MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is pleased to announce the newest addition to its Gaming Notebook Series - GT627. The new GT627 is the first in the MSI Gaming Notebook series to feature the NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS graphics processing unit (GPU). This revolutionary GPU delivers blazing-fast mobile gaming and supports NVIDIA CUDA technology enabling MSI customers to experience the wide range of CUDA-based applications-such as heart-stopping GPU-accelerated game physics and video conversion. The GeForce 9800M GS also saves power and increases computing efficiently by handling video decoding, allowing the CPU to focus on other tasks.
"We are excited to offer the NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS GPU in the GT627 Gaming Notebooks," said Andy Tung, Vice President of Sales, MSI US. "This GPU will allow us optimize performance and deliver unparalleled graphics for gamers on-the-go."

"Whether viewing or editing photos, finding directions, playing a game,or watching a hi-def movie, the MSI GT627 with the NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS GPU runs silky smooth, with amazing visuals," said Rene Haas, General Manager of the notebook business unit at NVIDIA. " With the GeForce 9800M GS handling the graphics, video and physics acceleration, MSI customers will be ready for the visual computing movement."

MSI has also equipped the GT627 with a spacious 15.4" WSXGA (1680x1050) LCD, 2W internal speakers, and weight cartridge laser mouse to enhance the mobile gaming experience. The GT627 also features MSI's proprietary Turbo Drive Engine, which can overclock the notebook's Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (Penryn, FSB 1066) by as much as 15% at the touch of a button when in AC mode. When on the go, users can conserve the GT627's battery by taking advantage of the MSI's Eco Engine technology to switch between five power settings to ensure efficient power consumption.

MSI housed the powerful GT627 in its stylish anodized brushed aluminum gaming case. This solid enclosure features stamped aluminum sheeting in both the LCD lid and palm rest for increased protection and durability. However, despite the reinforced casing and a 6-cell battery, the GT627 weighs just over six pounds making it one of the most portable gaming notebooks in its class. Additionally, MSI also included an 802.11 b/g/n wireless modem and a Blu-ray player to make it a true mobile entertainment center.

Hynix this week double-dipped into the record books by introducing the world's first and fastest 1 Gigabit GDDR5 graphics DRAM operating at 7Gb/s, a 40 percent improvement over 5Gb/s GDDR5. The new memory is built using a 54nm process and can process up to 28GB/s with a 32-bit I/O, the company claims. On a 512-bit memory bus, bandwidth should reach as high as 448GB/s.

In addition to speed, Hynix also emphasized power consumption. The new memory requires just 1.35V as opposed to 1.5V inherent in previous generation GDDR5 memory. This means that the improved GDDR5 not only bodes well for future high performance videocards, but the potential for lower heat and longer battery life could also be a boon for notebooks.Hynix says its 1Gb GDDR5 graphics memory meets the JEDEC standard and plans to start volume production in the first half of 2009.

Here's a formula to help boost sales: Take something popular - for example, The Dark Knight - and then apply it to something completely unrelated, like videocards. Of course, copyright concerns could come into play, so be sure and design a character or logo that resembles nothing from which it was borrowed (in this case, steer clear of Batman).

Perhaps we're being too cynical and maybe Asus isn't a fan of DC's comic hero gone big screen. In any event, Asus' new Dark Knight series of videocards will inevitably conjure up thoughts of Christian Bale in his most recent role as Batman, but the new GPUs have no association to arguably the best super hero movie to date. Instead, the "self-designed" Dark Knight branded cards will come with a special heatsink the company claims ups the cooling performance ante while keeping noise levels down.

