Just before the end of each current graphics generation, ASUS puts the cherry on top of it and demonstrates its sheer technological power by presenting a limited-edition card to take the throne of the world’s fastest. This sort of statement may seem too pompous at first, but a look back at cards such as ARES and MARS says enough.

As we predicted in a recent article dealing with AMD’s new graphics cards from the HD 7000 series, after the high-end models were presented, miniature chips would follow, replacing the very popular Juniper-based products. The Juniper GPU “survived” for two Radeon generations, which is mostly due to its unprecedented success, one that’ll be hard to repeat, if there even is the need for such a thing.

Although we’re a bit disappointed not to have received the new Radeon graphics up to now, we still didn’t have to wait for too long to get one. As usual, this was taken care of by AMD, but chips are obviously in good supply anyway, since we received the first branded model not too long ago too. This is very good news, as a low yield has been mentioned as one of the possible causes of the late presentation of the card and reception of the first actual models, but luckily, that’s not the issue here.

As you probably know, the official start of Electronic Art's Battlefield 3 beta test is drawing near and we had a chance to try the game a bit sooner than most other players. Apart from playing, we also performed the short test in order to know what to expect from hardware when it comes to this game. We tried playing with the configuration Electronic Arts specified as a minimum to play this game comfortably. What we had is a 3.2 GHz dual-core Phenom II X2 555 processor combined with 2GB of RAM and a Radeon 3870 graphics card. Although it might not be expected due to impressive in-game trailers with pimped up visuals, you can actually play the game comfortably using Radeon 3870 in full HD resolution, albeit with minimal graphics settings. Of course, here and there the framerate drops below 30 frames per second, but considering the fact that 3870 is four years old video card, we think that engine optimization is more than good. Even on low settings, the game looks quite decent, so if you have a relatively old hardware, you shouldn't completely give up the game.

We’ve recently dealt with the benefits that AMD Catalyst drivers offer through regular updates. The test was done on Radeon HD 6870. Our conclusion was that, even though this model seems to be the most frequently mentioned one in the release notes, practical gains don’t usually match theoretical ones. The performance difference turned out to be minor in favour of newer revisions in real-world conditions. We haven’t been planning on letting NVIDIA slip past, though, so here’s the second part to the story. As was the case with AMD, we’ve been looking for a model that’s been present on the market for a while already, while still selling in high quantities.

New drivers appear regularly from AMD’s kitchen, and this is something that we’ve always appreciated about Radeon graphics cards. It’s one of the best ways to let your buyers know that they are being covered in terms of technical support and that they won’t be left on their own after they’ve purchased your product. Simply put, if something isn’t working properly, or you’re encountering trouble with a specific application, chances are that the next month’s driver revision will amend it all. What’s even more useful is opening the release notes of the new driver revision and reading the list of improvements, particularly performance jumps in certain games, which ranges from a few percent to a few dozen percent.

Last month we presented Radeon HD 6790, a pretty accessible solution for gamers who don’t have a lot of money at disposal. AMD released this model with the desire to add a product to their gamma which would simultaneously be both stronger than Radeon HD 5770 and weaker than HD 6850, but also a direct competitor to GeForce GTX 550. They fulfilled this task well, as the price was perfectly positioned even on local markets, the way it was supposed to be. However, certain models, produced by the so-called “premium” partners, had a rather high price for this card, around 130€. This wouldn’t be such a big problem if HD 6850 wasn’t a mere 10€ more expensive, which rendered HD 6790 unnecessary in the value for money segment.

We’ve often been asked why we were using a motherboard “with only a x16/x4 configuration” to test graphics cards in CrossFireX, with the question referring to the available modes for a motherboard’s PCI Express slots. This makes sense from the viewpoint of an author trying to create the ideal conditions and get results as objective as possible. On the other hand, how much does this really impair performance compared to an x8/x8 system? Many users are desperate when they find out that their motherboard is limited to x16/x4, thinking that this is bound to degrade their performance significantly. This theory isn’t based in fact, however, since PCI Express 2.0 (the one that most graphics cards are currently using) has a bandwidth of 8 GB/s in x16 mode. This is an extremely high bandwidth value that no single-GPU card can use to the fullest, as seen from the experience with GeForce GTX 580, the fastest single-GPU card in existence; in fact, not even multi-GPU cards can, as witnessed by Radeon HD 5970 and the hotly anticipated HD 6990. Yet PCI Express x4 has only 2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is often considered laughable by today’s standards, as a number this low is bound to cause a performance bottleneck. Or is it?

In certain situations, when a company is using practically the same chips for two or more product generations, the need to rename a certain older-generation product is unavoidable. In order to simplify that process for the end users and avoid them drowning in a torrent of names, prefixes and suffixes, the simplest way is to rename the product with some slight changes and place it (either by name or price) into the newer category. NVIDIA is familiar with this concept, in fact, too familiar - this strategy got completely out of hand back in the era of GeForce 8, 9 and GT200. Luckily, history doesn’t have to repeat itself, and this move is entirely justified in the case of GTX560. This card is the one that should be put right behind GTX560 with the Ti(tanium) suffix, and therefore replace the very popular GTX460 with 1 GB VRAM, which was the first Fermi-based product to offer truly excellent performance at a moderate price.

It was some time ago that we first got the idea of making a comparative test of two cards that are in high demand among hardware enthusiasts. The chance arose when two almost identical cards got to our offices, courtesy of ASUS. Situations such as these, where you have the chance to compare graphics cards with entirely different GPUs under the same conditions, are rare to say in the least. Even if performance is comparable, cooling systems are usually not. Furthermore, every manufacturer has its own PCBs, layouts etc. However, this is one such situation, since ASUS provided us with cards from their DirectCU II series. We’ve already explained countless times how this series first got its name, so no need to repeat all the “theory” again. Suffice to say - an even-handed melee between Radeon HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 570. If this phrase is enough to get you going, you’re the proper audience for such a showdown, so sit back and enjoy the following lines.