Galaxy Microsystems Ltd. a leading global manufacturer of graphics accelerators, today announced the immediate availability of the new Galaxy GTX 460 series of graphics cards featuring the industry's first detachable fan cooling technology and DirectX 11 support for today's hottest games.

"Our new Galaxy GTX 460 graphics cards offer out of this world realism and performance at a price that is simply amazing." said Shane Vance, US Sales for Galaxy. "And the new detachable fan makes it even easier to keep your card in peak condition".

NVIDIA today announced the latest addition to its Fermi-class of graphics processing units (GPUs), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 -- which delivers a great DX11 gaming experience and is priced right at the market's $199 sweet spot.

Built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation, GeForce GTX 460 GPUs deliver monster tessellation performance with up to 4x tessellation performance over competing GPUs. The GTX 460 brings the ultimate next-generation DX11 gaming experience to a new price segment, enabling more gamers than ever to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.

Galaxy displayed a new GeForce GTX 480 graphics card that uses non-reference design PCB and cooling. The unique selling point here is a cooler that Galaxy claims to be superior than the reference, making use of the Vapor-chamber technology for quickly transferring heat off the GPU to the heatsink. It also features a very Gundam-styled cooler shroud the company has been toying with on several of its recent designs. The GeForce GTX 480 packs 480 CUDA cores, and 1536 MB of memory across a 384-bit GDDR5 interface. Clock speeds are not known at this point.

While every NVIDIA GPU since GeForce 8 series, with over 256 MB of memory supports the CUDA GPU compute technology, and with it PhysX GPU acceleration, the prospect of dedicated GPUs for computing PhysX interests many, especially enthusiasts, after NVIDIA stopped production of the PhysX processor from erstwhile Ageia. EVGA first devised a graphics card that has a high-end GPU processing graphics, and a mainstream GPU dedicated to PhysX processing, with its GeForce GTX 275 Co-op. Building on the same principle, Galaxy designed an enthusiast-grade graphics card that uses an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 for DirectX 11 compliant graphics processing, while its sidekick on board is a 40 nm GeForce GT 240 GPU.

The GeForce GTX 480 sticks to specifications, complete with 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide, while the GT 240 has its own 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. Both GPUs share the system bus over an NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip, which gives both GPUs a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 link. The GTX 480 GPU packs 480 CUDA cores, and features the latest GPU technologies, including 3D Vision surround. Since it is independent from the GT 240, the GTX 480 can pair with three more of its kind for 4-way SLI, without affecting the functionality of the GT 240 in any way.

Galaxy is finally breaking ground on graphics cards with two GF100 "Fermi" GPUs from NVIDIA, with the company displaying one such design sample at the ongoing Computex event. The dual-Fermi board uses essentially the same design NVIDIA has been using for generations of its dual-GPU cards, involving an internal SLI between two GPUs, which connect to the system bus via an nForce 200 bridge chip, and are Quad SLI capable.

The power conditioning and distribution on this design consists of two sets of 4+1 phase VRM, the card draws power from two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. The GPUs carry the marking "GF100-030-A3", which indicates that it has the configuration of GeForce GTX 465, and since we count 8 memory chips per GPU system with no traces indicative of the other two memory chips per GPU sitting on their own memory channels, on the reverse side of the PCB, it is likely that the GPUs have a 256-bit wide memory interface. Galaxy, however, calls the card GTX 470 Dual. Output connectivity includes 3 DVI-D, with a small air-vent. It's likely that the cooler Galaxy designs will dissipate hot air around the graphics card, rather than out through the rear-panel.

Galaxy is working on a single-slot graphics card based on the GF100 in its GeForce GTX 470 version. If that didn't boggle your mind, the fact that it's not another card with a water-block, but a single-piece air-cooled card surely will. Enter the Galaxy GTX 470 model known as "Katana" in Japan and "Razor" in other markets. The PCB appears to be a little over 10 inches long, looks-wise makes use of Galaxy's Blue-silver-copper scheme from its other non-reference GTX 470 GC card.