"The ASUS designed EAH4870 DK and EN9800GTX+ DK Series come equipped with the specially designed Dark Knight Fansink," Asus wrote in a press release. "This innovative fansink is equipped with 4 heatpipes and a large heatsink surface area; and is made of aluminum alloy to deliver extreme cooling while retaining operating levels at only 32dB—almost imperceptible in a quiet room—catering to users who require maximum cooling without excessive fan rotation noise."The new cards also come with a handful of technologies and buzzwords aimed at attracting the overclocking crowd. These include an EMI shield, DIP spring chokes, LF PAK MOS, and all-solid Japanese capacitors. Put together, Asus claims end users can expect a 9 percent performance improvement while gaming. Utility belt not included.

Do you know the difference between a 9800 GTX and GTX+? How about an 8800 GTS 1st and 2nd generation? Well if you’re confused don’t worry, your not alone. Now finally after many years of dazzling and confusing customers, Nvidia is looking to make some permanent changes to help deal with the dizzying array of identifiers. The company is hoping that by years end it will have better control over card’s surnames in an attempt to give users a clear idea of the performance they can expect. Using this approach the GTX term would be reserved for the highest-end gaming cards with GS and GT being reserved for mainstream boards. Last but not least, gamers on a budget will be able to choose from a clearly labeled G series.This is clearly a follow up to the Radeon’s addition of the HD line and with any luck will help users figure out what kind of performance they can expect from a given card without scouring the web for comparisons. Rumor has it the 9400 GT will also be rebranded as the G100, and the 9500 GT through 9800 GT will become the GT120 to GT150 series.

I think you’ll agree these changes are long overdue.

Graphics card competition has heated up with the introduction of ATI's HD4800 series -- to offer a more attractive solution to go against the ATI cards, NVIDIA has now introduced the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics card. This particular 260 has slightly more stream processors than the 260 which was originally released: it then had 192 stream processors, whereas the Core 216 variant has 216 stream processors; hence the name. And if you are confused over this entire mess of a naming convention, then you are not alone.

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will sell for a competitive $280 and will go head-to-head with the HD 4870, both in price and performance. The latter sells for anything between $280 and $300. Check out two such 260 offerings from EVGA and Zotac.

Pricing pressure increased on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 when ATI tagged their HD 4800 series cards for $300 only. NVIDIA then slashed the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 prices by a hefty amount in response.Specifications of both cards from EVGA and Zotac are virtually identical. The number of stream processors differs from 192 stream processors in standard GTX 260 card to 216 stream processors as NVIDIA has enabled one more functional block with 24 stream processing units in the existing GT200 GPU. The GT200 GPU can offer a maximum of 240 stream processors -- 24 each in 10 functional blocks. Along with a total of nine such blocks in the GTX 260 Core 216, eight more texture filtering units have also been enabled, bringing the total to 72 texture filtering units.

While the Radeon HD 4870 outpaced the 192-core 260, it will be interesting to see if the 216-core variant can fare better against its arch-rival. Also note that the card still doesn't offer DirectX 10.1 support.

If you haven't heard, ATI's HD 4870 kicks some serious gaming ass. Nvidia's received the message loud and clear, so the company's gone back to the drawing board and now plans to release a revised version of its GTX 260 videocard. The tweaked GTX 260 pushes the number of stream shaders from 192 up to 216, expected to result in a 5-10 percent performance increase. To prevent confusion in the market place with existing GTX 260s,speculation suggests the new card may carry a 'Gold' moniker.

This isn't the first time in recent memory that Nvidia has revised an existing SKU, with the company earlier this summer shrinking the 9800 GTX's core from 65nm to 55nm and boosting clockspeeds, which resulted in the 9800 GTX+. But this time around, DigiTimes reports graphics card makers are voicing concerns that the Gold release will leave them with an oversupply of original GTX 260 cards that no one wants. Whether those fears prove founded or not depends on how Nvidia plans to price the new release, which so far has not yet been announced.

