AMD Radeon HD 6790 1GB Video Card Review

The AMD Radeon HD 6790 Graphics Card

Tonight AMD is releasing another new video card called the Radeon HD 6790. This video card shouldn't come as too much of a surprise as they were made available on the retail market before the card officially announced by AMD. The AMD Radeon HD 6790 isn't a revolutionary change, but it is more of an evolutionary change. What do we mean by that? Well, the AMD Radeon HD 6790 is nothing more than a 40nm Barts core that has some things disabled and the clock speeds adjusted. Remember when AMD announced the AMD Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850 graphics cards back in 2009 and then followed both of those up with a Radeon HD 5830? That card used same PCB that the Radeon HD 5870 used, but had more stream processors (ALU's) disabled that either the Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5870. It made up for the disabled stream processors by having a higher clock speed than the Radeon HD 5850, which meant it also consumed more power. It was a very strange card, but it worked and fit in the Radeon HD 5800 series as it used a "Cypress" core. Think of the AMD Radeon HD 6790 as a Radeon HD 6830.

AS you can see the AMD Radeon HD 6790 fills in the gap between the Radeon HD 6850 ($144.99) and the Radeon HD 5770 ($99.99). The AMD Radeon HD 6790 has an MSRP of $149.99 and is already available in the market. We expect the AMD Radeon HD 6790 to fall in price in the days to come as numerous AMD Radeon HD 6850 video cards can be had for $145-$150 after rebate. We figured the AMD Radeon HD 6790 would be called the Radeon HD 6830 and it looks like many others thought this way as well as AMD issued this statement on the nomenclature of the card:

"The AMD Radeon HD 6790 products are positioned between our AMD Radeon HD 6850 and the HD 6770 (the OEM equivalent of the HD5770). The performance of the HD 6790 is roughly 20% higher than the HD 5770/6770, which makes a lot of sense when you consider the performance difference between most HDxx50 and HDxx70 products. Juxtaposing the product's specifications may shed some additional light on this. The AMD Radeon HD 6790 shares many 3D engine configuration similarities with to the rest of the AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series. Namely, the 800 stream processors are common across the HD 6790 and HD 6770, while 16 render back-end units are common across the entire HD 6700 Series of products. Ultimately, we are trying to help buyers better understand just the performance of the product by providing what we feel is the most descriptive branding." - AMD Marketing

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Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card Review

Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card Introduction

Today we are going to be taking a look at the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card. This is the factory overclocked version of the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 video card. This particular card does not contain Sapphire's Vapor X cooler and is based on the reference PCB that is familiar to the 6800 series of AMD's Radeon HD cards. Much like several other cards that are in this same class the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card is a 3D capable card that features the AMD HD3D technology. Now, don't get disappointed; it has other AMD technologies too. Eyefinity is in there; it is crossfire capable should you wish to run more than one card for a little extra performance boost. I do have to let you know that just like the rest of the 6800 series you will only be able to hook up one other card in a crossfire configuration, so triple and quad crossfire setups are, unfortunately, not possible with this card.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card is a PCI-E 2.1 compliant card that is capable of full HD 1080p resolution. It has 1 GB of GDDR5 memory on-board and is Direct X 11 compatible so that all of your games, videos and movies are crystal clear and stutter free. As I mentioned earlier, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card is factory overclocked to 820MHz on the GPU core and the memory is overclocked to 4400MHz, but I have a feeling we will be able to take this card a bit higher than that.

One of the first things that came to mind when I opened the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card was that due to its reference design for the PCB and the cooling that this card might not be able to reach very high overclocks due to heat issues. In the past I have noticed that the reference style coolers are not that effective at moving the heat away from the vicinity of the card and therefore causes the cards to heat up a bit more than, say, a Vapor X cooler or an IceQ cooler. Another thing that struck my eye was the size of the card; now, although I have an NZXT Phantom case which is like the black hole of cases as it can accommodate just about any size video card with ease, some other cases might not be able to comfortably handle its 10" length. The Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Video Card is priced pretty much the same as the other cards at its price point at $184.99 with a full two year warranty.

