Gizmodo Australia » gpu

ATI Radeon HD 5970: The World’s Fastest Graphics Card

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:20:00 +0000

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 slaughters the competition in pretty much every benchmark thrown at it. It’s outrageously fast. We’re talking 5 teraflops here, people. Teraflops.

MaximumPC put the 5970 to the test, and found that it lives up to its promise. The 2GB dual-GPU card is the first to support DirectX 11, and basically doubles its wholly respectable predecessor (the 5870) in specs, capable of delivering nearly 5 teraflops of raw processing power. It’s a massive card, about 30cm long, designed mostly for heat dissipation, at which it apparently succeeds at. It’s also got easy access to overclocking via AMD’s OverDrive, and can drive up to three displays simultaneously with a maximum resolution of 7680×1600. So it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever, and it’s got a price tag to match: $US600 upon its undisclosed release. Yow. [MaximumPC]

AMD’s Eyefinity Graphics Card Drives Six 30-Inch Monitors At Once

Sean Fallon — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Good Lord—that is badass. What you are seeing here is one of AMD’s next-gen DirectX 11 graphics cards with an Eyefinity feature that allows you to use multiple monitors as a single display.

Specifics on the technology are being kept close to the vest, but a recent demonstration revealed, amazingly, that it runs on only one GPU. it also features several DisplayPort connectors—In this case, six 30-inch Dell displays were configured to run as a single 7680×4800 monitor.

Eyefinity is enabled through a combination of hardware and software being developed by AMD. On the hardware front, AMD’s upcoming Radeons will sport between 3 and 6 display outputs of various types, DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, etc. And those outputs will be managed by software currently dubbed SLS, or Single Large Surface. Using the SLS tool, users are able to configure a group of monitors to work with Eyefinity and essentially act as a single, large display.

Maximum PC witnessed XPlane 9 and Far Cry 2 running at full resolution on Eyefinity at 12-20 frames per second. HotHardware notes that an upcoming DX11 racing game, Dirt 2, was played at 7680 x 3200 with “perfectly acceptable frame rates.” Hot Hardware also notes that there are plans to integrate CrossFire support down the line and that AMD has partnered with manufacturers to create ultra-thin bezel displays specifically designed for use with Eyefinity. [Hot Hardware and Maximum PC]

The Current State Of Graphics Cards, In A Photo

John Herrman — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:41:02 +0000

Confusing, meaningless name? Check. Ostentatious styling added by a third party, completely unsuited for a component that you often can’t see? Check. Bizarre, irrelevant marketing claims? Oh, check.

The MSI R4890 Cyclone SOC, which shares as much aesthetically with a motorcycle engine as it does a PC component, is a perfect example of everything that is confusing, irritating and unnecessarily obfuscated with graphics cards today.

There’s a lot of impressive tech here—an overclocked 1GHz ATI Radeon HD 4890 GPU and 1GB of GDDR5 RAM— but instead of putting that into meaningful terms, MSI is content to just throw the numbers out there and brag about the card’s “200-year lifespan” and “largest ever” fan. I’m sure this is fun for the hardest of the hardcore enthusiasts, but for the rest of us it’s just a headache. The card should ship any day now, priced somewhere in the ballpark of $US250. [Slashgear]

Adobe Promises Flash Video Acceleration on Netbooks: Not For a While, And Not For Everyone

John Herrman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:01:47 +0000

HD Flash video, which has a hearty appetite for CPU cycles, and Intel’s Atom, which doesn’t have huge surplus of said CPU cycles, have never made a great couple. So Adobe getting serious about Flash hardware acceleration on netbooks is great news! For some. Eventually.

The announcement comes in two parts: one from Nvidia; one from Broadcom. Both promise full hardware acceleration for Flash video, primarily by means of upgrades to Adobe’s plugin, which guarantees smooth playback of HD flash video, which is becoming the norm for online streaming content, and more importantly in my mind, much, much lower CPU usage during regular video playback.

The reason for this announcement strategy, unfortunately, is that the first wave of optimisation will only benefit hardware based on either Nvidia’s powerhouse Tegra solution, or Atom netbooks which have Broadcom’s Crystal HD video acceleration add-on, which must either be installed by the OEM (rare) or plugged into a PCI-E Mini port or ExpressCard port. In other words, current-gen netbooks, based on Intel’s chipsets, are kinda left out in the cold, unless Adobe pulls something out of their hat before release.

About that release: we won’t even see this Flash upgrade for Atom until “the first half of 2010″, though the release hints the Tegra will support it from the get-go. I expect more partnered announcement like this to drop before then, and for GPU-accelerated Flash to become the norm eventually, but for now: Adooobeeee!

