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Posts Tagged ‘radeon’

The not-quite GTX 570

When is a GTX 560 Ti not really a GTX 560 Ti? When it’s almost a GTX 570.
Nvidia’s latest GPU, the GTX 560 Ti 448 is really a GTX 580 (originally dubbed the GF110) with two functional blocks disabled, reducing its CUDA Core count from 512 to 448. The GTX 570 is a GF110 with one functional block disabled, endowing it with 480 CUDA Cores. The original GTX 560 Ti is a completely different chip, with different power requirements, but all 384 of its cores are fully functional.

Priced at $290, The 560 Ti 448 … [Read More...]

AMD and Nvidia driver teams have been putting in some pretty serious overtime trying to keep up with the flood of new titles hitting the market just before the holidays, and a third profile update just went live for AMD’s less than one month old Catalyst 11.11. Just in-case you’d lost count, in addition to the three profile updates, AMD has also released three separate beta drivers to fix various other issues with specific titles. If you like to be on the bleeding edge, make sure you have Catalyst 11.11C, along with the just released CAP3.

CAP3 includes the following … [Read More...]

Two GTX 580s, one gargantuan videocard

Imagine a graphics card weighing 5.25 pounds with three (yes, three) 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. Now imagine this card taking up three PCI Express slots and almost sucking the life out of an 850W power supply.

That may be one reason Asus named this card after the Roman god of war. It’s probably the most powerful single graphics card we’ve tested, but that power comes at a substantial cost. You’ll need the right type of motherboard and case, too—one where you can install a three-slot-wide card that’s 12.25 inches long and 5 inches … [Read More...]

Get Gaming on an HTPC

I don’t want to watch cable TV. I don’t want to use a controller. I just want to watch 3D Blu-rays and frag people with a mouse and keyboard, all on a box that fits on my entertainment center. Is that too much to ask?

We’ve built our fair share of home theater PCs in the past, with all sorts of different use cases in mind. Our August 2010 HTPC was a stunner built for 3D, with passively cooled GPU, CPU, and PSU, as well as a four-channel CableCard tuner and Blu-ray 3D support. In … [Read More...]

It’s not pretty, but it’s gaming ready

Cybernet has been building all-in-one touch-screen PCs for hospital and medical use for years. Given the ambitious specs of the company’s new iOne-H5—a 2.93GHz Core i7-870, 8GB of memory, and ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5730 GPU—we found ourselves wondering if this long-term expertise would translate into an awesome consumer system.

The truth is that performance is pretty much the only hope Cybernet has of winning over would-be buyers. In a category that emphasizes glossy plastic curves and minimalist bezels, the iOne stands in such stark contrast to systems like HP’s TouchSmart 610 and … [Read More...]

It’s easy to build a gaming machine on a budget if you’re playing at 1650×1080 or 1920×1200, but if you’re rocking 2560×1600, you need a little more oomph

As Maximum PC senior editor Gordon Mah Ung puts it, building a budget gaming rig for a 30-inch panel is the metaphorical equivalent of slapping a Ferrari engine into a crappy Ford car. If you can afford a display that rings up north of $2,000, then why the heck are you trying to cut corners on the system you’re connecting it to?

I can’t answer that one for you. But what I … [Read More...]

AVA finds a way to mix performance and silence

In our world, performance and silence go together about as well as Aliens and Predators. Each one has its appeal, but put them together, and you generally get a turd.

That’s a fact AVADirect has set out to disprove with a PC apparently named by U.S. Army logistics command: Custom Gaming PC, Silent PC, Low-Noise Custom Computer System. Despite its funktastic name, the AVADirect PC doesn’t disappoint and seems capable of creating its own alternate reality where performance commingles harmoniously with peace and quiet.

Sure, Puget System’s virtually silent Serenity Mini … [Read More...]

Capable-but-unexciting Budget Box

You want to know a secret? Building a high-end PC on an unlimited budget ain’t that hard. You just click the “Bestest” button and add to cart.

What’s hard is building a PC on a strict budget. Do you sacrifice CPU, GPU, or storage? Do you cheap out on the case or the PSU?

So when WarFactory decided to ship us its Immortal budget box instead of the usual shoot-for-the-moon rigs we test, we thought it would be interesting to see how the more modest PC would measure up.

The Immortal can’t win any benchmark battles but … [Read More...]

So what if summer is over, the weather is still good for fishing, and AMD is hoping to reel in entry-level system builders working on a tight budget. The bait? A pair of new Fusion-powered A-series accelerated processing units (APUs), the A4-3300 and A4-3400. With the introduction of the A4-3300, the cost of entry for a desktop APU is now just $70, or at least that’s where AMD wants it to be at.

