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In general, we see a trend in the market preference for quieter, smaller, cheaper, and more powerful GPUs. In reality, we might see two or three of these features in a product, at the expense of the other(s). I took the opportunity to visit as many vendors as my time allowed in Computex to find GPUs which could potentially fit into these categories.
On the NVIDIA side of things, Zotac where showing two silent models. The first is actually a PCI card, rather than PCIe – a GT 430 with 512 MB DDR3 memory on a 128-bit bus, running at 700 MHz core speed and1600 MHz memory. A purely silent card, it has a single slot design and supports DVI-I, HDMI, and VGA. It’s interesting to see a PCI card on sale – they have their uses mainly in industrial applications, but due to the PCI specifications there’s a bandwidth limitation which may hinder any significantly faster GPU.
The Zotac 520 ZONE Edition, with 48 CUDA cores and 1 GB DDR3 memory on a 64-bit bus, runs at 810 MHz with 1600 MHz memory. Again, this is a silent card, but a dual slot solution, supporting DVI-I and mini-HDMI.
Sparkle, apart from competing with Gigabyte and ASUS on SKU naming complexity, had three silent cards on display – a GTS 450 (SXS4501024DSSNMP), a GT 440 (SXT4401024S3LNMP) and a GT 520 (SXT5201024S3LNMP). The GTS 450 version supports two DVI ports and a mini-HDMI, whereas the other two give the standard VGA, HDMI, and DVI connectors. The GT 440 is a single slot solution, and all three have 1GB memory.
In terms of raw power in the veil of silence, we have to look at the AMD side of things and Powercolor, who have wrapped a HD6850 (yes, you read that right) in a passive heatsink using 5 heatpipes – this thing is massive:
The issue that probably bugs me the most about this card is I can see people using two in Crossfire. In order to shift that much heat, the case will require sufficient cooling – i.e. fans, and thus defeat the point of silent running.
Powercolor also had two more sensible passive solutions on show: a HD6670 and HD6570.
In a similar vein, over at the AMD booth, they had selected passive cards from various manufacturers – an ASUS EAH6670, a Gigabyte HD6770 (GV-R677SL-1GD), a HIS 6570 Silence and an XFX HD5670 (HD-567X-ZNH).
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Even though there is a distinct trend to produce graphics cards with dual slot coolers, it does pique my interest when a manufacturer has a single slot solution to what is typically a dual slot answer. This is often at the expense of length, fan noise, and cost of heatsink materials, but in terms of performance per unit volume, a good single slot GPU can sometimes be the answer.
So enter the Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot Edition. Again, you read that right – a single slot 6850. This card isn’t significantly longer than the standard 6850 from looks, put I’d wager that the fan must work hard to push air through when the card is working at a full load.
On the professional side of things, Sapphire had a FirePro V7900 on display as a single slot solution. The V7900 is the 1280 streaming processor variant with 160 GB/s memory bandwidth, and differs from the commercial equivalent by utilizing features most people don’t need but professionals do. My usual perception in terms of a environment using professional GPUs (i.e. clusters for simulation) is that more per machine is usually better, so I could see up to 7+ of these in one motherboard – perhaps.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4429/computex-2011-silent-and-single-slot-gpus
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The ultimate goal of any HTPC is to handle any media content you might desire, all while consuming very little power and generating no noise. Package all of that in an attractive case that can fit in with your other home theater equipment and you’ve got a winning HTPC solution. Previous attempts have used NVIDIA’s ION platform (Atom + GeForce GPU), which met the low-power requirement but often failed at decoding certain video streams, and the Atom CPU was so slow that the UI interactions frequently felt sluggish. Other solutions have used higher performance CPUs, but such designs use more power, creating unwanted noise from the cooling fans, and there’s still the issue of media support.
Now, Zotac hopes to satisfy the needs of the low-power crowd while providing enough performance and decoding prowess to please A/V aficionados who want 24FPS content to work properly. To do this, they’ve turned to AMD’s Brazos platform, sporting Atom-like power with roughly twice the CPU performance and integrated graphics that are faster than ION and we might just have a winner. Zotac also includes a Blu-ray drive, for those who prefer disc content. Can the new ZBOX AD03BR-PLUS-U finally supplant the higher performance CPUs with discrete GPUs that so many HTPC users end up using in order to handle all of their video decoding needs? Let’s find out.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4442/zotac-zbox-brazos-goes-htpc
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Herb Sutter recently announced C++ AMP at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit as part of his keynote. Here, Daniel Moth, a program manager on Microsoft's Parallel Computing Platform Team, digs deeper into C++ AMP with code samples and more. Please download the slides from the link below as the recording of this session doesn't do them justice.
