MSI did a lot more than showing off its AMD Fusion "Brazos" Wind U270 notebook at today's press-meet in Taiwan. The company seems to have spilled its entire load for CES, just days ahead of it. Today's exposé included two new ultra-high end graphics cards under the company's Lightning series. The R6970 Lightning is based on AMD Radeon HD 6970, and the N580GTX Lightning, of course, on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580.

Both cards look nearly identical because their most peculiar part, the cooling assembly, is mostly the same. The Twin Frozr III from MSI combines slick looks with certain enhancements with the fan blade design (to improve noise to airflow ratio). Under the shroud is what looks to be a dense aluminum fin array to which heat is conveyed using several heat-pipes, including 8 mm thick ones. While the cooler more or less respects the 2-slot width, it increases the height of the cards by a good inch.

TechPowerUp today introduced version 0.5.0 of GPU-Z, our popular graphics subsystem diagnostic utility that provides you with detailed tech-specs of your installed graphics processors, and lets you monitor clock speeds, voltages, temperatures and fan speeds. Version 0.50 adds full-support for Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon HD 6970. It fixes several stability and reliability issues, including fillrate roundoff errors, improved voltage monitoring support for GeForce GTX 570, some crashes and freezes.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.0

A complete list of changes follows.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today announced the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 Sabrina Edition, using the "Sabrina" who is the chief actress in the cognominal movie in the shaping of life and love with full of dreams as the prototype, providing the best Christmas gift for users.

Christmas is coming, a lot of people will buy their holiday gifts for relatives and friends with their blessing. For many people, will stay at home and watch a cozy movie with his family in Christmas eve to enjoy a memorable holiday. Of course, a high-definition graphics card is naturally essential for watching movies at home. Available on this Christmas season, the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 Sabrina Edition are essential for the ultimate Blu-ray movie experience on a Desktop PC or notebook computer.

NVIDIA is readying a new GPU to counter the Radeon HD 6950. Released earlier this month, reviews suggest that the HD 6950 managed to slip into a sweet-spot between GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 570/Radeon HD 5970, giving buyers an option for around $300. NVIDIA's counter to this is named GeForce GTX 560, it is based on the new 40 nm silicon. While specifications-wise, this GPU is identical to the GF104, it is redesigned to allow high-clock speeds with lower power draw, the same secret-sauce that went into making GF110 is applied here.

The GeForce GTX 560 features 384 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide memory interface that connects to 1 GB of memory. The new GPU has bolstered high GPU clock speeds, with 820 MHz core, 1640 MHz CUDA cores, and 4000 MHz (GDDR5 effective) memory, churning out 128 GB/s memory bandwidth. NVIDIA however, isn't in a hurry with its release, it has the GTX 560 slated for some time in January, 2011.

Gigabyte made the WindForce 3X GPU cooler a standard issue for its base-model GeForce GTX 480 graphics accelerator. Featured on factory-overclocked GTX 480 graphics cards by the company, WindForce 3X is a double-slot GPU cooler that makes use of three fans to cool a large aluminum fin array that spans along the entire area of the card. The GV-N480UD-15I Revision 2.0 features this change. The initial version made of use NVIDIA's reference cooling assembly over Gigabyte's own Ultra Durable VGA blue PCB.

Point of View the leading European manufacturer of an exclusive range NVIDIA based 3D processor boards, advanced netbooks as well as fancy 7" and 10" Tegra tablet computers and additional enthusiast PC products, announces today that it is first to market with a water cooled GeForce GTX 570 3D processor board, the POV/TGT GeForce GTX 570 "Beast"M featuring a solid 9mm slim-line AquaCopper water cooling block. The POV/TGT GeForce GTX 570 "Beast" already started shipping at a recommended retail price of €499 (TGT-570-A1-BST-W).

In addition, Point of View and TGT are offering a silently air-cooled solution running at identical frequencies priced at € 449. Hand-selected by TGT, the POV/TGT GeForce GTX 570 "Beast" is running at an unprecedented 841 MHz core clock "out of the box", 1682 MHz shader clock and 3960 MHz DDR-5 memory clock honoring TGT's efforts to optimize and balance both, enhanced core clock settings and rock solid stability.

