For major manufacturers, Intel maintains its absolute hegemony as producer of CPU, with 79.3% market share. The company has lost 1.5% of market to their principal rival, AMD, who has grown to 20.4% of total share. Undoubtedly, the new generation of APUs with integrated graphics has given AMD a much needed boost.

In regard to cellular processors, Intel lost 1.9%, remaining at 84.4% of the total. Once more, AMD has taken the Intel fall to increase its share to 15.2% (+1.8%). The third manufacturer in this mix is is VIA Technologies, though its share is only 0.4%.

Nevertheless, the share of AMD remains at only 20.4% which means it still has a long way to go before it puts significant pressure on Intel, whose Sandy Bridge platform has also achieved a good reception this year. With the 2.9% decline in PC sales last quarter and expected to drop even further over the next quarter, the battle over market share is sure to heat up.

Legit Reviews has the NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 Classic Edition video card from AXLE 3D up for review today. Equipped with 96 CUDA cores on the GF108 'Fermi' GPU along with 1GB of GDDR3 memory, the GT 430 is geared toward lower end gaming and the home theater markets. Read on to see what we find on the AXLE GeForce GT 430 and to see how it performs in games lie Mafia 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum!

Source: Legit Reviews Hardware Articles

Double the GPUs, double the performance, at almost double the price.

AMD’s dual GPU cards have come a long way in the past several years. The original Radeon HD 3870 was noisy, ran hot and didn’t always perform up to snuff. Since then, AMD’s Catalyst Driver suite has substantially improved the performance and breadth of CrossFire-supported games.

On the hardware side, AMD is pulling out all the stops with its Radeon HD 6990 card. The company understands that a dual GPU card is most appealing to a small band of enthusiasts who really want the card to push the edge of the envelope, both in terms of engineering and features.

Despite being fully twelve inches long—like its predecessor, the Radeon HD 5970—the HD 6990 looks a little less imposing than the 5970. Maybe it’s the center-mounted fan, which visually breaks up the huge mass of the cooling shroud.

The Radeon HD 6990 combines twin Cayman GPUs, 4GB of GDDR5 and a new cooling system.

Still, it’s a big, heavy card that will only fit in larger PC cases, so make sure your case has the room for it.

The HD 6990 is essentially two Radeon HD 6970 cards built onto one card. While the base core clock speed is down a bit, at 830MHz, the full 6970 has been replicated, complete with 3,072 total shader ALUs, 192 texture units and 4GB of GDDR5 running at 1,250MHz.

A pair of HD 6970 GPUs and all that GDDR5, even with the core clocks cranked back to 830MHz, consumes serious power; the HD 6990 ships with two 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. Also built into the card is a tiny physical dip switch that allows you to overclock and overvolt the core clock with a single flick, to 880MHz. Flicking that switch turns the 6990 into full, screaming dual HD 6970s, but at a hefty power cost. At full throttle, the overclocked HD 5990 used 528W—more power than we’ve ever seen from a single graphics card. The card itself, when overclocked, consumes up to 450W, which requires serious voltage regulation. AMD touts its use of Volterra digital programmable regulators and cherry-picked GPUs which would run at high voltages and clock speeds without melting.

The dual Volterra digital regulators are the rectangular chips at the top. The two GPUs are symmetrically laid out.

Cooling dual Cayman GPUs and 4GB of video RAM takes a serious cooling system. AMD re-engineered the cooling system, incorporating a full-board heat dissipation system with dual vapor chambers.

The heat sink fins each cover a separate vapor chamber located above each GPU. The copper head sink is thermally linked via phase change thermal interface materials.

The central fan pulls heat from the rearmost GPU, pushing that air over the front GPU. Since all the video connectors are mounted on one side of the double-wide PCI bracket, the other bracket side becomes a full-height exhaust vent.

The HD 6990 ships with five video connectors built in, one dual-link DVI connector and four mini-DisplayPort 1.2 attach points. Retail boxes will ship with three additional adapters, one miniDP to single link DVI passive, one miniDP to single link DVI active and a miniDP to HDMI passive.

Four mini-DP 1.2 ports plus a dual link DVI connector enable full Eyefinity support.

So the Radeon HD 6990 seems well engineered. How does it actually perform? We cranked up the standard testbed, loaded up the benchmarks and took it for a spin. We compared the HD 6990 (with the OC switch in both settings) to an overclocked eVGA GTX 580 SC, and the previous generation Radeon HD 5970.

