With its launch not too far, AMD partners are busy sending their Radeon HD 6970 samples to reviews. It is inevitable then, that some would actually post pictures of those on the web ahead of launch. Some such pictures made it to HardwareLuxx.de, which shows PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 in fresh out of its retail box. The card, and the box itself, reveal quite a bit about the HD 6970. To begin with, Radeon HD 6970 (and HD 6950), are high-end single GPU graphics cards based on AMD's new "Cayman" high-end GPU. The HD 6970 is about as long as a Radeon HD 5870 (which it's intended to replace), and retains product design carried forward from the HD 6800 series graphics cards.

The HD 6970 from PowerColor sports 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, perhaps some of the memory chips are located on the reverse side of the PCB, which is why a back-plate is used to cool them. The top side of the card reveals the power connectors: one 8-pin, and a 6-pin PCI-E power; two CrossFire bridge fingers, and a tiny switch. It is rumored that this switch lets users select between two BIOS ROM chips present on the cards; one chip is programmable, and partners can store an overclocked profile, while the other is not programmable, and stores the AMD reference profile. It gives users a nice fallback in case they brick the card with a bad BIOS.

Gigabyte graced NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 570 launch with a reference design graphics card model. Carrying the model number GV-N580D5-15I-B, Gigabyte's card features factory-overclocked speeds of 772 MHz (core), 1544 MHz (CUDA cores), and 1002/4008 MHz (memory/GDDR5 effective), against reference clock speeds of 732/1464/3800 MHz. Based on the 40 nm GF110 GPU, the GeForce GTX 570 features 480 CUDA cores, and connects to 1280 MB of memory over a 320-bit GDDR5 memory interface Gigabyte's GV-N580D5-15I-B is priced at US $359.99.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced that it has renewed their patent license agreement with Elpida Memory, Inc., Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). This agreement covers Elpida's range of memory products including SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR5 DRAM.

"We are extremely pleased to have licensed another one of the top three memory companies. This agreement continues our licensing momentum and renews a winning partnership that has produced best-in-class memory solutions for customers," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "Elpida's customers now have the full benefit of licensed products using our patented innovations to enrich the consumer experience of electronic systems."

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today unveils two SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 Graphics Cards, offering unparalleled levels of price/performance to mainstream users. The SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 Graphics Card uses the non-reference cooling fan from SPARKLE, featuring 1 big size PWM fan with 92mm diameter (12mm bigger than the reference one) and directional cooling fins with the directional guidance technology, effectively creating huge of wind for the heat dissipation of GPU / Memory / MOS circuit / capacitors. The non-reference cooling fan use the quiet design to operate extremely silence.It dissipate heat up to 5% more efficiently during gameplay and enable up to 9% quieter operation than the stock fan for GeForce GTS 450 graphics card.

Internationally renowned graphics card and mainboard manufacturer MSI announces today the R6870 Twin Frozr II graphics card. It is equipped with the latest 40nm AMD Radeon HD6870 GPU, IGB GDDR5 high-speed graphics memory, and the award-winning Twin Frozr II thermal solution. As a result, the operating temperature and noise of the R6870 Twin Frozr II are reduced by 19°C and 12.8dB respectively (versus the reference design). Also, the overvoltage function from the MSI-exclusive Afterburner software further enhances the OC potential of the Barts GPU, and AMD's Eyefinity Technology provides optimal multi-display 2D/3D output for gaming, productivity and entertainment. Along with the super reliable Solid CAPs which prolong product life and enhance product stability and quality, the R6870 Twin Frozr II is the best choice ever for power users looking for graphics cards with ultimate performance and low operating temperature.

Club 3D B.V. is pleased to announce the introduction of the next generation video card based on the Bart XT chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11. The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 Overclocked Edition video card features now the AMD HD3D technology which allows you to play your favorite games in full stereo 3D with a single video card (up to 3 monitors), and enjoy with the new EyeSpeed technology to watch the latest Blu-ray movies in 3D.

Do things faster with AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology on the most demanding applications and take advantage of the Dolby True HD support for a theatre-quality experience. Now is available to you with 940 Mhz GPU Clock, 4400 Mhz GDDR5 and 1120 Stream Processors.

