Inno3D Launches iChill GeForce GTS 250 Card

Inno3D has announced a new edition to its iChill line of videocards which feature advanced cooling options from companies such as Arctic Cooling, Zalman and Zerotherm. By integrating aftermarket coolers, the iChill line of cards allows enthusiasts and gamers to enjoy high-end performance while keeping their cards cool and quiet. The latest addition to the iChill lineup is the GeForce GTS 250 featuring the Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo Pro cooler. The cooler uses a four-heatpipe design mated to 35 fins and twin 92mm fans to provide superior cooling. The iChill GTS 250 manages to post temperatures 23C lower than the reference design boards and drops noise levels from 3.4 Sone to a mere 0.4 Sone. Inno3D hasn't announced pricing or availability information yet.

MSI MOA Qualifiers Now Open

The MOA 2009 qualifiers are now open with Phase I selection scheduled to last from June 29 through July 19. The first round is open to all overclockers in the US, Canada and Mexico. The top 10 teams will move on to Phase II which runs July 25 through August 2nd. The top two scores earn teams the right to go to the Grand Final in Beijing as guests of MSI. The clock is ticking so head on over to the MOA web site and get your scores in. Who knows, maybe we'll be cheering for one of OCC's own in Beijing this year!

PowerColor to Begin Bundling BumpTop 3D Desktop Application

PowerColor announced today it has joined up with Bump Technologies out of Ontario, Canada to begin offering the BumpTop 3D desktop application as part of the bundle that comes with the PCS HD4850 graphics card. The PCS version of PowerColor's HD4850 line of cards offers an advanced cooling solution from Arctic Cooling that not only lowers operating temperatures but also ensures a much quieter environment.

BumpTop is a creative and customizable three-dimensional desktop that empowers users to organize their virtual desktop in a more creative and intuitive fashion. By combining the look and feel of a real desktop with the power of a PC, users can use the application's advanced search and sort capabilities to become better organized and more productive. With links to social apps like Twitter and Facebook, BumpTop allows you to share photos directly from your desktop, or you can link to Flickr and Picasa and create a digital photo frame to display the latest photo streams using an RSS reader.

PowerColor will begin distributing BumpTop with the PCS HD4850 beginning in July with plans to expand the software to its entire line of cards soon afterwards.

PowerColor Unveils Go! Green Series Video Cards

California based ATI add-in-board partner PowerColor has announced the launch of its Go! Green graphics card series. The Go! Green series consists of two models: the HD 4650 SC3 and the HD 4350 SCS, with further additions in the pipeline. Both of the new cards are equipped with PowerColor's passive Silent Cooling Solution (SCS) for quiet computing. Both cards have a 512MB DDR2 memory buffer clocked at 800MHz backed by a GPU speed of 600MHz. The 4650 has an 128 bit memory interface and 320 stream processors and the 4350 comes with a 64 bit interface and 80 stream processors. PowerColor says that the cards use less power than their green team equivalents, the 9500GT (38% less) and the 8400GS (24% less). The Go! Green series will be available this July and prices are yet to be confirmed; although I'd expect them to retail close to a standard 4650 and 4350 respectively.

NVIDIA Releases New GeForce Drivers

The green company a few days ago released its new graphics drivers for its GeForce series cards, which mainly boosts performance in multiple games such as Far Cry 2 and Mirror’s Edge, along with other titles. Also included with the new drivers, known as 186.18, is support for the Ion motherboard GPU, which is gaining popularity at a rather quick rate in home and mobile use among consumers. Users of NVIDIA’s software should also note that some bugs have been fixed, though most of the solved problems relate to Windows XP 32-bit. However, the drivers are also supposed to bring support to Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. As usual as well, the new PhysX software that is included with the drivers has been updated, lifting it now to version 9.09.0428. The new drivers can be downloaded from the NVIDIA website, along with other download locations.

Inno3d Adds to GTX 295 Lineup with Platinum Edition Card

Inno3D today announced a new member in it's stable of GeForce cards with the addition of the GTX 295 Platinum Edition. Inno3D already offered a standard version as well as an overclocked model of the GTX 295. The Platinum edition card adheres to the standard reference design as far as clock speeds and memory goes, but updates the cooling solution with the Platinum cooler (see why they call it the Platinum edition?). The design offers superior cooling performance by using a large nine-blade fan to expel hot air out both ends of the card. One end exhausts to the outside through the dual slot design normally seen in high performance cards and the other end pushes the air out into the chassis. Inno3D didn't release any additional details about the design, but it looks like the fan should be able to run at lower RPMs and still keep the heat in check.