Have you ever run into an old ex-girlfriend only to realize she's nothing the way you remembered? Or fired up that retro-game and wondered what you found so appealing about it in the first place? Every once in awhile a blast from the past (like bringing WarGames back to theaters) will make a worthwhile comeback, but more often than not, old relics are best left buried, and Albatron might be finding this out.Earlier this month the company let it be known it would be bringing Nvidia's 8-series videocards in 8400, 8500, and 8600 trim to the PCI bus, but those plans have hit a snag and it might be awhile before we see another PCI videocard. Even though the PCI bus has been around since close to the dawn of time, not all motherboards stick to the same signaling implementation for the PCI interface, and Albatron fears that compatibility with different motherboards could become a problem.

Sam Nada, Albatron's International PR representative, says the company's engineers are working on optimizing the BIOS to ensure a smooth rollout, but it will be a couple of weeks before the new Retrotechnology cards make a debut. But what's a couple of weeks if you've already staved off the upgrade bug for this long?

No, this wasn’t a typo, GPU manufacturer Albatron Retrotechnology is actually releasing the Nvidia 8400, 8500, and 8600 for the PCI, not PCI-Express. What kind of performance can we expect from these “phat” cards riding the skinny bus?

Performance

Albatron claims the new GPU’s are capable of pounding out performance benchmarks in 3D Mark 06 of anywhere from 800 to 1200 depending on the model. While this is a considerable improvement over other PCI alternatives, it still pales in comparison with it’s PCI-E based brethren. A quick test with an XFX 8600 GTS Express card yielded results of close to 2200, almost twice as fast. This isn’t surprising given PCI’s meager 133 MB/s bus speed vs PCI-Express’s mammoth 8GB/s performance.Why Power Users Might Want One

While we all know the productivity benefits of multiple monitors, it is something that has always been hassle for those of us with SLI setups. Short of disabling multi GPU support in the driver, Nvidia power users have been forced to make do with a single monitor. Luckily, most dual GPU solutions from Nvidia leave a single PCI port exposed allowing for further expansion. By adding a third video card to your spare PCI slot you unlock the potential to run three monitors full time while still maintaining your SLI configuration. Adding an extra video card may all so unlock additional gaming potential down the line as Nvidia toys with the possibility of allowing users to dedicate spare GPU’s to physics processing.

What happens when you take a Radeon HD 3870 graphics card and slap a gig of memory on it? That is the question of the hour, since our subject is Diamond's new card with just such a configuration. The Radeon HD 3870 has established itself as a pretty decent option among mid-range graphics cards, although it's squeezed by formidable competition from Nvidia. Could doubling up on video memory allow the 3870 to distinguish itself from the likes of the GeForce 9600 GT and GeForce 8800 GT? We decided to find out.

Diamond's novel facet
Diamond's new take on the Radeon HD 3870 doesn't depart too radically from the established formula. The card comes with a default GPU clock of 830MHz, well above the 775MHz baseline created by AMD but not quite as high as some of the cards we tested in our mid-range roundup, which ranged as high as 850MHz. Similarly, the card's 1GB of GDDR3 memory comes clocked at 870MHz, for an effective data rate of 1740MT/s, on a 256-bit bus. The 512MB versions of the 3870 generally come with GDDR4 memory and consequently feature clocks as high as 1.2GHz. Diamond's, er, ace is its larger memory size, coupled with the fact that GGDR3 memory tends to have lower latencies and thus perform better than GDDR4, clock for clock. On the flip side, GGDR4 tends to consume less power.Diamond has outfitted this puppy with a little bit larger cooler than the norm; the oversized blower causes its enclosure to protrude slightly above the top of the card itself, much like a GeForce 8800 Ultra. The cooler doesn't look to be tall enough to create any sort of clearance problems in your average PC case, but those with small form factor systems may want to proceed with caution.

Beyond that, the 1GB card comes with the usual complement of output ports and accessories, including a single DVI-to-VGA adapter and a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. Analog video junkies will appreciate the assortment of composite, component, and S-Video output cables (while the rest of us will tolerate them, I suppose). Diamond eschews the temptation to bundle a game with the card, and given the usual value proposition involved there, we're not inclined to complain.