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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 07 February 2014 11:14
Out of last year’s AMD cards there was one card that stood above the rest with an all metal custom cooler. That was the double dissipation HD 7970 from XFX. This year there is a lot more competition and XFX has changed their design once again. I’m excited to find out how XFX stands up against the competition this year. With a black and chrome it certainly has the styling needed, but how is the performance? Let’s find out!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 15 January 2014 12:57
Although all of the R9 270X’s and R9 280X’s that we have covered have been extremely exciting, especially the Toxic cards, to date we hadn’t had a chance to take a look at the newest cards from AMD. Today we finally have that chance. Sapphire sent over their R9 290 Tri-X for us to put through our tests. The Toxic cards have dominated in our other reviews so I am extremely interested in how well the 290 Tri-X will perform with it sharing a very similar cooling design. With high expectations, let’s jump into it and let the numbers do the talking.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 03 January 2014 19:16
Over the past few years, there is one video card company that had really caught my eye with a couple unique products. PowerColor introduced the Devil 12 and has followed up with various Devil cards that have been really sharp. It’s always exciting to see a video card manufacture really step up. When PowerColor offered to send over their new R9 270X I jumped at the chance, excited to see what their PCS+ cooling is all about.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 06 December 2013 10:34
When I had the chance to check out the R9 270X Toxic from Sapphire at its launch I was completely blown away at both its performance and styling. Sapphire had obviously put a lot of time and effort reinventing their image, designs, and really stepped it up the performance. When given the chance to check out the R9 280X Toxic, I didn’t even have to think about it. I couldn’t wait to see if Sapphire could do the same with the R9 280X that impressed me so much with the R9 270X. Today is the day, lets dig in and see what it’s all about.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 11:09
One of the best parts about a new video card launch is having the chance to be able to check out the differences between the same models from multiple companies. It seems like every company anymore has their own cooling design and their own names for each of the cards features. One of the companies who has performed well in all of our previous launches has been the Twin Frozr designs from MSI. Today I’m going to take a look at their R9 270X Gaming that features a Twin Frozr cooling design along with a few gaming features that help it stand out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 07 November 2013 09:00
When Nvidia launched the GTX 780 it was an extremely impressive card, and frankly it still is. Even so AMD did come out swinging with the new R9 290X and to counter that Nvidia lowered the pricing of the GTX 780 and GTX 770. Now to go along with that they are filling in the price gap they created with the lower prices with a new product, the GTX 780 Ti. Today I have the chance to check out the GTX 780 Ti and see what it is all about. I expected the GTX 780 Ti to just be a higher clocked GTX 780, but I was pleasantly surprised, read on to find out what’s different.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 21 October 2013 18:56
Earlier this week I had the chance to take a look at Asus’s Matrix R9 280X Platinum, today I’m going to come back down to earth a little and check out their R9 270X DirectCU II Top. With a price that fits better into budget builds I’m curious how many of the features I saw on the Matrix will carry over into this card. I have high hopes for the card, but after seeing a few R9 270X’s from other manufactures I can say without a doubt that Asus has their work cut out for them. Let’s dig into it and see what it’s all about.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 14 October 2013 19:04
When I spoke about the AMD launch of its new R9 cards, I mentioned that most of the cards are rebadged versions of the 7000 Series cards. That doesn’t mean manufactures couldn’t go out of their way to improve on the designs themselves. Asus attempted this with their flagship R9 280X called the Matrix R9 280X Platinum. The Matrix itself brings a lot of amazing features, but the platinum edition is handpicked and equipped with a higher overclock to go with it all. Today I’m going to take a close look at the card to see what sets it apart from the rest of the R9 280X’s on the market.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 11 October 2013 13:17
When it comes to AMD video card manufactures there really only a few different names that come to mind. At the top of that list for most people will be Sapphire. Those of you who made it out to LanOC v13 will also remember that Sapphire joined us for our event as well. When they offered to let us take a look at their new R9 series cards, I jumped at the chance. Boy was I surprised to see that they had made some significant changed to their product line, especially the Toxic model that we are going to take a look at today.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 10 October 2013 08:20
Every new launch means new custom PCB designs from the manufactures. The first to hit our office this time around was an R9 270X from Gigabyte with their Windforce cooler design and an overclock. In the past I have been impressed with Gigabytes Windforce designs for their pure cooling power, I’m excited to see what three cooling fans on a large heatsink will do for keeping the R9 270X cool. But first let’s take a look at the card.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 09 October 2013 12:06
