Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for its extreme visual graphics technology development, today announced the new-generation WinFast GTX 580 graphics card. This newcomer's fastest DX11 GPU is designed for performance per watt and lower noise, offering you the maximum resolution and quality settings. The upcoming flagship card that will be based on the GF110 GPU features an ultra-high core clock speed of up to 772MHz and its processor clock ends up at 1544MHz. With 512 cores and 1536MB of GDDR5 memory, paired up with a 384-bit interface, it satisfies the graphics needs of the most demanding gamers. WinFast GTX 580 especially emphasizes lower power consumption and noise while the GPU is executing data computing. According to these benchmarks, the WinFast GTX 580 is 10% to 15% faster than the GTX 480. For the acoustics comparison, it is quieter than GTX 285, at only 47 dBA.

NVIDIA today announced the latest consumer GPU based on the NVIDIA Fermi architecture, the GeForce GTX 580, which has been reengineered from the transistor-level up to deliver increased power efficiency and performance over previous generation products.

The GeForce GTX 580 GPU delivers the world's fastest performance for DirectX 11 (DX11) games, and support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, Surround, PhysX, SLI and CUDA technologies, further entrenching GeForce-based PCs as the most robust gaming platforms in the world. The combination of an innovative vapor chamber thermal solution and new architectural enhancements make the GTX 580 the fastest and quietest GPU in its class, delivering an increase of up to 35 percent in performance per watti, and performance that is up to 30 percent faster than the original GeForce GTX 480.

Next-generation gaming has arrived. A GPU with performance at twice the speed for your online games is available right now. Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for its extreme visual graphics technology development, today announced the arrival of the overclocking version of WinFast GTS 450 Extreme GDDR5 1GB graphics card. Much like a race car in appearance, it delivers the best and coolest performance in comparison to others. The new product can lower GPU temperature by 10%-15% and be overclocked to up to 850 MHz.

Compared to the same level of product in the previous generation, WinFast GTS 450 Extreme dominates the competition with more than 2x the DirectX 11 geometry processing power for unparalleled game realism. Built on next-generation GeForce Fermi architecture, it is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce 106 GPU and 192 cores. The new release is specially designed to effectively dissipate heat away from the graphics card. The WinFast GTS 450 Extreme can quickly transfer heat away from the GPU and lower the temperature by a whopping 12ºC in comparison to reference designs.

Leadtek has decided to make its SpursEngine video processor more palatable to production houses and studios, by multiplying its performance by four. SpursEngine accelerates video encoding/decoding performance of full HD MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 videos many times over compared to the CPU, it uses the CELL Broadband Engine architecture, the same which is used in supercomputers, PlayStation 3, and HDTVs in various forms. The WinFast HPCC1111 from Leadtek uses four SpursEngine chips on a single board, that connects to the system over a PCIe bridge chip, through PCI-Express x4. With the new HPCC1111, one can encode full HD MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 in real time, or even faster than real time, if the rest of the hardware permits. SpursEngine has already made its way to single-chip cards and mobile workstations. Scheduled to release in Japan this September, the HPCC1111 is expected to cost JP ¥99,000 (US $1,175).

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.

Bigfoot Networks, the networking technology company behind the Killer line of gaming networks cards, today announced Killer 2100, its next-generation network interface card (NIC) for online gaming. Killer 2100 combines elements of speed, intelligence and control demanded by gamers with major throughput and latency enhancements and an innovative and easy-to-use software interface. Killer 2100 epitomizes blazing speed and maximum performance as the fastest Gigabit NIC on the planet for gamers.

At the heart of Killer 2100 is Bigfoot Networks' groundbreaking Game Networking DNA technology, comprised of a dedicated network processor (NPU), Advanced Game Detect, Windows stack bypass, Visual Bandwidth Control and other optimizations designed to deliver the best online gaming experience possible. Game Networking DNA accelerates latency-sensitive game traffic while reducing stuttering, freezing and other symptoms of lag, giving online gamers a competitive edge.

Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for its extreme visual graphics technology development, today revealed the latest WinFast Killer Xeno Pro, the only network card designed to provide smoother, more responsive online game play. Leadtek will distribute the WinFast Killer Xeno Pro through online and retail channels in Taiwan, Korea and Japan, improving the competitiveness of millions of online gamers.

