The new ROG MARS II picks up where previous graphics card powerhouses from ASUS ROG left off, and continues the legacy of the finest hardware for hardcore gamers. The limited-edition card is built on twin NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPUs and a mammoth 3GB of GDDR5 video memory, with a proprietary ROG design that combines extreme cooling and extensive tuning facilities that cater to the most demanding power user. It also offers colossal pixel-pushing output that is unmatched by any graphics card.

PNY Technologies, Inc. launches their all-in-one Liquid Cooled Graphics solution, now available to consumers nationwide. The new line of Liquid Cooled Graphics will debut with two options: the XLR8 Liquid Cooled GeForce GTX 580 and XLR8 Liquid Cooled GeForce GTX 580 with CPU Cooling.

PNY and Asetek, a leader in CPU thermal management, have combined forces to launch a high-end Liquid Cooled Graphics solution geared towards gaming enthusiasts. Consumers will receive a fully integrated XLR8 GeForce GTX liquid cooled graphics system, with a combination GPU/CPU cooling version available as well. Engineered with a closed loop system, and built with an Asetek sealed water cooler already attached, the PNY design offers consumers an out-of-the-box ready, simple to install and reliable product.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue of $1.02 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 ended July 31, 2011, up 5.7 percent from the prior quarter, and up 25.3 percent from $811.2 million in the same period a year earlier. On a GAAP basis, the company recorded net income of $151.6 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2012. This includes a two-cent dilutive impact from the Icera acquisition. It compares with net income of $135.2 million, or $0.22 per diluted share, in the prior quarter. In the same period a year earlier, the company had a net loss of $141.0 million, or $0.25 per diluted share.

On a non-GAAP basis -- which excludes stock-based compensation, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, other acquisition related costs, and the tax impact associated with these items -- net income was $193.5 million, or $0.32 per diluted share. That compares with net income of $165.7 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, in the prior quarter, and net income of $47.6 million, $0.08 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today unveils two new water-cooling solutions - the GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition and ZOTAC Omni for gamers that demand a water-cooled graphics card or want to upgrade their existing graphics card with water-cooling.

"As graphics processors become more powerful, greater cooling performance is a necessity which typically results in greater noise levels. To combat the heat and noise levels, water-cooling is an excellent solution," said Carsten Berger, marketing director. "By equipping the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition with a water-cooler, we were able to reduce temperatures by over 25-percent and produce lower noise levels."

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.

Here is a tasty scoop of benchmark results purported to be those of the AMD FX-8130P, the next high-end processor from the green team. The FX-8130P was paired with Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 motherboard and 4 GB of dual-channel Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000 MHz memory running at DDR3-1866 MHz. A GeForce GTX 580 handled the graphics department. The chip was clocked at 3.20 GHz (16 x 200 MHz). Testing began with benchmarks that aren't very multi-core intensive, such as Super Pi 1M, where the chip clocked in at 19.5 seconds; AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark, where L1 cache seems to be extremely fast, while L2, L3, and memory performance is a slight improvement over the last generation of Phenom II processors.

Shuttle, a world-leading PC manufacturer focused on high-performance small form factor desktops, today announced the availability of the Shuttle H7 5800G Pro and H7 5800P Pro extreme performance PC models for purchase through Shuttle's USA online shop, starting today.

Ready for gamers and enthusiasts, the Shuttle H7 5800G Pro features a 3.06GHz Intel Core i7 950 quad-core processor (up to 3.33GHz Core i7 980X Extreme Edition), NVIDIA GeForce performance graphics (up to GeForce GTX 580 or Radeon HD 6970), 4GB DDR3 memory (up to 16GB), and 500GB hard drive (upgradeable to SSD), starting at $1,299.99 MSRP.

In the wake of ASUS' ROG MATRIX GeForce GTX 580 and MSI N580GTX Lightning, EVGA is ready with its own enthusiast-grade GeForce GTX 580 designed for extreme overclocking. The EVGA GTX 580 Classified combines a strong electrical circuitry with powerful air-cooling and a feature-set designed for overclockers. To begin with, the card uses a tall PCB that draws power from one 6-pin and two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors.