Zotac is flexing its engineering muscle again. Known for several novelty high-end non-reference design graphics cards, Zotac's latest work is based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580, and revolves around backing the GPU and memory with a strong VRM. So complex is its VRM circuit, that it extends the PCB's height by a good one inch. The VRM consists of over 16 phases, making use of high-grade chokes, capacitors, POSCAPs, and proadlizers. Power is drawn in from 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors.

To cool the beast, there's a monolithic aluminum heatsink that runs through all corners of the PCB, cooling MOSFETs and memory chips. The GPU is cooled by a 2+ slot air cooler that makes use of two 120 mm fans blowing air onto a dense aluminum fin array. This cooler can be detached, and a universal water block for the GPU can be used without having to worry about cooling other components. Although the clock speeds aren't known, one can expect them to either be high, or moderately high leaving a large overclocking headroom. Zotac will brand this card "Zotac GTX 580 Extreme Edition".

After the successful launch of the world's most powerful single graphics card- GeForce GTX 580, SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today announced the world's first independent produced GeForce GTX 580 V-Go Graphics Card, becoming the world's first manufacturer who can independently produce high-end graphics cards using Fermi architecture. "We are pleased with the new high level of SPARKLE R&D and production capabilities." said Kevin Wang, General Manager of SPARKLE. " Our mission is to provide the best graphics cards products and services to DIY players and professionals with expertise spirit on garaphics cards manufacturing for 16 years."

Since the release date, there's no independent produced GeForce GTX 580 graphics card from AIC, because it is very difficult to pass the extreme rigorous tests and verification conducted by NVIDIA. All the GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards which users now can buy in market are the reference boards, by definition all brands GTX580 series graphics cards are identical. As NVIDIA's add-in-cards partner and global strategic partner, with the strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities, SPARKLE took the lead in passing the NVIDIA original product performance testing, thermal performance and noise testing, product reliability/compatibility testing, burn-in and a series of strict validation, to become the world's first AIC manufacturer which can self-produce the GeForce GTX580 reference boards.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today introduces the tweaked and tuned ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition graphics card. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition is engineered for maximum gaming performance.

An overclocked graphics processor and memory amplifies the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition to uncharted performance heights for a stunning visual adventure with smooth-as-butter frame rates. Support for Microsoft DirectX 11 with hardware tessellation technology enables the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition to bring landscapes and in-game objects to life with phenomenal realism.

PNY Technologies, a global leader in flash memory cards, USB flash drives, solid state drives, high speed HDMI cables, computer memory upgrade modules, consumer graphics cards, and professional workstation graphics cards, today announced the XLR8 GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 graphics card.

PNY's XLR8 GeForce GTX 570 Enthusiast Edition offers incredible performance and stunning gaming effects. With cutting-edge Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and full support for all the premium GTX gaming technologies, such as NVIDIA Surround, 3D Vision, PhysX, and SLI, the GTX 570 screams performance. PNY's latest graphics card also features the new innovative thermal design for a quiet gaming experience. The GTX 570 delivers a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience, for the ultimate in PC gaming.

Galaxy Microsystems, a leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of NVIDIA based graphics solutions, announced today the launch of the Galaxy GeForce GTX 570 graphics card with the world's fastest DirectX 11 GPU.

"Maximum settings! With today's DirectX 11 games, that's what it's all about. But you shouldn't have to sacrifice performance OR pay a small fortune." said Shane Vance, US Sales, Galaxy. "With the new Galaxy GTX 570, you get the performance, the life-like realism, all at a price that you can afford, from the company that's been custom developing graphics cards for more than 10 years."

Gigabyte graced NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 570 launch with a reference design graphics card model. Carrying the model number GV-N580D5-15I-B, Gigabyte's card features factory-overclocked speeds of 772 MHz (core), 1544 MHz (CUDA cores), and 1002/4008 MHz (memory/GDDR5 effective), against reference clock speeds of 732/1464/3800 MHz. Based on the 40 nm GF110 GPU, the GeForce GTX 570 features 480 CUDA cores, and connects to 1280 MB of memory over a 320-bit GDDR5 memory interface Gigabyte's GV-N580D5-15I-B is priced at US $359.99.