Fresh out of the factory, not a whole lot of vendors are stocked up on these new chips just yet, and the few that are have them … [Read More...]

There’s a new version of GPU-Z available for download (version 0.5.5) that now fully recognizes AMD A-Series Fusion processors. In addition, the latest build adds support for numerous videocards not previously recognized, fixes a shader count detection issue for Blackcomb (mobile AMD Cayman), adds a PowerColor hardware giveaway, and more.

Support for a dozen Nvidia GPUs were added to the latest build, including Nvidia GeForce GT 560 Ti OEM, GT 545, GT 530, GeForce GTX 580M, GT 555M GeForce 520MX, GT 520M, 510M, 305M, Quadro 5000, Quadro 4000M, and Quadro 400. On the AMD side, the list isn’t quite as … [Read More...]

AMD decided to shake things up a bit with its last major driver release of the summer, Catalyst 11.8. The new driver package integrates the chip maker’s CPU Overdrive utility into the AMD Vision Control Center, putting CPU and GPU overclocking controls at your fingertips from a central location (note that the software only supports CPU overclocking of Black Edition chips).

When you’re finished overclocking and ready to get down to the business of playing games, Catalyst 11.8 promises to deliver up to 20 percent better performance in Call of Duty Black Operations for both single- and multi-GPU setups running … [Read More...]

Just how good is this rare beast of a card?

When we took a look at the reference version of AMD’s Radeon HD 6990, we found a board that was impressive on a number of fronts, though not all the impressions were positive. The HD 6990 builds in two full Radeon HD 6970 GPUs onto a single board, each with its own 2GB of frame buffer. In our initial testing, performance looked to be very fast, but the reference board was also pretty noisy under load.

So we waited to get a shipping board from one of AMD’s many board … [Read More...]

Can we build a serviceable rig for just $340? With AMD’s Fusion APU, we’re gonna try

In past months, we’ve shown you how to build rigs for less than $1,000, and we even built a surprisingly speedy $667 PC Value Meal. But what do you do when your budget is half that? Let’s face it, not everyone has half a grand or more to spend on a new computer, and not every build has to be a tricked-out gaming rig. Sometimes you just need a second computer for the family, or an HTPC that doesn’t break the bank. Heck, sometimes … [Read More...]

Last year I wrote about Sony’s amazing VAIO Z. It was the PC I used for several months as my main work laptop and the one that was in my bag when my son was born last June. I defined the Z as “luxury computing”; it was fast, light, beautifully designed and sported features that no other laptop on the market had. To this day I rank it as one of the best PC’s I’ve ever used.

Now Sony is redefining luxury with the new version of the VAIO Z, which goes on pre-sale starting today. It’s a .66” thin, … [Read More...]

It’s clear that HP sees the value in this category. The PC maker’s new TouchSmart is sleek, polished, and is the first all-in-one we’ve ever seen to feature a subwoofer-out jack. HP makes a subtle but valid point here: The truth about these systems is that, regardless of where we set them up—kitchen, living room, garage—we find ourselves frequently using them as music stations, so why not aim for higher audio fidelity? Conveniently, HP has also integrated Monster’s (and Dr. Dre’s) Beats environment, allowing the TouchSmart 610 to pump out impressive enough sound to make people do a double-take.

HP’s … [Read More...]

What netbooks were meant to be

We’re not living so close to the cutting edge here at Maximum PC that we can’t see the utility of a no-frills, budget portable that’s capable of performing all the common day-to-day computing tasks. Whether it serves as a secondary machine for work on-the-go or as a primary PC for a school-age kid, we get it. It’s the same need that netbooks were meant to fulfill, if only they hadn’t fallen short of the mark. What netbooks taught us is that today’s common computing tasks—which include things like gaming and high-def video playback—require more … [Read More...]

Simple, affordable, quiet

NZXT’s H2 is a simple-looking case—in fact, simplicity seems to be the overall theme—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the world of PC building, simple can be good.

The H2 is an ATX mid-tower, constructed of sturdy steel. The side panels (which lack windows or adornment of any kind) are lined with acoustic-dampening foam to keep your hardware quiet. It works well for the most part. We had the case running three fans, and the addition of the side and front panels made the case noticeably quieter.

The NZXT H2 has a very simple and, … [Read More...]

When all of the walls of a system are transparent, where do you hide the cables? Answer: behind all the awesome insides

Were there a Mount Everest of PC builds, the see-through PC would likely be it. The difficulties are great, and the possibilities for failure high, but there’s nothing that gets me more excited than the opportunity to crack my knuckles and customize the lighting and electrical setup of a transparent desktop system.

The most fearsome part of this build is the acrylic case I’m using: There’s nowhere to hide any mistakes. Nor can I just stuff a mass … [Read More...]