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HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo 1GB Video Card Review

HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo Video Card

Today we are going to take a look at an AMD based video card that not only provides a ton of power, but it also includes a cooling system to help tame the high temperatures that go along with high speed graphics. Of course I am talking about the HIS (Hightech Information Systems) Radeon HD 6850 Turbo video card (H685QNT1GD), that just happens to include their very effective IceQ X cooling system to help cool off the 820MHz clocked GPU and the 4400Mhz clocked memory. Of course you are all asking, "Does it have all of the features and bells and whistles that we have come to love in an AMD based video card?" To put it simply... yes. If you want to be immersed in your games Eyefinity is there for you. All you need to do is hook up your three monitors and bam; now you have peripheral vision. Want to play your games or watch Blu-Ray Discs in full stereo 3D? Eyedefinition with HD3D has your back. You can also speed up applications and enjoy brilliant video with AMD Eyespeed technology. Did I mention 3D capability? Ok so I will say it again with AMD HD3D you can now game and watch movies in full 3D, and all with the Direct X 11 compatibility that we all love. Oh, hey, I almost forgot to mention Crossfire; yep... it's in there, but unfortunately just like all of its 6800 series brethren you can only add one other card thus being able to have a dual card set up.

HIS is a video card manufacturer out of Hong Kong that provides ATI/AMD based high performance video cards. Founded in Hong Kong back in 2007 HIS has steadily risen as one of the major players in the very lucrative video card market. Their cards have won over 600 awards and feature the heat killing IceQ cooling technology on most of their cards. Most of the 6850 cards that I have looked at recently have been based on the reference design of the card and tended to produce a bit of heat. The HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo (H685QNT1GD) is actually built on a shorter length PCB coupled with the IceQ cooler to try and combat heat and give the card a killer look. You can have your own HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo (H685QNT1GD) for $189.99 plus shipping, and this also includes a two year warranty on parts and labor.

We are looking at the HIS IceQ X Turbo Radeon HD 6850 H685QNT1GD Video Card today, which is the fastest of the trifecta and features the custom GPU cooler.

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ASUS GeForce GTX 590 3GB Video Card Review

We all knew that NVIDIA had been working on putting two Fermi GPUs on a single graphics card for some time and, to be honest, it has to be tough to put that much GPU on a single card. NVIDIA found a way to take over 2200 components and get them assembled together on a single PCB to create their new flagship GPU called the GeForce GTX 590. The GTX 590 combines the power of two GF110 GPUs, the same GPUs used on the GeForce GTX 580, on a single graphics card. With a total of two GF110 GPUs packing 1024 CUDA cores and 3GB of GDDR5 memory you know this card isn't going to be cheap. The suggested retail price of the GeForce GTX 590 is $699.99, but for that you will get the ultimate GeForce GTX gaming experience and the ability to run Quad-SLI on just two cards.

NVIDIA's marketing department sent over a nice looking 5.56mm military ammo crate to celebrate the launch of the GeForce GTX 590. We also got a custom made dog tag that said '1st Division GTX590 Squadron' on it along with a marketing kit on a dog tag USB drive. It looks like we are going to war sans the bullets and the video card!

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 reference design comes with 1024 CUDA Cores (512 per GPU) and 3074MB or 3GB of GDDR5 memory. The memory subsystem of the GTX 590 is similar to the GTX 580, with six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory per GPU (3GB total). Clock speeds for the GeForce GTX 590 are 607MHz graphics clock/1215MHz CUDA Cores. Memory speed is 3414MHz data rate. These speeds are slower than what you would find on a GF110 GPU on a GeForce GTX580, but they had to be lowered to keep the card's thermal profile from getting too unruly. Notice that the board's TDP is designed for 365W and that is what the GPU cooler is designed to handle. Extreme overclocking will need to use better cooling, so if you want to push the envelope with one of these cards then you better get ready for water cooling!

NVIDIA said that over 2200 components are being used on the GeForce GTX 590 and that the card is an engineering marvel.

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MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II OC Video Card Review

MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II OC Graphics Card

Earlier this week we took a look at the ASUS Ultimate ENGTX550 Ti video card and today we are taking a look at a competing card by MSI. MSI is no stranger to the video card market and have been pushing hard into the North American channel by pushing their 'Military Class' components, custom GPU coolers, Afterburner overclocking utility and some very nice factory overclocks to persuade consumers to pick their video cards over another brand . With the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti series the engineers at MSI went developed two different cards. One card features the Cyclone II GPU cooler and the other features a GPU cooler that is based primarily off the NVIDIA reference design. MSI is only releasing the two overclocked versions in North America, so we could only find out pricing on those cards. As you'll see from the list below the Cyclone II cooler carries a $5 price premium over the NVIDIA reference designed cooler and custom red/black fan shroud.