EVGA started off its GeForce GTX 570 lineup with two models, the 012-P3-1570-AR, which is a base model that sticks to NVIDIA reference clock speeds, and 012-P3-1572-AR, which features level 1 "SuperClocked" (factory-overclocked) speeds. Both models are based on NVIDIA's reference board and cooler designs. The base model sticks to NVIDIA reference clock speeds of 732/1464/3800 MHz (core/CUDA core/GDDR5 memory), and is priced at US $349.99, while the SuperClocked card uses clock speeds of 797/1594/3900 MHz, and is priced at $369.99.

Palit Microsystems Ltd, the leading graphics card manufacturer, releases the most anticipated products of the year: Palit GTX 570 and GTX 570 Sonic Platinum. Featuring massive DX11 performance, dual fan thermal solution with the new mercury design and 4 video outputs, Palit GeForce GTX 570 Series will bring you a whole new level of gaming experience.

With 480 CUDA processor cores and the architecture enhancement on GF110 chipset, Palit GTX 570 Series deliver an outstanding DX11 performance that's 25% higher than previous generation. However, the enormous factory overclock of 800MHz and 1280MB of 2000MHz makes Palit GTX570 Sonic Platinum the king amongst GTX 570 Series. The performance of Palit GTX570 Sonic Platinum can boost 6% higher than non-OC GTX 570 in DX11. Even more, Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum runs up to 8 % faster in DX10 than non-OC version. Built from GeForce GTX GPU, Palit GTX570 Sonic Platinum also incorporates all the latest gaming technologies like CUDA, PhysX, NVIDIA Surround, 3D Vision and SLI. Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum is the most suitable gaming rig for enthusiast gamers.

Point of View - known for its range of NVIDIA based 3D Graphics cards, Netbooks and other PC products - announces today the new GeForce GTX 570 graphics card accompanied with two TGT/POV Overclocked variants: the POV GeForce GTX570 Charged and Ultra Charged. The GeForce GTX570 is the 1st wingman of the worlds' fastest graphics card and contains all the next generation features which were recently launched with the flagship GTX 580 card. This GeForce 500 series graphics card really pushes the envelope by a GPU, PCB and cooling system optimization.

A 'vapor chamber' based cooler ensures fast and efficient heat dissipation whilst the PCB has been restructured for energy leaks. The result: more performance, less heat and lower noise level. Point of View's newest enthusiast graphics card has a native support for DirextX 11 technology including hardware tessellation acceleration. The hardware tessellation acceleration techniques in the GeForce GTX570 will definitely boost in game detail to an absolute maximum.

Club 3D B.V. is pleased to announce the introduction of the next generation gaming video card. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 supports DirectX 11, CUDA , and Nvidia PhysX technologies to provide the best experience on your favorite games.

With NVIDIA 3D Vision technology you can now use two Gefore GTX 570 cards in NVIDIA SLI configuration to project across three displays with NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology. The new card features an impressive 732 Mhz clock speed with 1280 MB GDDR5 memory and a 320 bit memory interface. A new and innovative thermal design has been implemented to provide a quieter and cooler operation while performance has been increased.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today unveils the new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 570 graphics card for demanding gamers. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 570 graphics card delivers a stunning graphical experience without sacrificing performance or features for flawless high-resolution gaming.

Powered by a new graphics processor with 480 unified shaders, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 570 has abundant power to render beautiful hardware tessellated visuals using Microsoft DirectX 11 technology for unmatched clarity and realism. A large 1280MB frame buffer feeds the graphics processor with high-quality textures at lightning-fast speeds via an ultra-wide 320-bit memory bus for crystal clear visual details that rival reality with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 570.

NVIDIA today announced that NVIDIA SLI technology has been licensed by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers -- including Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and EVGA -- for use on their Intel P67 Express Chipset-based motherboards designed for the upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge processors.

As a result, customers who purchase a SLI-certified P67-based motherboard and a Sandy Bridge processor can equip their PCs with a single or a dual combination of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, including the recently released GeForce GTX 580 GPU and GTX 570, the world's fastest DX11 GPUs. 3-way SLI is also available on supported platforms.

