Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 690 flagship. The $999 card is based on two GK104 graphics processors that have their full potential enabled. The new card has one of the most extravagant designs, making heavy use of metal which adds to the experience. Performance is outstanding, being neck to neck with a dual GTX 680 SLI setup.
Palit's GeForce GTX 680 JetStream offers several enhancements compared the NVIDIA reference design, like a quiet triple fan cooler, overclock out of the box and reduced power consumption. The best improvement is certainly that it comes at no price increase compared to the reference design.
The ASUS GeForce GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP uses the company's famous triple slot cooler to bring low temperatures and low noise to the GeForce GTX 680. ASUS has also increased the clocks of the card significantly, which gives it a healthy performance boost, for a reasonable $20 price premium.
The ASUS Radeon HD 7870 Direct CU II is a highly overclocked custom version of the Radeon HD 7870. Coming at clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1250 MHz memory, it is a good deal faster than the AMD reference design. Thanks to aggressive pricing, the card retails at $360, which means there is no price increase for overclocking.
Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 680 which is based on the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. The card comes with massively improved performance per Watt. It also introduces an automatic dynamic overclocking method which gives the card the leading edge, making it the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world.
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 7800 Series, which is based on their new 28 nm Pitcairn graphics processor. The HD 7850 and HD 7870 offer a significant performance increase over the previous generation - up to 40% faster in our testing. Power consumption is also at a new record low, putting these cards in the leading performance per Watt spot.
The XFX HD 7770 Black Edition Super Overclock is the company's flagship HD 7770. It comes with a massively improved heatsink, dual fan and large overclock out of the box. In our testing we are impressed by the ultra low noise and great performance improvement it delivers.
ASUS is using their well-proven DirectCU thermal solution on the new HD 7770 DirectCU. The card also comes with a large overclock out of the box, yet stays cool and runs at super low noise levels. ASUS has chosen to follow the AMD pricing, so no price increase for cooler and overclocking.
PowerColor's HD 7950 PCS+ is a fully customized version of the HD 7950 with changed PCB and large dual fan cooler. It also comes with an 80 MHz overclock out of the box - at a price premium of $15. Its strongest feat is certainly the greatly reduced noise output when compared to the AMD reference design, making this an excellent low noise high performance solution.
Palit's new GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo is a custom design, dual fan GTX 560 Ti that comes overclocked out of the box and features LED lit fans which add a smooth glow to the card. Despite having two fans, the card is actually one of the quietest GTX 560 Tis that we tested so far - in both idle and load.
The ASUS MARS II is a monster graphics card consisting of two GeForce GTX 580 GPUs on a single PCB using triple slot cooling. Unlike the NVIDIA GTX 590, the MARS II comes with full GTX 580 clock speeds which give the card an almost 20% performance advantage over the GTX 590, making the card the fastest graphics card in the world, but also the most expensive at $1500.
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 TOP Direct CU II is a close to perfect implementation of NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti. The card comes with increased clock speeds out of the box which results in the same performance as the GTX 560 Ti. ASUS' thermal solution manages to impress too. It is whisper quiet, has tons of OC potential and temperatures under load are around 70°C.
PowerColor's new HD 6870 PCS++ comes with massively increased clocks out of the box which makes it roughly as fast as GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950. With a reasonable price increase of only $10 over the reference design, the card does not break the bank either, it is actually a worthy opponent to NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti considering price/performance.
MSI has engineered their own version of the GeForce GTX 580 called "Lightning", which is geared toward enthusiasts and overclockers. The card brings several exciting features like advanced voltage control and on-board DIP switches for tuning. A dual-BIOS feature with a special liquid nitrogen BIOS is also available.
In order to complete their lineup in the $250 segment, AMD has released a 1 GB version of the HD 6950. This makes the card $40 cheaper, yet does not impact performance in any way as our testing shows. We also saw great overclocking potential on our card which makes this card a tweaker's dream combined with the HD 6950 to HD 6970 modding potential.
MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II comes with MSI's own cooling solution, which does a great job at keeping the card cool. Even with heavy voltage increases, the temperatures never rose above 80°C. For maximum performance MSI has overclocked the card out of the box - at no price increase compared to the reference design.
ASUS is expanding their triple-slot cooler graphics card lineup. Their GeForce GTX 570 Direct CU II offers amazingly low noise levels as well as low operating temperatures in both idle and 3D. ASUS has also increased to clock speeds out of the box, even though the increase is only minimal. But with a price increase of just $10 there is not much to complain about.
ASUS' new GeForce GTX 580 DC2 uses a massive triple slot Direct CU II heatsink that increases cooling performance significantly. As a result the card is extremely quiet in both idle and load - quieter than many midrange cards. ASUS has also increased the operating clocks of their design, all this for a small price increase of $5.
NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 560 Ti is priced at the sweet spot of $249. It comes with a redesigned graphics processor that enables higher clock speeds and lower power consumption. NVIDIA's reference design board excels with nice overclocking potential and low fan noise.
MSI's HD 6850 Cyclone Power Edition comes at 860 MHz, which is the largest overclock out of the box of any HD 6850 available. The card also features a little switch to enable a silent BIOS which reduces fan noise considerably and makes the card a virtually noiseless experience to use, in both idle and 3D.
Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTX 570 graphics card which is based on the new more power efficient Fermi technology that we saw on the GTX 580, too. ASUS' GTX 570 is a full reference design implementation, the only difference is a small clock speed increase of 10 MHz.
NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 570 complements the GTX 580 at more affordable price levels. It offers the same reduced power consumption as its big brother without compromising performance. Palit's GTX 570 is a custom design with a unique thermal solution and substantially increased clock speeds out of the box.
PowerColor's HD 6870 PCS+ comes with some of the highest out of the box clock speeds of all HD 6870 cards available today. It also comes with a unique thermal solution that offers extremely low noise levels in both idle and load. Another improvement is that power consumption is slightly lower than AMD's reference design - despite the higher clock speed.
Last week NVIDIA released their new flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX 580. Today we have on our testbench the ASUS ENGTX580 which is an almost full implementation of the reference design. The only exception is that the clock speed has been slightly increased - at no price premium.
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 580 which is based on their Fermi architecture. The card is 20% faster than the GTX 480, yet requires less power. NVIDIA has also optimized fan noise making this the quietest highest-end card on the market today.
