Windows 7 DX11 Cards

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AMD's HD 6950 is unlockable

1536 Shaders with BIOS flash

It looks like all of the AMD HD 6950 cards appear to be ready for unlocking, at least for now. According to Wizzard from Techpowerup, it is a matter of a simple BIOS flash and your HD 6950 can easily turn to an HD 6970. AMD even made the process a bit easier as AMD included the dual-BIOS feature on its HD 6900 series cards and if something goes wrong you can always go for the recovery/factory protected BIOS.

It looks like AMD didn't use the fuse locking on its HD 6950 cards and it is a simple BIOS update that makes the card switch from its 1408 to 1536 shaders and even reach HD 6970 clocks. For now, the unlock is possible on all HD 6950 cards and not just a handful of review samples.

Nice news for all those who snatched the HD 6950 and it looks like these will be selling quite nicely in next few days. You can find more details here.

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It is official: First Details of AMDs 28nm GPU

Code name Wimbledon, it is a mobil GPU
- 256-bit, 2GB GDDR5,
- MXM 3.0 form factor
- 65 Watt+ (Enthusiast GPU)
- 1.25x faster than Blackcomb (blackcomb will be fastest Mobility Radeon HD 6000 GPU)
- Target production schedule is Q2 2012.

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CES 2011: After Chinese new year
The way the component industry works is that you either launch your product in January or in case you are not ready by then, you have to push the launch back till after Chinese New Year. The target to launch Radeon HD 6990 in the latter half of February, but don’t be surprised if it slips to early March.
The card is based on AMD's Cayman chip but there is a rumour that there might also be a dual-card based on two Barts cores. It is clear that this card might be one of the hottest card ever, but this is something that you have to expect from any high-end dual chip product.
We don’t know who will win this round. With Nvidia's two GF110 chips on its dual card, Nvidia appears to have a slight advantage, but we still have to see about that.

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CES 2011: And two 2x4 PCIe connectors
One thing is sure, Nvidia's dual-chip Geforce GTX 595 packs two GF110 cores. This is the chip behind Geforce GTX 580 and it is not exactly the coolest chip around. We can also deny any plans for a GF104-based dual-card from Nvidia.

The card has a dual-slot cooler with three fans on it, at least the one from EVGA does and we can expect that the card will end up quite fast.

Judging by the two 2x4 PCIe connectors the total power available to the card is 225W and we can only hope that consumption won't be too bad. It will most certainly be hot, but end users like silent fans and they kind of make peace with the fact that they are getting one very hot but extremely fast card.

AMD's dual-GPU Antilles card is scheduled to appear in late Q1 and it will also end up pretty hot and fast

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CES 2011: Tuesday the 25th
It looks like Nvidia's Geforce GTX 560 might show up before the end of the month. Tuesday the 25th is probably the last Tuesday that Nvidia can use, in the eve of the Chinese New Year. During Chinese new year, it's next to impossible to get any serious hardware shipment out of Asia.
Geforce GTX 560 is a fully enabled GF104 core with all eight clusters turned on and we used to call this card GTX 475 before. Nvidia thinks that calling it Geforce GTX 560 is a better idea and that it will be a worthy replacement for the GTX 460.
The card is faster than the GTX 470 and promises great performance in the $199 market. Nvidia lacked competitive products in this price range, so the new card should put more pressure on AMD's Radeon HD 6870 in this market.

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[Athlonite]

the front page of Guru of 3D: PC Hardware Reviews and tests has links for the bios files and program need to achieve it apparently it works quite well

 

[kemical]

the front page of Guru of 3D: PC Hardware Reviews and tests has links for the bios files and program need to achieve it apparently it works quite well

Did you miss the post already detailing this? The links provided at Guru3d are the same as the above (big thanks to Techpowerup)

 

[Athlonite]

only link i saw was the fudzilla one what page are you talking about Kemical

 

[kemical]

The link you saw is the correct one. See accompanying snip:

 

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Early HD 6950 1GB listings appear
We came across a rather interesting listing of a Sapphire HD 6950 board on our price search engine. What makes the new board quite interesting is not some fancy feature, but rather the lack of 1GB of memory.

Sappire’s new board, designated 11188-01-40G, packs just 1GB of GDDR5 and it’s a reference design with stock clocks. So, it’s really nothing spectacular, but it’s still a very interesting development. According to German tech site HT4U.net, the HD 6970 should also get a 1GB version, although we think an HD 6950 with 1GB makes quite a bit more sense.

The HD 6950 is one of AMD’s most competitive cards at the moment. It offers excellent value for money and Nvidia simply lacks anything to pit against it in the sub-€250 market. The new 1GB versions will obviously end up even cheaper than the currently available 2GB models, but at this point we are not entirely sure about the pricing.

