Here are some key bits of information concerning the upcoming GeForce GTX 680, a performance single-GPU graphics card based on the 28 nm GK104 GPU by NVIDIA. The information, at face value, is credible, because we're hearing that a large contingent of the media that finds interest in the GPU industry, is attending the Game Developers Conference, where it could interact with NVIDIA, on the sidelines. The source, however, is citing people it spoke to at CeBIT.

First, and most interesting: with some models of the GeForce 600, NVIDIA will introduce a load-based clock speed-boost feature (think: Intel Turbo Boost), which steps up clock speeds of the graphics card when subjected to heavy loads. If there's a particularly stressing 3D scene for the GPU to render, it overclocks itself, and sees the scene through. This ensures higher minimum and average frame-rates.

Even as NVIDIA is inching towards the launch of its next-generation GeForce GTX 670 Ti, it is rushing out the GeForce GTX 560 SE to stem loss in competitiveness to the Radeon HD 7770. Galaxy is readying a compact, cost-effective graphics card based on the new GPU, which is pictured below. Based on the 40 nm GF114 GPU (variant: GF114-200-KB-A1), the GTX 560 SE features 288 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 1 GB [(4x 1 Gbit)+(2x 2 Gbit)] of GDDR5 memory.

Galaxy's card uses a short PCB, its VRM area has been pushed to the front of the card, consisting of a 4+1 phase design. It draws power from two 6-pin power connectors. The card is cooled by a compact aluminum-fin heatsink to which heat is conveyed by copper heat pipes, and ventilated by a big (80 mm) fan. Chinese site QK123 put the card through a few synthetic benchmarks, measured power-draw, and OC performance. The GPU-Z screenshot reveals its reference speed.Benchmarks follow.

AMD's Radeon HD 7770 mid-range graphics card, which is slated for a little later this month, got its first public shot at 3DMark 11. The card was put through the Performance preset of the benchmark, where it scored P3535 points. The bench was driven by an Intel Core i7-3960X processor. The reviewer also took GPU-Z screenshots of this card, revealing low core temperature. Based on the 28 nm Cape Verde GPU, the HD 7700 is said to have 640 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, and 1 GB of memory over a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. It is designed for sub-$200 price points.

In its latest round of pre-launch testing of the Radeon HD 7950, DonanimHaber overclocked the GPU to match the clock speeds of the HD 7970, that's 925 MHz core, 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective) memory, from its reference clock speed of 800 MHz core, 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective), and pitted it against a Radeon HD 7970 reference and GeForce GTX 580 reference. Tests included 3DMark 11 Extreme Preset, and 3DMark Vantage Performance. At the outset these figures establish the HD 7950 to be faster than GTX 580 in the two tests. When overclocked to match the clock speeds of the HD 7970, the HD 7950 on average is 4% slower than it. In related news, DonanimHaber reports that AMD could also be working on affordable variants of the HD 7950 that come with 1536 MB of memory, on the same 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. That would probably depend on how NVIDIA's lineup stacks up against it.

Two different sources have put the Radeon HD 7950 through 3DMark 11 benchmark. The first is DonanimHaber, which put an HD 7950 clocked at 880 MHz core with 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) through Extreme preset against HD 7970 (stock) and GTX 580 (stock), where it outperformed the latter. The second is MyDrivers, which put HD 7950 stock (800/1250 MHz) and overclocked (1030/1250 MHz) through Performance preset, against HD 7970 stock, HD 6970 stock, GTX 570 (screenshots below are in the order HD 7950 stock, HD 7950 @ 1030 core 1250 mem MHz, HD 7970 stock, HD 6970 stock, and GTX 570 stock).3DMark 11 screenshots by MyDrivers follow.

So you thought the 1.26 GHz core - 6.30 GHz memory feat was quite something, considering that Sapphire already has a card in the works that does 1.33 GHz core 5.73 GHz memory out of the box? Wait till you see the numbers an overclocker for the MyDrivers community achieved. With the right voltage assistance, coupled with the right kind of cooling (liquid nitrogen), the overclocker achieved a Radeon HD 7970 overclocked speed as high as 1700 MHz core, and 2000 MHz (actual) or 8.00 GHz effective GDDR5 memory speed, churning out memory bandwidth of exactly 384 GB/s. The best part is that this wasn't a hit-and-run feat, the setup was able to run 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Vantage. The scores are pictured below. Details of the volt-mod can be found at the source.