The WinFast Killer Xeno Pro gaming network card delivers superior online performance by putting intelligent networking technology inside gamers' PCs. Its dedicated Network Processing Unit (NPU) and innovative architecture offload network traffic, bypassing the Microsoft Windows networking stack and prioritizing competing bandwidth demands from applications such as Web browsing, music streaming, software downloads and voice chat. Its Game Detect technology identifies, prioritizes and accelerates game traffic, giving players a competitive edge in the latest online games, from shooters to MMOs. Intelligent Bandwidth Control keeps the game running smoothly and lets you allocate bandwidth to other applications so you can do more while you game.

Leadteak is one of the many NVIDIA partners ready with its offering of GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards, pictured ahead of its launch. As with every other GeForce 400 series SKU in the making, these cards stick to NVIDIA's reference design. The Leadtek GeForce GTX 480 is DirectX 11 compliant, has 480 CUDA cores, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit memory interface, while the GeForce GTX 470 has 448 CUDA cores, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 320-bit memory interface. Both are 3-way SLI capable. The two are expected to be launched later this week.

Leadtek designed a new simple, low-cost graphics accelerator based on the GeForce GTS 250 graphics processor. The GTS 250 v2 comes in a compact, yet fully capable form-factor. It has a short PCB, a GPU cooler that spans its entire length, and clock speeds that adhere to NVIDIA's reference speeds, at 738/2200 MHz (core/memory), and comes in 512 MB and 1 GB variants. Its cooler comprises of a GPU block from which three aluminum heatpipes convey heat to a dense aluminum fin array, with a fan nested in the center. The card's VRM and memory come with heatsinks, and are cooled under the fan's airflow. The card requires a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. The card is 3-way SLI capable with other GeForce GTS 250 accelerators. Leadtek may price these on the lower side of the spectrum, where they provide good value.

Professional videographers face continuous pressure to deliver high quality work under tight deadlines. To ease that burden and enable greater levels of creativity, NVIDIA today announced the availability of GPU-accelerated plug-in solutions for Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) users, optimized to run on a wide range of NVIDIA Quadro graphics solutions.

NVIDIA is offering exclusive discounts of up to 50 percent on plug-ins from Elemental Technologies, Boris FX, Red Giant Software and proDAD when purchased at NVIDIA.com.

Among the plug-ins being offered is the NVIDIA CUDA architecture-based Elemental Accelerator 2.0 for Windows from Elemental Technologies (MSRP $499 discounted to $249). By leveraging the CUDA parallel computing architecture, this new plug-in offloads H.264 video encoding to the Quadro GPU, enabling Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 users to experience a performance increase of up to 11X when compared to CPU-only video encoders. Now available on a range of Quadro GPUs, Elemental Accelerator 2.0 supports the creation of Blu-ray DVDs and web content using Flash. In addition, NVIDIA and Elemental Technologies are bringing accelerated H.264 video encoding capabilities to Mac Pro users for the first time with the new Elemental Accelerator 1.2 for Mac OS X running on the Quadro FX 4800 for Mac.

Leadtek has been toying with the idea of bringing Toshiba's SpursEngine HD video encoder to the masses. The company earlier unveiled one of the first consumer add-on cards to sell this technology, and now has an external video encoder unit called Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100. The device connects to a host PC using PCI-Express cabling. It weighs 194x45x90 mm, and 0.7 kg (1.54 lbs).

SpursEngine is a video encoding concept originally conceived by Toshiba, which uses a modified CELL Broadband Engine chip to handle HD video on some of its premium laptops. It is said to accelerate PEG4-AVC/H.264, MPEG-2 video encoding, although performance figures are yet to surface. The SpursEngine processor makes use of 128 MB of Rambus XDR memory. The pricing and availability for HPVC1100 are yet to be known.

Leadtek Research Inc., exclusive workstation partner of NVIDIA in APAC, today announced the advent of its most powerful Quadro professional solution family yet. It includes the FX 3800, FX 1800, FX 580 and FX 380. Along with previously launched FX 5800 and FX 4800, the latest Quadro family offers top to bottom solutions on the shelves to satisfy the most demanding customers in different industries.