The single-slot air cooler covers the entire length of the PCB, with a fan that draws air from both sides of the PCB, and has grills that reveal the cooler's internal network of copper air-channels, and a slab of copper that is spread across most of the PCB's area that holds the GPU and memory. The cooler makes use of vapour-chamber technology. The card draws power from 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors. It is 4-way SLI capable. It is expected that the card comes with at least NVIDIA reference clock speeds, all other specifications remain the same: 448 CUDA cores, 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory across 320-bit interface, and connectivity which includes two DVI-D and a mini HDMI. It is expected to deck up Galaxy's Computex booth.

Galaxy is ready with its 100% non-reference design graphics card based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 GPU, the Galaxy GTX 470 GC Version. The card makes use of Galaxy engineering with both the PCB and cooler designs. The card features a blue PCB, which is 0.5 inch shorter than the reference design (at 9 inches), and pushes the two 6-pin power connectors to the rear-end of the card. The cooling assembly uses a large aluminum fin array cooling all vital parts, covered with a silvery plastic found on action figures. Galaxy innovated a little with the fan, which can be partly detached from the rest of the cooler to help clean it and the heatsink under it.

The card is overclocked out of the box, with speeds of 625 MHz / 1250 MHz / 837 or 3348 MHz (effective), for the core, shader, and memory, respectively. Like every other GTX 470 based card, it is DirectX 11 compliant, and has 448 CUDA cores, 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 320-bit wide interface, and is 2/3/4-way SLI capable. Display connectivity includes two DVI-D, and HDMI with integrated audio. A test by the source shows that with this cooling solution, the GTX 470 GC Version manages to keep the GPU at around 88 degrees Celsius with Furmark load. It is expected that the card will be available in the US as early as by tomorrow.

Whereas NVIDIA is inching towards releasing its DirectX compliant GF100 GPU from which it has high expectations, some of its partners don't seem to give up on the two-generation old G92. Galaxy has almost finished designing a graphics card that uses two GeForce GTS 250 GPUs on one PCB, in an SLI on card setup. It refers to the card as "DualCore GTS250", and consists of a long blue PCB which holds two G92-426 GPUs (G92-426 GPUs are used on low-power variants of the GTS 250).

Each GPU is wired to 1 GB of GDDR3 memory across its 256-bit wide memory interface (total 2 GB on board). The two GPUs are connected to the system over an nForce 200 BR-03 bridge chip. The multi-GPU system is contained within the board, with no SLI fingers for expansion, even though G92 chips are Quad SLI capable.

After AMD completed its mid-thru-high end product launches under its DirectX 11 compliant Radeon HD 5000 series, it looks like NVIDIA eased up restrictions for partners to design high-end dual-GPU accelerators. ASUS had launched a limited-edition accelerator making use of two GeForce GTX 285 GPUs, but limited quantities, and other factors which we're not aware of, may have influenced the company to sell it for over $1000 a piece. Galaxy, for one, is second in line, with a single-PCB dual-GPU graphics accelerator, which it reportedly plans to release before Christmas.

For now, the card exists only in its drawings and CAD designs. The PCB layout drawing shows the card have a layout similar to the single-PCB GeForce GTX 295. With space for 16 memory chips on the obverse side and a backplate in the CAD design, it is deduced that the card has 512-bit memory interfaces per GPU, and hence could be a dual GeForce GTX 285 accelerator, much like the ASUS MARS dual-285. The cooler looks to have independent coolers over each GPU with circular heatsinks that have radially-projecting fins, and a baseplate to cool other components. Galaxy wants this to be a Christmas special. Here's hoping it doesn't draw inspiration from the ASUS MARS as far as pricing is concerned.

Constantly innovating new graphics cards designs, Galaxy pushed the limits of engineering by coming up with the first GeForce GTX 260 with a single-slot air cooler. To achieve this, the company designed its own long cooler based on the Vapor Chamber (VC) technology. A VC plate sits on top of the GPU and the aluminum base-plate of the cooler (to cool the memory) On top of the VC plate is a dense copper channel array through which air directed by the blower passes. There is a separate heatsink over the VRM area, which cools off under the air-flow from the main cooler.