Welcome to the first TechPowerUp news post of 2012! Read on for a couple of impressive overclocking feats with the HD 7970 graphics card.

It looks like the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 could be a bit of a dark horse and a lot more potent than its stock specifications would suggest - excellent for creating a competitive graphics card market. The reviews at stock speeds show the flagship HD 7970 to be around 10-15% faster than NVIDIA's flagship GTX 580, which doesn't seem all that impressive since the GTX 580 has been on the market for over a year now. However, what the reviews haven't really shown, is what kind of an overclocking monster the HD 7970 is. It definitely looks like AMD could have easily beaten the GTX 580 by a much bigger margin than they did, had they wanted to and it makes one wonder why they didn't.

VR-Zone have spent the New Year weekend overclocking this beast, having reached a whopping 1.26 GHz core clock speed with their HD 7970 - and decent benchmark improvements to go with it. Also, with the fan at 100%, the card never got above a very comfortable 68 degrees centigrade while running Furmark, which is amazing considering how this test is specifically designed to heat a graphics card to the max - but please see the update at the bottom of the article. The stock cooler may be noisy, but it's certainly very effective: an excellent result which will prolong the working life of the card.

Not quite two weeks ago, we reported on leaked pictures of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7770 mid-range graphics card based on the new Southern Islands architecture and listed its basic specs. Well, the leaks keep coming and bigpao007 of ChipHell has leaked more pictures with some benchmarks to go with them. The test setup consisted of an Ivy Bridge ES CPU - Core i5-3550K at 3.3Ghz and Z77 chipset-based motherboard. The driver used was the AMD Catalyst 8.940 RC2, giving the following 3DMark benchmark results:

Over the last few months, motherboard manufacturers have been raising a big hoopla over how it's important to pick their products that feature PCI Express 3.0 (Gen 3.0) slots. There was even some drama between competing motherboard manufacturers over who was first to the market with this technology, even when consumers couldn't really make use of the technology. To begin with, you needed a next-generation Ivy Bridge CPU, then you needed a compliant graphics card. Sandy Bridge-E, fortunately, formally introduced the technology, complete with motherboards and processors that support it.

GPU maker AMD wanted to be the first to be out there with a GPU that's compliant with this interface, and so one thing led to another, and VR-Zone got to set up a test-bed using Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E", ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (which allows users to change PCI-Express standard mode in the BIOS setup program, by forcing Gen 2 or Gen 1 mode), and an HD 7970, to see if running the GPU on PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 3.0 modes made any worthwhile difference. The results are in: zero, nada, zilch, sunna (zero in my language).

Futuremark today released an update for its 3DMark 11 benchmark suite that's built to put today's and tomorrow's DirectX 11 GPUs through their paces. Although this is a relatively minor update, Futuremark recommended that all existing users update to this version for reliability. It packs the following changes:

• Bullet physics library updated to version 2.79 to improve compatibility with future CPUs and GPUs.
• For most systems containing multiple GPUs, for example integrated graphics and an additional discrete graphics card, the user can now select the GPU to be tested using a new option on the Help tab.
• Improved error handling and user messages for the most common compatibility issues.
• SystemInfo component updated to version 4.5 for improved compatibility with current and future hardware.
• New "More" tab with information about other Futuremark products and services.

