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12K gaming rig renders 1.5 billion pixels per second for just $17,000 (video)
Think your gaming rig's impressive because it can run Metro: Last Light with maxed out settings at 60FPS? Well, Microsoft rounded up a trio of Sharp PN-K321 32-inch 4K monitors and wired them to a Windows 8 PC stuffed with three ASUS 7970 GPUs. The $17,000 experiment proved two things: Such tech is outside our price-range and it takes a huge amount of support to get it working. For instance, before AMD wrote custom drivers to make Eyefinity and multi-stream transport play nicely together, the framerate was a meager 8FPS. It's worth noting that even after all that, demos only lasted a few minutes before the computer's power supply would conk out -- but maybe the kinks will be fixed in time for us to play Battlefield Bad Company 5 on it.
MSI ships AMD Richland A10-based GX70 and GX60 gaming laptops
Just as we knew it would, MSI has formally announced pricing for its newfangled GX70 and GX60 gaming laptops -- the world's first machines to ship with AMD's Richland A10-5750M (2.5GHz - 3.5GHz) within. The 17.3-inch GX70 offers up a 1,920 x 1,080 native display resolution, AMD's Radeon HD 8970M on the graphics front, a 750GB hard drive, 8GB of DDR3 memory, a Blu-ray Disc drive, Bluetooth 4.0 and Killer's E2200 networking technology. You'll also get a SDXC card slot, HDMI 1.4 socket, 720p webcam, a 9-cell battery -- likely good for about 89 seconds of use -- a backlit keyboard and a frame that's 2.17-inches thick and 8.6 pounds. If none of that frightens you, you can plan on parting ways with $1,399.99 to call one your own. The (slightly) more petite GX60 boasts a 15.6-inch panel (still 1080p, though), a 7.7 pound frame and a $1,299.99 price tag. Otherwise, the specifications are essentially identical from its big brother, and both should be shipping any moment now.
AMD unveils Radeon HD 8900M laptop graphics, ships them in MSI's GX70 (eyes-on)
Did you think AMD showed all its mobile GPU cards when it launched the Radeon HD 8000M series in January? Think twice. The company has just unveiled the 8900M series, an adaptation of its Graphics Core Next architecture for desktop replacement-class gaming laptops. To call it a big jump would be an understatement: compared to the 8800M, the flagship 8970M chip doubles the stream processors to 1,280, hikes the clock speed from 725MHz to 850MHz and bumps the memory speed slightly to 1.2GHz. The net effect is about 12 to 54 percent faster game performance than NVIDIA's current mobile speed champion, the GTX 680M, and up to four times the general computing prowess in OpenCL. The 8970M is more than up to the task of powering up to 4K in one screen, and it can handle up to six screens if there are enough ports. We'll see how long AMD's performance reign lasts, although we won't have to wait to try the 8970M -- MSI is launching the GPU inside the new GX70 laptop you see above. We got a brief, hands-off tease of the 17.3-inch GX60 successor at the 8900M's unveiling, and it's clear the graphics are the centerpiece. We saw it driving Crysis 3 very smoothly on one external display while powering 2D on two other screens, albeit through a bulky set of Mini DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA cables. Otherwise, the GX70 is superficially similar to its ancestor with that chunky profile, an unnamed Richland-based AMD A10 processor, Killer networking and a SteelSeries keyboard. More than anything, price should be the clincher: MSI is pricing the GX70 with the new Radeon at $1,100, which amounts to quite the bargain for anyone whose laptop has to double as a primary gaming PC. %Gallery-188363% %Gallery-188362%
Triple-screen gaming setups put under the microscope, deemed an attainable luxury
Can't help salivating over gaming setups with three screens? The Tech Report knows your hunger, and aims to satiate your cravings with a detailed look at the triple-display efforts of Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 680 OC and ASUS' Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Top. The high-end GPUs ran Battlefield 3, Arkham City, Rage and a few other games through the wringer -- competing on temperature, game performance, noise level and more -- outputting each title in a glorious extra-wide resolution, with a few quirks on the side. The Tech Report emerged from the gauntlet reluctant to relinquish its additional displays, extolling the trial as the first "next-generation gaming experience" they've had in a while. What's this mean for you? The author sums it up nicely: "In a few short years, surround gaming has gone from being somewhat of an exotic luxury to something far more attainable." If snagging a multi-panel gaming setup is your goal, venture on to the source below where an unabridged, 11-page breakdown awaits.