The card that we are looking at today is the N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II 1GD5/OC video card! This card is factory overclocked up to 950MHz and features a custom GPU cooler, called the Cyclone II, that helps keep temperatures in-touch with reality.

Looking at the front of the MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II OC you find a video card that looks nothing like the NVIDIA reference design.

The MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II OC graphics card sports a black and silver color scheme and has a very aggressive look to the card. It almost looks like the GPU cooler could be used as a weapon, but this is the look that MSI was going for with this cooler design. This fan design won't exhaust much of the hot air from the inside of your case since the shroud doesn't extend all the way to the exhaust bracket. The PCB of the card measures 8.25" in length and stands at 4" tall. It should be noted that the heat pipes extend the height of the card up to ~5.5" in height.

One of the main new features of the MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II OC graphics card is the redesigned Cyclone II Heatsink. At first glance it looks the same as the original, but MSI has changed the 'propeller blade' technology on the cooling 9cm PWM fan. The fan now has air channels located along the the edge of the fan blades that help increase the surface area. MSI says that this adjustment increased airflow by 20% compared to conventional fans! The Cyclone II GPU cooler with its 9cm PWM fan, large nickel-plated copper heatsink base and high-density circular radiator fins all help to dissipate heat rapidly away from the GPU, enabling the new N550GTX-Ti Cyclone OC to run 23 degrees cooler than the reference board under full load according to MSI.

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ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Review

The ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX550-Ti

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card is going to be a popular gaming graphics card in 2011 due to it's lucrative $150 price point. When the GeForce GTX 550 Ti was launched last week we noticed that ASUS came out of the gate with not one, but three cards for this series. ASUS once again custom designed all of the ENGTX550 Ti cards and fitted each of them with their DirectCU cooler for lower noise and GPU temperatures.

The card that we are looking at today is the ASUS UL ENGTX550 Ti DirectCU DC/DI/1GD5 video card! This card is also known as the ASUS Ultimate GTX550 Ti and with a core clock of 1015MHz it is the fastest clocked card that the companies offers for this series. This card is clocked 115MHz faster than the NVIDIA reference design as it runs at 900MHz on the core. For those that like numbers, this means that this card has a core clock that is 13% faster than the NVIDIA reference design! The ASUS card costs $20 more, which also happens to be a 13% difference. So, here is one of those rare situations where you pay for what you get!

ASUS didn't just stop there though as the company custom designed a sweet looking black PCB and slapped on their tried and true DirectCU GPU cooler that features a pair of 8mm heatpipes for great cooling performance. If you are a fan of factory overclocked video cards this card won't be letting you down anytime soon as it is one of the fastest clocked cards that money can buy. If you want even more speed from this card you can use the included their SmartDoctor utility with VoltageTweak or any overclocking utility that you like using. The nice thing about the ASUS utility is that you can bump up the GPU core voltage in just a few mouse clicks if needed.

The card sports a black and red color scheme and we noticed that the bottom right hand corner of the PCB is rounded, which is something we don't see too often. This fan design won't exhaust all the hot air from the inside of your case since the shroud doesn't extend all the way to the exhaust bracket. The PCB of the ASUS custom designed card measures 8.875" in length and stands at 3.875" tall. It should be noted that the heat pipes extend the height of the card up to 4.55" tall and the plastic fan shroud makes the card just shy of being 9" long.

Flipping the ASUS GeForce GTX 550 Ti video card over we don't find too many interesting things as the card doesn't have a back plate or any of the GDDR5 memory on the back of the PCB. The GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card does support SLI and has a single SLI bridge located along the top edge of the graphics card. The NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti series supports two-way SLI configurations and can run NVIDIA Surround (2D) multi-panel gaming technologies. That means you can buy two of these and run games at a resolution of 5760 x 1200 across three monitors for example.

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AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Dual GPU Video Card Review

Antilles Arrives with 2 GPUs and 4GB of GDDR5

If you have been waiting for the dual-GPU monster from AMD called Antilles, you can finally jump for joy as the Radeon HD 6990 4GB video card has officially been released. This video card has been at the center talked about openly by AMD for nearly half a year now, so to see it out in the wild is a relief. AMD should be relieved too as this is their first Dual-GPU video card that they have launched since the Radeon HD 5970 was released back in 2009. They also managed to get it out the door before the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 comes to market, which is always good.

