really!). Read on for details on this year’s NVIDIA laptop offerings—coming soon to a Sandy Bridge laptop near you !</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; "><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/4087/nvidia-500m-refreshing-the-400m">Read more...</a></span></p>
We like to talk about Lamborghinis and Porsches, but in reality we own Corollas and Golfs. Meet the latest of the graphics cards 'Golf GTI' breed - Gigabyte GV-N460OC-768I. Sporting bigger cooling and more horsepower, can it still make an impression just as GeForce GTX 460 1GB did?