The entire set of heatsinks is neatly packed under an aluminum shroud. The card packs standard features of the GeForce GTX 260, including 216 shader processors, 896 MB of GDDR3 memory across a 448-bit memory interface, 3-way SLI support, and support for DirectX 10. Connectivity options include one each of DVI-D, HDMI, and S-Video/composite. It draws power from two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. Availability and pricing of this card is not known just as yet.

NVIDIA partner Galaxy announced that some of the newest batches of its GeForce GTS 250 accelerator will be bundling a company-branded pair of anachrome diopter glasses dubbed Galaxy 3D Vision Discover. The glasses are compatible with NVIDIA's stereoscopic GeForce 3D Vision technology, and lets you play 3D games with depth perception. Galaxy advertises these glasses as a "free" inclusion, so it shouldn't affect the price of the graphics accelerator. Considering durable anachrome glasses can cost anywhere over $20, and NVIDIA's 3D Vision kit over $150, this offer looks impressive. Sadly it's for a limited time period.

Galaxy is preparing yet another GeForce GTS 250 SKU, this one labeled "Cool Edition", owing to its design that focuses on the GPU cooler. The card uses the usual Galaxy shade of blue colour. The PCB holds a 5-phase VRM for the GPU and memory, and is cooled by dedicated heatsink. The center of attraction is the GPU cooler, which looks elliptical. From its central GPU contact base made of copper, arise several radially-projecting, forked aluminum fins. Nested in a plastic shroud is an 80 mm fan for active cooling, while the memory cools directly under its airflow.

This card comes in two variants based on memory size: 512 MB and 1 GB. It uses fairly standard clock speeds of 702 MHz (core), and 1000 MHz (memory). Output connectors include DVI-D, D-Sub, and HDMI with provision for audio routing from your sound-card. The card can pair with two more of its kind (or GPU at least), for 3-way SLI. Expect standard pricing when this hits stores soon.

Galaxy is readying another variant of the GeForce 9600 GT Low Power Edition. Prior to this, the company had launched the 9600 GT Low Power, Low Profile (LPLP edition), and the 9600 GT Green Edition. Unlike the two, the new variant uses a full-height PCB, and a cooler made by Cooler Master, that doesn't span into more than one expansion slot.

The card draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot, and uses a 2+1 phase power design. Under the cooler is a 55 nm G94 GPU, with clock speeds of 600/1625 MHz (core/shader). The 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory is passively cooled under the cooler's air-flow. It is clocked at 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR). Output is care of DVI, D-Sub, and audio-relayed HDMI connectors. It's pricing and availability isn't disclosed yet.

We saw an interesting graphics card at Galaxy today. Their latest
9800 GT uses a mini-HDMI connector instead of a normal sized one.

Graphics card major and NVIDIA partner Galaxy has come up with a new graphics card cooler design it calls "fan-card". The cooler may feature in some of the high-end graphics accelerators the company is working on. The cooler's design revolves around mounting three powerful fans onto a graphics card without straining its PCB (preventing gradual bending) caused due to the fans' weight and vibration, while also providing greater control.

The card's main heatsink remains fixed on to its PCB, while this card is installed right under it (or over, depending on which way the motherboard is oriented in a case (BTX-style)). The fan card holds three 80 mm LED-lit fans that push greater volumes of air than dual-slot cooling solutions with three fans the company has designed cards with do. The fan-card has openings behind the card that directs its air-flow onto the graphics card's exposed heatsink. The fan-card draws its power from a 4-pin Molex input, and also has a speed controller knob available to the user from the back of the case.

In related news, Galaxy published a picture of its upcoming single-PCB GeForce GTX 295 dual-GPU accelerator, while confirming a few specifications. The card is 267 mm (10.5 inches) long, and features two G200b GPUs with 240 shader processors each. A total of 1792 MB of GDDR3 memory is available. The board TDP is rated at 289W, and carries the reference NVIDIA clock speeds of 576/1242/2016 MHz (core/shader/memory).

