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The Next Gen Dual GPU Cards: Specs & Rumors

TommyNator84 — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:43:43 +0000

Rumors have been circulating that AMD would be launching the Radeon HD 7990 soon after NVIDIA launched their Kepler debut card, the GTX 680.

It has yet to happen, but let’s take a look at the rumored specs for the AMD HD 7990 “New Zealand”:

Two “Tahiti” GPU chips clocked at a lower than HD 7970 speed of 850 MHz, connected via an onboard CrossFire bridge chip.
6 GBs of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1250 MHz (5 GHz effective), divided in two for 3 GB per GPU, on 2 x 384-bit buses.
62 compute units with a total of 4096 (2 x 2048) Stream Processors and 256 (2 x 128) texture units.
TDP of ~330 watts (max power use in watts).
DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 4.2 hardware support.
PCI-Express 3.0 compliant.

NVIDIA plans to tackle the HD 7990 with the GeForce GTX 690, a similar dual GPU solution.

The rumored specs for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 at the moment are as follows:

Two GTX 680 “GK104″ GPUs, clocked at lower than GTX 680 speed of ~705 MHz to ~730 MHz (boost), connected via an onboard SLI bridge chip.
4 GBs of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1500 MHz (6 GHz effective), divided in two for 2 GB per GPU, on 2 x 256-bit buses.
64 Raster Operations Pipelines, 8 Graphics Processing Clusters and 16 Streaming Multiprocessors with a total of 3072 (2 x 1536) CUDA cores and 256 texture units.
TDP of ~300 watts (max power use in watts).
DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 4.2 hardware support.
PCI-Express 3.0 compliant.

Conclusion:

It’s not that easy to make any conclusions based on the on the rumored specifications of the two dual-GPU cards, but seen in light of the recent test results of their single-GPU equivalents, it seems obvious that it will be a very close race in terms of total performance output.

The AMD card has it’s advantages in memory bandwidth, whereas the NVIDIA card counters the lack of sheer memory size and bandwidth with more speed. You can speculate that this would possibly make a difference in games that have not been released yet, in AMD’s favor, but we can only speculate at this point.

All in all, for current generation games, these cards will be overkill, but may be worth considering if you want to “future proof” your gaming RIG, especially considering the prices these cards are expected to carry, at about 1.5-1.75 times the price of a single GPU version. Even though the GPU clock is very likely to be lower on these cards than their single GPU equivalents, it still means savings over buying a second GTX 680 or HD 7970.

If you’re considering buying one of these cards, it’s worth checking first that it will fit in your rig. The length of these dual GPU cards, especially the AMD cards tend to be very long at over 11.5 inches / 29.2 cm, with NVIDIA trailing right behind at 11 inches / 27.94 cm (lenghts of the HD 6990 and GTX 590 cards).

Release dates are not official, but the GTX 690 is rumored to be released in May, and we could see the HD 7990 released before the end of April.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Released!

TommyNator84 — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:59:07 +0000

Overclocking Tools

TommyNator84 — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:12:33 +0000

When getting into overclocking your rig – whether you just want more frames per second out of your old 6600 GT in Call of Duty 4, or to be able to brag about a score above 20k in 3DMark06 – you’ll need the right tools for the job.

Here’s an introduction to some of the most used overclocking and monitoring tools!

RivaTuner

Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
This application lets you overclock your NVIDIA graphics card. It was originally just a registry tweaking application for NVIDIAs old Riva TNT graphics card, but has since evolved into a much more useful tool. The most common use of RivaTuner is to set higher clock speeds on the core, shaders and memory of your graphics card(s), as well as letting you control fan thresholds and other settings. The registry tweaking is still an option however, shall you feel tempted.

ATITool

Windows XP / 2003 / 2000 (incl. 64-bit)
You guessed it – ATITool was made to overclock your ATI graphics card. However, today this application also works with NVIDIA graphics cards. If you have problems with RivaTuner, try this little bugger instead.

Prime95

Windows (incl. Windows 3.1) | Linux | FreeBSD | OS/2
This number crunching application lets you push your CPU to its limit of stability. The latest version supports multi-core processors using multiple threads. Tip: If you want to test only your CPU for stability, choose the “Small TTFs” torture test, and select “Round off checking” under the “Advanced” menu. This test uses the least amount of system memory, reducing the likelihood of your RAM being the culprit in case of failure, (but it will still be a factor).

External link: Guide to using Prime95 effectively.

SpeedFan

Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP (incl. 64-bit) / Vista / Windows 7
This handy tool lets you monitor temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, and can even monitor hard disks with S.M.A.R.T. enabled. As a bonus feature it can adjust the FSB speed on some motherboards, but primarily I use SpeedFan to monitor the temperatures and voltages when overclocking. Tip: Disable SpeedStep (Intel) or Cool’n'Quiet (AMD) features in the BIOS to get accurate readings after OC’ing.

Core Temp

Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / Windows 7
A simple, yet useful utility that lets you monitor the temperatures of your processor cores. A nice feature of Core Temp is that all CPU core temperatures can be displayed in your system tray at all times.

CPU-Z

Windows
One of the most widely used tools for overclockers. CPU-Z gathers information about your CPU, motherboard and memory timings (including SPD values).

GPU-Z

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
As the name suggests, this tool is much like CPU-Z, only for graphics cards. GPU-Z gives you detailed information about your accelerator card, from make and model to clock speed and driver version. If you click the “Sensors” tab, you can handily monitor the GPU and PCB temperatures, fan speed (in per cent and RPM), and current core and memory clock speeds.

NVIDIA = HAXX

TommyNator84 — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:18:21 +0000

NVIDIAs new Crysis-optimized beta drivers 169.01 and 169.04 were picked apart over at Elite Bastards, who could reveal shocking results. Apparently these drivers force removal of certain water/shadow effects, increasing performance at the expense of visual quality.

One can easily deduct that NVIDIA has made this move in order to better benchmarking results for their 8xxx line of graphics cards, trying to make them stand out more vs their AMD/ATI opponents. Elite Bastards conclude that this is not an issue in the official 163.69 drivers, and adds that the difference in performance between the old and new drivers is 7 %.

Users of the new drivers who prefer not to rollback can easily circumvent this game-specific “optimization” by renaming the “crysis.exe” file to “nvidiacheats.exe”.