Colorful, the brains behind the iGame series of fully-loaded performance-thru-mainstream graphics cards is continuing to let its creativity fly. This time around, the company is working on a new GeForce GTS 450 graphics card that's "slim" in more ways than one. To begin with, the card will feature a single-slot cooling solution, next, the designers completely did away with "big" and redundant components on the PCB, and replaced them with higher-grade yet compact and less in number components. For example, while most other graphics card vendors fill up the 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus of the GeForce GTS 450 with eight 1 Gbit (128 MB) chips, with two chips sharing a 32-bit wide path, Colorful used just four higher-density memory chips. That's four 2 Gbit (256 MB) memory chips made by Hynix to achieve the same capacity, reducing board footprint, and possibly heat and energy draw.

All cylindrical capacitors are replaced by server-grade flatbed high-C POSCAP capacitors. The card uses a simple 3+1 phase VRM, driven by an ON-Semi made controller. The chokes used don't exactly sit on the PCB, rather, they're suspended in openings of the PCB, by their leads, this improves ventilation around the chokes, and reduces the size of the chokes on the obverse side, reducing the obstruction caused to the cooler. The PCB itself is well "ventilated". All free-space on the PCB is used to carve out vents for the cooler to draw in air from. Colorful did not mention when tentatively it plans to release this product.

EVGA is showing some love to the game of the day, Call of Duty: Black Ops, with a special edition GeForce GTX 580 graphics card that keeps up with the game's theme, and adds to die hard fans' collection. The EVGA GTX 580 Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition (part number: 015-P3-1583-AR) is a special package that includes a factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 580 graphics card bearing the game's theme in stickers, a game themed product box, and a game themed poster. The card doesn't, however, bundle a copy of the game itself. The GTX 580 card has factory-overclocked speeds of 797 MHz core, 1594 MHz CUDA cores, and 4050 MHz memory (GDDR5 effective), against reference speeds of 772/1544/4008 MHz. Available from EVGA store, the EVGA GTX 580 Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition is priced at $519.99, or $579.99 thanks to Newegg.com's 'unbeatable' pricing.

EVGA announced a full-fledged lineup of GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards today, consisting of an NVIDIA reference clock speed version (part number: 015-P3-1580-AR), which also serves as the base model, priced at US $499.99. This is followed by a factory-overclocked version that bears the "SuperClocked" marker (part number: 015-P3-1582-AR), carrying slightly higher clock speeds, but sticking to NVIDIA reference board and cooler design. This one is priced at $519.99. The king of the hill is the FTW Hydro Copper 2 variant, which sports top clock speeds, supported by EVGA's iconic Hydro Copper water-block (part number: 015-P3-1589-AR).

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is based on a new 40 nm GF110 core, it packs 512 CUDA cores, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory over a 384-bit memory interface. Its reference clock speeds are 772/1544/4008 MHz (core/CUDA core/memory, GDDR5 effective). For EVGA's SuperClocked variant it's upped to 797/1594/4050 MHz, and for the FTW Hydro Copper 2 Edition it's all the way up at 850/1700/4196 MHz.

NVIDIA is designing a new variant of its GeForce GTX 460 graphics processor, the GeForce GTX 460 SE. Based on the 40 nm GF104 silicon, it's positioned below the GTX 460 768 MB. It has 288 CUDA cores (6/8 streaming multiprocessors enabled, compared to 7/8 on the other GTX 460 variants), but uses the complete 256-bit wide memory interface, with GDDR5 memory. The GPU and memory are clocked at 650/1300 MHz DDR, compared to 670/1350 MHz DDR on the other GTX 460 variants. No information regarding pricing/availability is available.

Galaxy debuted a premium custom-design GeForce GTS 450 graphics card belonging to the company's new bleeding-edge factory-OC identifier, the HOF (hall of fame). The GTS 450 HOF from Galaxy uses a core clocked at no less than 1000 MHz, blazing past factory-OC levels set by the likes of Point of View (TGT-Beast @ 920 MHz); Gigabyte (WindForce XOC @ 930 MHz), Colorful (iGame @ 900 MHz), and EVGA (FTW Edition @ 930 MHz), etc.

Galaxy's card makes use of a rather simple 4+1 phase VRM to deliver power, drawing from a single 6-pin power connector, but relies on a powerful cooling solution designed by Arctic Cooling, and very low latency (0.4 ns) GDDR5 memory chips made by Samsung. The memory interface is clocked at 1025 MHz (4100 MHz GDDR5 effective), while the CUDA cores are clocked at 2000 MHz. The card was introduced to the Chinese market a little earlier this month, and is now on its way to western market. For EU, the same exact card KFA2-branded, isn't ruled out. Its pricing isn't known at the moment.