HD 4800 Series Prices to Fall in Q3

Next month, look for ATI to slash prices of their HD 4800 series cards, by as much as US $50. The cuts, possibly due to low manufacturing costs, come right before ATI plans on introducing DirectX 11 compatible cards for use on Windows 7. The prices look to be as follows after the cuts (all prices are USD): $199 for the 4890 (down from $249), $149 for the 4870 (down from $199, not sure if this is for the 1G or 512 version), and the 4850 will fall below $100, to make up for the shortage in supply of the 4770.

NVIDIA Wants More DirectX

While claiming that it would wait until DirectX 11 to upgrade its cards from DirectX 10, NVIDIA is now announcing that it will be producing new 40nm desktop graphics cards that will support DirectX 10.1. ATI has already had cards on the market that support this version of the Microsoft standard for some time, and NVIDIA has been stating that the minor revisions did not concern them, though they are now supporting it. Oddly enough, DirectX 11 is set to be used in Windows 7, and while still in the Release Candidate form, it is right around the corner in terms of its release date. The green team still obviously plans to support the new revision of the standard that will be used in the new operating system, though all together, it seems odd for NVIDIA to wait so late in the game to start supporting DirectX 10.1.

ASUS Shows Mars GTX 295 SLI Running Far Cry 2 @ 3820 x 2160

It was last week that we first heard that ASUS would be launching the limited edition MARS GTX 295 graphics card, with a huge 4GB of RAM and 2 x GTX 285 GPUs. At Computex this week, it has been showing a demo with two of the cards hooked up in SLI (that's 8GB of RAM!) running Far Cry 2 at a whopping 3820 x 2160 resolution. It has also set a new 3DMark Vantage record with the cards, coming in with a score of X25949. While the horsepower of a couple of these cards in SLI may have the die hard gamers reading this drooling, it is a limited edition card and will likely be pretty hard (and one would imagine, certainly expensive) to get hold of. ASUS will be producing only 1000 of the cards; each one coming with a unique serial number. You can watch a video of the demo in action over at TweakTown.

VTX3D - A New Brand For AMD/ATI

TUL Corporation, owner of PowerColor  have debuted a new brand exclusively for ATI – VTX3D. The new brand will be releasing most of the Radeon HD 4000 series cards, but they will skip out the 4890X2 and are said to use the stock reference design.  They will introduce the following cards: Radeon HD 4890, 4870, 4850, 4770, 4650 and 4350. The Radeon HD 4550 also seems to be missing, but it might have been forgotten. If the company has good customer support, then it might be another successful brand for AMD! Willie Huang, Sales Director of VTX3D has this to say: “We believe graphics industry still has high potential to thrive in the coming future; and also, many consumers are still looking for their ideal brand in the market - that's why VTX3D is here. With advantage of AMD's one-step-ahead technology and VTX3D's worldwide talented team, we're ready to stamp strong brand awareness in this competitive industry!”. We wish you the best of luck VTX3D!

AMD Demonstrates DirectX 11

At a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan today, AMD showcased the world’s first Microsoft DirectX 11 graphics processor. AMD showed the faster application performance and some new game features, with the technology set to be released late 2009. The list of features includes two mature, AMD-developed technologies in DirectX 11:

• Tessellation, which will allow higher quality and better performing games by making use of the newer AMD technology.
• The compute shader, which will help make Windows 7 run faster using AMD technology. One example is by allowing users to simply drag-and-drop video to portable media players rather than having to run a conversion program.

Others features include Fetch4, custom filter anti-aliasing and high-definition ambient occlusion shading. The development of DirectX11 relied heavily on AMD graphics technology, which means that it will be almost tailored for use on their new graphics cards. Should be interesting to actually see what DirectX 11 brings to the gaming world.

Got a Faulty GPU? Stick it in the Oven!

Do you have any video cards lying around the house that just refuse to work? Ones you've completely given up on? Why don't you try popping them in the oven? That is what one enthusiast did, and to everyone's surprise, it worked. Apparently the oven melts the solder, fixing any miniature cracks that might be leading to poor connection. If anyone does try it, be sure to tell us! But please do be careful, as OCC can not be held liable for any burned down cities, ovens permanently gaining a video card attachment, or any other damages.

