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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 21 November 2018 18:15
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Written by garfi3ld
Well with the original RTX 2070 launch I had to switch right back over to my Intel i9-9900K testing and I haven’t really had a chance to revisit the 2070. At launch, I covered the Founders Edition model and while I talked about the pricing on other 2070’s the Founders Edition model runs more and also has a higher factory overclock. So after that launch, I did reach out to a few companies hoping to get the “cheaper” model in to get a better idea if the $100 lower price point really made a big difference when it came to performance or value. Well, I’ve finally had a little time to check one out, I have had the Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2070 in the office and have been testing it. Today let’s look at its features, performance, and then see how it all fits in the market.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 16 November 2018 18:19
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Written by garfi3ld
So yesterday AMD introduced the RX590, a refreshed Polaris GPU based on a 12 nm FinFET manufacturing process. I did a full review of it while testing the XFX RX590 Fatboy, you can check that out HERE. Well in an accidental set of circumstances I ended up with two matching cards. Normally I patch together Crossfire or Multi-GPU testing with two different cards. Well, I spent the rest of the day yesterday after everything went live testing out the XFX RX590 Fatboy in our same tests only with both cards running. As always these results depend a lot on the games that you play but I was curious how things would work out with our test suite. Like our previous Crossfire and SLI coverage, the commenting will be at a minimum and this is just a quick article to show off the numbers so keep that in mind and use the information however you would like.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 15 November 2018 09:01
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Written by garfi3ld
Unlike Nvidia, AMD has actually had a few more recent launches, they all fell right in the middle of the coin mining craze though that played havoc on GPU prices and availability. The RX580 launched last April and then Vega came in August to fill some of the gap in the high end. The RX580 was a refresh of the popular sweet spot card, the RX480 that launched back in 2016. They were both on the Polaris architecture and here we are again with a new Polaris based card in hand. AMD is officially introducing the RX590 today, just two weeks short of two and a half months after the original launch. AMD surprisingly decided to stick with the 500 series naming and just slip in a card hoping to fill in the gap between the RX580 and the GTX 1070.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 16 October 2018 09:01
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Written by garfi3ld
So just over 3 weeks ago both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 were unveiled. You can find my reviews of the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 at those links. While both were extremely fast, they were also expensive and a lot of the main features weren’t really out yet. With those at the top of Nvidia’s product stack that left a lot of people wondering what to do for builds that aren’t as expensive as a used car. Some people just decided to go with last generation cards, but today the RTX 1070 is finally available and with a $499 starting point it is at least in reach of a lot more people. But before you run out and buy one, let’s take a look at how they perform. With the RTX 2070 Founders Edition in hand, I’m also curious to see how different it is than the two other RTX cards so I will take a quick look at that as well.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 20 September 2018 21:20
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Written by garfi3ld
In addition to the new RTX 2080 Ti that I already took a look at. Nvidia also introduced the cheaper RTX 2080 and I have also been testing the RTX 2080 Founders Edition to see how it performs and compares to the 2080 Ti and everything already on the market. The RTX 2080 Ti had a shockingly high price tag and the RTX 2080 FE comes in $400 less so it does have the potential to be a little better on the pocketbook. While still not cheap, it is currently the cheapest way to get the Turing architecture and you still get that great looking Founders Edition cooler design. So let’s dive in and see how the RTX 2080 does and figure out of the RTX 2080 Founders Edition is the right direction to go if you decide to go RTX 2080, or if you should look at some of the aftermarket designs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 20 September 2018 03:09
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Written by garfi3ld
Just to put things in perspective, the GTX 1080 launched May 27th, 2016, that was the last consumer launch of a new series of cards and microarchitecture from Nvidia. That is nearly two and a half years ago. In that time the US elected a new president, we saw a total eclipse over the US, the Cubs broke their 108-year long curse and won the world series, we have even been through TWO Olympics, and not to mention the whole crypto craze! Even crazier, the PC market has completely changed as well, The Intel i7-6700K was the top dog in the consumer market with its 4 cores and the bleeding edge was the recently introduced i7-6950X with its 10 cores. Now 6 and 8 core CPUs are the norm in the mainstream lineups and AMD has the 2990WX with 32 cores on the high end! So even with the 1080Ti and later the 1070Ti, we are long overdue for big graphics launches and Nvidia is going all out. Today both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 launch, I’m going to check out the 2080 Ti first and dive into the new Turing architecture, the use for RTX over GTX, the completely new cooler, and of course performance so hang on we have a lot to get through and a short time to get there (RIP Bandit).