Current listings indicate that the 1GB version could sell for about €240, but since the 2GB version is already selling for just over €250, we are guessing that the price will end up even lower. In any case it seems like a very nice move on AMD’s part.

Retailers believe they will have the 1GB HD 6950 in stock by the end of the month. You can check out the listings here.


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Looks quite promising
Several early benchmarks of Nvidia’s upcoming GTX 560 Ti board were posted at the chiphell.com discussion board and the results look quite promising. According to the figures, the 560 managed to outperform the old 460 by about 25 percent and the same goes for AMD’s HD 6870. Surprisingly, the 560 is very close to the Cayman based HD 6950, at least in 3Dmark.
The card scores P4118 in 3Dmark 11, while the Vantage score stands at P20644. As expected, the GTX 560 Ti ended up with 384 shaders, 32 ROPs, 1024MB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit bus with a total memory bandwidth of 128.3GB/s. The default GPU clock appears to be 823MHz, while the shaders and memory ended up at 1645MHz and 1002MHz respectively. This is quite a bit faster than the GTX 460, although some factory overclocked GTX 460 boards ended up at 850MHz.
Mind you, the results should be taken with a grain of salt, but nonetheless the GTX 560 appears to deliver impressive performance. It should be able to match AMD’s HD 6950, so at this point it all comes down to the price. The GTX 560 should launch later this month and January 25 is being tossed around as the launch date.
More here.

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[cybercore]

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GTX 460 goes wireless

Nvidia AIB KFA2 has quietly introduced the world’s first WHDI graphics card based on Nvidia’s venerable GF104 core. Actually, it wasn’t that quiet, but we sort of missed it.

Dubbed GTX 460 WHDI, the card feature’s AMIMONS WHDI technology and allows users to stream video onto any WHDI capable device within 100 feet, or 30 meters in Europe. Of course, WHDI is still in its infancy, but this is the way of the future and we will probably see more WHDI cards soon.

The card ships with a bundled 5GHz WHDI receiver and it uses no fewer than five antennas to stream uncompressed 1080p video at 60Hz. So, for the love of God don't try to explain what it is and what it does to your girlfriend. It’s also HDCP 2.0 compliant, to make big content happy. Sadly, there is no word on pricing or availability, but we don’t expect it to come cheap.

 

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$279
AMD has officially confirmed the upcoming 1GB version of its Cayman based HD 6950 card.

According to HardwareCanucks, the new card will officially be priced at $279 and it should appear in time to counter Nvidia’s GTX 560 Ti.

The MSRP for the full 2GB version is $299 and frankly we were expecting a somewhat more substantial price cut than $20.

European retailers have already listed the first 1GB cards with prices starting at €234. This is no bargain, as 2GB versions go for as little as €245 to €250, depending on the market and VAT rates. Two European retailers claim that they will start shipping Sapphire’s 1GB card within 48 hours.

More here.

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[Athlonite]

they cost $493 NZD here for the 2GB models

 

[kemical]

AMD offically launched HD 6700 series

Juniper rebrands

AMD has officially rebranded its HD 5700 series Juniper based graphics cards to Radeon HD 6700 series. The Radeond HD 6750 and the Radeon HD 6770 are now detailed at AMD's website and have the same specs as the old HD 5750 and 5770 cards.

To be fair, a while back AMD did say that the HD 5700 series is here to stay so this rebrand doesn't come as a surprise. On its product page, AMD cleary states that these are based on the HD 5700 series hardware with added support for HDMI 1.4a and it appears that these rebrands are only for OEMs while retail/e-tail is still listing the HD 5700 series cards.

As far as the specs go, the HD 6770 features 800 stream processors, DirectX 11 support and features a 128-bit memory interface paired up with GDDR5 memory. THe HD 6750 has 720 stream processors, while both cards have the same clocks as the old HD 5700 series.

For now it looks like that these two rebrands are OEM only but we'll keep an eye out in case these appear in retail/e-tail. You can find them both here.

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[kemical]

Powercolor has released its new Radeon HD 6950 PCS++ card that will use a dual BIOS feature in order to work at either 880MHz for the GPU or 800MHz for the GPU in safe mode.

According to our info, the PCB of the card is based on Powercolor's own design and they opted for a PCB that is more similar to the HD 6970 so it is no wonder that the card has an ability to unlock all the shaders and happily work at 880MHz. It is a bit unclear wether it already has 1536 shaders in the "second" BIOS, but we guess that you can always unlock it manually. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1250MHz (5.0Gbps) and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

Since we are talking about a PCS++ series card, it is quite normal that it has a non-reference cooler. The cooler is equipped with two 92mm fans and three heatpipes connected to a rather large heatsink with copper base. The card features two DVI, HDMI and two mini DisplayPort outputs and will be bundled with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game.

Unfortunately, the price or the availability date haven't been announced but we guess that it will show up in retail/e-tail pretty soon.