Big thanks to AMD for providing Channel 9 with this excellent content!
To get full performance out of mainstream hardware, high-performance code needs to harness, not only multi-core CPUs, but also GPUs (whether discrete cards or integrated in the processor) and other compute accelerators to achieve orders-of-magnitude speed-up for data parallel algorithms. How can you as a C++ developer fully utilize all that heterogeneous hardware from your Visual Studio environment? How can your code benefit from this tremendous performance boost without sacrificing your developer productivity or the portability of your solution? The answers will be presented in this session that introduces a new technology from Microsoft.
Get the slides to this presentation here.
Learn more about C++ AMP:
Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Daniel-Moth-Blazing-fast-code-using-GPUs-and-more-with-C-AMP
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There's one component in your machine that will be superseded by faster and more powerful versions quicker than any other, and that's the graphics processor.
The graphics card is the supermodel part of any modern gaming PC. It, more than anything else, makes your games look beautiful and run as smoothly as a baby's velvet smoking jacket.
So, if you're a gamer and you've got a bit of cash to spend, forking out the lot on a new graphics card is the best way to up the frame rate of your favourite games and make the girls think you're attractive, right?
Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the way the graphics game works. The top-performing rigs are always the most well balanced. Put a Ferrari engine into a Mk1 Golf GTi and it will go fast, sure, but you'll fly off the first corner you come to and probably make someone an orphan.
To a certain extent, it's the same with a PC. Obviously it's not going to career off the desk and decapitate a passer-by, but using the fastest graphics card in the world for your rig isn't always going to make it the best machine.
There are a number of key considerations to think of before spending an obscene amount of cash on a GPU, or a pair of GPUs. Number one is, naturally, can you afford it? But we'll skip the personal economics lesson for now.
The second issue is, can you get the most out of it? This is a multi-part question, though, and covers the size of screen you're running, possible bottlenecks in your system (such as OS, CPU and memory) and whether your power supply can handle the extra draw that comes with a top-end graphics card.
Then it all comes down to which card, or combination of cards, suits you best. This is the key point ? do you go for a single, high-performance model or opt for a (possibly cheaper) multi-GPU solution? It's all a bit complicated, isn't it? But have no fear: we've handcuffed ourselves to the test-bench and won't move until we've tried the top 20 graphics setups around today.
Both Nvidia and AMD have released their most expensive and powerful graphics cards ever in the last few months. With the launch of the GTX 590 (Nvidia) and Radeon HD 6990 (AMD), the top of the market has never looked so good. But how do you get the most out of such outrageously priced components?
You want to make sure that, if you spend the best part of �600 on a graphics card, you're wringing as much potential as you can out of it. The one thing a top graphics card such as the dual-GPU GTX 590 or HD 6990 wants is a high-end display setup. A good, high-resolution desktop is going to push your expensive silicon to up its game, and will make sure you get the most out of its pixel-pushing prowess.
Buffering up
Both of the latest dual-GPU cards from the big-name manufacturers come with a frankly huge amount of graphics memory. The GTX 590 has a chunky 3GB of GDDR5 and the HD 6990 a positively bloated 4GB. It's these large frame buffers that help enable the cards to output at the crazy resolutions afforded by the multi-screen setups AMD and Nvidia are championing.
Just how much the frame buffer means is shown by the GTX 460. That appeared in both 768MB and 1GB trim, with the former version significantly worse at higher resolutions than its memory-laden brother. Either of them will breeze through any game you throw at it if you're running at resolutions such as 1,280 x 720, and even up to 1,680 x 1,050. But as soon as you go past the 1080p resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, lower-end cards such as the 768MB GTX 460 will start to struggle.
This is what you get when you drop �600 on a graphics card, then: the knowledge that it will cope at pretty much any resolution you throw its way.
Five stars
When AMD released the HD 6990, it came out blowing the trumpet of quint-screen gaming. For those who aren't aware of the phrase we just made up, it means five screens with a possible resolution of 5,400 x 1,920. That's five 1080p screens running in portrait mode, connected together.
The GTX 590, on the other hand, can only cope with three screens. It is, though, the first time Nvidia has released a single-GPU card that can output to more than two screens. Either way, it's a huge amount of screen real estate to play with.
If your graphics card can cope with that scale of resolution madness then you're surely onto a winner. You do have to be careful, though, because there aren't many games out there capable of taking full advantage of such screen size. Most can cope with the 30-inch panel's native resolution of 2,560 x 1,600, but few are able to deal with multi-monitor setups.
Take a look at the Dragon Age 2 screenshot AMD supplied with its HD 6990 press material ? with half of your HUD on screen one and the other on screen five, you're going to get whiplash fast.