The card uses a strong VRM circuitry that consists of solid-state chokes (which can't whine), direct-FETs (low RDS), and proadlizers (better power conditioning). The power connectors are fused to prevent surges from damaging anything, there are consolidated voltage measurement points, LEDs are used to indicate power status of each power domain (NVVDD, FBVDD, and PEXVDD). The card also features two BIOS ROMs that are selectable by a switch. One stores an overclocked profile, and the other stores a failsafe reference speed profile.

PNY Technologies, Inc. ("PNY"), a global leader in flash memory cards, USB flash drives, solid state drives, High Speed HDMI cables, computer memory upgrade modules, as well as consumer and professional graphics cards, today announced the debut of an innovative product line of Liquid Cooled Graphics Cards. PNY's new Liquid Cooled Graphics solution will be showcased at E3 2011 from now until June 9th.

PNY and Asetek, a leader in CPU thermal management, have combined forces to launch a high-end Liquid Cooled Graphics solution geared towards gaming enthusiasts. Consumers will receive a fully integrated XLR8 GeForce GTX liquid cooled graphics system, with a combination GPU/CPU cooling version available as well. Engineered with a closed loop system, and built with an Asetek sealed water cooler already attached, the PNY design offers consumers an out-of-the-box ready, simple to install and reliable product.

Continuing the success of its popular ROG MATRIX Series graphics cards, ASUS today launches the ROG MATRIX GTX 580 Series. Based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU, the ROG MATRIX GTX 580 Series combines a dual-fan DirectCU II thermal design and 19-phase Super Alloy Power components with instant hardware overclocking tools; TweakIt, ProbeIt and an innovative Safe Mode button. Together, with the new GPU Tweak software overclocking utility, both gamers and overclockers can now gain an undeniable performance advantage over the competition.

Amidst all the Computex fanfare, NVIDIA released its rather silent update to the GeForce software suite, with GeForce 275.33 WHQL. The driver includes all the updates of GeForce 275.27 BETA. A performance-drop issue found on The Witcher 2 played on 275.27 BETA, was fixed. Aside from that, a number of performance improvements are carried forward from 275.27 BETA, and released in the WHQL-signed 275.33. These are specific to GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 560, and provide performance improvements by as much as 15% in some cases.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 275.33 WHQL

A list of performance improvements follows.

ASUS, a global leader in the new digital era, today announced a number of exciting new products for high-performance gaming PCs to further expand its Republic of Gamers (ROG) range. Established five years ago, ROG is committed to developing the ultimate high-performance hardware.

"The ROG philosophy is based on the core ideals of class-leading performance, innovative user controls and gamer-focused design," said ASUS Vice President and GM of Worldwide Sales, Jackie Hsu. The products announced today not only hold true to these ideals, but also introduce a host of new innovations that push high-end PC performance to even greater extremes.

While between the GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 6970, the former is clearly the faster graphics card, the two share a disputed lead over each other in their dual-GPU avatars, GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990, attributed to the HD 6990 sustaining clock speeds closer to those on its single-GPU implementation, and a better electrical design. While NVIDIA is fixing the electricals on a revised PCB design scheduled for release in the weeks to come, companies like ASUS are wasting no time in designing their own PCBs that can let the two NVIDIA GF110 GPUs sustain clock speeds identical to those on the single-GPU GTX 580. This would pose serious competition to the HD 6990. To ward that off, PowerColor is working on a new Radeon HD 6970 X2 graphics card, which has two AMD Cayman GPUs clocked on par with single-GPU HD 6970, and having the same overclocking headroom.

The new card from PowerColor is not just an overclocked HD 6990, but also has the overclocking headroom of the HD 6970. Further, unlike the HD 6990, it uses Lucid Hydra technology. The PLX-made, AMD-branded PCI-Express bridge chip is replaced by a LucidLogix-made bridge chip that gives each GPU PCI-Express 2.0 x16 bandwidth. Users can run the two GPUs in either AMD CrossFire (with Hydra features disabled), or enable Lucid Hydra Engine features, and let the two GPUs work in tandem with any other graphics card installed in the system, that uses GPUs of any make and generation.

The Republic of Gamers MARS II, detailed earlier, is a new custom dual-GF110 based graphics card in the works at ASUS. Here are some of its first pictures, revealing a monstrosity that's about as long as a Radeon HD 5970, a couple of inches higher, and three slots thick. Its cooler sticks to the black+red color scheme in use with ASUS ROG products for a while now, and uses an intricate cutout design.

