MSI's iconic Hydrogen series of graphics cards are making a comeback. According to the latest Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) listings, we have information about the latest addition to MSI's lineup of graphics cards. For starters, MSI has filled EEC reports about its upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 LHR variants, which feature an updated GA106-302 GPU. The new cards will carry the LHR name as a part of the official product name, to be easily separated from non-LHR variants, so buyers know exactly what model they are getting.

Additionally, MSI is seemingly making a comeback of its Hydrogen series. Hydrogen lineup used to be popular with GeForce GTX 580 Hydrogen card, which delivered awesome overclocking performance enabled by a water block strapped onto the card. If MSI brings the series back, it will come in the form of the GeForce RTX 3090 Hydrogen model, which could represent the highest-end RTX 3090 design from the company. It remains to be seen what MSI does with it, and if we are getting it at all, so we have to wait for more information.

NVIDIA's flagship single-GPU graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680, achieved performance leadership over AMD's Radeon HD 7970, and forced a price-cut, however, a section of the community feels that availability is an issue with it. According to NVIDIA, availability is attributed to sales, and not lack of volumes. At an annual investors' meeting with the company's top-brass, NVIDIA released a slide which depicts GeForce GTX 680 as having 60% higher sales than GeForce GTX 580, six weeks following their respective launches.

There is one cosmetic inaccuracy in the graph, though. GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 580 are labeled "GT". One inference that can be drawn out of the graph is that NVIDIA is seeing some success in putting the 28 nm silicon fabrication process to use, despite the GTX 680 being one of the first chips built on it. In comparison, the GTX 580 arrived when the 40 nm process achieved a higher level of maturity. There seems to be a genuinely high demand for the GTX 680.

NVIDIA reportedly stopped production of GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards. Launched in November, 2010, the GeForce GTX 580 had been the fastest single-GPU graphics card for a year, before AMD responded with Radeon HD 7900 series. With launch of the GeForce GTX 680, and volumes of 28 nm chip production at TSMC looking positive, GeForce GTX 580 served its purpose. NVIDIA can stop production and leave remaining inventories get gradually digested by the market. NVIDIA had already stopped production of GeForce GTX 590.

To pave the way for the GeForce GTX 680, which will arrive later this month in small but sizable quantities, with wide availability in the months to come, NVIDIA is cutting the prices of its GeForce GTX 580 graphics card. The GF110-based behemoth of 2011, will now start at 339.8 EUR, according to European price-aggregators such as Geizhals.at. The new price makes GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB cheaper than the Radeon HD 7950, and having a slightly improved price-performance ratio. The 3 GB variants of GeForce GTX 580 are priced similar to the HD 7950. The GTX 570 starts at 249 EUR.

One year after its debut, Epic Games' Samaritan Tech Demo is back at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) and it's there to tease the power of NVIDIA's Kepler 28 nm GPU. At last year's GDC Samaritan, which is based on Unreal Engine 3, was running in real-time on three GeForce GTX 580 cards set in SLI. This year Epic is showing off the demo running on a single NVIDIA Kepler graphics card.

NVIDIA has reportedly named the top desktop graphics card based on its upcoming 28 nm GK104 GPU GeForce GTX 670 Ti. The GK104 is a spiritual-successor to GF114 (which in-turn, to GF104), and NVIDIA is eager to get this part out fast, so it could consolidate on the performance thru high-end segment, before it's certain that it won't face issues with its foundry partners, so it could go ahead and launch parts based on the GK110. Interestingly, NVIDIA chose to name the highest-performing GK104-based SKU GTX 670 Ti and not GTX 660 Ti, probably indicating that this part will perform competitively with high-end parts out in the market today, including AMD's recently-launched Radeon HD 7000 series.

Speaking of performance, sources told SweClockers that they expect the GeForce GTX 670 Ti to outperform GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950. Its specifications doing rounds on the web suggest it has a radically different number-crunching machinery. Industry analyst DigiTimes recently pinned launches of GeForce Kepler family to begin in April, though we're hearing there will be substantial activity surrounding these GPUs in March.

