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EVGA has announced the GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition, a new video card for the Mac Pro. The hardware uses 2GB of GDDR5 RAM, and includes four outputs: HDMI, DisplayPort 1.1, and two dual-link DVI connections. The card can also be used alongside Boot Camp and/or Windows, and supports standards including OpenCL and CUDA, which allow a video card to handle non-graphics tasks.
NVIDIA at its Gaming Festival in Shanghai unveiled the expected GeForce GTX 690. The dual-chip board is billed as the fastest on offer and combines two partly downscaled GTX 680 units for a major leap in speed over the GTX 590. With 3,072 processing cores, it in many cases runs games twice as fast as the GTX 680.
NVIDIA on Tuesday set out to lure more mid-range gamers and professionals by introducing both the regular, non-Ti version of the GeForce GTX 560 as well as a new Tesla card. The new card trips down just enough to drop the price down to $199 with 336 stream (visual effects) processors, 56 texture address units, and at least an 810MHz core clock speed, 1.62GHz effects shader clocks and 1GHz GDDR5 memory. While its core and texture unit counts are similar to the outgoing GTX 460, the newer design and higher clock speeds should make it noticeably faster.
NVIDIA as it promised has launched the GeForce GTX 590 as its fastest-ever graphics hardware. The design mates two underclocked GTX 580 chips on one board and includes 1,024 visual processing cores, dual 384-bit memory buses and a total of 3GB of RAM spread across the two chips. It may also be as much as two times quieter than the Radeon HD 6990, since each chip now has its own vapor chamber cooling system and combined stop at 48dB of noise, even at full speed.
NVIDIA today brought its second-generation Fermi hardware into the true mid-range while simultaneously resurrecting the Ti badge not used since the GeForce 3 and 4 days. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti directly replaces the GTX 460 and is about a third faster, owing both to 384 visual effects cores (up from 332) as well as a much higher 822MHz core and 1.64GHz shader clocks (up from 675MHz and 1.35GHz). Eight hardware tessellation engines also give it a steeper performance increase for DirectX 11 and OpenGL games that support the feature.
NVIDIA today confirmed its second-ever GeForce 500 series chipset in a push to bring its new graphics to the mainstream. The GTX 570 has the exact same 480 cores as the old GTX 480 but, through the refined architecture, runs at a higher 732MHz main clock speed, 1.46GHz clock for each core and a 1.9GHz memory clock. It uses a narrower 320-bit memory interface (down from 384 bits) but, due to the combined improvements, has a higher texture fill rate bumped up from 42 billion to 43.9 billion pixels per second.
NVIDIA today at last confirmed the existence of the GeForce GTX 580, its new graphics leader. The design jumps from 480 processing cores to 512 and adds 16 PolyMorph (hardware geometry tessellation) units that significantly boost the performance, especially when they can be fully used in DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1. In extreme cases, a GTX 580 can be up to 160 percent faster than a Radeon HD 5870 in a game like HAWX 2 and 62 percent faster in a DX9/DX10 game like StarCraft II.
NVIDIA today confirmed its rumored entry-level video chipset, the GeForce GT 430. The design is targeted at home theater computers and other systems where video playback support is more important than raw 3D performance and now supports HDMI with passthrough audio. It can output HDMI 1.4a for full 3D video along with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound.
NVIDIA this morning released its cheapest ever graphics chipset based on its current Fermi core. The GeForce GTS 450 scales back to 192 effects cores and a 128-bit memory bus but is expected to be on par or faster than its arch-rival, AMD's Radeon HD 5750. It's pitched as an alternative to integrated graphics as a partial GF106 core is both cheaper and much more energy efficient than a full GF106 core or earlier designs.
NVIDIA today launched its first mainstream graphics chipset in the Fermi family with the GeForce GTX 465. The chipset scales back from the GTX 470 with 352 visual effect (stream) processors versus 448, 32 render output processors versus 40, and slightly slower 802MHz GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus. It still runs at the same clock speed and carries the full feature set, which gives it DirectX 11 (and OpenGL 4) features as well as higher-performance general computing in CUDA, PhysX and OpenCL.
NVIDIA in a low-key move today launched the GeForce GT 240. The chipset brings performance from the mid-level to sub-$100 cards and uses the newer 40 nanometer manufacturing process to make itself a reasonable fit in budget PCs: its low energy use both helps it occupy only one slot and to run entirely off the power of the PCI Express bus instead of needing a separate power connector.
EVGA has released a new hybrid card, the Hybrid GTX 275 Co-op PhysX, which uses NVIDIA's GTX 275 and GTS 250 GPUs on the same card. The two split tasks accordingly, with the GTX 275 taking care of the graphics while the GTS 250 does PhysX computing for physics in games like Batman: Arkham Asylum (included in the box) or Mirror's Edge. There is 1.28GB of combined memory while the GTS 250 and GTX 275 chips run at 633MHz and 738MHz, respectively. Total memory bandwidth tops out at 179.8GBps.
Motherboard and graphics card maker EVGA on Thursday announced the upcoming release of its first LCD display, the InterView 1770, which mates two 17-inch LCD panels onto a single stand. Either can be rotated 180 degrees, so the displays face in different directions. Each sports a 1440x900 resolution and can also fold together like a clamshell for stowing away. The spine stand houses a 1.3-megapixel camera, and there are three USB ports in its base. Each monitor has its own keyboard and mouse connections, though each controls what's on both screens.
EVGA on Wednesday introduced a new display system, the InterView, that integrates two 17-inch TFT LCD panels, according to Engadget. The device is designed for business presentations, researchers, doctors, financial consultants or creative professionals. The thin LCDs support resolutions up to 1440x900, while each can be independently adjusted to different settings.
Following last week's introduction of the GeForce 9400M for MacBooks and other notebooks, NVIDIA has also introduced the GeForce 9300 and 9400 for desktop systems. The two not only support the full range of Celeron, Pentium and Core 2 desktop processors but carry roughly the same 16-core graphics processing as the 9400M and thus have much faster 3D performance than Intel's GMA 4500.
After a recent bout of bad press – alleged mass product defects, competitive price cuts, and legal problems – two of Nvidia's largest partners have supposedly jumped ship to pursue alternate ventures with an unnamed company. The news follows the loss of Gainward, a company now fabricating ATI-based boards. While details of the supposed deal are scarce, it is known that the two companies, XFX and EVGA, are not defecting to rival GPU manufacturer ATI.