LEADTEK Research Inc., world acclaimed for its extreme visual graphics leading brand technology, proudly announces the WinFast GTS 250, a new performance level graphics card. Based on the Best-in-class NVIDIA graphics development technology, this graphics card comes with high-speed 1024MB 256bit GDDR3 memory providing ultra smooth 3D rendering and a more realistic gaming presentation. The WinFast GTS 250 also features a special cooling design "shield fan-sink". This specially designed 2-slots fan-sink can efficiently reduces heat from GPU by creating smooth air flows on the top and side of the processor. Moreover, this fan-sink can maintain a low fan-sink noise level especially in full-throttle operating mode. All these features ensure that the WinFast GTS 250 delivers users a great performance and gaming experience.

LEADTEK Research Inc., world acclaimed for its extremevisual graphics leading brand technology, proudly announces its latest WinFast GTX 260 EXTREME+ with a new graphics card packaging design. Based on the Best-in-class NVIDIA GTX 260 chipsets, this thoroughbred graphics card delivers advanced performance with the best cooling silent fansink. Its overclocking capability is sure to bring users a fantasy visual effect. Together with the launch of the graphics card, Leadtek debuts a new packaging design. The latter replaces the former robots with a series of top speed cars as the key visual. This original concept aims to vaunt Leadtek's corporate spirit of "high quality & speedy performance" that gives users an altogether new visual impression.

WinFast GTX 260 EXTREME+ is powered up with 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture and enables the rendering of multiple, true-to-life characters in complex and dynamic virtual worlds. In addition, the latest parallel computing architecture with massive independent processing cores enables GTX 260 EXTREME+ to execute the most intricate non-gaming applications via CUDA language. This includes acceleration of the art design application - science simulation application or transcoding of video to a personal video player up to 7X faster than the CPU.

Our friends at Fudzilla had a little news bit a few days ago, about the lay-off of 450 employees at Leadtek. The company has now reacted and I had the following statement with the title Statement to the Untrue Internet Rumor "Leadtek Fires 450 in Taiwan" in my mailbox this morning:

With its strong and healthy operation, Leadtek Research Inc. does not fire 450 employees as rumor said. The partnership of Leadtek and NVIDIA remains solid, as Leadtek is still the exclusive partner of NVIDIA Quadro series in APAC, except in Japan.

To clarify the false internet rumor, "…Leadtek, recently fired 450 people from its operation…Leadtek was not in NVIDIA's top six list and this might be the partial reason….", Leadtek states the facts here :

1. With 378 employees at the moment, Leadtek is in a good and strong condition, no future down-sizing plan ongoing.

2. Leadtek NVIDIA Quadro series is leading in Asia-Pacific, and NVIDIA has stated that Leadtek is still its direct account and the exclusive distributor of NVIDIA Quadro series in APAC region (except in Japan).

The rumor of firing 450 people and the loosing partnership with NVIDIA is apparently false and exaggerating.

Rising to the expectations of international gamers, Leadtek Research Inc., a global front runner in extreme visual graphics technology development, announces the upgrade of its graphics card, WinFast GTX 260 EXTREME+. Based on the NVIDIA GTX 260 chipsets, the enthusiastic graphics card has been upgraded to 216 stream processors and ready to bring users into an impressive new era.

Featuring the powerful GeForce GTX 260 GPU with upgraded 216 stream processors, WinFast GTX 260 EXTREME+ has a scorching GPU clock speed of 602MHz and GDDR3 896MB memory. GTX 260 EXTREME+ can power extreme HD gaming and entertainment, and also represent an effective shift of everyday processing tasks from the CPU to the GPU.

The term "SpursEngine" might be a little new for some of us. It is the HD video processor Toshiba used in its Qosmio G55 and F40 high-end media notebooks, where the company chose to call it "Toshiba Quad-Core HD processor". The SpursEngine tag comes in, where the processor uses Toshiba's proprietary technology to accelerate graphics and HD video across multiple heads. The chip itself is derived from the CELL Broadband Engine (CBE), the central processor that drives the Sony Playstation 3 gaming console. Toshiba made modifications to the design, by reducing the number of synergistic processing elements (dubbed cores) to 4, with the common PowerPC thread arbiter remaining. It is specialized for video processing.