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 13 December 2017 18:46
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Written by garfi3ld
We might be late to the party, but we did finally get a Vega card into the office and I have been testing it and getting a feel for it. Like Ryzen, the Vega launch was hyped up over an extended period of time because AMD fans have been looking forward to being able to rejoin the high-end market. The RX580 is a good card but when you are looking to game at 1440 or 4k your options have just been the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and recently the GTX 1080 Ti. Well AMD is back, they do have a few options up in the high-end range again. Of course, there has been a lot of drama as well, today I’m going to check out performance now that Vega has been out for a little while. Talk about the differences between the cards, and take a closer look at the RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled model that AMD sent over.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 16 June 2017 18:28
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Written by garfi3ld
When Nvidia announced the extremely powerful GTX 1080 Ti they slipped in a few other launches as well, mostly unnoticed. The GTX 1080 with the Ti’s 11 Gbps memory was one of them and I have covered those recently. Then there is the GTX 1060 with upgraded memory running at 9 Gbps. This didn’t get much attention, but with AMD introducing the RX 500 series of cards I’m curious if the upgrade to the GTX 1060 was enough to keep up. Gigabyte sent one over and today I’m going to check it out, focusing on how it compares to the normal GTX 1060, the RX 480, and the RX 580.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 02 June 2017 10:18
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Written by garfi3ld
While getting components in for an upcoming build, Asus sent over their new GTX 1080 that is running the new 11Gbps memory from the 1080 Ti. I couldn’t just have the card come into the office without taking a closer look. I was really digging what Asus had going on with the Strix RX 570 that I took a look at, so today I’m going to see what they have to offer in the Strix GTX 1080 11Gbps and then run it through all of our normal testing to see how it performs as well as how it compares to the similar MSI card that already covered.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 27 May 2017 05:00
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Written by garfi3ld
With two RX 570 reviews out of the way, before packing them back up I grabbed both cards and set them up in Crossfire. I was really curious to see if an upgrade to Crossfire would be worth it to anyone who couldn’t afford a more expensive card when they built their computer. In the past, this has been very dependent on the games you play and I imagine it will be the same again but there is only one way to find out. Like our previous Crossfire and SLI coverage, the commenting will be at a minimum and this is just a quick article to show off the numbers so keep that in mind and use the information however you would like.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 25 May 2017 09:30
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Written by garfi3ld
Well the Strix RX 570 isn’t the first RX 570 that has come into the office but it is the first Asus video card that we have had in a while. Today I want to check out what Asus is doing to set themselves apart from everyone else, compare the performance of this card to the XFX 570 as well as the rest of the competition, and see how it compares in value. I’ve been impressed with the Asus Strix styling on motherboards recently and it looks like some of that has carried over to the GPU market so it should rate high but the only way to find out is to get to it so let's do that.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 23 May 2017 19:05
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Written by garfi3ld
After getting a good look at the RX 580 at launch and checking out a second card as well as Crossfire performance I took a little break from video cards but today I’m back to revisit the new 500 series cards. I’m going to check out the RX 570, specifically the XFX RX 570 4GB RS to see how it compares to the RX 580, RX 480, and the RX 470 along with Nvidia’s offerings in that same price range. Not everyone needs the world's fastest video card, in fact, most people are picking up mid range cards so I’m curious to see if the new RX 570 has the performance to be a good buy for those not looking to spend the extra money on an RX 580.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 24 April 2017 15:18
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Written by garfi3ld
So last week AMD launched the 500 series of cards and I had the chance to check out two different RX580 variations. So like always, if I get a pair of cards in and they support Crossfire or SLI I have to see what they are capable of. So as soon as I had my reviews posted I got the XFX and Sapphire cards on the testbench and started seeing what they can do. Like previous multi-card testing articles, this is mostly just me posting up results with less commentary than normal. So get ready to flip through a whole bunch of results.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:00
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Written by garfi3ld