Chinese graphics card manufacturer ColorFire designed a new non-reference design AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card that that uses a stronger VRM and a Zalman VF-3000 GPU cooler. The PCB sets the red color-scheme, and the cooler keeps up with it, using a hot rod looking shroud. The card uses a 7+1 phase VRM that draws power from two 6-pin power connectors, facilitating high clock speeds. The PCB also holds two CFBI fingers, indicating the card to support 3-way and 4-way CrossFireX. Low-latency (0.5 ns) GDDR5 memory chips by Hynix are used.

The VF-3000 has some hefty credentials, it can handle very high thermal loads. The cooler makes use of a dense aluminum fin array that is ventilated by two 90 mm fans. The exact clock speeds are not known. Display connectivity includes one each of DVI, D-Sub, HDMI 1.4, and DisplayPort 1.2. Like every other HD 6850, this one packs 960 stream processors, and supports the latest graphics APIs such as DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.x. It's not known if ColorFire will market this card outside China.

SAPPHIRE Technology, the largest manufacturer and supplier worldwide of graphics solutions based on AMD technology is announcing the first products in a second generation of video cards to support the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and delivering spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects, including over multiple monitors and 3D stereoscopic displays.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series features the second generation of graphics technology from AMD designed to support all the features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. The new GPU's are built in AMD's 40nm process to deliver high performance with low power consumption. Advanced hardware features include an enhanced Tesselation unit, dedicated HDR Texture compression, multi-threaded communication with system CPU cores, embedded support for many of the DirectCompute 11 instructions, 3D stereoscopic support and HDMI 1.4a.

Barely a couple of days ahead of its launch, the first picture of the Radeon HD 6850 taken apart made its way to the internet. We were treated to the pictures of the HD 6870 PCB last week. AMD's release-grade reference design PCB is not as long as that of the HD 6870, it keeps up with the black color, and is available as either a premium 8-layer version, or a cost-effective 6-layer one. This particular one makes use of a 4+1+1 phase VRM, a CHIL-made VRM controller that might support software voltage control, power input from a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector, one CrossFire connector, and display connectivity that includes two DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors. From the information available to us from recent reports, the Radeon HD 6850 has 960 stream processors 32 ROPs, 48 TMUs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB of memory. Its core is clocked at 775 MHz, and memory at 1000 MHz (4000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

Specifications of the upcoming Radeon HD 6800 series GPUs have already been doing rounds for the last couple of days, and ChipHell.com finally managed to leak an alleged press-deck of the HD 6800 series that discloses the GPUs' specifications and some key features that AMD will introduce with this generation. What can be said looking at the slides is that AMD seems to have stepped up performance/die-size big time (up to 35% increase in performance per mm²), with some reconfiguring of key components. It also redesigned the GPUs to have up to 100% increase in tessellation performance, new image-quality enhancements, a new video acceleration engine (UVD 3), and a redesigned display IO with 2nd Gen. Eyefinity technology that can let users of standard variants drive up to six displays with a single card.

Specifications of the HD 6870 are: 1120 stream processors, 32 ROPs, 56 TMUs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB, clock speeds of 900/1050(4200) MHz core/memory(effective), and idle/max board power of 19W/151W. For the HD 6850, it's 960 stream processors, 32 ROPs, 48 TMUs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB, clock speeds of 775/1000(4000) MHz, idle/max board power of 19W/127W.

Colorful made global headlines when it unveiled the iGame GTX 460 graphics card to markets outside its niche of China and other East Asian markets. With the more affordable GeForce GTS 450, we thought it went softer with its non-reference GTS 450 graphics card that is designed appropriately for the market-segment. Now it looks like Colorful is back to an exorbitant product design, with the iGame GTS 450. This card sports similar styling to its GTX 460 cousin. The "shark-fin" cooler design that "breathes in" air for efficient ventilation is also there, but the key feature here is a design meant for overclocking.

The iGame GTS 450 makes use of a strong VRM area that makes use of a 5-phase design, with high-grade ONSEMI-made MOSFETs and server-grade NCC POSCAP capacitors, low-latency GDDR5 memory chips from Hynix, and a dual-BIOS design that is user-controllable with a switch on the rear panel. Each BIOS stores a different clock-speed profile, the first one is failsafe, sticking to reference speeds of 783/3608 MHz (core/memory); while the second one sports aggressive speeds of 900/4100 MHz. Colorful also mentions that with all the high-grade components on board, one can benefit from its overclocking capabilities that take it beyond that high-speed clock profile. Outside Asia, Colorful will release this card in Europe, the company has not finalised its price.