Some games have been coded with the likes of AMD's Eyefinity panoramic technology in mind. They offer the chance to keep all the HUD elements on the central screen while still affording you the ultra-widescreen format. Five screens might be pushing it a little, but a three-screen setup capable of 1080p and above in portrait mode would be hitting the sweet spot.
There's one more thing to be aware of with a portrait setup, and that's the screen technology used. You'll need to make sure the monitor you choose has a decent viewing angle; something the traditional TN panel can't offer.
Ideally, then, you'll need to splash out on the more expensive IPS panels. Otherwise, the vertical viewing angle, which becomes the horizontal angle when put in portrait mode, will seriously impede your image quality.
Space to burn
So, once you've made sure the display setup is in place, how do you ensure that your rig is up to the task? The first thing may seem obvious, but it's all about space. High-end graphics cards or multi-card setups need a lot of that.
The Radeon HD 6990 is the same size as the HD 5970 and, as such, is one of the longest cards you'll find on the market. It's worth making sure your chassis is capacious enough to cope with the extra few centimetres the big cards need.
On the next tier down, the HD 69xx cards are fairly chunky too, with the Nvidia models coming in a bit shorter and more likely to fit. Testing on a mid-size CM Storm Scout chassis, we found we could easily fit a GTX 580 inside. On the AMD front, though, the fastest card that would fit the case was the HD 6870.
That's not the only consideration, though. If you do manage to squeeze an HD 6990 into your case, you'll have to make sure there's enough airflow to avoid the thing suffocating and its silicon brains melting out of the choked vents. Top-end cards are, essentially, electric fan heaters. The amount of heat they generate can be directly attributed to the amount of power they need to run, so something like the GTX 590 is going to push out a lot of heat.
The new dual-GPU cards from AMD and Nvidia have both been set up with a symmetrical cooling design. Unfortunately, that means that just as much hot air is blown into the case as is vented out of the back.
The problem isn't quite so bad with multiple graphics card setups because, as with a single-GPU card, you can vent directly out of the back. Multi-card rigs will need to have space to breathe too, especially between the cards. If they're stacked on top of each other then you're going to end up with some seriously hot silicon.
The next concern is just how much power you're going to need to keep your graphical behemoths juiced up. Multi-GPU cards and SLI or CrossFire arrangements need an extraordinary amount of power just to get them up and running.
With something like the GTX 590, Nvidia recommend a 700W PSU as a minimum. If you're looking at the HD 6990 or a dual-GPU GTX 580 setup then you're probably going to need an 850W power supply.
Before you go out and spend the cash on a 1,500W PSU, though, it's worth remembering to make sure you've got enough spare capacity, because an under-used high-end supply is far more inefficient than a lower-capacity unit running at the same power draw.
So a 700W supply drawing 500W is going to be much more efficient than a 1,500W PSU drawing the same 500W. PSU inefficiency means wasted energy, and that means excess heat. With high-end graphics cards, that can be dangerous.
Letting the side down
As well as checking ratings to cover the amount of power a particular card needs, there are other concerns. The latest dual-GPU cards make serious demands of your PSU's 12v rail.
Both the HD 6990 and GTX 590 have been designed to stay below the 375W maximum the twin 8-pin PCI Express power connectors and motherboard PCIe bus can supply, but when you factor in overclocking, that goes straight out of the window.
The HD 6990 comes with a BIOS switch that boosts the core clocks to the same settings as the HD 6970 GPUs the Antilles chips are based on. This increases the power draw to insane proportions, and can overload the 12v rail in lesser PSU lights.
We spoke to one of Enermax's PSU engineers about this at launch, and he explained that customers need to consider two things when purchasing a PSU for top-end graphics cards: "The PSU should be equipped with OPP function, and should have a strong 12v line, or lines."
OPP means 'Over Power Protection', and this technology shuts down the PSU if the graphics card is demanding more power than the 12v lines can give. So you don't get a cascade failure effect if the PSU falls over.
Another key consideration is your CPU. If your processor can't cope with the pace of your new graphics giant then you'll end up with a bottleneck in the system. This means that your expensive bit of silicon will be sitting there twiddling its transistors, waiting for the laggy CPU to catch up. A modern, multi-core CPU ought to be able to cope with anything a new game can throw at it, though.
Granted, a lowly AMD Athlon II dual core will still give you a bottleneck, as will a sub-2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, but any Phenom II quad or Core i5 should keep things ticking over nicely.
Double trouble?
So, you've made sure your chassis can house a beefy graphics setup, you've sorted out a power supply that won't collapse and turn the insides of your gaming rig into pricey slag and you've got a decent processor at the heart of your machine so the graphics don't get ahead of themselves. Now, what sort of high-end graphics setup do you want?