So this week has been mostly filled with information on the AMD 500 series launch but today Nvidia taking the NDA off of their updated GTX 1080’s that were introduced at the same time as the GTX 1080 Ti. The new GTX 1080’s now have 11Gbps memory, just like the 1080 Ti. MSI sent over the GTX 1080 Gaming X+ for me to check out so today I’m going to run it through our recently refreshed test suite and see how it compares to the GTX 1080 Ti and the original GTX 1080 as well. Being an aftermarket card it should run cooler and quieter than the two Founders Editions that I tested, but how does it all translate to in game performance. I test at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k to see just how they all compare.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 19 April 2017 16:29
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Written by garfi3ld
With the official RX 500 series launch, we learned that the new 500 series cards are hopped up versions of the 400 series of cards. With that in mind, all of the aftermarket cards have to up their game to keep things cool. So today I’m going to check out a second card and see how much they ended squeezing out of the card and what they had to do to keep things cool and quiet. That card is the RX580 8GB GTS from XFX. XFX kept their old cooler design on some of their cards, but for their flagship the GTS they went a completely new design. I’m excited to see how that looks and how it performs. Let’s dive into it.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 18 April 2017 09:01
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Written by garfi3ld
2017 has been crazy and we are only a few months in really with multiple big launches from AMD. They launched their RX 400 series of cards last June and the excitement and hype has hardly slowed down in AMD groups. Now that Ryzen 7 and 5 are both out and with rumors of Vega starting to pick up AMD decided to slip in the 500 Series launch. This might be one of the worst kept secrets with cards being sold worldwide for the past week or two but today is the day we finally dive into it all officially. For the launch, AMD sent over the latest Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 in an 8GB Limited Edition version. So today I’m going to run through what the 500 Series is all about and then I’m going to test the Sapphire card and see how it compares. For even more fun I dug out the RX480 Nitro+ that dominated our RX480 charts to see how the new card compares to its year older brother.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 09 March 2017 09:00
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Written by garfi3ld
After almost a year of different rumors, Nvidia announced the GTX 1080 Ti last week along with a few other announcements at GDC. Recently GTX 1080 owners were most likely disappointed to hear about the price drops for the GTX 1080 and the new faster 1080’s as well. Not to mention the new GTX 1080 Ti is promised to be 35% faster than the GTX 1080. That in itself is really exciting because that is a big performance jump but given all of the launches this year, 2017 is looking like an exciting year for gaming and enthusiasts hardware. Well, today the NDA drops and I can finally dive into the performance of the new video card. Nvidia sent over the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, but I hope to see what the aftermarket cards can do as well here soon.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 08 March 2017 10:37
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Written by garfi3ld
When it comes to LAN rigs, there are some cases that support full sized cards, but when getting into the smallest options they need shorter ITX sized cards. Over the past few years, these options have been opening up, especially with the GTX 1060’s where the cooling and power requirements are a little lower but the performance is still what people are looking for. I’ve had the chance to check out one ITX sized 1060 back at launch and one that was close as well. Well MSI is introducing their new Aero ITX lineup with a GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060, and a GTX 1070. Today we have the chance to check out the GTX 1060 so I’m going to see what MSI is doing differently and then find out how it compares to the competition. Is this the card for your LAN rig as we get close to all of the spring events? Let’s find out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 27 February 2017 15:45
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Written by garfi3ld
Well while I have the Crush project build apart I painted the two GTX 1080’s and after that, I had a little extra time. To fill that time I went ahead and put the two cards on our testbench and ran them through our standard test suite to see how they perform. I put all of the results together and today I’m tossing the up for anyone who wants to see how the 1080’s compare in SLI to a single GTX 1080, two RX 480’s, or two GTX 1070’s. As always with our SLI/Crossfire articles, it is mostly just the results with very little content beyond that, so you can use the information to form your own opinions.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 16 January 2017 21:10
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Written by garfi3ld
So last week I took a look at XFX’s RX 480 and it, like the XFX RX 470, has what they call Hard Swap fans. The stock fans are just basic 90mm fans like you would find on most aftermarket cards, but without any tools they can be swapped with other fans. Along with the card, XFX also sent all three of their LED fan kits for me to check out. So today isn’t going to be a long day or anything, but I’m going to check out the new fans, see how easy they are to swap out, and take a look at all three LED colors on the XFX RX 480.
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