How to Transform your Radeon HD6950 into a 6970

If you have an AMD Radeon HD6950 graphic card, you're now entitled to a completely free and unexpected surprise. What if I told you that you have, in fact, a soon-to-become Radeon HD 6970?

Indeed it's true: you can actually transform your Radeon HD 6950 into a fully fledged Radeon HD 6970.

It's no secret that manufacturers often use the same chips to create more affordable models at the desired price ranges. Usually that means capping/limiting the hardware so it performs slightly worse than it actually is capable of.

But fortunately, in the case of the AMD Radeon HD6950, the capping was done purely via software; meaning you're jsut a BIOS flash away from unlocking your Radeon's true potential! :)

As always, with anything relating to formware flashing, you're on your own should anything go awfully wrong (though, it shouldn't be that scary, as you even have a recovery mode to flash your backup firmware back into your graphic card...)

Nvidia Optimus GPU Dynamic Switching

Nvidia is once again pushing mixed GPU interaction to the limits.

For a long time computer manufacturers have been trying to find the right balance between performance and power efficiency, especially where it matters the most: battery powered laptops.

While stuffing two graphic cards in laptops is nothing new: a power hungry one offering maximum performance, and a less powerful one offering maxium power savings; it was up to the user to select which one to use according to special power schemes or by toggling a button.
Often, this also meant the user had to log off and on again... which wasn't very user friendly.


With this Nvidia Optimus the principle is the same, but the toggling is made based on the current needs, without any user interaction and without even flickering the screen.

Asus is scheduled to have this system in their laptops (UL50Vf, N61Jv, N71Jv, N82Jv, e U30Jc) soon.

Check the following video (the jerkiness of the video is due to the capture software, in real life it looks as smooth as you'd expect it to be.)

NVIDIA Optimus Technology - GPU Switching 2 - PC Perspective from Ryan Shrout on Vimeo.

Unigine Heaven 3D DX11 Benchmark

This Unigine Heaven Demo is a great demo that shows some of the new DirectX 11 features, such as tesselation.

With tesselation on, the graphic card can automatically fill in the "details" for low polygon count 3D models.

You can see it in action in the following video:




And the beautiful  Heaven demo itself:

Matrox Octal Graphic Card

From the company that brought us DualHead and Triple Head graphic cards, let me now present you the newest Matrox Octal Graphic Card:

This M9188 PCIex16 can be connected to eight monitors, with resolutions of  up to 2560x1600 each (using DisplayPort; if you use DVI you'll be limited to single-link resolutions of up to1920x1200) allowing you to have a setup like this on your desk:

I think I could get used to it pretty fast... now I just need to free some space to put all those monitors... :)

Laptop with External Graphic Card

Want a small and light ultraportable laptop to hang around with you all day; but can't stand the lame performance these devices have when it comes to play 3D intensive games when you're back home?

Looks like you need one of these Gigabyte Booktop M1305 with an external graphic card in the docking station:

When alone, this Booktop relies on its Core 2 DuoCPU , 4GB of DDR3, 320 or 500GB hard drive, and an integrated GMA 4500MHD graphic chip feeding its 1,366 x 768 LCD - but when you connect it to its docking station, you then have the full power of an NVIDIA GeForce GT220 chip at your command.

AMD Eyefinity - Multimonitor for the Masses?

If AMD is having a hard time keeping up with Intel in the CPU field, ATI on the other hand is keeping Nvidia well in check. And now AMD/ATI is about to introduce Eyefinity - which might be the very first step to bring multi-monitor systems to the masses.

Just like many gamers now have SLI/Crossfire setups in their computers, lots of them don't have a problem having several monitors. But, until now, multimonitor gaming isn't easy, monitors are treated as separate entities - but with AMD/ATI's Eyefinity you can now group a bunch of monitors as if it was a single one.

Considering how LCD prices increase with size, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that would prefer spending the same amount of money in six 24" LCDs than in a single 30" monitor!
Though not everyone will have the space to do something like this:

(24 monitors  11,520 x 4,800 - 55.3 megapixels - 4 graphic cards)

And while the the bezel around the screen is kind of annoying, even that can be minimized if you opt to buy thin-bezel LCDs, like these ones from Samsung.

In one of the demos, a single card with a single GPU was able to run the GRID racing game in six 30" monitores, at 7680 x 3200 - which is s sign of things to come.

If you love wide-screen, high-resolution gaming... Eyefinity might be just what you were waiting for!

AMD Cinema 2.0

AMD/ATI is not willing to let Nvidia take all the credit for the next next-generation 3D graphics. And to that effect, they've shown their Cinema 2.0 initiative - which, as they say: "you won't just play movies, you'll play in them."

And if their demos, with a single PC with a single graphics card with two of their latest and greatest GPUs, the RV770, are to be trusted... this is indeed quite close to real time photo-realism graphics.



Just head on over here to see the video.

... time to start saving some money...

Nvidia intros GTX 280

This is exactly what I needed (better yet, three of those) to be able to play on my 24" LCD.

Nvidia has once again turned all graphic cards obsolete, by presenting their new high-end GTX 280 and 260 models.

GTX 280 has 240 processing cores and 1GB RAM, while the smaller GTX 260 has "only" 192 cores and 896MB RAM.

And to show that all this power is more than enough to handle tasks beyond 3D games:



Not even PS3's Cell processor can get close.

As for the games, check these benchmarks. This a card that allows you to play most games at 50-60fps in ultra-high 2560x1600 resolution.

Even Crysis moves along nicely at a more manageable1920x1200.

The drawback is its price, $640 and $400 USD are not exactly cheap. Particularly considering you can get similar performance in most cases with a 9800 GX2 which costs a lot less. So... who will actually spend a small fortune on that? Not that many people... (Then again, how many of you have a 30" LCD to justfify these beasts - or even a 24" LCD?)

It will also be curious to see who will end up winning the "arms race" in 3D gaming: if Nvidia with its monolithic super powered single chips, or AMD/ATI with its smaller but scalable chip architecture.

With Intel alreday demoing real-time ray tracing in 3D games using 16 cores CPUs... it won't take long till we have enough CPU power to have photorealistic graphics in our computers. And then... will there really be a need for discrete graphic cards? (Just like what happened with math coprocessors chips back in the day.)

via [Engadget, Gizmodo, Techreport]

Quad SLI Supercomputer

Want a supercomputer on a budget? How about letting 4 "regular" graphic cards do the work?

By using four GeForce 9800GX2 (each one effectively being 2 graphic cards in one board) these researchers at Antwerp UNniversity were able to use the imense power of the 8 available GPUs to drastically improve the render time of 3D tomography scans.

What used to take hours in a 4 Quad-core PC cluster can now be easily done in about 30 seconds.

And of course, it must handle gaming (Crysis jumps to mind) quite well - I imagine. :)

Check the video:



If you're interested in building a similar rig:

• AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
• 4 x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
• 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
• MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
• ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
• Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
• Windows XP 64-bit

That's about 4,000 Euros worth of computing power which is considered "cheap" in academic terms.

via [Engadget]