Nvidia and AMD might not release new cards until 2012 — who cares?

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

I’ve become used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a consistently quick schedule: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the spring, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia has confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any potential release dates for its new Radeon HD 7000-series — presumably taking extra time to further tweak and perfect the new chips. (more…)

AMD: losing the battle on all fronts

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Remember AMD Barcelona? Delayed and disappointing, the architecture behind AMD’s first Phenom chips finally turned up in November 2007, six months behind schedule, with performance that left us “a little underwhelmed” after months of anticipation – and that’s before it was compared against its Intel equivalents.

At the same time, Intel was preparing to release its Wolfdale-based Core 2 Duo processors, which appeared in January 2008 using the more efficient 45nm architecture – a key improvement over AMD’s 65nm chips. The result? Our review concluded that the new Core 2 Duo E8000-series “wipes the floor with the [older] E6000 series” and that Intel’s new processors were an “unqualified success”.

Fast forward three years, and the similarities are startling. (more…)

AMD Radeon HD 6990 review: first look

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

We’ve seen some big graphics cards in our time but AMD’s new Radeon HD 6990, which has just been hauled into the Labs by a team of four burly couriers, takes the cake. You’ll have to take our word for it, as AMD is only allowing us to show you these pictures at this time, but we’ve just tried to cram the new card into our test rig — which uses not-inconsiderable Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced chassis — and it wouldn’t fit, blocked off by the hard disk cages before getting anywhere near the motherboard. (more…)

Will Nvidia PhysX ever be worthwhile?

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Nvidia has talked up its PhysX system incessantly since it bought Ageia Technologies, creator of the engine, in February 2008, but it’s struggled to make a significant impact on the PC gaming landscape. So, despite the impressive tech demos and endless optimism, is PhysX looking more like a white elephant with every passing GPU and game release?

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First look: ATI Radeon HD 4830

Friday, October 24th, 2008

It seems that, at the moment, ATI is releasing fantastic graphics cards on a month-by-month basis. Now, it’s the turn of a part that’s been designed to sit between the Radeon HD 4670 and HD 4850 in ATI’s comprehensive line-up: the HD 4830.

The specifications reveal that, while the 4830 isn’t as powerful on paper as the 4850, it’s still a powerful GPU in its own right. A core clock speed of 575MHz is only 50MHz lower than the 4850, and 512MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory certainly hints at the new card’s potential.

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Technological progress: lost on the masses

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

I loaded up Steam for the first time in a while last night and was promptly asked to participate in Valve’s ongoing hardware survey. I’ve done this before, and the results are always fascinating, so I jumped right in. A few clicks later, and a quick scan of my cobbled-together PC, and I got to see the breakdown of nearly 1.8million gamers’ systems – with some surprises.

Just 41% of polled users have made the much-needed step to a dual or quad-core processor – the norm in pretty much all new PC systems sold today – and 38% have shelled out on 2GB or more of RAM. Assuming a correllation between the two, that leaves a huge proportion of PC players who are still trundling along on 1GB of RAM or less and a single-core CPU.

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Strange things afoot in the world of graphics

Friday, May 30th, 2008

Today I’ve been reading about not one, but two rather retro developments in the wacky world of graphics cards, and both have left me scratching my head.

The first is the re-announcement by Asus of its XG Station, which brings external graphics to laptops. It was first “launched” early last year, as a way to get GeForce 7-series desktop gaming power via the ExpressCard slot on a laptop – but we didn’t recieve a review sample, and it soon became clear it would never see the light of day in the UK.

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Nvidia’s confused GPUs

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Nvidia aren’t known for their demure and shy antics, so I wasn’t surprised at a press briefing a few weeks ago when they launched an attack on what some quarters – namely Intel with their new Larrabee GPU – who have identified ray-tracing as the future of graphics.

They spent a great deal of time assuring the assembled members of the IT press that it was a waste of time – every game since before the turn of the Millennium (indeed, since the demise of voxels) because every game is made using polygons and that developers wouldn’t want to alter their techniques and systems around a new, somewhat experimental technology.

So, why have Nvidia gone and bought a ray-tracing company?

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Nvidia Squares Up to Intel

Monday, April 28th, 2008

So, after finding out that Intel were planning to release its own graphics card – the mysterious and, at the moment, practically mythical Larrabee – the Nvidia boardroom must have been a fun place to be. The GPU market is, after all, where the Californian company has ruled the roost for the past few years thanks to the strength of the 8000-series and, now, the emergence of some decent 9000 series cards like the 9600 GT and 9800 GTX.

Evidently, it’s decided to come out on the offensive: Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang recently lambasted Intel’s integrated graphics, which have long been a staple of PCs that don’t need to play games and edit demanding videos, as ‘a joke’. He also boasted of his plans to ‘open a can of whoop-ass’ onto Intel, which must be quaking in its boots – after all, its CPUs haven’t done that well, and they certainly not market leaders with no real competitors. Ahem.

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