AMD To Be First To Release DirectX 11 Cards?

According to bit-tech's Taiwanese sources, AMD will be the first to market with DirectX 11 cards, with products currently on track for release in October this year. Apparently AMD is "essentially ready" to push out the new family of GPUs, but problems with TSMC's 40nm process (which the company's current RV740 GPU is built on) need to be worked out before a release can go ahead. It is said that the new GPUs will follow a similar strategy to the HD 3000 and HD 4000 series products and we can threrfore expect to see it put two GPUs on a sinlge PCB to create a flagship product. Sources have also said that while NVIDIA's GT300 has taped out, it has been cagey about release dates, with the possibility that it has also been suffering with problems with TSMC's 40nm process. The GT300 is expected to be a large GPU, with a focus on performance and efficiency when switching between graphics and general computing tasks.

4GB Monster from ASUS

ASUS, one of the most well know computer part manufacturers have announced to techPowerUp! that they will be releasing a new 4GB NVIDIA Graphics card – and no, this isn’t a GTX 295 with extra memory, instead it is two GTX 285’s, with 2GB of GDDR3 RAM each on a 512-Bit memory bus. It would be even more of a beast if it was 4GB shared memory! This new card is called the ASUS MARS 295 Limited Edition, notice the 295 and Limited Edition? The dual GPU monster works with the GTX 295 drivers, and is recognized as one and the limited edition shows that ASUS will only be making a certain amount of these - no surprise there! The clocks though are the same as any stock GTX 285 (Core: 648MHz, Shader: 1476MHz, Memory: 2400MHz). This new card requires an 8-Pin power connector, which comes as no surprise. You can find plenty more details here.

Overclocked GTX 260 Introduced By GIGABYTE

Other manufacturers have released many versions of the GTX 260, as it is one of the most popular graphics options available right now on the market since the GeForce 9800 model. GIGABYTE, maker of mostly motherboards and other computer hardware, is currently announcing its own overclocked NVIDIA GTX 260 graphics card. Though the card will actually use the reference cooler, the company is equipping the NVIDIA GPU with a blue PCB that will come with 2oz. of copper, as well as Japanese solid capacitors. This allows the card to be classified under the Ultra Durable VGA specification from the company. Even though the product is being announced by GIGABYTE at the moment, a release date is not yet known, and neither is a price point.

ECS Hardware Giveaway

There's nothing better than a chance to win free hardware, especially if there's little or no effort involved in qualifying. ECS is offering a chance to win one of its NGTS250-1GMU-F GeForce GTS250 videocards along with an A790GXM-AD3 Black Series motherboard. Entering couldn't be any easier. Just log on to your Twitter account and follow ECS By going to http://twitter.com/ecsusa and click on “Follow”. You need to send the following tweet without the quotes “RT @ecsusa I want to win that motherboard or VGA #ecsusa http://tinyurl.com/gimmethatboard”. That's it - you're automatically qualified for the giveaway which will take place on June 12, 2009 at 5:00PM Pacific Time. You can check out the rest of the contest details here. Good Luck!

New ATI Radeon HD 4730 Revealed!

ATI have sure been releasing a LOT of new GPU’s recently, and they don’t seem to be stopping – first the 4890, then the 4770 and now the 4730! Let’s not forget that we are expecting a 4750 as well! At the moment it seems that only PowerColor is releasing this GPU, but I’m sure other manufacturers will join in as well. This new GPU won’t be using the 40nm fabrication process either; instead it will use the 55nm RV770CE which is physically the same as the RV770 and has the same specifications as the RV770LE (4830) but with a bit of a twist, it comes with 512MB of GDDR5 on a 128-Bit memory interface. Let’s see what ATI throw at us next! Thanks to VR-Zone for the picture.

Pictures of Sapphire Radeon HD Vapor-X 4890 Revealed

As you all know, or should know, the king of the hill 4890 card – the Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic Edition should be released soon and it comes with Vapor-X cooling. Sapphire have also branched off and used the Vapor-X to brand a new range of cards using a different Vapor-X cooling system than the Atomic Edition. The new card looks virtually identical to its 4870 brother, but then again they’re not that different are they?  This card is coming at stock clocks, but a factory over clocked version should be coming soon. I’ll let you look at the pictures of the card now – and let me tell you, Sapphire never fail to impress.