Sapphire is ready to launch its Radeon HD 6800 series products. As AMD's one of front-line partners, why wouldn't it be? The company will kick off its lineup with a Radeon HD 6870 model that sticks to the AMD reference design, and a Radeon HD 6850 based on an in-house design, probably marketed with the company's popular "Toxic" or "Vapor-X" brands. The Radeon HD 6870 card is compliant with the reference design, and uses reference clock speeds of 900/1050(4200) MHz (core/memory(effective memory)). It features DirectX 11 support, 1120 enhanced stream processors, 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface, and display connectivity that includes two DVI, two mini-DP 1.2, and one HDMI 1.4a. 2-way CrossFire is supported.

The Radeon HD 6850 card, on the other hand, sports an in-house design with both the PCB and the cooler. The PCB is colored in Sapphire's favourite shade of blue. The cooler looks quite muscular with a heatsink (probably making use of vapor-chamber technology) over the GPU, a 90 mm fan, and 8 mm heat pipes conveying heat to additional aluminum fin arrays. This card also reportedly sticks to reference clock speeds of 775/1000(4000) MHz, and features 960 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide interface. Display connectivity on this card is more akin to what we're used to seeing on the HD 5800 series: two DVI, one standard-size DisplayPort 1.2, and one HDMI 1.4a. Expect both these cards to be out on the 22nd. A non-reference HD 6870 later down the line from Sapphire can't be ruled out.

After a recent exposé of the XFX Radeon HD 6870, DonanimHaber scored a few pictures of its next HD 6000 series card, the XFX Radeon HD 6850. Unlike the HD 6870 card, the HD 6850 from XFX makes use of XFX' own design for both PCB and cooler. The card is shorter than the HD 6870 by a fair bit, and makes use of typical XFX styling on the cooler shroud and rear panel. The cooler seems to be a circular fan-heatsink over the GPU, it's not known whether the memory and VRM have heatsinks too. Display connectivity includes two DVI, and one each of HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2.

The card carries 960 stream cores, contradicting an older report, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. The core is clocked at 775 MHz, and memory at 1000 MHz (4 GHz GDDR5 effective). Expect it to be out on the 22nd of this month, at a highly competitive price for its performance level.

AMD's latest graphics processors is just around the corner, and one of the first of them is the Radeon HD 6800 series. The value version of it is the Radeon HD 6850, its most probable specifications have surfaced. To begin with, HD 6850 is based on AMD's new Barts GPU, built on the 40 nm process. The source mentions that the SKU will have 800 stream cores enabled, from earlier reports we're lead to believe that these stream cores are individually more complex than AMD's traditional 5D (4 simple + 1 complex) approach to unified shaders. There is a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB of memory, the card uses 5 GT/s memory chips, so the memory should be clocked around 1200 MHz (or 4800 MHz effective), if not more. The core is clocked at 775 MHz. Its FOB (freight on board) price is expected to be US $175. Power is drawn from a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector, the draw is expected to be less than 150W. Partners have the option of using a premium blower-type cooler, or a cost-effective heatsink-type cooler. The latter had been pictured a while back, posted below for reference.

AMD is close to unveiling its next-generation "Northern Islands" GPU family, which will be branded under the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series. These include two new performance-thru-extreme GPUs, namely Barts and Cayman. There's also a dual-Cayman implementation codenamed Antilles. While specifications are anyone's guess besides the little details we know about Barts and Cayman, the feature-set of the Northern Island family was communicated to AIB parts in a presentation which was leaked by the Chinese press.

To begin with, the key feature additions in Northern Islands includes a much more evolved display logic that can drive five displays simultaneously over physical outputs that include two dual-link DVI-I, one HDMI 1.4 (full-size), and two mini DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. The logic also provides you to install up to six monitors over the two DisplayPort connectors by daisy-chaining them, making use of the MultiStream feature of DP 1.2, which supports two times the data-rate of DP 1.1, and can provide very high-resolution display, or HD display with stereoscopic 3D (120 Hz). HDMI 1.4 lets you make use of Blu-ray 3D. A new video processing engine, UVD 3.0, provides GPU acceleration for MPEG-2, DivX, MVC (multi video coding), for Blu-ray 3D.