AMD releases Radeon HD 7750 and 7770 GPUs, reviewers like and don't like
Not into that whole $500 fuse-melting monster graphics card thing? Then good news for you: AMD has finally brought out two more affordable models in its 28nm Radeon HD range. The 7770 is priced at $169 and claims to be the world's first reference GPU that comes factory clocked to 1GHz. Meanwhile, the 7750 comes in at $109 and boasts a low enough wattage (75W, versus 100W for the 7770) that it doesn't require its own power connector. Both cards pack 1GB RAM and run on AMD's Cape Verde architecture, which makes them slightly different to the Tahiti-powered 7900 series, although they do inherit key top-end features like ZeroCore Power, PowerTune and Eyefinity 2.0.Reviewers have mixed opinions, as befits a healthy blogosphere, but the low-power 7750 generally comes off slightly better, especially for those looking to build a budget or HTPC rig. AnandTech likes the power-to-performance ratio of both cards, but dislikes the price-to-performance of the 7770, noting that the older 6850 still offers more in this respect -- at least for gamers. HotHardware concludes that AMD might have "technically" priced both cards "just right," considering how they stack up against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX560 and 550, but in practice those NVIDIA cards deliver a lot more punch for just a few extra dollars. Feel free to glean further details for yourself via the PR and review links below.
AMD announces next-gen Radeon HD 7970 for $549, says it 'soundly beats' rivals
A fresh contender for your blow-out 2012 Olympic gaming rig: AMD's first 28nm GPU, the Radeon HD 7970. It's scheduled to arrive on January 9th, priced at $549 -- nearly $200 more than its direct ancestor, the 6970. Then again, this newcomer packs some supremely athletic specs, including a 925MHz engine clock that can be readily OC'd to 1.1GHz, 2,048 stream processors and an uncommonly muscular 384-bit memory bus serving 3GB of GDDR5. At the same time, AMD hopes to make the card more practical than the dual-processor 6990 by bringing the card's power consumption down to less than 300W under load and a mere 3W in 'long idle' mode, and promising quieter cooling thanks to improved airflow and a bigger fan. We'll have to wait for benchmarks in January before we hand out any medals, but in the meantime NVIDIA's forthcoming 28nm Kepler GPU might want to step up its training schedule. Update: Pre-release reviews are out already and our round-up will follow imminently.
Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2011 wrap-up
We came, we saw, we conquered -- and just like that, Intel's Developer Forum was over. Much like years past, Chipzilla was proudly beating its own drum: we saw demos of Ivy Bridge and Haswell, a healthy helping of Ultrabooks and of course its high speed interconnect du jour, Thunderbolt. But that doesn't mean we didn't see a lot of other random, mind-stimulating otherness. Did you catch all the treasures we found lurking deep within the halls of this year's show? Unfortunately, we can't tell from here, so you better hop past the break for the full listing and find out.