DOWNLOAD: 3DMark 11 v1.0.3 Update | Full Installer

Well, this is good news for PC enthusiasts. PC overclocking has become a competitive sport in recent years with various brands hosting the competitions and others also chipping in with sponsorship money. This year's event was the fourth annual MSI Master Overclocking Arena competition held in Taipei, Taiwan, with sponsorship money coming from the likes of Intel and Kingston among others. Basic competition info: sixteen teams worldwide; benchmarks used were Super PI 32M, 3DMark 11 and surprisingly, the ancient 3DMark 2001SE but it's not clear why such an old benchmark is being used; the components used are given to contestants based on a lottery system, the team picking a number corresponding to either a CPU or a complete rig. This prevents contestants from having an unfair advantage by bringing in their own heavily modified kit to press home an advantage. Imagine how much more potent a modded motherboard with beefed up voltage regulators could be? Turned out that the favourites, previous winners Romania, won the competition. The prize money was only $3000, which is paltry compared to mainstream sports, but remember that this overclocking "sport" is still very new and is very niche in nature, so isn't so unreasonable when viewed in that light. Head on over to VR-Zone for more competition details and photos.

The world-renowned motherboard and video card manufacturer MSI has officially announced the all-new AMD Llano series motherboard - A75A-G55 today. In addition to continuing the motherboard advantages of the first model A75MA-G55 and scoring P1646 points for 3DMark 11's built-in display performance record, it also displayed MSI's superb R&D strength, crossing the OC Genie II technology onto the AMD Llano platform. There are no complicated settings, and it only requires one button (step) and one second to easily boost the system's overall performance by 110%.

It is the simplest and easiest overclocking tool whether it's for beginners or advanced computer enthusiasts. In addition, different from the AMD Dual Graphics technology used by other manufacturers, the MSI A75A-G55 motherboard can even work with MSI's video card overclocking software, Afterburner, to increase performance. The overall 3D operation performance can be increased to a maximum of 390%, again showing the outstanding features and multiplied effects of MSI's motherboard and video cards.

Slides of a key presentation to Intel's partners was leaked to sections of the media, which reveal Intel's own performance testing of the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition, the top-model of the socket LGA2011 "Sandy Bridge-E" processor series. Meet the family here. In its comparison, Intel maintained the Core i7-990X Extreme Edition socket LGA1366 processor as this generation's top offering. It was pitted against the Core i7-3960X in a battery of tests that included some enthusiast favourites such as Cinebench 11.5, POV-Ray 3.7, 3DMark 11 physics, Pro-Show Gold 4.5, and some OEM favourites such as SPECint_rate base2006, SPECfp_rate base2006, and SiSoft SANDRA 2011B multimedia and memory bandwidth.

From these test results, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition is pitched to be about 47.25% faster on average, compared to Core i7-990X Extreme Edition. Intel is attributing the performance boost, apart from the normal IPC increase, to the 33% higher bandwidth thanks to the quad-channel DDR3 IMC, and the new AVX instruction set that accelerates math-heavy tasks such as encoding. The Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition is an upcoming socket LGA2011 six-core processor that is clocked at 3.30 GHz, with Turbo Boost speed of up to 3.90 GHz, with 12 threads enabled by HyperThreading technology, and 15 MB L3 cache. It will release by either late 2011 or early 2012.

Sparkle has today announced 6 upgraded version models of high-end Calibre graphics cards catering to various needs of different consumers. As Sparkle's "Global Heavyweight Strategic High-End Graphics Card Brand" and by means of remarkable R&D competence and abundant resources, Calibre not only focuses on the ultimate performance of high-end graphics cards, but also sketches out the user experience of top high-end graphics cards for consumers including product/industrial design, packaging design and after-sales service of free 3-year warranty.

With perfection in mind, Sparkle places emphasis on the product design and style of the Calibre brand. The all new Calibre range of products adopts the innovative Mono Luxury technology and introduces ultimate fashion and style with simple grandness. The top front fan cover is made of high quality matt black aluminium which adds a more elegant touch to the cold mechanical look of graphics card. In addition, the design of the back side of the card has also set a rare new record in the industry, the boldly added bottom back panel echoes with top cover design, giving a graceful feel on the whole. More importantly, the bottom back panel creates bigger cooling surface area to improve the heat transfer efficiency significantly. Its solid structure protects PC board from impacts and also prevents graphics cards from board bending which is a problem consumers are most worried about.