The options at the pricey end of the market are fairly wide ranging. At the very top you're looking at CrossFireX and quad-SLI setups, with four of AMD or Nvidia's top single-GPU cards being thrown together on one motherboard. That will create a graphical array more than capable of the highest resolutions games will realistically play at.
It's also entirely possible that it will create a black hole. In your wallet, that is. It's this sort of setup that makes the single PCB, multi-GPU cards more attractive, and seem like better value. That's quite a feat considering they cost about �600 themselves.
The benefit of these single-card solutions is that they take up far less space inside your machine. And if you're an Nvidia fan who's not blessed with an SLI-ready motherboard, you can now run a twin-GPU setup. If you do have an SLI-ready motherboard, though, and one that will happily support quad-SLI, then you could drop a pair of GTX 590s in for some serious graphical action.
The paucity of SLI-certified motherboards is only one of the problems with multi-GPU arrays, though with AMD's Bulldozer boards looking increasingly likely to support SLI, that situation could change.
But, still, driver problems persist when you add extra graphics processors. More often than not you'll find that the latest games don't work, or that you don't see one of your GPUs at launch. Then there's a wait for the driver issues to be sorted out by the relevant manufacturers.
This isn't an exclusive problem to either Nvidia or AMD ? they're both as bad as each other now. A fast, single-GPU card will save you headaches down the line, then, as well as a fair bit of cash. But if you absolutely must have the highest frame rates then multi-GPU options are the way forward.
Looking down the spectrum and pairing up a couple of lower-end GPUs, such as a couple of GTX 460s, will net you performance that will make anyone who forked out for a GTX 580 a little green around the gills. Why stop at two GPUs, though?
The performance of twin cards has gone through the roof in recent years, to the point where we're close to doubling the performance. But, unfortunately, adding in more cards is very much a case of diminishing returns. With the performance boost you get, the second card is totally worthwhile. A third or fourth addition, though, will barely register.
We tested a pair of GTX 590s and a pair of HD 6990s and it was rare indeed that we saw a significant improvement in performance. Heaven 2.5 was the only benchmark that used the four GPUs properly, nearly netting double the performance. The rest of our benchmarking suite ably showed just why SLI and CrossFire performance is so hit and miss.
Aliens vs Predator only showed an increase with Nvidia's GPUs, Lost Planet 2 gave extremely poor returns and DiRT2 went backwards when we dropped in a second HD 6990.
Up the resolution
Finally, it's important to consider what you're going to be using your high-end graphics setup for: gaming. The problem at the moment is that because of the cost of games development, most publishers are focusing their efforts on the consoles. That's where the big profits lie.
The PC is more powerful than any console, a fact shown by all the recent TV ads for multi-platform games, clearly using PC footage to make sales. Unfortunately, though, PC games are still being held back by the lowest console denominator ? it's simply not worth the developers' time to push a game for PC hardware.
So we come back round to the start, and what it is that's going to really take advantage of your serious graphics hardware. Namely, large resolutions. At normal resolutions of 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1080, PC games are still quite a way from really pushing top-end GPUs. It's only when you jump into the upper echelons of 2560 x 1600 and above that these expensive beasts start to come into their own.
Should you go out and buy a seriously expensive graphics setup? If you have a hankering for some crazy screen real estate, then hell yeah. If not, you might not need to part with �1,200 for a pair of GTX 590s.
There's still a wealth of graphical options lower down the scale, though. We've benched 20 different setups to give you the lowdown. Turn the page to find out what we've discovered in testing.
1. Asus GeForce GTX 590
So here it is, the pinnacle of Nvidia engineering and the fastest single-PCB graphics card the Santa Clara company has ever produced. It's quite spectacular ? we're talking about one board with two of the most powerful GPUs Nvidia's ever made jammed on it.
Obviously, compromises have had to be made with the chips to get them to run happily on a single card, and to stay within the 375W limit that comes from a pair of 8-pin PCI-e connectors and the motherboard PCI-e bus.
Read the full Asus GeForce GTX 590 review
2. Asus Radeon HD 6990
Pipping Nvidia to the post came AMD, releasing its dual-GPU, top-end graphics card a few weeks earlier than the competition. As with Nvidia, the HD 6990 is the fastest single-PCB graphics card the Texan brand has ever made, with performance to match.
It almost looks as though both cards have come from the same design school, with so many similarities between them it borders on the suspicious. Like the GTX 590, the HD 6990 houses two of the cores from its current-fastest single- GPU card ? the HD 6970.