Any lingering doubts as to who is the new performance champ are now gone.  In games that are seem mostly bandwidth or texture bound, we see little difference between the OC setting and the standard setting. It’s worth noting that we did see games crash on a couple of occasions when the card’s switch was set in the OC setting, while the 6990 was completely stable at the standard setting.

So for the moment, AMD gets to hoist the PC graphics performance crown onto its brow. But fame and GPU fortune can be fleeting, and already rumblings of a dual GPU Nvidia-based card have hit the Internet rumor mills.

Will you want one? At $699, the price is pretty steep, especially if you consider that a single Radeon HD 6970 costs about $360. Also, it’s a big card, so make sure you case has room for a foot-long card. And you’ll need a robust power supply to deliver all that juice.

Nevertheless, the temptation is there – that’s a lot of raw GPU power on a single card. The price of GPU glory is never a small one.
 

$699 (est) http://www.amd.com     

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card is without a doubt one of the best all around gaming graphics cards on the market today. In our GeForce GTX560 Ti launch article we showed you how the NVIDIA reference designed card did and today we are taking a look at our very first custom designed GTX560, the ASUS GeForce GTX560 Ti DirectCU II TOP video card!

Source: Legit Reviews Hardware Articles

What Fermi was always meant to be

Nvidia’s latest GPU release, the GF110, is essentially a re-engineered version of the original Fermi chip, with the addition of a few tweaks. By re-spinning the original, the full potential of Fermi is now realized, with all 512 compute cores active. (The original GeForce GTX 480 had the same number of compute cores, but 32 of them were deactivated.) Besides that, the GF110 features other enhancements, like improved FP16 texture performance, which boosts the frame rate in scenes using high dynamic range (HDR) rendering. The new chip also clocks higher; reference cards run at 772MHz core and 1,000MHz memory.

EVGA delivers a slightly tweaked GTX 580, making the fastest single GPU a little faster—albeit at a steep price.

EVGA’s GeForce GTX 580 SC version of the card juices the clock speeds a bit, with the core running at 797MHz and the memory at 1,012MHz. The clocks don’t come free, though. The EVGA card’s power consumption was a bit higher over the reference card at full throttle; in our tests, power at load came in at 395W, versus 385W for the reference GTX 580. That’s also higher than the power consumption of the original GTX 480, but Nvidia likes to stress that “performance per watt” has improved.

Despite its incomplete nature, the GTX 480 was the fastest single-GPU card available; the extra compute cores, plus the higher clocks, allows the GTX 580 to considerably up the performance ante.

We popped EVGA’s new progeny into our reference test system and took it for a spin. The result was a clean sweep across the benchmark board, as the GTX 580 easily trumped the performance of its predecessor as well as the top two single-GPU AMD products. In fact, when we dropped in a dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, the GTX 580 still won in the majority of tests, and the difference was marginal in those benchmarks the HD 5970 won. So, not only is the GTX 580 the fastest single-GPU card you can get, it’s pretty much the fastest card, period.

As with other Nvidia-based cards, you also get Nvidia’s PhysX GPU physics feature in the games that support it. And if you’re willing to dig deeper into your wallet, you can pick up a 3DVision kit for stereoscopic 3D gaming and movies, provided you have the requisite 3D LCD with a 120Hz refresh rate. Unlike AMD, however, you’ll need a second card if you want to drive more than two displays.

The GTX 580 costs a pretty penny: The lowest price we’ve seen is around $540. So, if you’re burning for the fastest graphics card you can get, and have the power supply to handle it, you’ll have to pay for the privilege. AMD enthusiasts may like to play the efficiency card, but sometimes we just crave raw speed.

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

Nvidia turned more than a few heads earlier this year at CES when it announced plans to develop its own graphics-enabled microprocessor (MPU) using ARM technology, a decision that so far has been met with optimism by industry analysts, including iSuppli’s Matthew Wilkins.

“Nvidia’s entry into the microprocessor segment makes sense, despite the current market dominance of Intel and AMD,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. “In notebook PCs alone, IHS iSuppli research forecasts the penetration rate for graphics-enabled MPUs will increase to 82.9 percent by 2014, up from 39 percent in 2010. This presents an opening for Nvidia to make inroads into the MPU market.”