Fujitsu Amilo GraphicBooster External GPU Actually Looks Like a Great Idea

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Fujistu-Siemens has released their Amilo GraphicBooster. It seems like a rather good idea. A powerful graphics card and two-USB port that you can have permanently attached to three displays. It look amazing in action.

The Amilo GraphicBooster connects to the laptop using PCI-E, and has its own power supply. It houses a 512MB ATI Radeon HD3870 capable of driving three displays simultaneously, with two USB ports added so you can have a mouse and a keyboard always connected for minimun fuss.

And on top of that, it looks nice.

We will have to wait and see if we can say the same about its price. [Ubergizmo]

Photoshop CS 4 Will Use Your Graphics Card to Run at Light Speed, Do Fancy 3D Tricks

Matt Buchanan — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:30:00 +0000

The next version of Photoshop (CS 4) will be juicing up performance by taking advantage of hardware it hasn’t tapped before: graphics cards and physics processors. How much faster is the new 64-bit, GPU-injected Photoshop? At a demo at Nvidia’s HQ, TG Daily watched “the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly.”

3D effects are spiffier too, with direct 3D model manipulation and rendering, as well as a snappier 3D accelerated panorama. Overall, it sounds like it could be the most important Photoshop update in years when it drops in October. [TGDaily]

Fujitsu’s AMILO GraphicBooster External Graphics Card For Easy Laptop Upgrades

Sean Fallon — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:30:00 +0000

Fujitsu is set to launch an external graphics card solution dubbed the “AMILO GraphicBooster” sometime in the “next few weeks.” Unfortunately, this information was leaked from a presentation, so there isn’t a whole lot in the way of details—but we do know that the GraphicBooster is based on ATI XGP technology, it will allow users to connect up to three external displays to their notebook, DVI-D and HDMI connections are included, and it can reportedly deliver a 4.7X performance improvement over the graphics of a small form factor AMILO notebook.

Furthermore, the leaked graph above claims that an AMILO notebook with the GraphicBooster can get up to 8,000 points in 3DMark06. We have heard promises of external hard drives for laptops before, but so far nothing has been made available to the public. With any luck, there will be some truth in all of this (and the card with work with more than just the Fujitsu AMILO laptop). [Notebook Review]

ASUS EAH3850 Trinity Prototype Video Card Goes Triple Penetration With Three Cores

Jason Chen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:00:00 +0000

What the crap? As if shoving two GPUs onto a single card wasn’t enough to play contemporary games at a decent frame rate, Asus has just made an EAH3850 Trinity, a tri-core card with its own connected water-based cooling system. When you break it down, it’s three RV670 cores in one card, generating output for four DVI ports allowing you to power four monitors (or one gigantic one at insane-o resolution).

Two cores in back and one in front make up the construction, which runs so hot that it comes with heatsinks, heat pipes and a water block that fits into two 5.25-inch slots. How many Xbox 360s, PS3s and Wiis could you buy for the price of one of these? [Nordic Hardware]

ATI Breaks Teraflop Barrier with Radeon HD 3870 X2 GPU

Wilson Rothman — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:07:26 +0000

Remember that honkin’ ATI graphics card we showed you at CES? The one that was 1,000 times as fast as a Cray-1? Well, it’s official, making its debut today as the US$450 ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. It’s the first GPU to break the teraflop barrier, and is nearly double the performance of the HD 3870 you spent all your money on back in November. Press release with technical details after jump. [Product Page]

AMD Delivers Enthusiast Performance Leadership(1) with the Introduction of the ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3870 X2

– Industry’s First Teraflop Consumer Graphics Card Redefines High-Definition Performance for 1080P Gaming and beyond –
SUNNYVALE, Calif. –(Business Wire)– Jan. 28, 2008 AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced the immediate availability of the ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3870 X2 graphics processor, expanding the visual boundaries of PC entertainment well beyond the 1080P High Definition (HD) threshold. The industry’s first graphics processor to break the Teraflop (one trillion floating point operations per second) barrier, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 nearly doubles the performance of the award-winning ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3870 introduced in November 2007.(2)

Through an elegant yet aggressive design, the 55 nanometer process-based ATI Radeon 3870 X2 combines two ATI Radeon HD 3870s on a single graphics board, connected through integrated CrossFire(TM) technology. ATI Radeon 3870 X2 is also the first performance-leadership graphics product in the world to support Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX(R) 10.1 technology. The ATI Radeon 3870 X2 delivers a new class of price and performance leadership with unbelievable enthusiast value at a suggested retail price of US $449.