AMD sent us the Radeon HD 6990 4GB video card in a silver briefcase that had a rather large advertisement for Dragon Age II on the cover, but sadly the game was no where to be found. Inside the briefcase up we found more marketing material that said, "Rise to power with the AMD Radeon HD 6990, the fastest graphics card in the world". Below the sign we found the foot long behemoth and no we aren't talking about a Subway Footlong sandwich! This isn't a $5 Subway Footlong though as this is a flagship video card that comes with a hefty price tag of $699. A Radeon HD 6970 can be had for $319.99 after rebate, which is interesting as this video card uses the same GPU cores.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB video isn't something totally new as AMD basically took two of their Cayman GPU's used on the Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 series and slapped them on a single PCB. If you recall the Radeon HD 6970 video card runs at 880MHz on the core clock and has 24 SIMD units with 1536 ALU stream processors. We thought that AMD would have to reduce the clock speeds on the GPU for a dual-GPU card and we were partly right.

The Radeon HD 6990 has a core clock speed of 830MHz with a memory clock speed of 1250MHz (5.0Gbps). The Radeon HD 6990 has compute performance rating of 5.1TFLOPs (single precisions) and 1.27TFLOPs (double-precision). This is very impressive, but as you can see they had to reduce the clock speeds.

Well, that isn't exactly true. The AMD 6900 series has two BIOS versions that you can change between and AMD allowed one to be set at 880MHz on the 6990! That means that the Radeon HD 6990 really does have two GPU's that are basically running at the same core clock speeds as the core on a Radeon HD 6970 video card. AMD has done a ton of engineering to pull this feat off and this should mean that this single card should easily defeat the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and become the fastest video card on the planet. The slide above shows that the overclocked profile is called the 6990 OC.

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XFX Radeon HD 6850 Black Edition Video Card Review

XFX Radeon HD 6850 Video Card

Today here in the LR labs we are going to be taking a look at some new technology and a bit of older technology. Back in 2009 ATI/AMD released the Radeon HD 5770 video card for around $159.99. More recently AMD released the 6800 series video cards that included the Radeon HD 6850 which, by coincidence or not, can be had for around $159.99 after rebates for the standard version with a 775 MHz core speed and a 1000 MHz Memory speed. For about $20 more you can get the Black Edition which is slightly overclocked at 820 MHz Core and 1200 MHz Memory speed, at least that's what mine came clocked with. So now the question stands, "how far have we come over the last year in the $160.00 price point for an AMD Radeon 6850?"

As we all know, AMD was primarily a CPU and chip set maker up until its acquisition of ATI a few years back. AMD made the decision last year to start to eliminate the ATI name from its flagship products such as the Radeon HD video card line. Today we are going to be taking a look at both of these cards to see just how much has changed since the 5770's came out in October of 2009.

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AXLE GeForce GT 430 1GB Video Card Review

With their headquarters in Hong Kong, AXLE is well known in the Asia Pacific region and they have distributors all across the world in many countries such as Germany and Malaysia, to name a couple. They are not very known in North America but are really trying to change that.

About AXLE 3D:

AXLE International Holding Limited being NV Card Manufacturer, insist to provide the best to its customers, not only for the products but also the service. The only belief is quality maintains the survival of the company.

Established in 1988, over 20 years grew and developed under keen competition, AXLE found its own way ~ service & quality. Today, we have our factory with over 600 workforce in Mainland China with capacity of 190k per month.

Headquarter in Hong Kong, sales offices in Germany, Dubai and China, AXLE products are distributed all over the world, such as in Asia, Middle East, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe. Sales turnover exceeds US$45 million in the past financial year. Since 2000, AXLE became one of the biggest NV Card manufacturer in Asia Pacific region. This provides the most accurate information and cost advantage to AXLE.

As for the high standard of product quality & management, AXLE gained ISO9001 certified. It is also the indicator for the standard of the VGA cards in market.

In order to broaden our product line, AXLE also carried design utilizing chip sets from other vendors. Most recent products are 3D VGA cards, motherboards & power supply. Besides marketing our own products, AXLE is also very active in OEM business which account for about 30% of total sales turnover.