Hot on the heels of last month's successful launch of the GeForce GTX 580 graphics processing unit (GPU), NVIDIA today announced the immediate availability of the GeForce GTX 570 -- the newest addition to its GTX 500 Series of DirectX 11 (DX11) GPUs designed for PC gaming enthusiast platforms. The GeForce GTX 570 brings a new level of DX11 price/performance to the enthusiast PC gaming market while maintaining quiet acoustics and is available starting today from the world's leading add-in card partners, including ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, Zotac and others.

EVGA is ready with its stock of GeForce GTX 570 graphics accelerators. Canadian online store NCIX.com listed one of its GTX 570 models at a pre-order price of $414 CAD (US $411). What these pictures also reveal is that NVIDIA's reference board design of the GTX 570 is exactly the same as that of the GTX 580, with just two memory chips removed (128 MB x 10, instead of 128 MB x 12); and the GTX 570 GPU configuration. GeForce GTX 570 has 480 CUDA cores, it connects to 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory over a 320-bit wide memory interface.

NVIDIA introduced the GeForce GT 540M notebook GPU, the first GPU in our GeForce 500M family of notebook GPUs. OEMs are launching these Optimized notebooks with GeForce GT 540M GPUs and dual-core "Arrandale" CPUs in order to hit mainstream price points sooner, ahead of Huron River dual-core platforms that will not be released until later in 2011. It is available immediately in China from Acer, and will be available worldwide next month.

With GeForce GT 540M, we are taking an already proven architecture and using the maturity of the manufacturing process to create GPUs with higher clock settings while staying in the same power envelope. As a result, the GeForce GT 540M delivers a significant increase in fill-rate and memory bandwidth, which ultimately translates to better overall performance.

British retailer YoYo Tech, which claims to be "famously first for Fermi", started giving out the pricing of NVIDIA's upcoming enthusiast graphics card, the GeForce GTX 570. The card, according to this retailer, is priced at £299 (GBP), including 17.5% VAT, that's £246.6 excluding it. Direct conversion to USD would yield $384. Based on this, we can garner a guess that the US pricing could be somewhere between US $350 and $400. The GeForce GTX 570 is NVIDIA's upcoming graphics card based on the 40 nm GF110 GPU, it features 480 CUDA cores, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory over a 320-bit wide memory interface. More details about the GPU can be read here.

Point of View the leading European manufacturer of an exclusive range NVIDIA based 3D processor boards, advanced netbooks as well as fancy 7" and 10" Tegra tablet computers and additional enthusiast PC products, announces today that it is first to market with a water cooled GeForce GTX 580 3D processor board, the POV/TGT GeForce GTX 580 "Beast" featuring a solid 9mm slim-line Copper Water Cooling block. The POV/TGT GeForce GTX 580 "Beast" already started shipping at a recommended retail price of € 729.

Hand-selected by TGT, the POV/TGT GeForce GTX 580 "Beast" is running at an unprecedented 855 MHz core clock "out of the box", 1710 MHz shader clock and 4104 MHz DDR-5 memory clock honoring TGT's efforts to optimize and balance both, enhanced core clock settings and rock solid stability.

Inno3D is ready with a new high-end graphics card based on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 graphics processor, which comes with a factory-fitted water cooling system. Dubbed the iChill Black Series GTX 580, the card makes use of a pre-fitted water-cooling loop consisting of a full-coverage water block, and tubing leading up to a pump/reservoir/radiator unit that uses one 120 mm fan. The loop can be detached at the card's end. The iChill card is bound to feature some factory-overclocked speeds, coupled with quite some headroom courtesy water-cooling. Its exact pricing and availability are not known. Based on the 40 nm GF110 GPU, the GeForce GTX 580 is NVIDIA's fastest GPU, it features of 512 CUDA cores, and 1536 MB of memory over a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.

NVIDIA BIOS Editor (or NiBiTor), got its timely update, the application is now at version 5.9. NiBiTor allows enthusiasts to extract and manipulate with the VGA BIOS from a supported graphics card. With each new release, the a number of new GPUs are added to the supported products list, bugs fixed, and stability improved. The GPUs added to the list with this release include:

• GeForce GTS 450
• GeForce GTS 360M
• GeForce GT 310M
• GeForce GTX 285M
• GeForce GT 240M

With this release, NiBiTor also adds the ability to manipulate with minimum/maximum fan speeds.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) v5.9