The obvious challenge here is in software. Nvidia has steadfastly denied plans to develop a x86 processor, and going with ARM’s architecture will prove an uphill battle, albeit not as steep as, say, 12 months ago. Microsoft is building a version of Windows for ARM hardware, and also plans to port its Office productivity suite over as well. Between Nvidia’s hardware and Microsoft’s software support, it’s conceivable that developers will make the jump without dragging their feet.

Image Credit: http://en.wikinoticia.com

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

If you’re wondering what the frak “Super Alloy Technology” is, don’t worry, we had the same puzzled look when heard about Asus’ new GT 440 graphics card. Here’s how Asus explains it:

“The Asus GT 440 includes Super Alloy Power technology, featuring a special alloy formula used in power delivery components such as capacitors, chokes and MOSFETs. It instantly lowers average operating temperatures up to 35°C, extends product lifespan 2.5 times, and improves overall performance up to 15%. This gives users access to greater overclocking potential, as the G440 can withstand higher operating temperatures than its reference counterparts.”

Savvy? Let’s move on. Asus’ factory overclocked GT 440 sports an 822MHz engine clock and 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 3200MHz on a 128-bit bus. Other specs include 96 CUDA cores, D-Sub output, DVI-I output, HDMI 1.4a compliance, and a funky looking cooling solution.

No word on price or availability.

Image Credit: Asus

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

Wait a minute, didn’t AMD take the ATI brand behind the shed and give it the Old Yeller treatment? Sort of. Barring a special edition throwback or a mulligan of sorts, you won’t ever see a new graphics card in the home desktop market carrying an ATI label, but AMD is still using it for some of its professional cards, including the ATI FirePro V5800 DVI, one of two new graphics cards geared for the workplace (the other being the AMD FirePro 2270).

“Because of their superior power consumption and multi-dispaly capabilities, solutions based on the AMD FirePro 2270 and ATI FirePro V4800 DVI deliver strong value for financial, medical, and corporate workstation environments,” said Janet Matsuda, general manager, AMD Professional Graphics. “With the AMD FirePro family, we continue to demonstrate our focus on enhancing productivity through an enhanced visual experience.”

The AMD FirePro 2270 ( $150) is AMD’s only low-profile, passively cooled, dual-display, triple set support solution graphics card, while the ATI FirePro V5800 DVI ($470) boasts added muscle to drive two high-resolution dual-link DVI displays. Both cards are available now.

Image Credit: AMD

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

It was a disappointing fourth quarter for graphics chip makers as overall shipments failed to meet expectations, according to Jon Peddie Research. Year-on-year growth was “an unimpressive 4.3 percent,” which JPR pegged as a major bummer considering the graphics market came blazing through the gates at the beginning of the year.

Thanks to the integrated graphics business, Intel once again led the charge by claiming a 52.5 percent market share, up 2.9 percent on year. It was a close race for second place, with AMD edging ahead of Nvidia with a 24.2 percent share compared to 22.5 share. Perhaps more importantly, AMD’s market share rose 11.2 percent on year, while Nvidia slid 15.1 percent.

JPR acknowledged that the tablet market, and specifically Apple’s iPad, might ultimately be the reason why graphics chip sales didn’t meet expectations, noting that the iPad “has cut into low end PC sales.”

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles

Excited about Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 560 Ti videocard? You aren’t the only one. Boutique system builder iBuyPower announced it’s now offering the new GPU across its entire line of desktops, including its LAN Warrior II Paladin XLC and Level 10 lines.

If you’re not yet acquainted with the GTX 560 Ti, we have some recommended reading:

• Nvidia’s New GTX 560 Ti: First Benchmark Results Here
• MSI NGTX560 Ti Twin Frozr OC Videocard Review
• Asus ENGTX560 Ti DCII Videocard Review

The short and sweet of it is Nvidia’s GTX 560 Ti offers “impressive performance for the dolloar and watt,” and depending on what cooling solution is being used, noise is acceptable too.

As it pertains to iBuyPower, the company’s aforementioned LAN Warrior II starts at $970 when equipped with a GTX 560 Ti. Other options include a Palit Sonic GTX 560 Ti (900MHz) for $19 more, an EVGA Superclocked GTX 560 Ti (900MHz) for $29 more, or a 2GB GTX 560 Ti that also adds $29 to the bottom line.

Image Credit: iBuyPower

Source: Maximum PC - All Articles