Eurocom, a developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable Notebooks, high performance Mobile Workstations and Mobile Servers, introduced the EUROCOM Panther 4.0 Mobile Workstation, Mobile Server and Gaming Station powered by Intel's newest line of 6 core, 12 thread, 130W desktop Intel Core i7-3960X Processor Extreme edition based on the Intel X79 Express Chipset Sandy Bridge-E architecture.

EUROCOM PANTHER 4.0 provides workstation-calibre performance, powerful graphics capabilities and high performance storage with four physical storage drives, two being SATA 600, two being SATA 300 and RAID 0/1/5/10. Super powerful Intel Core i7, i7 Extreme and next generation Intel Xeon processors are supported for high-end computing wherever work takes place.

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.

Here are the first pictures of ASUS' premium DirectCu II graphics card designed around AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GPU. The design is based on giving the GPU a powerful cooling solution, backed by a custom-design PCB. Since its cooling solution spans across three expansion slots, one of the three expansion slot brackets is productively used to provide additional display connectivity. To begin with, the PCB uses a 10+1+1 ASUS Digi+ VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It supports heavy overclocking, and provides several voltage tuning features.

A common metal heatsink spans along the length of the card, making contact with VRM and memory components. On top of this sits the DirectCu II heatsink. This heatsink uses a large aluminum fin-stack heatsink to which heat from the GPU is conveyed by six heat-pipes, which make direct contact with it. The heatsink itself isn't very thick, but what makes the card span across three slots are its two 100 mm fans. The GPU is clocked out of the box at 1000 MHz (vs. 925 MHz reference), and 5.60 GHz/1400 MHz actual memory (vs. 5.50 GHz/1375 MHz actual reference).

ORIGIN PC starts off 2012 with three major announcements. The award-winning GENESIS desktop has been overclocked to a record 5.7GHz with the exclusive new ORIGIN PC Phase Change cooling system. The Phase Change cooling system will be available in late Q1. ORIGIN PC launches free U.S. based lifetime 24/7 technical support on all desktops and laptops starting today. The award winning EON17-S and EON15-S laptops both receive an upgrade with the new exclusive ORIGIN PC design.

In Japan, Epson does more than selling printing and imaging devices. It sells pre-built PCs. Its latest creation is the Endeavor Pro 750, a gaming PC based on Intel Sandy Bridge-E platform. The Endeavor Pro 750 is housed in an airy aluminum-built case. The case has two permanently-fixed handles on top, and its 3.5/2.5-inch drive bay stack can be access from the front-panel, to give it some hot-plugging capabilities. The front-panel also has two USB 3.0 ports next to audio I/O. It's the insides that are more interesting.

The Endeavor Pro 750 is driven by an Intel Core i7-3930K, though an i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor can be opted for, the CPU is cooled by a custom air-cooler. The processor sits on a custom OEM motherboard labelled Epson, but in all likelihood, it may have been built by any of the major motherboard ODMs, such as Foxconn. There are a variety of memory options, starting from 4 GB, all the way up to 32 GB, with DDR3-1600 MHz being the standard memory type. The base model ships with an AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics card, but it can be configured all the way up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. Storage options, too, are configurable, with various HDD RAID and SSD (Intel 510 series) available.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

Outed last week, the highly-customized GeForce GTX 580 Classified Ultra from EVGA has become available for purchase, 'coincidentally' just before AMD launches the Radeon HD 7970.

This new, GF110-powered model features 512 CUDA Cores, GPU/shader clocks of 900/1800 MHz (772/1544 MHz stock), a 384-bit memory interface, 3 GB of GDDR5 memory set to 4212 MHz (4008 MHz), a 14+3 phase power design, a dual-slot cooler, 4-way SLI and EVBot support, one NEC Proadlizer, Super Low ESR SP-Cap capacitors, and high frequency 3 MHz shielded inductors.

The GeForce GTX 580 Classified Ultra costs $619.99 and can be found @ Newegg.

Ahead of every major GPU launch, both NVIDIA and AMD give out a document to reviewers known as Reviewer's Guide, in which both provide guidelines (suggestions, not instructions), to reviewers to ensure new GPUs are given a fair testing. In such documents, the two often also give out their own performance expectations from the GPUs they're launching, in which they compare the new GPUs to either previous-generation GPUs from their own brand, or from the competitors'. Apparently such a performance comparison between the upcoming Radeon HD 7970 and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, probably part of such a document, got leaked to the internet, which 3DCenter.org re-posted. The first picture below, is a blurry screenshot of a graph in which the two GPUs are compared along a variety of tests, at a resolution of 2560 x 1600. A Tweakers.net community member recreated that graph in Excel, using that data (second picture below).

