Gainward Introduces a 3GB GeForce GTX 580

Remember when we did a roundup for the GTX 570 cards? We actually featured one of their cards in our roundup – anyhow, here’s the link. Apparently their mother company is Palit, while Gainward on the other hand recently launched its GeForce GTX 580 3072MB Phantom3. The superscript, 3 actually refers to how they built this particular card and it comes loaded with three PWM cooling fans below a gigantic heatsink. A cooling solution that massive does in fact come with notable improvements as they claim there’ll be up to 12 degrees Celsius lower temperatures when compared to a stock GTX 580 under heavy 3D tasks, as well as up to a 54% less noise while on standby.

Then of course there’s the more obvious aspect of the card having a ludicrous, three gigs of video memory. While the other specs resemble quite close to a stock GTX 580, and they include 512 CUDA cores, a core clock of 783MHz, 1566MHz on the shader and 4020MHz for the memory, a 384-bit bus, the usual DX11 support, dual-DVI, HDMI, and finally the DisplayPort. Your guess of how much all this will cost is as good as ours – a reference GTX 580 already costs $499, so something like this will surely come with a premium.

ZOTAC’s GTX 570 AMP! Edition

Looks like it’s not long before the GTX 570 gets the company’s signature AMP! treatment, and it also comes with a complimentary copy of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands!

Specs are a 780MHz core clock, 480 unified shaders, 1560MHz shader clock, 1280MB of GDDR5 memory, 4000MHz memory clock and a 320-bit memory interface. It is also HDMI 1.4a compliant, and 3D ready. Pricing has yet to be announced, but expect a premium for factory overclocked cards.

We’ll Be Parting with VGA in 5 Years

Officially announced by Intel and AMD, the format we all came to knowing of will be completely phased out by 2015. It’s said that support is to be ceased early 2013, and that the standard will die out by 2015. Nick Knuppfer, Intel’s spokesperson, told TechNewsWorld,

“HDMI and DisplayPort are modern digital interfaces that support higher resolutions and screen sizes.”

It isn’t surprising that the two major companies in the computer word is dropping this ancient analog technology, as integration of DisplayPort and HDMI technologies will yield higher resolutions and modern interfaces for displays in the future. The 5-volt requirement on VGA (video graphics array) ports actually results in an overall increase in cost and PCB real estate. How do you feel about this? Still use the VGA port quite often?

Gigabyte Announces Sandy-Bridge Motherboards

Slated for early next year, Gigabyte already has a handful (eight to be exact, take a glimpse at all of them over at PCSTATS.com) of boards ready with the P67 and H67 chipsets that will be compatible with Intel’s currently non-existent Sandy-Bridge CPUs.

This mid-range line all feature the LGA1155 socket (having support for the 32nm manufacturing process processors), bears Gigabyte’s trademark Ultra Durable 3 copper PCB, takes DDR3 RAM of speeds up to 2200MHz, have two USB 3.0 ports, dual PCIe 16x slots with CrossfireX capability (no mention of SLI), and includes four SATA III 6Gbps ports (only three for the mATX version). Here are a few – we totally admire the classy new black PCB design for the P67A-UD3R, making it comparable with other high-end boards. Check out pictures of the other two motherboards below, the P67A-UD3 (no RAID, sadly) and H67MA-UD2H (with no PCI slots at all).

Top-view shots and spec sheets:

AMD Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Arriving Friday

Word’s out, and these cards are to be officially released this Friday. Port outputs on these cards remain the same from the pictures we seen earlier, there’s the standard dual DVI, one HDMI 1.4a, and two Mini DisplayPorts.

HD 6870 - Click for a larger view

HD 6850 - Click for a larger view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we know about power requirements so far, is that the HD 6870 would need two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors whereas the HD 6850 needs only one. There’s also a video of these cards being run on AMD’s Mecha Rampage Demo we included down below.

AMD HD 6870 and 6850 Launch Approaches

Okay, we’re looking at a week or so before AMD lets loose those much anticipated brand new flagship graphics cards. According to Fudzilla, if they are right, the HD 6870 and 6850 should be available for public consumption next Friday (Oct. 22). It is said that AMD had already begun shipping its parts to several vendors, and their sales will solely reflect on how they compete with the cards that are currently on the market.

Surprisingly this pair of cards are still both based on the Barts core (PRO [6870] and XT [6850]), with the faster Cayman core for the top-of-the-line (and even faster) parts later this year, perhaps the HD 6890, 6970, or 6950. AMD’s HD 6870 and 6850 should come with the standard 1GB of GDDR5, HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D, and DisplayPort outputs (2 for the 6870).

Samsung’s New Monitor with 1 ms Response Time

Samsung recently announced, as the title implies, a new monitor (P2770FH) with 1 ms response time. With a response rate this quick, it should bring  virtually no motion blur or any ghosting effects whatsoever when it comes to games, videos, or graphics design. The P2770FH also showcases a 70,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio with a enriched color gamut.

In terms of specs, here’s what we’re looking at:

• Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 1ms response time
• 70,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio
• Viewing angle: 170°/160°
• Input:
  • HDMI
  • Standard VGA
  • DVI-I
• Audio:
  • Audio Out
  • Optical Audio Out
• Dimensions: 26 x 19 x 9.6 inches
• Weight: 6.7 lbs.

This 27-inch bears Samsung’s signature Touch of Color red finish and includes a simple stand. Expect to find these sometime this month for about $399.99 (USD) retail. Check out the link here for the official press release.