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Booksley wrote:

I'd rather play the stock market.

These days? :rollercoastermax:

...and I hope you made some wise investments when money was good- like, say, real estate. Meanwhile

ATI snags XFX

It's been rumored for months now, and late yesterday XFX made it official, announcing that they plan to add ATI GPUs to their repertoire of graphics card offerings.

Unfortunately, nothing specific has been announced just yet, only that: "XFX will debut its first ATI Radeon HD 4000 series-based cards in early 2009. The XFX-partnered Radeon products will come with all of the popular features that XFX is known for, including XFX’s unparalleled 5-Star support, access to customized drivers, and factory overclocked XXX series."

XFX will continue to offer GeForce cards in addition to the upcoming Radeons. No word so far on whether the company plans to offer motherboards based on AMD chipsets as well; up to this point XFX has remained loyal to nForce.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21112

NV's pre-paper-launching the GTX 295...

GeForce GTX 295 Early Performance Test

Packing two 55-nm GT200b GPUs and nearly 1.8GB of memory, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 295 is designed to unseat the Radeon 4870 X2 as the world’s fastest graphics card. But does the card succeed in its mission? Join us as we take an early look at a preproduction card!

...and Sapphire's 'countering' with a single-slot 4870X2.

Sapphire announces water-cooled 4870 X2 Atomic

Not interested in NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 295? Perhaps Sapphire's announcement of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic is more your speed? The card is the world's first single-slot 4870 X2 board, with cooling provided for the graphics card and CPU:

Bringing the highest levels of graphics and gaming performance ever seen in the PC, SAPPHIRE Technology - the leading innovator of ATI-based graphics solutions - is now introducing the amazing single slot, liquid cooled ATOMIC Edition of its HD 4870 X2.

Fastest graphics ever!
Featuring a closed loop liquid cooled system, the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC brings workstation class cooling to the PC, enabling faster clock speeds and quieter operation - and delivering the fastest graphics performance ever seen in a single slot solution. Both GPU’s in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC are clocked at 800MHz and each has 1GB of DDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz, making a total of 2GB of memory on board. The streamlined single slot cooler assembly on the graphics card evenly cools both GPU’s and their associated memories - enabling this dual graphics system to run with a high level of stability even when delivering the highest levels of performance - currently the fastest PC graphics available.

The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is a limited edition product packaged in an aluminium case with a host of accessories aimed at the gaming enthusiast, including HDMI adapter, HDMI cable, CCL UV lamp and SAPPHIRE USB memory sticks, as well as driver and utilities software.

Closed loop liquid cooler [etc]

Put a couple in your MP, OC CPUs to suit, and... um.. nemind.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21119

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21123

Bat wrote:

Oooh, new GPUs from AMD - however these ones aren't going to be breaking any performance records, they are both priced below $60.

The Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 are slotted in between integrated graphics and the set of hardware we took a look at recently in our Radeon 4670 review. The Radeon HD 4550 will run you around $45 - $55, while the Radeon HD 4350 will be priced at $39. Generally speaking, if you're a gamer you're not spending any less than $150 for a graphics card - so these GPUs are mostly for enabling hardware Blu-ray acceleration or providing a boost in performance over games running on integrated graphics.
...

I just put a 4550 in my PC desktop to replace the 2400 that it came with, big difference in scoring.

Mine was this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6814121281

The recession is here- and there, and everywhere.

Palit cuts orders for NVIDIA GPUs

With demand for everything drying up, inventories of products are piling up at manufacturers. Last week we reported on millions of 4-series ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards sitting idle inside warehouses, so it's no surprise to hear similar stories in graphics. DigiTimes reports that Palit has cut orders for some 400,000 NVIDIA GPUs due this quarter. The site reports that ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and PC Partner (Zotac and Sapphire's parent company) have also cut their orders with NVIDIA. DigiTimes sources said orders on up to 1.5 million GPUs may have been cut.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21201

Shipments are down, inventory up across the board, I think. Also suspect NV's big chip will never spawn a lesser variant; DX11 chippery will arrive first.

NVIDIA launching another renamed GPU at CeBIT?

