Looks like EA the publishers and Dice the developers of Bad Company 2 are getting their ducks in line for hardware and gaming enthusiast that have embraced Eyefinity and TripleHead2Go multi-display gaming configurations. Check out Robbaz video that he posted on below. Simply schweet!
Discussion
Thinner
Intel has set a few new goals for its Sandy Bridge CPU with integrated graphics. The plan is for Huron River platform to increase battery life and get to the point where you can play two Blu-ray discs on a single charge.
This will probably be the case for larger notebooks rather than the really small ones, and besides, such notebooks dont even come with an optical drive.
We dont know the battery life increase figures as of yet but the target is to do better than Calpella platform. The launch date is Q1 2011 at least for some SKUs while some from the line up might come at an even later date.
A nice bonus
According to some leaked pictures, HIS is going to bundle Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with its HD 5830 card. This bundle sounds like a great bonus and it might push a lot of consumers toward HIS’ card, but only if the rest of the package is decent.
The cooler, as well as the price are the main details to consider, but if the price remains the same as on all other HD 5830 cards, HIS might have a rather good card product in its hands.
3D, Multitouch, 1080p and Core i7
MSI is going to show a couple of quite interesting all-in-one Wind Top systems at this year’s Cebit show. The 24-inch, full HD, 3D capable all-in-one and Core i3, i5, i7 equipped Wind Top systems are just a little part of MSI’s offer that will be presented at Cebit show.
The 22-inch and 24-inch AE2280 and AE2420 will be equipped with Intel’s Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and include a pair of 10W speakers, as well as multitouch capability. It is still unclear if the Core i3, i5 and i7 processors will be paired with a 3D Wind Top but we are sure that there will be many SKUs to choose from and with a pair of 3D shutter glasses.
All of these specs are quite interesting and if MSI manages to offer these at reasonable price a lot of consumer might consider them, as 22- and 24-inch are plenty for most consumers.
We are quite sure that MSI will make a lot of noise about these products at Cebit and we will surely check them out.
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.
Mobile platforms for Sandy Bridge
Intel has a new codename for the new Sandy Bridge CPU-GPU platform and it simply calls it Huron River. This new platform is meant for mobile computers and it should launch in Q1 2011 together with Sandy Bridge dual and quad cores.
One of the cool things of this platform is the next generation Wireless HD. Intel has demonstrated this with Arrandale based CPU and Calpella platform and this Wireless HD can play up to 720p.
Huron River in Q1 2011 will enable full 1080p playback with the push of a button and all this will simply go wireless.
We guess that you will still need to connect the next generation NETGEAR Push2TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display box on your TV in order to make it work, but watching HD movies from your notebook based on Huron River tends to get even easier and in full HD. You just need to wait for Q1 2011 to get it.
Thanks to its Evergreen series and the absence of any meaningful answer from Nvidia, AMD is king of the DirectX 11 market. The Evergreen generation currently packs 11 different DirectX 11 cards with the fastest one being the HD 5970, which is at the same time currently the worlds fastest card. It has been 7 months since the first Evergreen card hit the market and AMD made sure that all market segments are covered for whenever Nvidia launches its DX11 hardware.
AMD now launches yet another Evergreen card named Radeon HD 5830. As the name suggests, the card belongs to the HD 5800 series and its based on Cypress graphics core. Radeon HD 5830 is a pretty interesting card as it comes with Cypress GPU bat is a bit crippled compared to the HD 5850 or HD 5870. Naturally, this shows on the pricing as well so gamers on a tighter budget will be able to enjoy the benefits of HD 5800 and DX11 at a lower price point.
Performance-wise, Radeon HD 5830 will sit between the HD 5850 and HD 5770. Nvidias competition will remain GTX 260 and GTX 275 until Fermi hits the market.
Since AMD decided against reference PCB design, all the partners are actually launching their own versions of HD 5830 graphics cards. Our todays test sample is coming from Sapphire and it brings quiet operation, serious muscle and stability, as well as Sapphires gift game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Shorter than competition
XFX has announced its own version of the HD 5830, but instead of going with a PCB similar to that of the HD 5850 card, XFX has opted for a shorter one, similar to the HD 5770.
We already told you yesterday that some partners will decide to go for a HD 5770 like cooler, and since today is the launch day, we can officially show you the picture of this short PCB HD 5830.
Although it is shorter than the other cards, it still has the same specifications so you get 1120 Stream processors, 800MHz GPU clock, 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4000MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.
The cooler is quite similar to the one on XFX’s HD 5770 card except for the fact that its is rotated by 180 degrees. The card has dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and should hit retail with the same suggested US $249 price tag.
Eyes on discrete
Sandy Bridge does have monolithic integrated graphics and CPU but it still cares about external graphics. The next generation Intel CPU has support for PCIe 3.0.
Currently at least the mobile version supports PCIe 16X which should be enough even for two graphics cards in two times 8X mode. All these features are integrated in the CPU and there is increasingly less chipset features that are still out of the CPU.
The PCIe 3.0 support is integrated in the Sandy Bridge and so is the direct routing to EC. Intel also has a feature called De Muxed EDP, something that provides concurrency with discrete graphics, all meant for reduction in discrete card power consumption.
All in all Sandy Bridge definitely looks like a huge step forward.
The only one available
Powercolor has announced its overclocked Radeon HD 5830 card that will be a part of Powercolor’s PCS+ series. The card uses the same coolerwe’ve seen on Powercolor’s HD 5850 PCS and features a slight factory overclock.
The card still has 1120 Stream processors, 256-bit memory interface and runs at 825MHz for the GPU and 4200MHz for 1GB of GDDR5 memory. Just for comparison, the reference card works at 800MHz for the GPU and 4000MHz for the same amount of memory.
Powercolor decided to go for the same dual-slot cooler that we’ve seen on its HD 5850 PCS and it features four copper heatpipes and a 92mm fan. The backplate features a single DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.
It looks like most of the HD 5830 GPUs went to either Sapphire or Powercolor as these are the only two brands that are listed on both Newegg.com as well as on our price search engine. It also appears that this time, Powercolor was a bit faster and is currently the only available card in Europe.
Unfortunately, Europe has pulled a shorter straw again because the card is selling for US $239.99 after mail in rebate, whereas the same card in Europe sells for around 250.