Toshiba has already formed collaborations with Leadtek and Thomson, the two companies would be the first to come out with cards based on this infant video processor. As such, these are not stand-alone video-cards as of now (they lack output logic), they stand to demonstrate the GPUs design methodology in a PC environment, so the companies could gain foothold. The cards could serve as HD video processing solutions, for industrial, office or home use. Toshiba could put in its proprietary video processing technologies into this product. The Leadtek Winfast PxVC 1100 is pictured below. It uses PCI-Express x1 interface, and comes with 128 MB of XDR memory. The cards could be out by the end of this month, and could carry a steep price-tag of US $286, at least going by the listings in Japan.

Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of the latest graphics cards in the mainstream series - the WinFast PX9400 GT. The new graphics cards are designed with Leadtek's exclusive performance-driven layout that can increase your PC stability and performance while operating overclocking process.
Based on NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT GPU, the WinFast PX9400 GT is combined with PCI Express 2.0. They also come with the Ultra-High-Speed 512MB 128bit GDDR2 memory design. The GPU clock can run at a scorching speed of 575 MHz bringing users visual performance like never before. Furthermore, the WinFast PX9400 GT graphics cards are equipped with Leadtek innovative cooling systems; Leadtek exclusive graphics fansink system can provides the excellent cooling capability with lower noise level compared to NVIDIA reference fansink design. Leadtek noiseless Heatpipe is designed with high-capacity cooper heatpipe to maximum GPU heat absorption.

Leadtek Research Inc., the global leading brand for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new high-end graphics card, WinFast PX9800 GT 512MB. Based on the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics processing units and unified architecture design, the new graphics card can provide customers the best-in-classic gaming performance.

Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new mainstream graphics cards, WinFast PX9500 GT GDDR3 and GDDR2. The new cards, with Leadtek exclusive performance-driven layout can enhance overclocking capabilities without system instability and offer the excellent performance like never before. The 4th generation Heat-exhaust-efficiency Fansink can create a dramatic cool-down effect and reduce noise level further. Users would never worry about the cooling issue of graphics card.

Leadtek Research Inc., a global front runner in extreme visual graphics technology development, announces the launch of the latest products in its WinFast series. The new WinFast PX9800 GTX+, represents a dazzling 15% speed boost over the PX9800 GTX. The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX-based graphics card can vamp up performance like never before and provide optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Compatible with 3-way SLI technology, the new card gives every user the thrill of extreme HD gaming and first-rate entertainment experience.

Featuring a powerful single GeForce 9800 GTX GPU with 128 streaming fast cores each running at a blistering all time record GPU clock speed of 738MHz, WinFast PX9800 GTX+ delivers the smoothest ever game-play quality and exceptional value on price/performance. With the latest Microsoft DirectX 10 with full Shader Model 4.0 support, it can also offer realistic film quality gaming effects, guaranteeing users best possible performance in 3D graphics user interface under the Windows Vista operating system.

Leadtek Research, known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development takes pride in announcing thethe launch of a new premium Graphic card--WinFast PX9600 GSO Extreme. Based on the high quality NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO core chip, PX9600 GSO is equipped with 384MB and 96 Stream Processing Units, and makes over-clocking performance easy. The Leadtek exclusive S-FANPIPE fansink design is also applied to PX9600 GSO.

Leadtek is pleased to announce the launch of new mid-range graphics cards, WinFast PX9600 GT and PX9600 GT Extreme, to cost- conscious gamers. The new cards, with all solid aluminum capacitors for ultra high durability and stability, even during over-clocking, deliver high performance through the new HCT (High-resolution Compression Technology), and present the best cost per performance ever with up to 90% performance increase on the SUB US$200 segment.

Leadtek Research Inc. proudly announces the launch of new high-end graphics cards for gaming enthusiasts. WinFast PX8800 GT ZL with the ZALMAN fan design, famous for efficient cooling power, presents the users with a temperature 20 degrees Celsius cooler compared to the NVIDIA reference cooler, that is able to achieve an outstanding benchmark with a more stable system and potential over-clocking for an exclusively higher performance.

Leadtek Research Inc is pleased to announce the launch of a new high-end graphics card to gaming enthusiasts, WinFast PX8800 GTS 512MB. Fitted with a dual slot fan design for less noise and better cooling and with high stream processors of 128 units, the PX8800 GTS 512MB has again attained an impressive benchmark - about 45% higher 3DMark06 performance compared with PX8800 GTS 320MB.