MSI's Radeon HD 6970 Lightning is the company's new flagship single-GPU card for AMD. It offers plenty of overclocking features like triple voltage software control, voltage measurement points, a powerful cooling solution and increased clock speeds out of the box. What is even better is that those features are available at a small price premium of only $10 over the AMD reference design.
PowerColor's new HD 6870 PCS++ comes with massively increased clocks out of the box which makes it roughly as fast as GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950. With a reasonable price increase of only $10 over the reference design, the card does not break the bank either, it is actually a worthy opponent to NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti considering price/performance.
Today AMD is releasing their new Radeon HD 6790 which is targeted at the $150 segment that recently saw some love from NVIDIA in form of their GTX 550 Ti. AMD's new card uses the same GPU as the more powerful HD 6850 and HD 6870, so it will be interesting to see where it stands and whether it can defeat NVIDIA's latest offering.
MSI has engineered their own version of the GeForce GTX 580 called "Lightning", which is geared toward enthusiasts and overclockers. The card brings several exciting features like advanced voltage control and on-board DIP switches for tuning. A dual-BIOS feature with a special liquid nitrogen BIOS is also available.
In order to complete their lineup in the $250 segment, AMD has released a 1 GB version of the HD 6950. This makes the card $40 cheaper, yet does not impact performance in any way as our testing shows. We also saw great overclocking potential on our card which makes this card a tweaker's dream combined with the HD 6950 to HD 6970 modding potential.
MSI's new HD 6950 Twin Frozr III introduces the third version of MSI's exclusive cooling solution. Thanks to two fans and five heatpipes the card runs at excellent temperatures. Tweakers will also love this card as they can adjust three voltages using MSI Afterburner. Another plus is that this card is able to be modded to a HD 6970 by BIOS flash.
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 590 flagship which is based on two GTX 580 GPUs working on a single card. AMD released their dual-GPU HD 6990 design just two weeks ago, with power and heat being the decisive limit on performance it will be a tough fight between those cards.
Today ASUS released their new GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The card is based around NVIDIA's new GeForce GF116 GPU which promises more performance and less power draw compared to the GPU of the GTS 450. In our testing we see superior power consumption when compared to other GTX 550 Ti models.
MSI's new factory overclocked GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II uses an improved version of MSI's Cyclone cooler which increases air flow without increasing noise. As a result the card's temperatures never exceed 60°C - no matter what you throw at it.
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce GTX 550 Ti Series. ZOTAC's AMP! Edition comes with increased clocks out of the box. It is also the only card that features a full size HDMI output and a full size DisplayPort output in addition to two dual-link DVI ports which make the AMP! Edition the connectivity champ.
Palit's GeForce GTX 550 Ti comes with leading clocks of 1000 MHz out of the box which helps gain some performance to the GTX 460. In our testing the card emits super low noise levels which makes it a good choice for a silent media PC.
Today AMD unleashed their new monster: Radeon HD 6990. This dual-GPU card, which is based on two HD 6970 GPUs took the gaming performance crown without beating a sweat. So, this card has tons of performance, but what about power consumption, heat and noise? And last but not least, is it worth the $699 price tag?
AMD's new Radeon HD 6990 is the fastest graphics card in the world. We take TWO of those cards for a spin and check if this combination is worth $1,400 of your hard earned Dollars or if it only serves as a hot air blowing e-penis extension.
MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II comes with MSI's own cooling solution, which does a great job at keeping the card cool. Even with heavy voltage increases, the temperatures never rose above 80°C. For maximum performance MSI has overclocked the card out of the box - at no price increase compared to the reference design.
PowerColor's new HD 6970 PCS+ comes overclocked to the highest clock speeds of any Radeon HD 6970 card that is available at the market right now. It also uses a dual-fan heatsink which will help give you that edge during overclocking and overvolting. With a price increase of just $10, pricing is right, too.
Today Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to the public. We wanted to check if there are some gaming performance gains included the upgrade, so we ran NVIDIA's and ATI's flagship graphics cards through our VGA benchmarking suite.
HIS has designed a new cooler called IceQ X. It comes with a light blue transparent plastic shell that conveys an "ice block" feeling. In our testing we saw low idle and load temperatures, evidence that the cooler does a good job. The card also comes with increased clock speeds out of the box to gain some extra advantage over the reference design.
ASUS is expanding their triple-slot cooler graphics card lineup. Their GeForce GTX 570 Direct CU II offers amazingly low noise levels as well as low operating temperatures in both idle and 3D. ASUS has also increased to clock speeds out of the box, even though the increase is only minimal. But with a price increase of just $10 there is not much to complain about.
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP! Edition is the highest-clocked GTX 560 money can buy at the moment. Its blazing clocks of 950 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory give it a 12% real-life performance advantage over the reference design, which is quite impressive for the $279 it's coming at. With additional overclocking we could reach 998 MHz, and almost broke the 1 GHz barrier!
MSI's HD 6870 HAWK is the company's premium overclocking HD 6870 model. The card comes with support for software control of three voltages, voltage measurement points and OCP disable support. MSI has also included a nice overclock out of the box and adopted the dual BIOS feature that we have seen on the AMD HD 6900 Series.
PowerColor is bringing an exciting new HD 6950 to the market. Their HD 6950 PCS++ includes a feature to unlock additional shaders, resulting in the same shader count as the HD 6970 - a nice performance increase, for free. Since the feature is enabled by the flick of a button even novices will be able to use it.
ASUS' new GeForce GTX 580 DC2 uses a massive triple slot Direct CU II heatsink that increases cooling performance significantly. As a result the card is extremely quiet in both idle and load - quieter than many midrange cards. ASUS has also increased the operating clocks of their design, all this for a small price increase of $5.
NVIDIA's new GeForce GT 440 sets out to deliver acceptable performance in the low-end segment around $100. ASUS GT 440 comes with a custom designed, black PCB and a stylish heatsink. The card also comes with higher clocks out of the box to gain an extra performance advantage.
Palit's GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic Edition comes with increased clock speeds of 900 MHz core and 1050 MHz memory out of the box, which translates into a 7% real-life performance improvement. Its $20 price premium also gives you improved display connectivity: full-size HDMI and analog VGA.
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 uses reference clock speeds, but comes with a custom cooling solution by ZOTAC. The card is also one of the few that uses full-size HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and comes with a bundle of Assassin's Creed Hermand.