Now that AMD seems to have given the 40 nm Juniper GPU (on which are based the Radeon HD 5700 series models) a new lease of life, manufacturers can continue to get innovative with the Radeon HD 5770 GPU. One such board partner, Yeston, designed a Radeon HD 5770 X2 graphics card, which simply put, is a dual-GPU graphics accelerator that makes use of two Radeon HD 5770 GPUs, each with its own 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, that share the PCI-Express interface using a PLX-made bridge chip (perhaps the same one used on the Radeon HD 5970).

The PCB holds both GPUs on the obverse side, the PCI-Express bridge chip on the reverse side, and memory chips on both sides. A 4+1 phase VRM is used, additional power is drawn in from just one 6-pin PCI-E power connector. Both GPUs work in tandem via an internal CrossFire interface, it can pair with another Juniper-based graphics card for 3-GPU or 4-GPU CrossFireX. The duo are cooled by a large heatsink, air is circulated by two 90 mm fans. AMD reference clock speeds (for the Radeon HD 5770) of 850 MHz core, and 1200 MHz (4800 MHz GDDR5 effective) memory are used. Display connectivity includes two DVI, one HDMI, and a DisplayPort. Knowing Yeston's reach, it's not very likely that this card will be sold in the US more towards the Asian market.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, announced the Calibre X460G graphics card with Accelero cooling solution from Arctic Cooling, delivering unparalleled levels of cooling performance and gaming experience to mainstream gamers. CUDA Technology unlocks the power of the Calibre X460G Graphics Card's 336 processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks such as video transcoding. The 56 Texture Units embedded in the GF104 can dramatically improve the texture processing efficient in latest DirectX 11 games, resulting in higher fps than the competitor's products.

Tailor made to hit the gamers' sweet spot, the Calibre X460G Graphics Card delivers revolutionary levels of price/performance. With up to 4x the DirectX 11 tessellation performance of the competition, the Calibre X460G Graphics Card packs highly detailed visuals into your games - without sacrificing high frame rates. And with NVIDIA 3D Vision, PhysX, and CUDA technologies, the Calibre X460G Graphics Card powers all the incredibly realistic effects that your games can throw its way. Compared with ordinary GeForce GTX 460 graphics cards on market, the Calibre X460G Graphics Card is overclocked out of box. With 790MHz core speed, 3900MHz memory speed and 1580MHz shader clock, it has 17% performance upgrade and take mainstream gamers' DirectX 11 gaming beyond HD.

You're a sniper in the middle of a fierce firefight. You're trying to get an enemy soldier in your sites, but because he's far away, poor resolution makes it hard to lock it on him. MSI Marketing Director Sam Chern explains that the GT663, MSI's new generation gaming series laptop, comes equipped with GeForce GTX 460M (1.5GB GDDR5), nVidia's most advanced discrete graphics card to support DirectX 11. The high resolution it provides faithfully displays scenes from the battle, giving you clear shots of opponents. You can't blame your equipment anymore. Sam Chern points out that MSI already uses this series of discrete graphics cards in its powerful and stylish F series laptops which have won praise from media organizations the world over.

Internationally renowned graphics card and mainboard manufacturer MSI officially launches the N480GTX Twin Frozr II graphics card. Built on the latest 40nm manufacturing process, the N480GTX Twin Frozr II is equipped with 1536MB of high-speed GDDR5 memory. The exclusive, award-winning Twin Frozr II thermal design meets the performance and thermal demands of graphics enthusiasts.

Along with various exclusive technologies from NVIDIA such as 3D Vision Surround, PhysX, and CUDA, the N480GTX Twin Frozr II allows games to be played at the highest resolutions. The Twin Frozr II dual-fan thermal design from MSI reduces temperature by 14°C and noise by 4dB when compared to the the reference design. Without a doubt, the N480GTX Twin Frozr II is the only and best solution for superb performance, low operating temperature, and quiet performance.

Point of View the leading European manufacturer of an exclusive range NVIDIA based 3D processor boards, advanced netbooks as well as fancy touchpad computers and additional enthusiast PC products, announces today a complete product range of advanced 3D processor graphics cards based on NVIDIA's latest GeForce GTS 450 GPU with unrestricted support for PhysX, CUDA, SLI and 3D Vision.

PhysX is supporting life-like realism of collisions, movements and explosions in advanced 3D gaming. CUDA is a platform to support parallel processing, e.g. for pixel-intensive image - and video-processing. SLI supports two graphics cards running in parallel, while 3D Vision supports true 3D experience with wireless 3D glasses. POV/TGT are offering 2 models with significantly enhanced clock settings, way beyond the recommended and widely proliferated reference clock settings of 783 MHz core clock and 3608 MHz memory clock.