A couple of things here are worth noting. Reviewer guide performance numbers are almost always exaggerated, so if reviewers get performance results lower than 'normal', they find it abnormal, and re-test. It's an established practice both GPUs vendors follow. Next, AMD Radeon GPUs are traditionally good at 2560 x 1600. For that matter, the performance gap between even the Radeon HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 580 narrows a bit at that resolution.

KFA2, the European premium NVIDIA brand, announced today the GTX 580 MDT X4 EX OC, the latest in the line of MDT series multi-display performance gaming graphics cards. The KFA2 GeForce GTX 580 MDT X4 is designed to be the flagship product within our MDT range, offering unparalleled performance in the latest DirectX 11 games in full 1080p.

Whilst the KFA2 GeForce 580 MDT X4 supports up to 4 monitors for multi-display, its main feature includes 'Virtual single monitor mode' which shares one desktop across 3 screens, producing surround HD game play (50Mhz compatible monitors needed for this feature). This myriad of features and unrivaled performance is complimented by a KFA2 custom designed LED chassis and high efficiency triple fan cooling solution.

To spice up the holidays of Nvidia fans, EVGA has developed a couple of 'new' GeForce GTX 580 Classified cards, two 'Ultra' models which come with GPU/shader/memory clocks of 900/1800/4212 MHz (previously-released GTX 580 Classified cards topped out at 855/1710/4212 MHz).

Beside the ultra-high clocks mentioned, EVGA's latest offerings feature 512 CUDA Cores, a 384-bit memory interface, 3 GB of GDDR5 memory, 4-way SLI and EVBot support, a custom PCB, a 14+3 phase power design, one NEC Proadlizer, Super Low ESR SP-Cap capacitors, and high frequency 3 MHz shielded inductors.

The air-cooled GeForce GTX 580 Classified Ultra costs $619.99 while the water-cooled GeForce GTX 580 Classified Ultra Hydro Copper has a price tag of $749.99. Neither card is shipping yet but hopefully they will become available very soon.

AMD is on course to releasing its latest "Southern Islands" GPU family, and a fleet of desktop graphics card SKUs based on it, which will be led by a new high-performance GPU, codenamed "Tahiti", which will make up Radeon HD 7900 series; followed by performance GPU "Pitcairn", on which HD 7800 series will be based; "Thames" and "Lombok" making up the rest of the lineup. According to a report by DonanimHaber, HD 7970 (working name) is expected to be competitive with (or outperform) GeForce GTX 580, and priced at US $499. The HD 7950 will be competitive with (again, or outperform) GeForce GTX 570, being priced at US $399.

Things get interesting with Pitcairn, which is the successor of "Barts". This performance GPU is designed for sweet-spot SKUs, such as HD 7870 and HD 7850, which will be competitive with GeForce GTX 560 Ti / GTX 560, and priced at US $299 and $199, respectively. The Radeon HD 7670 will be particularly expensive, priced at US $179, followed by HD 7650 at $119. Further, it was reported that HD 7970 and HD 7950 will have a standard memory size of 3 GB.

Here are some of the first pictures of an unreleased custom design GeForce GTX 580 graphics card by Galaxy, given out by the good folks at HardOCP. It may look like yet another GTX 580 graphics card with a beefy cooling solution, but it's a little more than that. To begin with, it has a redone display logic that gives it a total resolution of 5760 x 1080. This means that three 1920 x 1080 displays can be connected to it without needing another card. Its display outputs include three mini-HDMI and a full-size DisplayPort. Display management is backed by Galaxy's in-house EZY display setting software.

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA SLI technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology -- which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC -- and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world's fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers -- including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year's hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.

Eurocom Corporation (www.eurocom.com), a developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable Notebooks, high performance Mobile Workstations and Mobile Servers is now offering a Mobile Workstation capable of supporting NVIDIA 3D Vision with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M and 560M GPUs.