Update: Powercolor got back to us and we can now confirm that the second BIOS does indeed unlock those extra shaders. So, in addition to the higher HD 6970 clocks, the HD 6950 PCS++ also has 1536 stream processors as well.

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AMD Radeon HD 6990 Sighted

Taiwanese site itOC has revealed pictures of AMD's Radeon HD 6990, displayed at a recent presentation. The picture is low resolution and doesn't give away much detail. However, there's no doubt that HD 6990 is one beastly card. The Radeon HD 6990 is still scheduled for "Q1 2011", though rumours suggest a February release following the Chinese New Year.

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The HD 6990 consists of two Cayman chips. On first glimpse, appears to be just as long as the HD 5970, but noticeably thicker. The power connector area does appear to be a bit different, though nothing can be concluded from such a low resolution picture. The "Batmobile" design is once again dropped in favour of the design used in the HD 6800/6900 series cards released thus far.​

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One of the characteristics of previous AMD reference dual-GPU cards had been that the two GPUs are relatively close together, and covered by a single heatsink. However, the two Cayman chips on the HD 6990 pictured are located on two opposite ends of the PCB. This could indicate two separate heatsinks for the two GPUs. The same idea has been executed on non-reference designs such as the Asus ARES, with better thermal results than the reference design.​

The HD 6990 remains on course for Q1 2011, most likely February, and is almost certainly poised to become the new performance king, overtaking the HD 5970 (or GTX 580 for games with poor CF support).​

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Ref: AMD Radeon HD 6990 Sighted by VR-Zone.com​

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Gainward GTX 580 Phantom first look

Preview: The GTX 580 with 3GB of memory



A few days ago, Link Removed due to 404 Error the GTX 580 Phantom card, which boasts 3GB of GDDR5 memory and comes with a rather unique custom cooler with three 80mm fans, six heatpipes and a large aluminum heatsink with a copper base.

The GTX 580 Phantom card features 512 CUDA cores and works at 783MHz for the GPU, 1566MHz for shaders and 4020MHz for 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface.

Since many are probably interested in the cooling capabilities, we'll get to the point. Phantom GTX 580 is the quietest GTX 580 we have tested so far. When idle, the card is almost inaudible. Naturally, more intensive operation will result in more noise, but it didn't bother us the least - all you'll hear is pure airflow. Thermals are, as you can see, excellent.

The custom cooler also makes this card a bit larger so bear in mind that it takes more than two slots. The card is 10.5 inches (267 mm) long.

Since GTX 580 Phantom’s clocks are almost identical to the reference ones, consumption is roughly the same as well. The card’s minimum overclock will not significantly affect performance whereas the 3GB of memory will help only in the most extreme settings, i.e. gaming at highest resolutions and antialiasing settings. Naturally, you can always boost performance by overclocking the card yourself. Our attempts at overclocking showed that overclocking potential of Phantom cards is equal to other GTX 580 cards we’ve tested so far.

GPU voltages can be changed in Afterburner, but it seemed to us that Phantom doesn’t like high voltages – upping the voltage only further limited maximum GPU clocks. We’ll have more information on overclocking after we play with it a little more.

One thing is for sure – you’ll love Phantom’s cooler. It is not loud and performs well. Overclock of 90MHz resulted in only 6°C more on the GPU.

You will find two dual-link DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and the card supports all the techs like Nvidia CUDA, SLI, 3D Vision Surround, PhysX and of course DirectX 11. We expect to see Gainward GTX 580 Phantom priced at about €540, although we've found it listed at as much as €630, here.


Ref: Gainward GTX 580 Phantom first look

 

[cybercore]

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Here are some leaked pictures of the new Radeon HD 6990 AMD dual-GPU graphics card. Radeon HD 6990 equipped with two 40nm GPU Cayman, a total of 3072 stream processors and 4096MB of memory between the two systems the GPU. The device also has a new type of output signal that consists of one dual-link DVI ports and four mini-DP 1.2. The graphics card is powered from a single 6-pin PCIe and 8-pin connector. Unfortunately, there is no information on pricing and availability so far.




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[kemical]

News on Nvidia's latest....

Antilles lurking in the shadows
DonanimHaber is reporting that Nvidia will introduce its dual-GPU card at the PAX East 2011 event, which kicks off March 11.

The new card, designated GTX 590, packs two GF110 cores on a single PCB, but we still don’t know the details. It should pack 3072MB of GDDR5 on a double 384-bit bus, but there is no word on the clocks yet. The biggest concern, of course, is power consumption. There’s a good chance the GTX 590 will be the hottest and hungriest card of all time.

AMD is also working on its HD 6990 Antilles board and it should launch at about the same time. It appears neither Nvidia nor AMD will showcase the new boards to the general public at CeBit, but they should show up a couple of weeks later nonetheless.

More here. (Google translation)

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