Besides, AXLE has introduced the brand "AXLE" into the market since 1999. It was a great success. "AXLE" is now well known in Korea, Russia, Middle East and European Markets. "AXLE" represents "Quality", in both product quality and after sales service quality. AXLE ensures you with both punctual delivery and technical support.

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ASUS GeForce ENGTX560 Ti DirectCU II Video Card Review

The ASUS GeForce GTX560 DirectCU II

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card is without a doubt one of the best all around gaming graphics cards on the market today. In our GeForce GTX560 Ti launch article we showed you how the NVIDIA reference designed card did and today we are taking a look at our very first custom designed GTX560, the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP video card!

The card that we are looking at today is the ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DirectCU II TOP/2DI/1GD5 video card! What makes this card special is the fact that it uses a custom designed PCB and GPU cooler, plus it comes factory overclocked for an extra performance boost. The ENGTX560 Top has been sorted to ensure the card can operate flawlessly at 900MHz and that is critical for those that want to be ensured their card can overclock. To help overclockers even more ASUS uses a DirectCU GPU cooler that has three 8mm flattened copper heat-pipes that make direct contact with the GPU that helps improve cooling by 20% when compared to the NVIDIA reference design. If that isn't enough, ASUS also includes their SmartDoctor utility with VoltageTweak. This means you can bump up the GPU core voltage in just a few mouse clicks if needed.

The front of the ENGTX560 DirectCU II TOP is looks great and we thought it was plastic before we opened the box and found out that it is real metal. When it comes to appearance the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 with the DirectCU II cooling solution is hands down one of the best looking cards on the market today. This fan design won't exhaust all the hot air from the inside of your case since the shroud doesn't extend all the way to the exhaust bracket. The card measures 9.75" in length and stands at 4.4" tall.

Flipping the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 video card over we don't find too many interesting things. Notice that the fan shroud extends well past the PCB and this is to allow better airflow for the dual cooling fans. The GeForce GTX 560 graphics card does support SLI and has a single SLI bridge located along the top edge of the graphics card. The NVIDIA GTX 560 series supports two-way SLI configurations and can run NVIDIA Surround (2D) multi-panel gaming technologies. That means you can buy two of these and run games at a resolution of 5760 x 1200 across three monitors for example.

We went to take off the metal fan shroud on the ASUS ENGTX560, but found that it was screwed under the three red decals and didn't want to peel off the stickers as they'd never stick right again. If you look at the end of the card you can make out the three 8mm heat pipes that are being used.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Versus AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB

NVIDIA Brings Titanium Back!

This morning the video card market got a little more crowded as NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX 560 Ti and AMD released a variant of the Radeon HD 6950 with 1GB of memory on it. Over the past week we've had a chance to test both of these cards that are aimed at the gamer that has around $250 to spend.

If you have been a gamer for many years you might remember the GeForce 4 Ti video card series from yesteryear and it looks like NVIDIA has gone ahead and resurrected the Ti moniker for the GeForce GTX 560 series. Ti stands for Titanium and it better mean that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is going to destroy AMD's offerings as the Ti was last used when NVIDIA dominated AMD's lineup.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 uses the GF104 core and NVIDIA took that core back to the drawing board and improved it the best they could. They were able to unlock all the cores on the chip now that they tweaked it, so the CUDA cores went up from 336 on the GTX 460 to 384 on the GTX 580. NVIDIA was also able to increase the clock speeds used on the GeForce GTX 560 Ti since the core was better designed. The graphics clock has gone from 675MHz up to 882MHz! The CUDA cores that used to run at 1350MHz now are greater in number and running at 1645MHz. Even the 1GB GDDR5 memory got bumped up to 1002MHz from 900MHz! All these extra CUDA cores and higher clock speeds did increase the board's maximum power draw to 170W, but that is just 10W higher than the GTX 460.

NVIDIA claims that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti reference board design has essentially been overbuilt. Compared to the original GTX 460 board, they've added more robust 4-phase power circuitry, faster 5Gbps memory modules, and improved cooling. The new cooler features one additional copper heatpipe and a larger heatsink and cooling fan. Finally, a baseplate was added to cool the graphics memory and the GPU’s power circuitry. To protect the graphics card and system from issues caused by excessive power draw, the GTX 560 Ti reference board features the same power monitoring hardware first introduced last year with the GeForce GTX 580.

NVIDIA says that the GTX 560 Ti should be 33% faster than the GTX 460 1GB and if that is the case we won't be upset with the 10 Watt power draw increase!

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