Today we are going to talk about an attempt by ECS Company to design a completely silent modification of Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB and will see how successful this solution turned out.

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<div id="intelliTxt"> <font size="2"><span class="content"> <p> For quite a while now, the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra have been the fastest single GPU cards around. In spite of the fact that we haven't seen any faster single GPU solution introduced, it is only recently that the rest of the lineup has become compelling on either the NVIDIA or AMD front. Aiming high is a good thing for those who can afford it, but until the technology makes its way into cheaper products most of us won't see the benefit. </p> <p> It costs quite a bit of money to develop and produce single GPU solutions of ever increasing die size and complexity. It's a problem of engineering rather than science: yes faster hardware could be built, but it doesn't matter how fast your product is if people who are interested can't afford it. There are trade offs and diminishing returns to consider when designing hardware, and production cost and market value always have something to say about what type of performance a company will be able to target with a given product. </p> <p>NVIDIA's G80 is a huge chip. Yes, they owned the market for a long time with it, but its cost to build was high and it was an expensive part for end users to own as well. AMD finally pulled out a wild card with the 3870 X2, and rather than putting their money into a large high cost chip, they combined two GPUs onto one board for their high end offering. Sure, NVIDIA had a single board dual GPU product a couple years back (the 7950 GX2) - and ATI tried that as well back in the Rage MAXX days - but we haven't seen a similar solution from their DX10 lineup until today. </p> <p> With G9x coming in as a glorified die shrink to G80, NVIDIA took the opportunity to move away from huge die size and shift to the cheaper option of combining two GPUs on a single board for its highest end part. It is less expensive to make use of two chips, even if their combined size is larger than a monolithic one because yields are so much better. NVIDIA is able to get more chips per wafer and a higher percentage of those will be good compared to a large design. </p> <p> Of course, in spite of a cheaper to produce solution, the increased performance of this solution over previous high end has earned the 9800 GX2 a pretty heft price premium. At a retail price of at least $600 US, these bad boys will not be making their way into everyone's systems. There is always a price for having the best of the best. </p> <p> As we mentioned, NVIDIA has done single card dual GPU in the past. But this board is different from both the 7950 GX2 and it's current competitor, the 3870 X2. Let's take a look at the board and see just what the differences are.</p> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3266">Read more...</a><br /> <p>&nbsp;</p> </span></font></div>

<img alt="" align="right" src="/tp-images/Image/nvidia-logo.jpg" /><br /> A mai rămas doar o zi pană la lansarea oficială a noii plăci video nVidia, GeForce 9800 GX2,&nbsp;&icirc;nsă primele teste au apărut pe internet chiar de saptamana trecută.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />

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<font size="2"><span class="content">We normally do not get giddy about the thought of reviewing another low budget integrated graphics platform. All right, some of us do, as we are eternal optimists that eventually a manufacturer will get it right. Guess what: AMD got it right - not exactly right, but for the first time we actually have an IGP solution that comes very close to satisfying everyone&rsquo;s requirements in a low cost platform. Why are we suddenly excited about an integrated graphics platform again?<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3258">Read more...</a></span></font>

<div id="intelliTxt"> <font size="2"><span class="content"> <p> We previewed AMD's CrossFireX technology a couple weeks ago, but today a WHQL drier is available that supports more than two AMD GPUs. In order to do this, AMD employs Vista's Linked Display Adapter (LDA) technology to make the collective GPUs appear to the system as a single virtual device. While this allows for more flexibility in GPU configurations, there are some drawbacks that we will talk about shortly. </p> <p> The new Catalyst 8.3 is a milestone release for AMD that brings, in addition to Vista LDA support for more than two GPUs, a number of new features. These are (from AMD's documentation): </p> <p> <strong>ATI Hybrid Graphics Support</strong>: The ability to use integrated and discrete graphics in hybrid mode to support either power saving (disabling the discrete graphics card) or to enable the integrated and discrete graphics hardware to share the graphics load. This is only available with lower end graphics cards and integrated chipsets using the 3200/3300 series hardware. </p> <p> <strong>Anti-Aliasing enhancements</strong>: AA support for all UE3 titles (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, Rainbow Six, etc.) through the control panel. Support for edge detect filters plus Super AA was slated to be in this release but it was pushed back. Tent filters can be enabled with Super AA, but edge detect will be coming soon. </p> <p> <strong>Digital Panel GPU image scaling</strong>: The option to enable image scaling for maintaining aspect ratio of a display has been added. Additionally, the GPU itself is now used to scale the image if the check box is ticked. NVIDIA has had this for a while and it's good to see AMD adding support for this. </p> <p> <strong>Advanced Video Quality controls</strong>: An edge enhancement slider has been added to adjust the sharpness of the video playback, along with a noise reduction slider. Having variable adjustment for these kinds of features is a very welcome addition and something we've been wanting ever since noise reduction became a hot topic in video decoding. </p> <p> <strong>HydraVision for Vista</strong>: Multiple monitor and virtual desktop manager with support for hotkeys and tools to help keep things organized. </p> <p> Let's take another look at CrossFireX now that we are allowed to test it on Intel hardware and compare it with competing solutions.</p> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3256">Read more...</a></span></font> </div>

All Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT based graphics accelerators we have tested so far were equipped with 512MB of video memory. Today we are going to check out the youngest member of the family equipped with only 256MB and will try to find out how it affects the gaming performance in contemporary titles.

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<p><font size="2">Yesterday saw the introduction of NVIDIA&rsquo;s GeForce 9 series of GPUs, starting with the GeForce 9600 GT. Carrying a MSRP of $169 - $189, the GeForce 9600 GT was designed to fill a void in NVIDIA&rsquo;s product lineup. The GeForce 8600, NVIDIA&rsquo;s original sub-$200 competitor was being sorely beaten by AMD&rsquo;s Radeon HD 3850. The GeForce 9600 GT was introduced to rectify the situation.</font></p> <p><font size="2">Had the world remained the same, the GeForce 9600 GT would have competed with and done a good job of destroying the Radeon HD 3850. However, AMD didn&rsquo;t remain still and quietly reduced the prices of its Radeon HD 3800 series GPUs in the channel. The GeForce 9600 GT no longer was a competitor of the Radeon HD 3850, but rather up against the 3870.</font></p> <p><font size="2">A 256MB Radeon HD 3850 will set you back around $150, while the 512MB models are $170 parts. Stock clocked GeForce 9600 GTs are doing a good job of hovering right at $179.99, while factory overclocked cards will set you back closer to $200. The Radeon HD 3870 has now dropped to below $200 and we even found one for about the same price as a 9600 GT</font></p> <p><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3235"><font size="2">Read more... </font></a></p>