The Cayman XT from that card has been doubled up and redubbed 'Antilles', and comes with slower clock, shader and memory speeds out of the box.
Read the full Asus Radeon HD 6990 review
3 Zotac GeForce GTX 580
Nvidia's GTX 580 is the best single-GPU card on the market. There's no caveat ? across our entire benchmarking suite, it held sway over all others. It's down to the exemplary GF110 GPU sitting at the heart of it.
Fermi has proven to be the best GPU architecture the green company has ever manufactured, and with this second generation, the GTX 5xx series, it's gone from strength to strength.
The first Fermi, the GTX 480, was the top card of its day, but wasn't without issues. The problem was the amount of power it needed and the quantity of heat it generated.
Read the full Zotac GeForce GTX 580 review
4. HIS Radeon HD 6970
The fastest single-GPU model out of the AMD stable is a tough one to recommend. As the first of its Northern Island codenamed graphics cards, it's certainly the quickest AMD has come out with.
The big problem, though, is the second-tier card released alongside it ? the HD 6950. But we'll come to that later.
The Cayman XT at the heart of the HD 6970 is essentially the same GPU as paired in the Antilles chip of the dual-GPU HD 6990. It's clocked faster than the stock specs of the Antilles, though ? through the shaky-ground magic of the Antilles Unlocking Switch (also known as the Screw Your Warranty Switch) the HD 6990 can run with its GPUs at the same speed as the HD 6970.
Read the full HIS Radeon HD 6970 review
5. Zotac GeForce GTX 570
The GTX 570 represents the second tier of Nvidia's Fermi architecture lineup. Coming in a little cheaper than AMD's top single card, the HD 6970, it's an impressive beast. As much as the GTX 580 was the GTX 480 engineered properly, the GTX 570 is a lot more than just the GTX 470 done right.
It has more in common with the GTX 480, coming as it does with almost the same basic GPU layout. The GTX 570 has the same 480 CUDA cores and 60 texture units, but drops eight ROPs compared with the GTX 480's 48. The 570 also has a smaller frame buffer, at 1,280MB against the previous generation card's 1,536MB.
Read the full Zotac GeForce GTX 570 review
6. Sapphire Radeon HD 6950
We understand that, in pure performance terms, the HD 6990 and HD 6970 have the HD 6950 beaten. But in our eyes, this is the finest graphics card AMD has produced in a long time. In the sub-�200 market, it's as good as you're going to get, and it's a card that offers much more than any of the opposition.
In its plain state, the HD 6950 comes close to the HD 6970 performance-wise, and to the GTX 570 too. The 2GB GDDR5 frame buffer means it can keep pace with Nvidia's second-tier Fermi card, although for the most part it does lag behind slightly. It does the same with the HD 6970, but that's to be expected from a card that's much, much cheaper.
Read the full Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 review
7. MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Just as the GTX 570 was replacing the GTX 480, leaving the GTX 580 out on its own at the head of the single-GPU pack, here we've got the GTX 560 Ti retiring the GTX 470, not the GTX 460.
Yes, that's a lot of numbers, but it does make sense, especially when you look at the performance of those GTX 460s, even in today's market. It would make no sense for Nvidia to kill off one of the best cards it's launched since the halcyon days of the 8800 GT.
But it's not quite as simple as just being another transistor-level tweak of the GTX 470 design. The GTX 560 Ti is more of a halfway house between the GTX 470 and GTX 460.
Read the full MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti review
8. XFX Radeon HD 6870
Once you drop below the price point of the competing HD 6950 and GTX 560 Ti, you get into the value segment. That's not value as in 'value' toilet paper ? it's all about the price, and not necessarily the performance.
With the HD 6870, you'd only be looking at this card if you really couldn't afford to spend a pound more than its listed price. That's not to say it's a bad card. It compares favourably with the marginally more expensive GTX 560 Ti, though when we first saw it at launch, the combination of relatively high price point (�200 at release) and older technology meant it got a fairly poor reception.
Read the full XFX Radeon HD 6870 Ti review
9. EVGA GTX 460 1GB
Over the last 12 months, if there's been one card you could call the a hero, it's most definitely the GTX 460 1GB. Nvidia has had a long history of creating superb mid-range cards, from the 6600 GT to the incredible 8800 GT, and the GTX 460 can sit happily among such illustrious forebears.
Based on the same Fermi architecture as the hot-and-heavy GTX 480, the GTX 460 carries the torch into the lower end of the price spectrum. At launch it was priced at �200, the same as the GTX 560 Ti when it was first released. However, thanks to the passage of time, you can now pick up an overclocked 1GB version for as little as �120.