Expreview is reporting that NVIDIA plans to rebrand G92 yet again early next month. According to the site, on March 3rd NVIDIA will unveil the GeForce GTS 250 at the CeBIT trade show in Germany. Sounds exciting right? Unfortunately, the GeForce GTS 250 is nothing more than a renamed GeForce 9800 GTX+. This is what NVIDIA is telling their board partners: "GeForce GTS 250 carries over the same specs and features of 9800 GTX+, and hence the same GPU, memory, board, PCB, and thermal solution. AIC’s should be confident in purchasing GPU’s, PCB’s, and other materials, since the only change is a new VBIOS to implement the new branding". So basically NVIDIA's going to launch this "new" GPU next month, forcing their board partners to implement all new packaging and dump their existing inventory of 9800 GTX+ GPUs. Somehow I don't think that's going to go over too well with execs at EVGA, MSI, XFX, and other board partners.

In addition to the GeForce GTX 250, Expreview also says that NVIDIA plans to rename the [s]GeForce 8800 GT[/s] GeForce 9800 GT yet again. The new card will be sold as the GeForce GTS 240. Clock speeds will carry over unchanged, with the only difference being the new name.

The silliest part about all this GPU renaming? SLI compatibility. If history is any indication, these new GPUs won't be compatible with existing GeForce 8800 GT and 9800 GT cards, even though it's physically the exact same hardware.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21251

Red Team might pull a shenanigan or two, too.

ATI renaming GPUs too

It appears that NVIDIA isn't the only one guilty of renaming GPUs. ATI plans to do the same with several Radeon 3000 series parts. Fudzilla unpacked ATI's Catalyst 9.1 driver and noticed 11 new SKUs ranging from the Radeon 4230 up to the 4750. All of these parts are based on ATI's RV615 (Radeon 3400) or RV635 GPUs (Radeon 3600).

No word on when the "new" GPUs will be released, although if I had to guess CeBIT sounds like the most likely release date.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21259

I need a new video card soon, what should i get? What would be the best for quality gaming? Not that good of graphics but like to run WoW smooth, and maybe fiesta.

I've got my hands full consoling Books about getting an OC'ed 4870 shortly before the 4890 comes out.

Also we should verify which OS is under discussion.

Well if it works its not a bonehead move. Heck i'm using a 8800GTS atm. Works nice but it could be better. I'd say anything in the midrange 4 series ATI or 9 series nVidia if its WoW.

dv wrote:

spanky wrote:

I need a new video card soon, what should i get? What would be the best for quality gaming? Not that good of graphics but like to run WoW smooth, and maybe fiesta.

What price point are you looking at? If I were buying today, I'd probably go with a nVidia GTX 260/216. Although Bat or NC will probably tell me why that's a dumb move.

*ahem*

Orion's going to wind up with a better compy than you. THIS WILL NOT... I mean, that won't do. That won't do at all.

They went on to do 3- and 4-way looksees for the interested. Meanwhile, Books can [semi]officially cry... Fudzilla sez

CeBIT 2009: An entirely new chip

We learned some bits and pieces on ATI's upcoming RV790 chip and we can now happily confirm that this is yet another 55nm chip from ATI.

The company didn’t want to postpone the introduction of the new card in performance segment and therefore did it in 55nm, while RV740 remains the first 40nm. RV740 just launched as a mobile chip, and we’ve seen it up and running, while the desktop part should arrive in the next month or two.

The new chip is a new architecture, but with some basic concepts taken from the RV770, that is why the chip will be significantly faster than anything based on the RV770. It is not just a speed bump and a better batch of RV770 based Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 chips, it is a newer and better chip.

It looks like this new chip will beat the GTX 260, and it could even get close to GTX285, but at a much more affordable price.

So 4890 is a new, faster chip/card. So much for OCed 4870s... woohoo!

RV790 is not a faster RV770

NVIDIA Backs Away From GTS 240 Rebrand of 9800 GT
NVIDIA cancels its plans for the GTS 240

NVIDIA will not be going ahead with its controversial GTS 240 rebrand of the GeForce 9800 GT graphics card, according to a confidential email that DailyTech has seen. The GPU firm has been under pressure from frustrated GPU board partners.

Instead, NVIDIA is telling its customers to focus on three cards using the 9800 GT name. Besides the standard version, there is a reduced power version of the 9800 GT and the 9800 GT OC version.

The original 65nm 9800 GT used the same original G92 chip as the 8800 GT and had the exact same specifications. A 55nm die shrink resulted in a G92b chip, which NVIDIA used as well in the 9800 GTX+ - this has also come under controversy for being rebranded as the GTX 280M despite not using a GT200 chip.

The 9800 GTX+ has also been rebranded as the GTS 250 in a last ditch effort to compete with the ATI Radeon 4850. The graphics division of AMD has been leveraging its very high yields and small die sizes of its GPUs to lower its prices very aggressively. This has forced NVIDIA to follow suit, dramatically cutting its revenues and profits.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14551