Graphics major Galaxy pulled out another GeForce GTS 250 accelerator from its hat, this time, laying design emphasis on the cooler and memory. The new cooler design, as claimed by the company, keeps temperatures up to 5 °C cooler than what a reference-design cooler would manage. To bring about electrical stability, Galaxy used a 5-phase power circuit. Its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory is made of high-performance 0.8 ns DRAM chips made by Samsung. This, again as the company claims, offers memory overclocking headroom till 1300 MHz (2600 MHz DDR), from its stock speed of 1100 MHz (2200 MHz DDR). Its clock speeds are in tune with the reference speeds: 738/1836/2200 MHz (core/shader/memory). Its price is yet to be known.

Earlier this week, news on NVIDIA selling keychains with real GPUs in them, made waves. The company has these keychains up in its online store that caters to the North American region, for US $9.99. It looks like the ploy to sell or give away GPU keychains is bigger than we thought it was. Galaxy, one of NVIDIA's largest board partners, has its own GPU keychain up for grabs, which it plans to sell in Mainland China, United States, and Japan. Currently Galaxy isn't selling it, but instead using it as a company souvenir in events held by the company. Perhaps the most interesting part of this keychain is that the GPU in it is not G98. Expreview notes that the GPU has the same area as the G94 GPU on the company's GeForce 9600 GT Low Profile Edition. We'll leave the guesswork to you.

GALAXY, well known for its highly customized video cards, has once again developed a GeForce GTX 275 card that feels a bit different than stock cards. The new GALAXY GeForce GTX 275 comes with a huge cooler, developed by Arctic Cooling. That's the AC Accelero EXTREME with three 80 mm PWM fans, 5 heatpipes and 107 fins, enough to cool the overclocked to 650 MHz core, 1475 MHz shader and 1200 MHz memory card and even sufficient for further overclocking. The card also uses self designed PCB and elements desing with digital PWM and digital MOSFETs. It has two BIOS chips and is bundled with GALAXY's Xtreme Tuner software for BIOS recovery, fan speed, and overclocking adjustments. The memory capacity is 896 MB GDDR3. There's no public information on pricing and availability date.

Galaxy made an addition to the increasing number of low-power GeForce 9800 GT graphics cards taking shape by several NVIDIA partners. The company introduced 512 MB and 1 GB variants. Specs-wise, the cards retain the GPU and memory configurations (112 SP, 256-bit memory interface), while cutting down on clock-speeds to 550/900 MHz (core/memory), from the reference speeds of 600/900 MHz.

The company uses the 55 nm G92 GPU (G92-283-B1), which has a smaller thermal footprint in comparison to its 65 nm variant. The result: cards that do not require auxillary power from the 6-pin PCI-E connector. The 1 GB variant comes with a full-coverage single-slot cooler, while the 512 MB one comes with a simpler radial cooler. Both cards are SLI capable. Display outputs provided on the card include DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI.

As NVIDIA partners attempt to cash in on the good sales of GeForce GTX 260, by lining up numerous custom-designed models based on the said GPU, Galaxy has added yet another to its lineup: a GeForce GTX 260 accelerator with twice the amount of memory as its reference design, all 1792 MB of it. Galaxy worked on two areas of this card: cooling and memory. Towards memory, the company chose to use the high-density Samsung K4J10324QD-HJ1A memory chip, that has a capacity of 1 Gb (128 MB). 14 such chips populate the 448-bit GDDR3 memory bus to dole out a total 1792 MB of memory capacity.

Towards cooling, Galaxy used a custom GPU cooler that spans across the length of the card. Its GPU contact block gives out five heatpipes that direct heat to a dense array of alumium fins. Three fans are employed to cool the card. The airflow passively cools the memory, the 4+1 phase VRM area has a heatsink of its own, so does the NVIO2 processor. Expreview put the card through a series of test to bring out its performance increment over the 896 MB GeForce GTX 260. The games World in Conflict and Company of Heroes saw significant increments in average frame-rates.