Armed with a Radeon HD 6550D graphics core that has 400 stream processors, 8 ROPs, and full DirectX 11 support, AMD A-Series "Llano" accelerated processing unit (APU) was tested to be the fastest integrated graphics solution to date. The tests was run by a forum-member of TweakTown community with early access to engineering samples. On the test-bed was AMD A8-3850 APU, which has four x86-64 cores clocked at 2.90 GHz, and the Radeon HD 6550D IGP with engine clock of 600 MHz. Standard dual-channel DDR3-1333 MHz memory was used, even though the APU supports faster DDR3-1866 MHz. To seat the test bed, Gigabyte A75M-UD2H was used. It's important to note here that the CPU cores were overclocked to 3.773 GHz (145.13 MHz x 26.0), with an insane core voltage of 1.52V.

The setup was put though three generations of 3DMark benchmark, covering DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11 performance. In 3DMark 06, the setup scores 10,492 points. In 3DMark Vantage, it scored P6160 (performance preset, validation). In 3DMark 11, it scored P1591 (performance preset, validation). More details can be read in the screenshots.

Futuremark today released an update to 3DMark 11, a popular benchmark suite for DirectX 11 graphics hardware. The new version 1.02 brings with it an updated Bullet Physics library that supports new and upcoming CPUs and GPUs, and an updated SystemInfo component that can detect new hardware. Basic Edition users now get access to display scaling controls. There are a number of feature improvements for Professional and Advanced editions, including fixed wireframe mode for the Combined test with NVIDIA hardware, and load/Save result dialog remembering the last used folder. With Professional Edition, the correct watermark is always displayed when benchmark is launched from command line; and command line loop switch with single test now loops without reloading. 3DMark 11 1.02 is available both as a 17 MB patch that updates previous versions to 1.02, and the full 295 MB installer.DOWNLOAD 3DMark 11 v1.xx to v1.02 patch | 3DMark 11 v1.02 installer

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced that a PC equipped with its Dominator GT ultra-high performance DDR3 memory was used to set new world records with the 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Vantage benchmarks. Well-known overclockers Vince "K|ngp|n" Lucido and Illya "TiN" Tsemenko posted list-topping scores of P24347 in 3DMark 11 and P79364 in 3DMark Vantage.

The hardware used included an EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard, dual Intel Xeon X5690 CPUs, four custom-modified EVGA GeForce GTX 580 GPUs, and three 2GB Corsair Dominator GT GTX2 DDR3 memory modules. A total of seven Kingpin Cooling liquid nitrogen pots were used to cool the CPUs, GPUs, and the Intel 5520 chipset.

Slated for Tuesday, 19th April, AMD new mainstream DirectX 11 compliant graphics cards, the Radeon HD 6670, and HD 6570, have been drawing some attention as two of the last products to launch in the HD 6000 series. It will probably only be with the HD 7000 series slated for who knows when, that AMD will release new GPUs. DonanimHaber put a HD 6670 and two HD 6570 graphics cards, along with a GeForce GT 440 (NVIDIA's fastest card in the segment), through 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11, in performance and extreme presets. The Radeons emerged faster overall. The HD 6670 and HD 6570 are designed for price points below $100.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today released SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 1GB/2GB DDR3 Graphics Card, providing unparalleled levels of price/performance to a ideal product for mainstream users.

SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 1GB/2GB DDR3 Graphics Card features SPARKLE exclusive designed Sun Flower Cooling Fan, which replaces NVIDIA reference cooling fans on ordinary GeForce GTS 450 graphics cards. This exclusively designed Sun Flower Cooling Fan uses SPARKLE patented technology known as "aluminum extrusion production processing", transferring heat from the bottom of the radiator to the cooling fin efficiently and fast. It also uses a "pressure casting" process, to make the entire cooling radiator at once, this process can not only brings sufficient cooling fins, but also bring heat from the bottom to the fins rapidly and efficiently, thereby improving the overall thermal efficiency, coupled with the design of solid thermal conductivity, heat from centre bottom can be brought even quickly to fins.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today presents The SPARKLE GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card, -- the latest product of SPARKLE GTX 500 Series. It delivers performance upgrade for mainstream DX11 gamers. Using the advanced Fermi 2.0 architecture from NVIDIA, the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card upgrades core algorithms such as texture filtering and Z-axis compression over Fermi 1.0 architecture, so that the corresponding instruction operation efficiency is greatly enhanced. With 40nm manufacturing process improvements, now the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card features higher core clock than GeForce GTS 450 graphics cards. With the two improvements, the Performance/Watt ratio of the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card is 20% better over the GeForce GTS 450 graphics cards.