NVIDIA 3D Vision Drivers Released for Windows 7

The NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision enables you to play games and watch movies in stereoscopic 3D. The technology mates a pair of glasses with an Nvidia GeForce GPU and a 3D Vision ready monitor to bring 3D viewing to hundreds of games without having to install any patches. With the release of Windows 7 coming up soon, NVIDIA has announced the release of the latest 3D Vision drivers for both 32- and 64-bit versions. The 3D Vision CD v1.08 driver kit includes the GeForce driver v185.85 and the 3D Vision driver v185.85 and can be found on the NVIDIA site. NVIDIA also released Vista drivers which can be found here. In addition to the latest drivers, NVIDIA also said it has added over 20 new titles to the list of supported games. You can check the complete list of games here.

PowerColor Breaks the 1GHz Mark with the PCS++ 4890

PowerColor has announced an addition to its 4890 line-up: the PCS++ HD4890. The PCS++ 4890 has all the features of its predecessor, the PCS+ HD4890 such as a custom ZEROtherm cooler, but with an improved factory overclock. This new single GPU behemoth based on the RV790 comes with a 1010MHz GPU clock and 1GB of GDDR5 goodness running at 1100MHz. PowerColor say that the new card also has improved PWM achieved by using polymer capacitors. There will be a BattleForge edition available of the PCS++ 4890, bundled with a full version of the game. I think the PSC++ 4890 sure looks like a monster and it'll be interesting to see how it fares with other video cards. PowerColor have not yet announced details on pricing or availability.

Sapphire Breaks 1 GHz Barrier With Atomic Edition HD 4890

The recently announced Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic Edition has broken the 1 GHz barrier in clock speed. A level that was thought to be achievable only with the help of liquid cooling at minimum, has been broken with an “inexpensive” air cooler. The addition of this air cooler will likely drive up the price greatly, however. AMD claims that the factory overclocked GPU will offer superior performance in several DirectX supported games including Ubisoft's HAWX. Breaking the 1 GHz barrier with merely an air cooler leads you to wonder what can be achieved with superior cooling.

Premiere GTX 295 with Single-PCB Design Unveiled

Rumors of a single-PCB GTX 295 have been floating around for a while, and now pictures have been released of the real thing. The new 295 variant measures 267mm in length, equipped with a dual slot cooler and one fan. Both GT200 GPUs are mounted on the front side of the PCB accompanied by 3 controllers and 14 DDR3 memory chips which total to a 1792MB buffer. The single-PCB GTX 295 contains the same speeds and features as the standard GTX 295. A 6 pin + 8 pin power connector provides the 295 with plenty of power and it still uses a dual-DVI output in favour of HDMI. There are no details available on the pricing or availability of the card, but I'd expect for it to retail for around the same as the standard 295; maybe a bit less as a single-PCB design saves AIBs money on manufacturing costs.

RV870 Delayed to Q4?

With the recent 'leaked release' of the 5870 and 5870X2 specifications it seems hard to refrain from excitement over the next generation of ATI video cards based on the RV870 GPU. Although the suffering may be prolonged for fans, as according to sources the RV870 may be pushed back from an original Q3 to a Q4 launch. The upside of this is that it could come with native DirectX 11 support. Rumors also have it that the RV870 may be cancelled to make way for a completely new DirectX11 card like Nvidia is doing with its GT300. It looks like there's some reshuffling going on in the red camp and hopefully we can look forward to some major announcements from ATI later this year.

ATI RV870 Revealed?

The rumour mills have certainly been spinning the past few weeks, with the alleged specifications of NVIDIA's GT300 architecture, and a release date of 2010. Now, websites have the ‘leaked’ specifications of ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 and 5870X2. Now I’d recommend you take these specifications with a pinch of salt, as these are probably guess numbers. So, here we go – the RV870 chip should come with 1200 Cores, which is in a 12 SIMD group, with 100 cores each. While the RV770 was a 10 SIMD group, with 80 cores total. It also comes with a stock clock of 900MHz, which is 150MHz more than the RV770, 1100MHz Memory clock, which is a lovely 200MHz higher. Processing power is a healthy 2160Gflops, which is a 960Gflop increase from RV770! The bandwidth should also be around 140.8GB/s, another dramatic increase. I’m sure you’ll be able to calculate that the 5870X2 is just those specifications twice. Oh and let’s not forget that the apparent release is July 2009. If all these rumours are true, then ATI might just skip over NVIDIA by a complete generation.  This will truly be an interesting year.