NVIDIA graphics partner GALAXY Microsystems is in preparation of a new custom designed GeForce GTX 285 video card with 2 GB of onboard GDDR3 (0.8ns) memory. The tricked out card will feature Arctic Cooling's Accelero EXTREME triple fan heatsink and stock clock speeds that can be changed at any time - 648 MHz core/ 1476 MHz shader/ 2484 MHz memory. The card comes with a digital PWM design whereas the reference design comes with 6 phase analog power. Two BIOS chips are also presented on the blue PCB of the card. It is also compatible with GALAXY's Xtreme Tuner Utility software, that allows users to manipulate things like BIOS recovery, fan speed, and clock settings.

Pushing up the ante with innovation, Galaxy has come up with a new GeForce GTX 285 variant. No, it's not another cost-saving design, but rather the other way round: a mix of high-grade components. There are a few features which makes Galaxy's new card stand out:

• A 4+2 phase digital PWM power design as opposed to the 6-phase analog design on reference NVIDIA PCB. The VRM controller supports the necessary interface for software voltage control
• Redundant BIOS, two EEPROM chips on the PCB, possible BIOS profile switching feature
• Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME GTX cooling

The listed features put this card a few notches above even the reference design. Galaxy may announce this card in the weeks to come.

Galaxy finally pushed its self-designed GeForce GTX 260+ graphics card to retail. The card surfaced earlier this month, in a pre-release appearance with a completely different GPU cooler (read here). The pre-release iteration featured PC-Cooler HP4-1226. As we found out during the course of the discussion, the said cooler was too large to be sold with the card, as it would probably span across four or more expansion slots.

Galaxy made the release-grade card a bit more retail-friendly by using a slightly modified Accelero Twin-Turbo cooler made by Arctic Cooling. The new cooler keeps the footprint of this card within three expansion slots. The Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ features factory-overclocked parameters, of 625/1350/1050 MHz (core/shader/memory), a 7% overclock over the reference speeds. It uses the 55 nm G200b core, with 216 stream processors and 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. Interestingly, the card bundles Galaxy's Xtreme Tuner overclocking software, as against the Magic Panel software the pre-release iteration was spotted with, by Chinese media.

Galaxy today announced a new video-card management software, the Xtreme Tuner. Unlike other manufacturers coming up with different bits of software to tune the graphics card's running-state parameters and BIOS manipulation, Galaxy's software provides a consolidated interface for monitoring the various parameters of graphics cards and controlling clock-speeds, fan-speeds, BIOS manipulation and BIOS flashing from within Windows.

The software becomes especially handy when all controls are present in one page. It is noted of this software to support all current NVIDIA GeForce-based graphics cards, with the exception of BIOS flashing being exclusive to some Galaxy-made graphics cards. This is attributed to Galaxy using a dual-BIOS design with some of its cards. Incidentally, Galaxy has another software utility called Magic Panel, which now seems to be exclusive for Galaxy products in the Asian markets. The interface of the Xtreme Tuner can be indexed in the picture below as: 1. Graphics cards fan speed control area, 2. Graphics card's Core/ Memory/ shader clock control area, 3. Operation Monitor, 4. BIOS Flashing interface, and 5. Application settings.

DOWNLOAD: Galaxy Xtreme Tuner

The GeForce 9600 GT Green Edition is NVIDIA's newest SKU that is based on an energy-efficient variant of the GeForce 9600 GT graphics processor. The SKU maintains the G94 GPU design, except for that it is built on the newer 55 nm silicon process (model: G94-350-B1), that is expected to add to its energy efficiency, also that the GPU makes do with a lower core voltage of around 1.0V from its original 1.1V figure on the 65 nm variant. At its default voltage setting the GPU uses reference clock speeds of 625/1625/900 MHz (core/shader/memory).

Galaxy designed its first accelerator based on the new GPU, to which it added its own set of innovations. The card uses a jumper to allow users to manually set the GPU voltage. At its default state (pins 1-2 short), the GPU operates at 1.0V, but when pins 2-3 are short, the GPU voltage enters a "pressurized state" (increases). When the jumper is removed (neither pins short), the GPU voltage plummets to 0.8V. The Galaxy accelerator needs the 6-pin PCI-E power connector for operation. The GPU is cooled by a classic Zalman VF703 Al cooler, while the memory is passively cooled under its air-flow.