AMD Eyefinity eyes-on, prepare to fall for landscape goodness (video)
Sure we've seen it before, but we'd be remiss if we didn't share what we stumbled upon at AMD's Fusion Zone at IDF 2011. Laying before you is a 5 x 1 landscape Eyefinity setup, powered by an upcoming unreleased 8-core FX CPU paired with a single Radeon HD 6990. For those of you keeping score at home, that's four displays connected via mini-DisplayPort and the fifth over DVI. Not much more to say, so peep the gallery below or hop past the break for a video of the bodacious rig running Dirt 3. Myriam Joire contributed to this report. %Gallery-134018%
AMD announces the Radeon HD 6990M, has some pointed words for NVIDIA
Here are five words you've heard before: "the world's fastest notebook GPU." Why, NVIDIA made just that claim two weeks ago, when it touted the GeForce GTX 580M as the nimblest card this side of Pluto. Not so fast, says AMD. The outfit just unveiled the Radeon HD 6990M with DirectX11 and HD3D support, and it insists this is the speediest GPU on the block -- specifically, up to 25 percent faster than any other GPU that's been announced to the public. And yes, AMD's well aware of that 580M. Just like NVIDIA came out swinging, making pointed comparisons to the Radeon HD 6970M, AMD's got some fighting words of its own: the company says the 6990M can whip the 580M in the benchmark AvP and games such as Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age 2, Shogun 2, BattleForge, Left 4 Dead, Metro2033, Wolfenstein MP, The Chronicles of Riddick, and ET: Quake Wars. We don't need to remind you that these numbers merely represent the story each company wants to tell. Still, you get the idea: these are the top-of-the-line cards each has to offer at the moment, and they'll likely be competing for space in your next gaming rig. As you can imagine, the 6990M joins other Radeon HD cards in supporting the company's Eyefinity technology, as well as GPU app acceleration. Let it be known, too, that while the 6990M supplants the popular 6970M as far as performance claims go, AMD tells us the 6970M will still be available for the foreseeable future. Speaking of availability, the 6990M will be offered in the Alienware M18x -- right alongside NVIDIA's 580M. Additionally, you'll find it packed inside Clevo's P170HM and P150HM. And you didn't think we forgot about specs, did you? Head on past the break to find the full PR, along with a handful of technical details straight from the horse's mouth.
AMD resurrects its 'FX' brand for speed freaks, lexicon lovers
We saw AMD's old "FX" moniker repeated on a leaked price sheet recently, but we couldn't be sure of its significance. Now AMD has confirmed that it is indeed bringing back the FX brand to denote hardware aimed at gamers and graphics enthusiasts. In keeping with its penchant for complicated taxonomy, the chipmaker will use the resurrected badge not on individual products, but rather on desktop platforms that combine top-of-the-range components -- including the forthcoming Scorpius platform that will consist of a 9-series chipset, HD 6000 Series discrete graphics and an unlocked eight-core Zambezi CPU. This is all part of AMD's efforts to square up to Intel and present itself as the PC gamers' choice, and to that end the company also revealed it is partnering with more games developers to encourage use of its HD3D, Eyefinity and Dual Graphics technologies. Full PR (excessive nomenclature and all) is after the break.
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard eyes-on
We're not normally all that stoked with motherboards, but Gigabyte's awkwardly named Z68XP-UD3-iSSD just about got our attention at Computex. The highlight here is the Intel 20GB SLC SSD latched onto the board's mSATA slot, which is right next to the LGA1155 CPU socket and the four DDR3 RAM slots (together supporting up to 32GB). Alas, Gigabyte says it won't be offering upgrade options for the SSD, though there are certainly alternatives out there in the wild if you dare to venture. But if none of this interests you, then there's always our multi-screen Angry Birds hands-on video after the break. %Gallery-125344%
AMD launches Radeon HD 6990 powerhouse for $699, maintains 'world's fastest' title
If you're scoring at home, NVIDIA currently holds the lead in single-GPU graphics cards with its GeForce GTX 580, but ATI's dual-chip Radeon HD 5970 has been holding down the absolute speed crown for a good long while. Now, bearing the name of AMD Radeon HD 6990, its successor sidles up to the throne and demands attention as the fastest single expansion board you can plug into your shiny new motherboard. The 6990 boasts a massive 4GB of GDDR5, 3,072 Stream Processors, 64 ROPs, and an 830MHz core clock speed. A dual-BIOS switch will let you crank that clock up to 880MHz with a corresponding increase in voltage, but don't expect to see much overclocking headroom above that. Reviewers note, alongside their fawning assessment of the world's best performance, that the HD 6990 is a massively power-hungry card (375W TDP) and one that makes quite a bit of noise while going through its herculean tasks. That's in spite of a new vapor chamber cooling system that allegedly supports up to 450W of thermal output. If all this strikes you as a somewhat flawed execution, maybe you'll join us in hoping NVIDIA's imminently upcoming response, dubbed the GTX 590, will be able to offer a neater, more efficient assault on the extreme peaks of graphical performance. Read - HardOCP Read - AnandTech Read - Tech Report Read - PC Perspective Read - techPowerUp! Read - Hot Hardware Read - Hexus