Eurocom offers 3D Vision support on the Neptune Mobile Workstation through a built in-emitter, 3D active shutter technology, a 120Hz display and supported NVIDIA graphics cards. The EUROCOM Neptune comes complete with an NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit which consists of one pair of 3D Vision glasses and USB cables. Each lens of the glasses operates at 60Hz, and alternate to create a 120Hz 3-dimensional experience.

EVGA released a new Batman: Arkham City-themed GeForce GTX 580 graphics card. Carrying the model number 015-P3-1582-A1, this card carries NVIDIA clock speeds of 797/1594/4050 MHz (core/CUDA cores/memory effective). Apart from the game-themed cooler shroud sticker and a themed box, we can't really see what's new with this product. Perhaps it has a voucher for a copy of the game?

Based on the 40 nm GF100 graphics processor, GeForce GTX 580 is the single fastest GPU on the planet. It packs 512 CUDA cores, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory bus. The GTX 580 also packs features Batman: Arkham City can benefit from, such as PhysX. Available on American retailer Newegg.com, the EVGA GTX 580 Batman: Arkham City Edition is priced at $529.99. At $30 over the base model GTX 580, it has got to pack a copy of the game.

The EVGA GTX 580 Classified 3072MB, previously announced on TechPowerUp, is now available to buy according to this forum post by an EVGA product manager - in limited quantities, of course. According to Gaming Blend, this card can amazingly reach a doubled 1.6GHz core clock when overclocked using waterblocks - GTX 590 eat your heart out! This card also has custom designed VRMs to take all the extra power that the card will use, which means that they won't squeal when the card is overclocked hard and also when running intensive applications such as Folding@Home.
UPDATE: Turns out that 1.6GHz overclock was actually achieved using LN2, not water. To confirm it, click the EVGA promo link after the jump and see the extreme cooling section video, or just skip directly to the YouTube video here.

Eurocom Corporation, a leading developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable notebooks, high performance mobile workstations and mobile servers is adding new high performance Intel Core i7 Processors to its line of High Performance Notebooks.

"Eurocom is always striving to offer the best available technology, and in our mind the second generation Intel Core i7 Mobile Processors will greatly improve our Business and Gaming Notebooks, through increased efficiency and performance" said Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

TechPowerUp today announced the latest version of GPU-Z, the graphics hardware information and diagnostic utility trusted by the PC enthusiast community at large. Version 0.5.5 comes with support for the latest graphics processors, makes the interface a little more accessible to users, and improves stability and reliability.

To begin with, GPU-Z 0.5.5 adds full support for AMD A-Series accelerated processing units (the Radeon GPU component embedded in them), a load of new and lesser-known GPUs from NVIDIA including GeForce GT 560 Ti OEM, GT 545, GT 530, GeForce GTX 580M, GT 555M, GeForce 520MX, GT 520M, 410M, 305M, Quadro 5000, Quadro 4000M, Quadro 400; from AMD including Radeon HD 6290, Radeon E6760 & E4690, FirePro V8800, FirePro V3700, FirePro 2460 (FireMV); and the recently launched ASUS ROG MARS II, which probably got Santa's inbox flooded by now.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.5 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.5 ASUS ROG Edition

Digital Storm, the predominant name in computer system integration and engineering, proudly debuts its latest innovation in the quest to design the most superior PC on the planet: the Cryo-TEC Cooling System. Based on the Sub-Zero Liquid Chilled system developed by Digital Storm that chills liquid below 0°C, this redesigned version is smaller, more powerful and utilizes direct contact heat dissipation technology.

The new and improved Cryo-TEC cooling system from Digital Storm is a radical leap forward in cooling technology. The Cryo-TEC system utilizes the same thermo-electric technology as Digital Storm's previous generation Sub-Zero Liquid Chilled system; however, the Cryo-TEC cooler now incorporates new direct contact heat dissipation technology. By placing the processor in direct contact with the thermo-electric cold plate, the Cryo-TEC system is more efficient in lowering processor temperatures below 0°C and increasing overclocking performance. The Cryo-TEC cooling system also includes a control board designed by Digital Storm engineers that automatically optimizes cooling power and efficiency.