This launch follows on the success of the recently released ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3400 and ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3600 series graphics products, completing a comprehensive portfolio of next-generation 55nm GPUs that deliver unparalleled price, performance and energy efficiency from entry-level to performance-leadership class products.

“PC gaming enthusiasts demand the ultimate in performance and scalability for their HD gaming experience and the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 sets the standard by which all should be compared in this segment,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. “With this launch we reaffirm our commitment to enthusiast performance leadership and send a clear message that the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 is the new gold standard of the PC gaming world.”

Ultimate Performance

With the upcoming introduction of Microsoft’s DirectX 10.1 specification, gamers can expect more realistic gaming environments while developers have access to an increased amount of tools and resources to enhance overall image quality. Through delivering top-to-bottom DirectX 10.1 support, ATI Radeon HD 3000 series users can enjoy a more complete gaming experience now and in the future.

“We’re pleased to see our newest DirectX 10 technology brought to market so soon with the introduction of AMD’s latest enthusiast hardware,” said Kevin Unangst, senior global director of Games for Windows, Microsoft. “One of the greatest advantages of PC gaming is the rapid pace at which the experiences evolve and improve. ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 delivers on the promise of DirectX 10 gaming with significantly improved visuals and enhanced performance.”

ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 will also provide support for ATI CrossFireX(TM), the innovative next-generation AMD multi-GPU technology designed to support up to four GPUs. Software support to enable ATI CrossFireX is planned for late Q1 2008.

Ultimate HD Experiences

With the launch of ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, AMD continues to support the industry-leading Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and ATI Avivo(TM) HD for exceptional platform efficiency and image quality for H.264 and VC-1 high definition content. Enhanced HDMI functionality is also offered via integrated HDCP and audio for HDMI video.

“Alienware prides itself on staying at the forefront of HD gaming innovation so that our brand stands for the best possible experience for our customers,” said Patrick Cooper, director of product group, Alienware. “With the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 in our Area-51 ALX CrossFire platform, we can push the boundaries of visual realism one step further and provide enthusiast gamers with the perfect blend of next-generation features, performance and platform efficiency.”

Ultimate Efficiency

The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is the first enthusiast graphics processors to use TSMC’s 55nm process technology. The smooth transition to 55nm has allowed for a 2X increase in performance-per-watt over the previous generation. Through an elegant board design, the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 delivers exceptional acoustics that are roughly equivalent to a single ATI Radeon HD 3870. When combined with ATI PowerPlay(TM) technology, the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 delivers exceptional idle power efficiency with the ability to dynamically raise or lower GPU power depending on the usage scenario.

The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 launches with broad availability and ecosystem support from AMD’s Add-in-Board (AIB) and Systems Integrators (SI) partners. AIB partners building boards based on the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 include Asus, ASK, Club3D, Diamond Multimedia, HIS, ITC, Jetway, MSI, Sapphire, Triplex, Tul and Visiontek. Systems integrators launching ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 series include ABS, Alienware, Canada Computers, CyberPower, Falcon-Northwest, iBUYPOWER, Maingear, Systemax and Velocity Micro.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

(1) Performance comparisons using ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 versus NVIDIA 8800 Ultra using 3D Mark 2006, Supreme Commander, Call of Juarez, BioShock and Unreal Tournament 3 at 2560X1600 on AMD Phenom 2.6GHz CPU, AMD 790FX chipset, 2GB DDR2-800, Windows VISTA 64bit and ATI Catalyst display driver v. 8.45

(2) Performance comparisons of ATI Radeon HD 3870 versus ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 using 3D Mark 2006, Supreme Commander and Unreal Tournament 3 at 2560X1600 on AMD Phenom 2.6GHz CPU, AMD 790FX chipset, 2GB DDR2-800, Windows VISTA 64bit and ATI Catalyst display driver v. 8.45

AMD Has Triplets; Three New GPUs Coming Soon

Haroon Malik — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:50:00 +0000

AMD has just announced they shall be releasing three new graphics processors. The R680 is the new model grabbing all the attention, thanks to its dual 55nm processor core. AMD were clear in stating the 55nm processors are identical to those used in an earlier model, but the older RV670 GPU contained only one 55nm Phenom processor. The R680 will bring twice the fun with its dual core goodness and CrossFireX support.AMD are also set to revise two existing models, the RV610 and RV630, which will both be treated to new 55nm processors, but shall remain otherwise identical. We know that Phenom cores have had a tough time courting favour with the experts, and though the new AMD triplet seem great on paper, we’ll reserve judgment till they are unwrapped and put to the test. The products will all hit next month. Happy New Year, gamers. [Daily Tech]