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for PC gets 3D, multiple monitor support
Ubisoft Germany has posted a video detailing the new features included in the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. German site GameStar (translation) has also posted a breakdown of the unique features and improvements. Apart from some graphical enhancements over the console releases, the PC version will also add support for 3D displays and multiple monitors. Specifically, the PC release will support Nvidia 3D Vision and AMD's Eyefinity tech. The latter allows players to link together multiple monitors for some really widescreen views of Renaissance Italy. Presumably, the technology also helps you feel better about purchasing so many monitors. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is slated to pounce onto PC sometime this quarter (before April). [Thanks, Wlodi; image credit: GameStar]
AMD Radeon HD 6970M reviewed: major leap from HD 5870M, not quite a GTX 485M
What has 960 shaders, two gigabytes of dedicated GDDR5 memory with throughput of 115.2GBps, and the ability to churn 680 million polygons each and every second? Yes, the Radeon HD 6970M. AMD's fastest mobile chip to date has been doing the review rounds recently and the response has been unsurprisingly positive. Most modern games failed to trip up the 6970M even at 1920 x 1080 resolution, though the usual suspects of Crysis and Metro 2033 did give it a little bit of grief. All in all, the leap from the HD 5870M was significant, although NVIDIA's still relatively new GeForce GTX 485M has managed to hold on to its crown as the most powerful GPU on the mobile front. Benchmarks, architectural details, battery life tests (what battery life?), and value-adding enhancements await at the links below.
AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market
It's taken AMD a long time to refresh the top end of its graphics hardware, but today's culmination to that wait has to be described as somewhat bittersweet. Sweet, because we're finally getting a successor to the venerable HD 5870, one that offers improved power management and tessellation performance at a lower $369 price point, but also bitter because in terms of sheer firepower, the Radeon series doesn't seem to have made quite the leap many of us had hoped for. The new top of AMD's single-GPU pile, the HD 6970, offers 1,536 stream processors, an 880MHz core clock speed, and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 5.5GHz for a total of 176GBps of memory bandwidth. Its partner in crime, the HD 6950, is expected to list at $299, for which saving you'll have to sacrifice some clock speed (down to 800MHz) and processing units (1,408 in total). There's a neat little addition to both new boards: a Dual-BIOS switch that will act like Google's hardware jailbreak toggle on the Cr-48, allowing tweakers to unlock the extra (unprotected by warranty!) performance headroom in their cards. Early reviews all seem to agree that both the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 have struck a very fine price-to-performance ratio. The 6970 manages to spar with the much pricier GTX 580, but given that it's priced similarly to NVIDIA's GTX 570, it scores plaudits for being a more than viable alternative. The HD 6950 is seen as the real value item here, however, particularly since it occupies a relatively unique spot in the price range, and most reviewers tipped it as their new bang-for-the-buck leader. Read - HardOCP Read - AnandTech Read - Tech Report Read - Guru3D Read - PC Perspective Read - Hot Hardware Read - techPowerUp! Read - Hexus Read - TechSpot
ATI FirePro V9800 runs out of ideas, shoots up with 4GB of GDDR5 and six mini DisplayPorts
If somehow you were able to choke up the FirePro V8800 and its 2GB of graphics buffer -- traveling across an autobahn-wide 147.2GBps interface -- here's the card for you. ATI has just announced the V9800, which doubles its predecessor's memory allowance to a mighty 4GB of GDDR5, but otherwise looks an almost identical beast. It maintains the 1,600 stream processor count of the V8800 and makes some small advances in performance and power efficiency, but on the whole it's the same card, just strapped up with more buffer muscle. We shouldn't neglect the new array of six mini DisplayPorts -- the retail package will include six DVI adapters, worry not -- which will let you have your full six-screen Eyefinity cake driven by just this one card. So, is this future collector's item worth your time? Well, at $3,499, the V9800 is a whole two thousand dollars pricier than the V8800, but then if you have the highly specialized needs it's looking to cater for, we're guessing that won't be too much of a hurdle for you. Update: Oh, about the price, AMD just got in touch to say it'll suggest a $3,499 tithe, not the $2.5K indicated on the slide below. Sorry is we misled you into selling up your entire 3D rendering farm with the lower price we had before.
