Let’s take a closer look at the most efficient single-array tower cooler out there designed for six-core Intel processors.

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<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">As Intel got into the chipset business it quickly found itself faced with an interesting problem. As the number of supported IO interfaces increased (back then we were talking about things like AGP, FSB), the size of the North Bridge die had to increase in order to accommodate all of the external facing IO. Eventually Intel ended up in a situation where IO dictated a minimum die area for the chipset, but the actual controllers driving that IO didn&rsquo;t need all of that die area. Intel effectively had some free space on its North Bridge die to do whatever it wanted with. In the late 90s Micron saw this problem and contemplating throwing some L3 cache onto its North Bridges. Intel&rsquo;s solution was to give graphics away for free.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">The budget for Intel graphics was always whatever free space remained once all other necessary controllers in the North Bridge were accounted for. As a result, Intel&rsquo;s integrated graphics was never particularly good. Intel didn&rsquo;t care about graphics, it just had some free space on a necessary piece of silicon and decided to do something with it. High performance GPUs need lots of transistors, something Intel would never give its graphics architects - they only got the bare minimum. It also didn&rsquo;t make sense to focus on things like driver optimizations and image quality. Investing in people and infrastructure to support something you&rsquo;re giving away for free never made a lot of sense.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Intel hired some very passionate graphics engineers, who always petitioned Intel management to give them more die area to work with, but the answer always came back no. Intel was a pure blooded CPU company, and the GPU industry wasn&rsquo;t interesting enough at the time. Intel&rsquo;s GPU leadership needed another approach.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">A few years ago they got that break. Once again, it had to do with IO demands on chipset die area. Intel&rsquo;s chipsets were always built on a n-1 or n-2 process. If Intel was building a 45nm CPU, the chipset would be built on 65nm or 90nm. This waterfall effect allowed Intel to help get more mileage out of its older fabs, which made the accountants at Intel quite happy as those $2 - $3B buildings are painfully useless once obsolete. As the PC industry grew, so did shipments of Intel chipsets. Each Intel CPU sold needed at least one other Intel chip built on a previous generation node. Interface widths as well as the number of IOs required on chipsets continued to increase, driving chipset die areas up once again. This time however, the problem wasn&rsquo;t as easy to deal with as giving the graphics guys more die area to work with. Looking at demand for Intel chipsets, and the increasing die area, it became clear that one of two things had to happen: Intel would either have to build more fabs on older process nodes to keep up with demand, or Intel would have to integrate parts of the chipset into the CPU.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Not wanting to invest in older fab technology, Intel management green-lit the second option: to move the Graphics and Memory Controller Hub onto the CPU die. All that would remain off-die would be a lightweight IO controller for things like SATA and USB. PCIe, the memory controller, and graphics would all move onto the CPU package, and then eventually share the same die with the CPU cores.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Pure economics and an unwillingness to invest in older fabs made the GPU a first class citizen in Intel silicon terms, but Intel management still didn&rsquo;t have the motivation to dedicate more die area to the GPU. That encouragement would come externally, from Apple.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Looking at the past few years of Apple products, you&rsquo;ll recognize one common thread: Apple as a company values GPU performance. As a small customer of Intel&rsquo;s, Apple&rsquo;s GPU desires didn&rsquo;t really matter, but as Apple grew, so did its influence within Intel. With every microprocessor generation, Intel talks to its major customers and uses their input to help shape the designs. There&rsquo;s no sense in building silicon that no one wants to buy, so Intel engages its customers and rolls their feedback into silicon. Apple eventually got to the point where it was buying enough high-margin Intel silicon to influence Intel&rsquo;s roadmap. That&rsquo;s how we got Intel&rsquo;s HD 3000. And that&rsquo;s how we got here.</span></span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></span></span></p>

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px;">The Water 3.0 revision of Thermaltake's closed loop cooling line is, in an interesting turn of events, an opportunity for us to essentially test the stock, traditional versions of Asetek's closed loop cooler products. Companies like Corsair, NZXT, and Thermaltake (among others) will often take the existing radiator, pump, and waterblock loop and give it their own spin, either by including special software, adding fan headers, or just using higher quality fans to differentiate their products. We've been able to test the CoolIT versions of the 120mm and 240mm radiator loops thanks to Corsair, but the Asetek ones are very popular as well (and in my opinion preferable), and thankfully that's what Thermaltake opted to go with for their third series of closed loop coolers.</span></span></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6984/thermaltake-water-30-closed-loop-cooler-roundup" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

As spring gets ready to roll over to summer, last week we saw the first phase of NVIDIA’s annual desktop product line refresh, with the launch of the GeForce GTX 780. Based on a cut-down GK110 GPU, the GTX 780 was by most metrics a Titan Mini, offering a significant performance boost for a mid-generation part, albeit a part that forwent the usual $500 price tier in the process. With the launch of GTX 780 the stage has been set for the rest of the GeForce 700 series refresh, and NVIDIA is wasting no time on getting to the next part in their lineup. So what’s up next? GeForce GTX 770, of course.

In our closing thoughts on the GTX 780, we ended on the subject of what NVIDIA would do for a GTX 770. Without a new mid/high-end GPU on the horizon, NVIDIA has instead gone to incremental adjustments for their 2013 refreshes, GTX 780 being a prime example through its use of a cut-down GK110, something that has always been the most logical choice for the company. But any potential GTX 770 is far more nebulous, as both a 3rd tier GK110 part and a top-tier GK104 part could conceivably fill the role just as well. With the launch of the GTX 770 now upon us we finally have the answer to that question, and the answer is that NVIDIA has taken the GK104 option.

What is GTX 770 then? GTX 770 is essentially GTX 680 on steroids. Higher core clockspeeds and memory clockspeeds give it performance exceeding GTX 680, while higher voltages and a higher TDP allow it to clock higher and for it to matter. As a result GTX 770 is still very much a product cut from the same cloth as GTX 680, but as a fastest GK104 card yet it is a potent successor to the outgoing GTX 670.

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