9500GT comes to the rescue
Hardware Rounds Maybe Nvidia can make it in the low-end
NVIDIA’S 9500GT IS making its premiere (as far as we know) at the XFastest forums today. The G96-based card boasts just 32 unified shaders, 256MB of GDDR3 memory and 8 ROPs, according to the specs on display. Now as you can imagine, don’t expect great performance from this card, although it does have a SLI connector… but we were thinks its impressive you can score the almost 6000 marks in 3DMark’06. TweakTown mentions these cards should retail at about $50-$60, which makes them a great HD-enabling upgrade for your HTPC. Catch it here (Chinese) and here (Googlenglish).
Our French friends at Clubic will excuse us if we didn’t notice their article right on their national holiday. Julien has one of the five advance-advance cards made available by DAAMIT. Again, there’s the “this is a sample” warning, but the French numbers are pretty clear. You can see some curious situations where the X2 matches the Crossfired HD 4870, and others where it clearly leaps ahead. There some tweaking to do there, but ATI’s got the crown for the time being. L’original ici, the Googlenglish version you’ll find here.
Taiwanese site Coolaler has (what looks like) the benchmarks of an as-of-yet unreleased Core 2 Duo E8600 running at an uncanny 6440MHz. They used LN2 to cool down the CPU, and supercharged it with 1.94v. Sure you won’t keep it long at those levels, but the PIs don’t lie. The E8600 chews through PI like there’s no tomorrow. It’s in Chinese, though, so you’ll have to resort to Googlenglish if you want to make heads from tails.
Hardware Zone in Singapore is reviewing the Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme, the much vaunted P45-based enthusiast mobo (although we don’t dare ask what they call their X48 mobos). It supports Tri-Fire and up to 16GB of memory. The dual Gigabit Ethernet will get you thinking “small server” but the mobo really is targeted at enthusiasts. It has several features the insane overclocker/tweaker will want – such as the Clear CMOS button at the back, integrated waterblocks for the chipset and a bit of the DES marchitecture. Good stuff.
The Fudzilla crowd has some hands-on time with an overclocked HD 4870 from MSI. The card, named the R4870, clocks in at 800MHz (that’s a 50MHz OC). The card is putting out some GTX260-level numbers, whilst carrying a smaller price tag, which is always a nice thing. It’s still a far bit away from the OC versions of the GTX 260, tho’… Read on.
If you want to know about Centrino 2, then we’d recommend you stop by Laptop Mag. The Laptop’s Centrino 2 Guide includes some reviews of newly-launched Montevina-based lappies, as well as some tips and tricks for the new platform. They’ve already got 8 reviews on-line, but they are Laptop Mag, after all, aren’t they? Read the full article and the sub-plots here. µ
Comments
ATI Has the crown?
Doesn't Nvidia still hold the crown until I can buy the ATI card? It's a month away maybe more. What if Nvidia comes out with the die shrunk gtx280X2 before I can even buy the ATI card?...LOL. Nobody expected the GTX+. We already know the die shrink of GT200 taped out a few months back so I'd be pretty shocked if NV doesn't release a dual gpu GTX280 with it to spoil ATI's 4870X2. You're jumping the gun a bit here don't you think?I'm not saying the card isn't fast, but it's not that fast until I can purchase it :) Also if they slap a $600 price tag on it I'd say it's nothing special. We end up with "It's 25% faster than NV's GTX280, and it's 25% more money too". Also don't forget it's a wee bit of a power hog vs. gtx280. That will cost you even more over a 2-3yr ownership of this card at load AND idle. Since this thing will run a 30in monitor with decent fps, you should be able to stay with this card for a few years on a 24in or below even considering future games (ok, probably not all). Which means you WILL pay the electric bill. Which wouldn't be so bad if it was just during gaming, but this card screws your electric bill all day even when browsing the web etc.
Nvidia has them smoked in power usage at idle (where most of our time is spent when browsing, email etc). Let me know when ATI is selling 4870/4870x2 in quantity. GDDR5 looks like it will limit any sufficient sales numbers that would hurt Nvidia's bottom line. It's a great card, probably at a bad price, and guaranteed to not be enough of them. Chew on that one Charlie...ROFL.
no GDDR5?
Now you tell me where you have found any 'Evidence' that the GDDR5 memory availability is blocking off sales and quantity of graphics cards?That's just a prejudice and an assumption, it was here at the announcement of the GDDR5 memory and it's still there even though there is no evidence at all, and there are no stock problems for HD 4870 graphics chips at all. Do you really think AMD would stick 2 GB of this memory on one card if it wasn't available?