In the world of Small Form Factor builds you are always compromising. You either have to give up some performance for a smaller size or give up some size to get the performance you are looking for. Recently though, this trend has been starting to change. My last LAN build was easy to carry around while having (at the time) the second fastest GPU from Nvidia and a high end CPU. Of course because of my GPU I couldn’t go any smaller. Asus has a new GPU that is going to change that. Their new GTX 670 Direct CU Mini is the same length of a MiniITX motherboard. With that size, my LAN rig is going to need a complete rebuild.. To go smaller!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 08 October 2013 10:23
If you have been paying attention at all, there has been a lot of talk about what AMD has been up to on the video card side of things. Part of this is related to them inviting some of their press and partners out to Hawaii to show off their upcoming product launch. Why Hawaii? Well this follows their islands name scheme. For those who didn’t make it out there they did a live video stream as well. There they showed off information about the cards but avoided specifications and major details. In place they focused on details about their new focus on in game audio for example.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 07 August 2013 09:04
As impressive as reference cards can be when they are introduced, it’s always impressive to see what all of the manufactures do with them when they have a little time to toy with the overclocks and fit their aftermarket cooling designs. A good example would be the card I’m going to take a look at today. The MSI GTX 760 Hawk looks similar to the GTX 780 Gaming that I recently took a look at, but with a yellow theme that would go perfectly with their new Z87 M Power motherboard. I wonder how it will perform compared to the reference GTX 760 as well as the aftermarket cards. They set the mark high, so MSI is going to have their work cut out for them.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 05 August 2013 17:17
Earlier this year we covered a whole collection of HD 7790’s from various manufactures but there was one missing. I was a little late getting my hands on a Sapphire card and due to other launches I’m even later getting to telling everyone about it. That does mean we have a chance to compare how the HD 7790 is performing now and along with that we get to see how Sapphires Dual-X dual fan cooling design performs. If its anything like the past few aftermarket cooler designs that we have seen from Sapphire I should be very happy.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 12 July 2013 18:13
To finish up our week we have another quick look at the SLI performance of one of Nvidia’s latest cards. This time around I paired up two GTX 780’s and put them through our test suite. Even just a single GTX 780 had more than enough power for most users, so only the most hard core enthusiasts will be considering going with two. For those of you who are, here is an idea of what to expect.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 08 July 2013 19:28
I recently had the chance to check out a couple of Nvidia’s new GTX 760’s. Now that we are past the launch and things have calmed down, I can now also share the results of my SLI testing of those cards as well. It will be interesting to see how they compare to the GTX 770 SLI results as well as single card performance of the GTX 780 itself.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2013 19:16
Our first introduction to the new 700 series of cards from Nvidia was impressive and I can say without a doubt that I have enjoyed our time with it through the review and beyond. I was especially impressed with the stock cooler aesthetically, but the performance wasn’t too bad as well. Of course that can be improved on and I finally have a chance to see that now with our latest card to come in, MSI’s GTX 780 Gaming or the N780 Twin Frozr 3GB Overclocked. Every time I have had a Twin Frozr card on the test bench I have been impressed, I wonder if this will be the same. Of course I am going to put it through our test suite to find out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 29 June 2013 00:25
So up until now we have taken a look at the stock GTX 760 with its single fan, the EVGA GTX 760 with its dual fans, that really only leaves one logical option right? Today I’m going to take a look at the GTX 760 from Gigabyte with their Windforce cooler that packs in a whopping 3 fans. The card is also overclocked a little more than the previous card as well. I’m expecting good performance and I’m very curious about how well Gigabytes Windforce cooling will do because this is our first chance to check out a card with it.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 27 June 2013 23:22
Now that we have taken a look at the GTX 760 from Nvidia, which of course means it is time to see what some of the other manufactures have done with their GTX 760 designs. First up is a look at a card from EVGA called the GTX 760 Superclocked w/ACX. Some of you might remember the GTX 770 ACX that we recently took a look at, this is very similar. Hopefully the performance that we saw with the GTX 770 ACX will be similar to the GTX 760 ACX; if that is the case we should be very happy with the card. Of course there is only one way to find out, read on to see.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 25 June 2013 16:53
Just this past week I was away on vacation, I came back to a stack of boxes with most of them being video cards. This time, most of them are a new model from Nvidia. Just like with other big launches, the Nvidia GTX 780 was quickly followed up by the GTX 770. To continue filling in gaps in their product line that the GTX 780 launch created Nvidia is launching the GTX 760 that will replace the GTX 660 Ti. Today we are going to take a look at the new GTX 760 and see what it is all about as well as seeing what it is capable in our test suite. The GTX 780 and GTX 770’s were both impressive, I am very curious to see what they will be following them up with.
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