Read the full EVGA GTX 460 1GB review
10. Sapphire Radeon HD 6850
Thanks to the shift in pricing that followed the the AMD HD 68xx series, the HD 6850 has come into its own more in the intervening months. Now available for as little as �132, it's about the same price as the GTX 460, and just about had it pipped to the post in most of our benchmarking suite.
Like the HD 6870 before it, it's based on the same Barts GPU, a reworking of the GPU at the heart of AMD's last generation of DirectX 11 graphics cards, the HD 58xx series. In real terms, though, this card was brought in to replace the excellent HD 5770, despite what the naming structure may have you believe.
Read the full Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 review
Bench analysis: Making sense of an awful lot of numbers
Because of the awesome amount of graphical power at our fingertips, with this latest batch of DirectX 11 cards all of the benchmarks below represent their performance at the very highest single-screen resolution possible; 2,560x1,600.
With the really intensive DirectX 11 benchmarks you can see a clear divide between the top contenders for the top GPU crown and the alsorans. Heaven 2.5 though shows a nice, smooth gradient as you move down the power order, but you can see with the incredibly demanding Metro 2033 that there is a definite step where the cards simply cannot provide enough graphical grunt to run the game at such high resolutions.
Even the GTX 570 fails to get into double figures in SLI. It's here the HD 6950 shows its muscles, keeping pace with the GTX 580 in this most demanding of benchmarks.
The multi-GPU performance is interesting too, with only the synthetic Heaven 2.5 test showing consistent GPU scaling with up to four GPUs. And talking of multi-GPU the power of twin budget cards, like the GTX 460 and HD 6850, proves a match for single, pricier options.
And the winners are...
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 AMD Radeon HD 6950
With so much choice in the graphics card arena it can be tough to make a definitive call on what the best cards are for what purposes. There are some standout performers in the test and some weaker options which you can almost discount immediately.
At the top end though things are incredibly tight. In terms of pure, out of the box performance you'd have to side with the GTX 590 as the three-screen hero single card. But with the frankly obscene performance of the GTX 580 in SLI, and despite the price-tag, we'd have to go for the separate, faster cards in SLI over the single-PCB, multi-GPU GTX 590.
AMD's HD 6990 comes in behind them, though with the ability to power up to five screens through its EyeFinity tech. With the, admittedly warranty-voiding, Antilles Unlocking Switch making overclocking the card as easy as flicking a switch (and hoping your PSU doesn't fall over) the HD 6990 actually does have a lot going for it.
Neither multi-GPU card though looks good in quad-GPU trim. Neither camp's drivers are really up to snuff, with only the Heaven 2.5 benchmark actually scaling properly. And driver problems, even with two GPUs, can mean a wait, post game release, for your cards to be supported.
Which makes a single GTX 580 a fantastic proposition on its own, it's fast, though does lack proper multi-monitor support. So Nvidia's top card becomes a double winner in single and SLI flavours.
AMD's top single-GPU card, the HD 6970, while being a decent card in of itself, is actually hampered by its own brethren. The HD 6950, in its default, vanilla flavour is almost as fast as the top AMD single-GPU card and for almost �100 less. Combined with the outstanding performance of the GTX 570 makes the 6970 impossible to recommend.
In the mid-range there really is only one winner, and that's the HD 6950. On its own it's a great performing card, keeping pace with both the HD 6970 and the GTX 570. If you factor in the unlocking potential and subsequent overclocking chops that turns it into a monster of a card for under �200.
You can also pick up two of them for the same price as a single GTX 580 and give Nvidia's top GPU a darned good thrashing while you're at it.
So if you're looking at a single, high-resolution monitor then Nvidia's GTX 580 will come without any driver hassle and keep your games looking great. For a serious multi-screen setup it has to be an AMD card, and personally I'd opt for a pair of unlocked HD 6950s, though the HD 6990, PSU-willing, will deliver incredible performance.
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The Guardian has announced that it is to adopt a "digital first" strategy for its news output, after the newspaper reported losses of �34.4 million in 2009-2010 and �33 million the following year.
Speaking to Press Gazette, a Guardian spokesperson said that the focus on digital was now the priority with a number of resources being moved from print to digital.
Digital income for this financial year is set to be around �47 million and the Guardian is hoping that this will be doubled over the next five years.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger admitted that the company must "move beyond the newspaper, shifting focus, effort and investment towards digital, because that is our future".
Digital vs print
Given the huge losses, it is interesting that the Guardian, according to the Press Gazette, has said that staff levels will not change, nor will overall editorial budgets ? but more money will be put into digital properties.
Insiders at the paper, however, believe that redundancies will have to happen and are pointing to possible closures of a number of the main paper's supplements.