AMD makes Eyefinity easier with line of budget-minded active DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters
AMD's Eyefinity technology is one of the best ways to fill every inch of your peripheral vision with pixels. However, it's certainly not the cheapest, relying on DisplayPort-capable monitors -- inputs that even some current models lack. This has left many gamers buying $100 DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters, significantly raising the cost of adoption, but AMD has announced an unusual plan to tackle that: cheap adapters. The company is helping to develop converters that are expected to retail for just $30, still not as disposable as the VGA-to-DVI blocks you have cluttering up your junk drawer, but considering these are active plugs it's probably about as good as we're going to get. So, who's up for some six-monitor Starcraft II?
NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround delayed, ATI gloats with an Eyefinity demo site
If you're one of the truly lilliputian proportion of PC gamers who actually bought two of either the GTX 470 or GTX 480 from NVIDIA in the hope of running a tri-monitor 3D gorgefest, we've got bad news for ya. If you're anyone else, enjoy the schadenfreude of knowing that those first guys will have to keep waiting for 3D Vision Surround support until the end of June. As NVIDIA tells it, the driver bringing the tri-dimensional, multi-monitor gaming nirvana was targeted for an April release, but has now slipped a couple of months. It's disappointing to see one of the major selling points of the GTX 400 series coming so much later than the cards' release, but at least ATI's around to console you if you're feeling jilted. The company has set up an Eyefinity Experience Tool that does a good job illustrating the benefits of gaming on a trifecta of monitors over a single display. Hit the source links for more.
AMD comes real clean with 2010 desktop platform: Phenoms, Athlons, Radeons, oh my!
AMD got serious with its VISION guide to buying PCs last September, but we've yet to see it actually put into practice until today. In addition to a new spate of laptop chips, the company is finally coming clean with the desktop CPUs that we've seen whispered about, touched and even benchmarked for weeks now. Frankly, there's not much here we didn't know already, but we're guessing that AMD's just aligning its official launch with the plans of Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and all the other big names that'll be introducing rigs based on this silicon in short order. Regardless, bargain gamers should greatly appreciate having the dual- and quad-core Athlon II range as well as the quad- and six-core Phenom II crew hitting the scene in official fashion, offering plenty of performance (for most, anyway) at a fraction of the cost of Intel's swankest Core i7 chips. And yeah, we're pretty stoked to see AMD getting its chips into so many desktops -- it's been awhile since there was even a semblance of an AMD / Intel balance in the customize-to-order sections of the world, and it's about time that changed.
Samsung's MD230X6 six-screen Eyefinity rig gets a price to match its size
Aww... isn't that 8-inch frame in the corner just adorable? And yep, it's right next to the same monstrous ATI Eyefinity rig we gave away at last month's Engadget Show, composed of six 23-inch IPS monitors bolted together. Samsung's been mum about its final price until now, but -- drum roll please -- the MD230X6's just a mere £3,180, which translates to about $4,750 on the other side of the pond. Don't know about you, but that £149.99 ($224) Samsung 800P photo frame's starting to look like a bargain now. Update: Samsung just informed us that these are actually PVA screens, not IPS.%Gallery-92805%