The shroud suspends two 120 mm high-sweep fans that blow air on to two heatsinks with highly dense aluminum fin arrays to which heat is fed by copper heat pipes. The card draws power from three 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. The card uses two NVIDIA GF110 GPUs with the same core configuration and clock profile as GeForce GTX 580, effectively making MARS II a dual-GTX 580, which also provides the overclocking headroom of a GTX 580, something impossible on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590.

Point of View the leading European manufacturer of an exclusive range NVIDIA based 3D processor graphics cards, advanced netbooks as well as Tegra tablet computers and additional enthusiast PC products, announces today that the factory over clocked POV/TGT GeForce GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged already started shipping into the European e-tail channel.

The hand selected POV/TGT GeForce GTX 3GB 580 Ultra Charged is of highest quality and tuned by TGT in Germany to feature rock solid stability even beyond the documented clock settings of 841 MHz (plus) core clock, 1682 MHz (plus) shader clock and 4104 MHz memory clock.

When ASUS first set out to build the MARS, a dual-GeForce GTX 285 graphics card, people thought the designers were crazy. NVIDIA could barely get the two 55 nm G200b GPUs on GeForce GTX 295 to run at GTX 285 specifications of 240 shaders and 512-bit GDDR3 each, and instead ran them with 448-bit wide GDDR3 memory interface, and lower clocks. ASUS managed to back two GPUs with insanely strong VRM and cooling, to achieve a dual-GPU graphics card that was more than just a GTX 295 overclocked. ASUS is back on the drawing boards with MARS II, a new dual-GPU graphics card that runs two GF110 GPUs in the same exact config as on GeForce GTX 580, perhaps with clock speeds higher than those of GTX 580.

The GeForce GTX 590 runs two GF110 GPUs with all CUDA cores and the complete width of the memory bus enabled, but the GPUs and memory are clocked significantly lower at 607 MHz core, 1214 MHz CUDA cores, and 3.42 GHz memory; while the single-GPU GTX 580 runs at 772 MHz core, 1544 MHz CUDA cores, and 4.00 GHz memory. MARS II also aims to get over the various design pitfalls of GTX 590 that made voltage-assisted overclocking practically impossible on air-cooling. To do this, MARS II will make use of a massive 19-phase VRM with Super Alloy chokes. To cool the beast, ASUS will put to use the expertise it gathered over time with its DirectCu series video card coolers. The new cooler will provide uniform cooling to both GPUs. More details, particularly about the when the card will be released, are awaited.

MSI is "pushing the limits" with trying to come up with super-dooper model names for its top-end factory-overclocked graphics cards. Until now, the "Lightning" model name has come to be known as MSI's highest factory-overclocked. MSI has a Lightning edition of its NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics card carrying 832/1664/4200 MHz clock speeds (core/shader/mem effective), but now feels that the Twin Frozr III and the VRM can push it further up. Enter the MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition. The new card is said to push the out-of-the-box clock speeds further up. To look at, the Xtreme Edition doesn't look much different, other than the blue fans and black shroud. The company is also working on a highly-overclocked GeForce GTX 560 (non-Ti) graphics card with a dual-fan cooler.

EVGA released a 3 GB (3072 MB) variant of its top of the line single-GPU graphics card, the EVGA GTX 580 FTW HydroCopper 2. It significantly lower clock speeds than the original 1.5 GB variant, of 772 MHz GPU, 1544 MHz CUDA cores, and 1002 MHz (4008 MHz effective) memory, against the 1.5 GB variant's 850/1700/4196 MHz (core/CUDA cores/memory effective). The card comes with a Swiftech-made EVGA HydroCopper 2 full-coverage water block pre-fitted, along with an EVGA GTX 580 backplate. The water block makes the card truly single slot, with the company replacing the double-slot bracket with a single slot one. The 3 GB EVGA GTX 580 FTW HydroCopper 2 is priced at US $739.99, a $40 premium over the 1.5 GB variant.