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Samsung continues to push the design envelope with regards to its screens, and this PC monitor/Full HD 3D TV hybrid is no exception. Released as part of the brand’s long-running SyncMaster range, it’s a catch-all 27inch display aimed at gamers and upmarket telly addicts. For those looking for something even smaller, the model is also available with a 23inch screen.
Samsung SyncMaster Series 9 TA950 27: Build and features
The design of the TA950 is nothing short of inspired. The screen ‘floats’ above the pedestal stand, which contains the Freeview HD tuner, sound system and inputs – it’s a wonderfully concise arrangement. Balanced on a giraffe-like neck, the panel can be angled for the best viewing position.
There are now a number of dedicated 3D monitors available. The TA950 is rather different in so much as it’s essentially a Series 8 LED telly shrunk by a Despicable Me Reducer-Ray. There’s no significant difference between this mini-me and its bigger TV brethren. The 120Hz panel is the same, as is the feature set, which includes Samsung’s Smart Hub apps and IPTV portal.
Reflecting its PC duality, the TA950 also ships with SyncMaster 3D Game Launcher software for PC. An iteration of TriDef 3D conversion software, it supports over 430 3D ready PC games, including Dragon Age II, Bulletstorm, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Farcry 2. Remember, the actual performance of these games is totally dependant on the PC hardware used, not this display.
The monitor also has S-RGB support for digital photographers, but there is no dedicated card slot. While compatible with a variety of PC inputs, optimal resolution is 1920 x 1080 @60Hz. The response time is 3milliseconds – good for a TV but bettered by dedicated monitors.
Samsung SyncMaster Series 9 TA950 27: 2D picture quality
Hi-def images on this screen have immediate wow appeal, but it’s easy to overcook them. The TA950 offers the same picture adjustments as bigger Samsung TVs, but given that the screen is designed for near-field viewing you need to pull these back. Sharpness, for example, should be on the zero setting, as it’s very easy to spot any edge enhancement.The screen spots Samsung’s’ Magic Angle’ mode which optimises contrast and colour for any given viewing position.
Samsung SyncMaster Series 9 TA950 27: 3D picture quality and audio
Given that the TA950 shares DNA with the rest of Samsung’s 2011 3D TVs, it’s no surprise that it shares much the same traits. Colour fidelity and brightness are above average, although minor double imaging is evident in 3D images. One pair of Active Shutter 3D glasses is supplied in the box. Like Samsung’s TV screens, the TA950 also does on the fly 2D to 3D conversion, using Samsung’s five direction vector processor.
While the sound system is really quite modest, at just 2 x 7w, the ingenious nature of the speaker design rather compensates.
Overall
We think the SyncMaster TA950 is as cool as Penguin’s pool party. The screen is currently only available from Harrods and Selfridges, and it sells for £650 which might seem a lot of cash for what is ostensibly a 1920x1080 resolution monitor. But then given that it’s also a Series 8 grade LED 3D TV as well, maybe it’s not such a bad deal after all?
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Junk email? That's so yesterday; it's all about the e-book publishing spam these days, with the Amazon Kindle self-publishing platform proving to be a spammers' paradise.
The work of legitimate aspiring authors is getting swamped by Private Label Rights (PLR) work ? prose that is available to be picked up cheaply (or freely) by anyone online.
Spammers and those looking to make a quick buck are reformatting these rights-free works into ebooks and sticking them up for sale around 99 cents (60p) using the Kindle Direct Publishing platform - and some are even selling books and DVDs to educate others in how to do it.
The man who would be Kindle
Not only is it irritating if you accidentally buy one of these PLR works, but this influx of spammy ebooks makes it harder than ever to find something worth reading.
Another sneaky money-spinning trick infiltrating the book platform is the copying and republishing of ebooks that are already proving popular, using a different title and cover.
One element making the platform so attractive to spammers is that distributing a work using the Kindle Direct Publishing service doesn't cost anything; Amazon simply takes a cut if you make any sales.
With plagiarism and spam-like content taking over, questions will no doubt be raised over whether Amazon needs to police the self-publishing platform more aggressively, or remove it altogether.
