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]

At more than a foot long, this card requires eight- and six-pin power connectors and a equally huge rig to live in. Seriously, the folks at Alienbabel Tech said they had issues fitting this card into a full size Antec 1200 chassis. Luckily, the card they had was apparently an engineering prototype, and may shrink down slightly for retail.

When we brought you word of this card in September, pricing and release date were unknown, and that hasn’t changed today. Just some additional pictures for you PC gamers to drool over as you fantasize about that six 30-inch monitor setup. [Alienbabel Tech via PC Perspective via Engadget]

The architecture really is a huge leap forward, according to people who’ve gone through it in-depth. Interestingly, the huge focus for Fermi is GPU computing. The first actual goods coming out using Fermi should be the GT300 series cards, which, besides the 512 cores sorted into 16 streaming processors with 32 cores each, uses a brand new GDDR5 memory setup.

PC Perspective has an epic write-up breaking down Fermi in detail that’s worth a whirl, and of course Nvidia’s got lots of fluff themselves all about Fermi. Strangely, they don’t explain the name, which sounds like a sad little poodle. [Nvidia, PC Perspective]

Inside, this nettop is pretty much traditional netbook save for the graphics, which means affordable 1080p HD video watching, if you’re so inclined, for a respectable price. As we’ve said before, this is a feature that’s changed cheap consumer computing, like, forever.

The rest of the deets are your standard netbook fare:

1.6GHz Intel Atom processor
1GB of RAM
160GB hard drive

However, as Liliputing notes, since Adobe Flash isn’t optimised on this graphics processor just yet, there will be some choppy playback of high quality/HD video on sites like YouTube and Hulu. Also, it kind of looks like a kid’s toy. A pretty powerful, cheap little kid’s toy. [Newegg via Blogeee via Liliputing]

In that first shot with the swine flu guy, it seems the one on the right is a bit nicer looking, as in his head and mask don’t look as polygonal as the one on the left. The two vents in his mask are actually round instead of octagonal, and there are more details all around. But that probably took you a while to spot.

I can’t even see a huge difference in the second shot, where I reversed the DX10 and DX11 shots to make sure you were paying attention. Did you think the one on the right was better looking before I said anything? If so, you don’t need to upgrade. More shots over at Firing Squad. [Firing Squad]

The two new cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, are the first video cards in the industry to fully support DirectX 11. Beyond that tidbit, they’re capable of producing 2.72 TeraFLOPS of computing power and are equipped with 1GB GDDR5 memory.

And yes, each is capable of driving six 30-inch monitors at once—what AMD refers to as “Eyefinity” technology.

Sadly, there’s still no word specific on pricing or availability, but these obviously aren’t bargain basement cards. [BusinessWire]

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]

ATI’s first, with the RV870-based Radeon HD 5800 series shipping out next month (no surprise, since they were showing it off a couple months ago), while Nvidia’s following with the GT300 series that’ll apparently hit in December, according to DigiTimes’ sources. On the other hand, Nvidia seems to have the lead on the actual Windows 7 front, since their GPUs are already Windows Hardware Qualification Lab-certified with support for the new DirectCompute API. Bonus: Your existing Nvidia graphics works with it, if it ain’t ancient.

Then again, there’s no excuse like a new operating system for buying hundreds of dollars in new computer gear. [DigiTimes]

Vaios at risk are Nvidia-based versions of the: VGN-AR1xx, VGN-AR2xx, VGN-AR3xx, VGN-FZ1xx, VGN-FZ2xx, VGN-FZ3xx, VGN-FZ4xx, VGC-LT1xx, and VGC-LT2xx.

The problems go back to Nvidia’s admission last year that some of its graphics chips (the GeForce 8400M and 8600M) were overheating due to faulty material, and the thermal designs of some laptops, or all-in-one PCs. Current GeForce 9-series chips should be fine.

As PC World points out:

Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple offered either a BIOS fix or free replacements for laptops with faulty chips. On Web sites like HP Lies, customers are still complaining about PC makers not offering free repairs for models that may be affected by the faulty chips.

So to Sony’s credit, it looks to be doing all it can. Though, as you’ll note below, it isn’t offering refunds. If you’re one of the “small percentage” affected, repairs should take about 7-10 business days. Applicable models beyond their 12-month warranty are also eligible to be fixed. [Sony Support via PC World]

In July 2008, NVIDIA announced that some notebook computers with NVIDIA graphic processors manufactured with a certain material set were failing in the field at a higher than normal rate. Since that announcement, Sony, in cooperation with NVIDIA, has been looking into any possible effect to VAIO® notebooks with NVIDIA graphic processors. Until recently we had not identified any VAIO models that were affected by this issue.

However, after closely monitoring the situation, Sony has now determined that a very small percentage of VAIO computers with the NVIDIA graphics chips may experience this issue. These PCs may exhibit distorted video, duplicate images or a blank screen due to a failure of the NVIDIA graphics chip.
Applicable Models
This issue only applies to the versions of these VAIO® computer models that came with a NVIDIA® graphics chip:
• VGN-AR1xx, VGN-AR2xx, VGN-AR3xx
• VGN-FZ1xx, VGN-FZ2xx, VGN-FZ3xx, VGN-FZ4xx
• VGC-LT1xx, VGC-LT2xx

It actually boils down fairly simply to a mixed bag: ATI’s Stream tends to be outright faster and pulls more of the load off of the CPU, but Nvidia’s CUDA tends to produce better quality results. Interestingly, PC Perspective seems to like ATI’s Avivo video transcoding application more than they used to, saying they’re impressed by its simplicity. But which side are you on? [PC Perspective via Engadget]