MSI shows its HD 5870 Lightning

Officially this time

Although its been already detailed and pixellized a while back, MSI has finally announced its HD 5870 Lightning card. This special, Lightning series, HD 5870 features a custom PCB, Twin Frozr II cooler and a 15-phase VRM, so this one is built for high and most likely impressive overclocking results.

The card features a 900MHz factory overclock for the GPU and 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz. Due to the 15-phase VRM (13-phase GPU + 2-phase memory), the card needs two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. As you can see from the pictures below, the card features a quite unique PCB which is a bit higher than the normal one. MSI calls this PCB a LPL, or Lightning Power Layer, and the card features Hi-c CAPs, 100% Solid State Chokes, Proadlizer capacitor, gold plated connectors and V-Check points, something that we're used to seeing on MSI's overclocking friendly hardware.

The Twin Frozr II cooler has two 80mm fans and four 8mm SuperPipes heatpipes, while the card has all the regular outputs: dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.

The card will most probably take a front stand at MSI's Cebit booth and will be available sometime in March. Unfortunately, the price tag has been left out.

ATI Radeon HD 5830 Review

AMD has been spitting out new graphics cards like crazy since launching the Radeon HD 5000 series five months ago. With today's release that translates into almost two new graphics cards each month.

Looking at the budget and mid-range segments you'll notice that there is no more than $40 separating each card. So why the big gap between the Radeon HD 5770 and 5850? As it turns out AMD has been planning to plug this hole all along with yet another offering. The Radeon HD 5830 is expected to come in at somewhere around $250, ~15% cheaper than the 5850.


Appearance and form factors aside, what we are most excited about is having a new Radeon HD 5800 product at more affordable price tag, that is, as long as AMD has kept the value proposition and performance balance as good as it sounds on paper. Let's find out.

Read the complete review.

By Julio Franco, TechSpot.com 

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review: Dual-GPU Graphics

As we discussed in our preliminary Radeon 5870 review, on ATI's horizon ATI was a follow-up to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, code-named "Hemlock XT", which in essence would put together a pair of Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single PCB.

Today AMD is officially unveiling the Hemlock as the new ATI Radeon HD 5970, hoping to expand its current dominance in single-GPU performance with the fastest single-slot graphics card on the market -- a title that until today was reserved for Nvidia's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295.



The Radeon HD 5970 looks to be well suited for the job. The GPUs used in this card use exactly the same configuration found on the Radeon HD 5870, while core and memory frequencies match those of the Radeon HD 5850. This provides the HD 5970 with an unmatched memory bandwitch of 256GB/s.

Source: TechSpot

Radeon HD 5970 detailed in advance

While AMD is gearing up to release it, the Radeon HD 5970 card has made a stealthy appearance online, exposing its likely final specifications. Made by Sapphire, the listed Hemlock card, which is most likely an all-stock product, has two 725 MHz-clocked Cypress 40nm GPUs, each with 1600 Stream Processors, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory set at 4000 MHz, both frequencies being at HD 5850 level.

The dual-GPU, dual-slot card also has a 2x256-bit memory interface, DirectX 11 and CrossFireX support, and dual-DVI outputs plus one mini DisplayPort connector (no HDMI like for the HD 5800 cards). The Radeon HD 5970's pricing and release date are still unconfirmed.

TSMC 40nm yield issues to affect AMD and Nvidia

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, recently confirmed it has run into new issues with their 40nm process technology that have sent yield rates down to 40%. Major customers for TSMC's 40nm processes include AMD, which just released its Radeon HD 5000 series, and Nvidia, who is expected to launch the GT300 series in December.

On first thought the conspiracy theorist in me found this suspiciously untimely for AMD, which for the first time in a long while had a great opportunity to capitalize on its early-to-market status. Their latest 40nm-based cards are not only the first to support DirectX 11, with Nvidia's answer arriving a few months later, but they have also been getting high marks for their performance and feature set in reviews around the web.

Then again TSMC's recent issues will reportedly impact shipping schedules for both AMD and Nvidia -- not to mention the manufacturer's financial performance. Company chairman and CEO Morris Chang pledged to get the problem fixed during the current quarter. The company had previously improved yield rates for its 40nm processes to around 60% from as low as 20-30% in the second quarter of 2009.

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com