NVIDIA Produces More Beta Drivers

Drivers tend to confirm either a hit or a miss in the world of graphics. ATI seems to have bad performing drivers from one time or another, and NVIDIA it seems keeps their drivers mostly stable in performance and stability, though everyone has different stories. The green graphics card manufacturer has released a new set of beta drivers, known as the GeForce 185.81 beta drivers, to the public. In this version comes support for the latest graphics cards, as well as the GeForce GTX 275. The new CUDA 2.2 has been included, along with better support for the NVIDIA Video Encoding library for graphics processing units that have less than 32 cores. Featured in this beta too is the support for Ambient Occlusion, which is a fairly new setting inside of the NVIDIA control panel. As always, the new drivers provide performance improvements over the earlier ones, such as release 182, which consumers should find beneficial during those late night gaming sessions and LAN meets.

N285GTX HydroGen OC

MSI, manufacturer of computer parts, has released another NVIDIA graphics card. Before were the lightning GTX 260’s and the N285GTX Superpipe 2G OC, MSI have now revealed a water cooled beast called the N285GTX HydroGen OC. What’s nice about this is that it comes with a single-slot copper water block, with G ¼ fittings instead of the usual dual-slot design. The specifications are overclocked, with 1024MB of RAM, 512-Bit memory interface and 240 processing cores, 702 MHz GPU shader and the memory at 1476 (2600) MHz. This beast will be available soon for a whopping £400.

XFX First to Offer Premium Cooler For 4770

Over the last few days various AIBs have been releasing their versions of the ATI Radeon HD 4770. At these early stages all the cards are the same, with only the sticker changing in appearance depending on the manufacturer. Some people aren't aware that AMD has released two versions of the stock cooler, and so far AIBs have opted to go with the cheaper one to increase profit margins. XFX is going to offer the first 4770 with the premium, more expensive cooler which offers slightly better thermal performance, bundled with their signature black PCB. XFX's premium 4770 will still retain the standard 4770 clock speeds.This is good news as XFX will hopefully get the ball rolling for other AIB's 4770 custom cooling solutions. XFX have not disclosed any details on pricing or availability of the premium 4770, although I'd expect it to cost a bit more than the standard 4770.

Rumors Now Suggest Single PCB GTX 295

Time after time, rumors constantly seem to pop up regarding different manufacturers, mainly NVIDIA and ATI. Gamers usually rejoice when they read these speculations, even if some turn out to be not true in the end. One of the latest rumors to hit the mill is that the green company will be releasing a new single PCB designed GTX 295. If they do in fact release this product into the market, it will use the same clock speeds, so performance will not see any improvement over the current design. It will be based on the P658 blueprint, so it will measure in at a total of 11-inches long. Price wise the card is supposed to stay the same, and because of this, many people are questioning if the single PCB design will replace its older one.

XFX Releases ATI Radeon HD 4770 Graphics Card

XFX has followed suit along with other AIBs and released its HD-477A-YDLC 4770 video card. The XFX ATI 4770 is based on the latest 40nm GPU architecture of the RV740. XFX's version comes with all the standard features including 826 million transistors, a 512MB GDDR5 buffer, DirectX 10.1 compatibility, Shader Model 4.1 support, 640 stream processing units and native 7.1 channel audio via HDMI. XFX has also included its "double lifetime warranty" with the new card. The XFX HD-477A-YDLC is currently retailing for US$110 on Newegg, in line with other 4770's. As always with recently released cards the XFX 4770 is equipped with the standard cooler, but I'd expect to see custom cooling solutions available in the coming weeks.

Gigabyte launches HD 4770 Graphics Card

Gigabyte announced the launch of its GV-R477D5-512H-B graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 4770 GPU. The new card features 826 million transistors, 640 stream processors and is manufactured using a 40nm fabrication process. With a 512MB frame buffer utilizing GDDR5 memory, the card utilizes ATI's TeraScale engine to offer teraFlops performance along with UVD 2 and Blu-ray picture-in-picture decode to deliver higher 2D and 3D graphics performance for the mainstream user. The GV-R477D5-512H-B provides DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities, support for Shader Model 4.1 along with HDMI and 7.1 surround sound connectivity. While Gigabyte did not disclose pricing, you can expect to find the card to be available around $100US.