It looks like EVGA isn't waiting for GeForce GTX 590, and is releasing its own dual-GPU graphics card to challenge Radeon HD 6990. Being released about 12 days ahead of GTX 590, EVGA's new GeForce GTX 460 2WIN could be a tad bit late to the market, considering it was first shown to the world back in January, at this year's CES event. The EVGA GTX 460 2WIN is a dual-GPU graphics card that uses two GeForce GTX 460 GPUs with 1 GB of memory each, for an SLI on a stick solution.

The EVGA GTX 460 2WIN (2WIN sounds like "twin"), uses clock speeds of 700 MHz core, and 900 MHz (3600 MHz GDDR5 effective) memory. Each GF104 chip has 336 CUDA cores enabled, totaling the CUDA core count to 672. The card is cooled by an in-house cooler by EVGA, it uses a large heatsink that is ventilated by three 80 mm fans. Power is drawn from two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. Display outputs include three DVI and one mini-HDMI, you can run a 3-display NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround setup with just one of these cards, without needing a second one.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today proudly introduced the Calibre X570 graphics card , delivering intense cooling performance and the broadest set of features for gamers who demand the best. With the excellent cooling solution from Accelero Xtreme, the Calibre X570 Graphics Card brings ultimate DX11 performance with OC function. This offers opportunities for enthusiasts and anyone intent on more hardcore applications to tap their full, powerful potential. Compared to reference GeForce GTX 570 graphics cards on market, the the Calibre X570 Graphics Card is overclocked out of box, it boosts the core, shader and memory clocks significantly to 772MHz, 1544MHz and 4212MHz, bringing better performance in the latest DX11 games.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today announced The SPARKLE GeForce GT 440 Graphics Cards for home theater enthusiasts and casual gamers, which have everything users need to spoil users senses. The SPARKLE GeForce GT 440 Graphics Cards adopt the Fermi architecture which accelerate your digital life. Designed with unparalleled levels of price/performance, the SPARKLE GeForce GT 440 Graphics Cards are the perfect GPU for LAN party pwning.The SPARKLE GeForce GT 440 Graphics Cards dominates the competition and offers amazing game realism on the latest DirectX 11 titles like Civilization V. Equipped with the latest industry leading technologies including NVIDIA 3D Vision, NVIDIA PhysX, high performance NVIDIA GeForce drivers, and more, the SPARKLE GeForce GT 440 Graphics Cards have everything you need to spoil your senses.

Futuremark today introduced the first major update to 3DMark 11, the company's latest 3D graphics benchmark. The update introduces some critical stability improvements that's general to all variants of 3DMark 11, and a few fixes specific to some variants. To begin with, the 3DMark v1.01 fixed a bug with the SystemInfo component that prevents the Physics and Combined tests from running; crashes related to absence of DirectX 11 API and .NET; an updated SystemInfo component, etc.

DOWNLOAD: 3DMark 11 v1.01 Update

A complete list of changes follows:

The pursuit of extreme performance is always the most important consideration for top power users when selecting computer components, and competing manufactures always strive to be the best in the flagship product market. Because of this, world-renowned video card and mother board manufacturer Micro-Star Intl Co. Ltd., in collaboration with graphics processing unit manufacturer AMD, is proud to announce two brand-new R6900-series video card today. The new MSI R6970-2PM2D2GD5 and R6950-2PM2D2GD5 graphics cards, based on AMD's flagship HD6900 GPU , includes an industry-leading 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 large capacity video memory buffer, satisfying the enthusiast's thirst for high-resolution graphics performance. Additionally, with specially marked packages users can receive a free Advanced Version of 3DMark11, allowing the full DirectX 11 experience to be enjoyed. You can also upload your results onto their official website and compare your results against users from around the world.