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In our Intel roadmap article published in May, we shortly previewed Intel's upcoming 700 Series SSDs. Back then there wasn't much to talk about as very few specs were known. Today we have some additional details to share, thanks to German site ComputerBase.de.
| Intel SSD 700 Series | ||
| Series | 710 | 720 |
| Codename | Lyndonville | Ramsdale |
| Capacities (GB) | 100/200/300 | 200/400 |
| NAND type | 25nm MLC-HET | 34nm SLC |
| Cache (DRAM) | 64MB | 512MB |
| Interface | SATA 3Gb/s | PCIe 2.0 |
| Read speed | 270MB/s | 2200MB/s |
| Write speed | 210MB/s | 1800MB/s |
| 4KB read | 35 000 IOPs | 180 000 IOPs |
| 4KB write | 3 300 IOPs | 56 000 IOPs |
| Power (active/standby) | 4W/0.095W | 25W/8W |
| Security | AES-128 encryption | AES-256 encryption |
| Data path protection | LBA tag checking | End to end data protection |
I want to start off by saying that these SSDs are aimed at enterprise use. If you want an SSD for your gaming rig, you should look at our mid-range SSD roundup for example.
The Intel 700 Series is meant to replace the X25-E lineup, Intel's enterprise series, which hasn't been updated since late 2008 so it's long overdue. However, neither of these is an exact successor. The 710 Series is closer with its 2.5" form factor and SATA 3Gb/s. The 710 Series is actually pretty close to the 320 Series in terms of specs: sustained write is slightly higher but random performance is a bit lower. The biggest difference between the 320 and 710 series is the NAND type. 320 Series uses regular MLC that you can find inside any mainstream SSDs; 710 Series is Intel's first enterprise level SSD to use MLC NAND, but not just any kind of MLC—it will use MLC-HET NANDs. MLC-HET offers more write cycles per cell so longetivity is increased, which is crucial for enterprises. The only downside is that MLC-HET will only last for 3 months after all write cycles have been used, whereas normal MLC will last for 12 months. However, this shouldn't be an issue due to the increased amount of write cycles. For the record, MLC-HET with 20% over-provisioning (OP) appears to offer roughly 65 times greater endurance than normal MLC.
The 720 Series will be Intel's first PCIe SSD. To take full advantage of it, you will need at least a PCIe 2.0 x8 slot since a x4 slot will only provide up to 2GB/s while the 720 Series provides read speeds of up to 2.2GB/s. It will use 34nm SLC NANDs, which is pretty common for high-end enterprise SSDs due to SLC's much better endurance. The 720 Series promises up to 36PB (yes, as in 36000TB) of 8KB writes for the 400GB SSD. That is nearly 1000 times more durable than 25nm MLC and over 10 times more durable than 25nm MLC-HET.
| 320 Series | 710 Series | 720 Series | |||||
| Capacity (GB) | 80 | 160 | 300 | 100 | 200 | 200 | 400 |
| Endurance (TB) | ? | ? | ? | 500/900 (20% OP) | 1000/1300 (20% OP) | 18000 | 36000 |
| Reliability (MTBF-hours) | 1.2 million | 2.0 million | N/A | ||||
One of the biggest and most needed upgrades from X25-E is the much better encryption support. X25-E offered only ATA password protection, which is way too vulnerable by today's standards, especially when considering that even the mainstream 320 Series supports 128-bit AES. 720 Series will take that one step even further by supporting 256-bit AES encryption. This is very important for enterprises handling confidential data; you don't want your data get into the wrong hands and you are ready to pay the premium for the best protection.
This update is essential for Intel to stay competitive in the enterprise SSD market. It has already been 2.5 years since the last update and when considering the progress of SSDs during this time, it's surprising that the update hasn't take place sooner. There isn't much news on the release schdule so the best we've got is what we have already posted: Q2'11 for 710 Series and Q4'11 for 720 Series SSDs. The 710 Series seems to be the low-end offering and it's basically the same as the 320 Series with improved endurance. The 720 Series, on the other hand, is an SSD for heavy enterprise use with features making it suitable for such use. OCZ has pretty much been the dominator of PCIe SSD market but Intel's 720 Series could offer some serious competition in the high-end PCIe SSD market.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4452/intel-710-and-720-ssd-specifications
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The United States government is building a scale model of the internet in order to test out its cyber war operations.
The multi-million dollar project is being called a 'virtual firing range' and will allow the US to simulate cyber attacks and create network protections systems to guard against them.
The platform, commissioned by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, will also allow the US to try-out its own offensive capabilities without causing online havoc in the real world.
Indeed, the initiative will be designed to enable the US to wipe the slate clean when test operations are completed.
Eric Mazzacone, a DARPA spokesman, says that the US will be able to carry out test operations."in days rather than the weeks it currently takes."
Prototypes
The project is currently in the conception stage with key US defense contractor Lockhead Martin believed to be working on the project.Last month Lockheed itself fell victim to a cyber hack.
The US recently allocated $500m (�309m) of its defense budget to develop "cyber technologies," with the US recently re-classifying cyber-attacks to be an act of war.
DARPA is largely credited with developing the forerunner to the internet in the 1960s.
Source: Reuters
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