Without making too much noise, EVGA released a new custom-design graphics cards based on the GeForce GTX 580 and GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPUs; the EVGA GTX 580 DS SuperClocked and GTX 560 Ti DS SuperClocked. Both cards use a dual-fan ventilated cooler that makes use of a large, dense aluminum fin heatsink to which heat is fed by heat pipes. The GTX 580 DS SuperClocked comes with clock speeds of 797/1594/4050 MHz (core/CUDA cores/memory effective), while the GTX 560 Ti DS SC comes with 900/1800/4212 MHz speeds. Both cards also use custom design PCBs, the GTX 580 model uses a high-flow backplate. The GTX 560 Ti DS SC is priced at US $219, and the GTX 580 model at $519.

Water-cooling solution brand Asetek, which is popular with the OEMs, demonstrated a prototype GPU water-cooling solution for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. The prototype uses an off-the-shelf GTX 580 card branded by PNY (doesn't necessarily mean that Asetek is designing this for PNY). The cooler could be to be a pre-assembled GPU water block loop that replaces the aluminum channel heatsink in the reference NVIDIA cooler. The NVIDIA reference blower is retained to cool other components such as memory and VRM, probably at low speeds.

Asetek put its GTX 580 prototype to test, by overclocking the PNY GTX 580 Enthusiast Edition to 995 MHz core, 1846 MHz CUDA cores, and 1100 MHz (4.40 GHz effective) memory. At these speeds, the GPU was able to score 1285 points at average framerate of 51 FPS in Unigine Heaven 2.0 benchmark. Watch the video embedded after the break for details.

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.

Known for coming up with innovative new high-end non-reference graphics cards for overclocking, ZOTAC is treating the GeForce GTX 580 GPU to a strong VRM and cooling to aim to be every overclocker's desire. To begin with, the card uses a strong 18-phase VRM to power the GTX 580. Power is drawn from two 8-pin power connectors, and is conditioned by the VRM that occupies a large part of the PCB including the rear portion and a top portion that's protruding above the full-height limit. The VRM uses high-grade MOSFETs, server-class capacitors, and proadlizers to condition power. The source notes that the VRM can handle up to 500W load.

To cool the beast, there are two heatsinks, first is the component heatsink that is spread across the length of the card, cooling VRM and memory; and the primary heatsink, which is a massive aluminum fin array to which heat is fed by six 6 mm thick heat pipes. The heatsink is ventilated by two 120 mm fans. The card is overclocked out of the box, with the core running at 850 MHz, 1700 MHz CUDA cores, and 1100 MHz (4.40 GHz effective) memory. Display connectivity includes two DVI and one each of HDMI and DisplayPort. You can use two connectors at a time. There's no info on pricing and availability, though ZOTAC is known for releasing such specialty products in Asian markets only.

NVIDIA today released its first WHQL-signed 270 Series GeForce software suite. The package provides the latest driver software for GeForce discrete, integrated, and notebook GPUs, ION GPUs, GeForce HDMI audio, and the latest stable releases of NVIDIA PhysX, and NVIDIA 3DVision. Version 270.61 WHQL packs official support for the recently released GeForce GTX 590, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560 Ti, supermassive performance increases (such as 516% in Dragon Age 2 (GTX 580 SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF Very High, SSAO on)) specific to GeForce 400 and 500 series; and of course, a stable version of NVIDIA's driver auto-update software.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 270.61 WHQL.

A list of changes follows.

Zalman is making changes to its VF3000F GPU fan-heatsink, to give it compatibility with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 and GTX 580. The heatsink is largely unchanged from the Fermi-ready one introduced back in September 2010, with only a few minor compatibility tweaks. The new variant still measures 239 (L) x 98 (W) x 51 (H) mm, weighing 430 g. It uses two green LED-illuminated 92 mm fans that spin at 1400-3000 RPM, featuring EBR bearing.

The VF300F is essentially a large aluminum fin array to which heat is conveyed by five 6 mm thick copper heat pipes. The heat pipes converge at a large copper base. The heatsink is ventilated by the two 92 mm fans, and is topped off with a green chrome cooler shroud. A syringe of ZM-STG2 TIM is bundled. The new VF3000F is expected to be priced on par with the older model, €40 - €45.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer, today introduces the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP2! Edition - its fastest single-GPU graphics card. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP2! Edition is designed to amplify cooling performance and gaming at extreme high-definition resolutions.

A custom high-performance heat-pipe heatsink enables the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP2! Edition to stay cool and whisper-quiet while dual orange 92mm fans add a stylish ZOTAC touch to create an enthusiast-grade graphics card that combines performance and style in a single 2.5-slot graphics card.