ATI Radeon HD 5970 news

Breaking in Sandy Bridge-E: Building A Kick-Ass Rig with Intel's New Chip

By MaximumPC, published 14-11-2011

Intel's new enthusiast platform is here. I'm going to put it through its paces with a quiet riot of a gaming rig. Intel has just released its new Sandy Bridge-E platform. With six- and eight-core processors, eight DIMM slots, and multiple PCIe 3.0 slots, it’s Nehalem’s true heir and the answer to complaints that Sandy Bridge, while awesome, just isn’t enthusiast enough. (Check out our official benchmarks here). The i7-2600K is a great part, but it’s only a quad-core, and there hasn’t been a six-core enthusiast CPU from Intel since the i7-990X, which is on a dead platform. I’ve gotten my hands on the Sandy Bridge-E flagship CPU: the Core i7-3960X, a $1,000, six-core beast at 3.3GHz. Oh, and a motherboard and cooler to go with it. I’ve rustled up a passel of RAM, a titanic GPU,...

Build It: A First-Class Gaming & Media PC for the Living Room

By MaximumPC, published 11-07-2011

Get Gaming on an HTPC I don't want to watch cable TV. I don't want to use a controller. I just want to watch 3D Blu-rays and frag people with a mouse and keyboard, all on a box that fits on my entertainment center. Is that too much to ask? We’ve built our fair share of home theater PCs in the past, with all sorts of different use cases in mind. Our August 2010 HTPC was a stunner built for 3D, with passively cooled GPU, CPU, and PSU, as well as a four-channel CableCard tuner and Blu-ray 3D support. In June 2011, Gordon tried to make a small-form-factor HTPC that could cut out the previous build’s bulk (and CableCard) while still supporting Blu-ray 3D. Both of those rigs handled their respective tasks well, but what if I don’t care about cable but do care about gaming? This month’s ...

How to Build a Kick-Ass Gaming Rig for Under $700

By MaximumPC, published 20-06-2011

Build A Gaming Machine That Will Satisfy Your Cravings Without Breaking the Bank The thought of a gaming PC might conjure up images of decadent excess—a full-course meal of awesome that moves from an SSD consumé to a filet of Core i7 990X to quad-SLI under glass. While that’s certainly a feast worth aspiring to, it’s by no means the only fare that will give your gaming needs sustenance. And, no, we’re not suggesting that you ruin your health with an empty-calorie diet of console. In fact, unlike some corners of the gaming world, where there’s a fixed menu of parts, the PC offers loads of options that scale from opulent to economical. Our budget gaming rig is all about instant gratification: a way for you to fill your gaming hunger with a state of the art, speedy machine, capabl...

Buying Guide: 10 top gaming graphics cards compared

By TechRadar, published 18-06-2011

There's one component in your machine that will be superseded by faster and more powerful versions quicker than any other, and that's the graphics processor. The graphics card is the supermodel part of any modern gaming PC. It, more than anything else, makes your games look beautiful and run as smoothly as a baby's velvet smoking jacket. So, if you're a gamer and you've got a bit of cash to spend, forking out the lot on a new graphics card is the best way to up the frame rate of your favourite games and make the girls think you're attractive, right? Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the way the graphics game works. The top-performing rigs are always the most well balanced. Put a Ferrari engine into a Mk1 Golf GTi and it will go fast, sure, but you'll fly off the first corner you come t...

Polywell Ignition X5800 Review

By MaximumPC, published 27-05-2011

Polywell’s latest packs a surprise GPU Here at Maximum PC, we adhere to the cable news statistics rule that two data points is all you need to create a trend. So being presented with the second white system we’ve seen in the last three months, we can now declare that white is the new black (which was the new beige). And, (Kent Brockman voice-over) it’s a trend we like. Far from gaudy, Polywell’s Ignition X5800 manages to look powerful, stately, and professional. It’s an appropriate aesthetic coming from a company with a long history of making computers for work. For 24 years, Polywell has cranked out workstations, servers, and even Alpha-based rigs. White is really the new black. Those workstation roots seem to influence the rig’s interior as well, with Polywell opting for Int...

Small Form Factor Face-Off! We Compare 5 Compact Contenders

By MaximumPC, published 16-05-2011

From the caliber of their parts to the breadth of their abilities to their unconventional shapes and sizes, today's small form factor PCs are a tasty treat for power users It has long been considered common wisdom that the smaller the size of a PC, the greater its compromises. Notebooks, no matter how fat, for example, will never touch the power of a desktop machine. The same held true for small form factor rigs. But is that still the case? To find out how today’s SFF rigs compare with their full-size desktop brethren, we tasked five top PC makers with sending us their best and brightest, and, well, smallest machines. We didn’t put any hard and fast limits on size or price. Instead, we wanted the vendors to go nuts with the definition of “small form factor rig.” As a result, what ...

PowerColor dual Barts/HD6870 video card surfaces and it looks awesome

By SlashGear, published 05-10-2011

I really like it when video card makers take what would normally be a decent video card with a single GPU and make it much more than that by adding a second of the same GPU to the mix. Dual GPU video cards are nothing new and have been around for a long time, we just don’t see them as often as the single GPU offerings. The only downside to a dual GPU video cards is that they tend to run hotter and take up more space and power than your average single GPU card. The new card that has surfaced from PowerColor has a pair of the ATI 68xx/Barts GPUs shoehorned into a single video card. That should be plenty of oomph to give the dual GPU NVIDIA GF114 video card a serious run for its money. The use of a pair of the 6870 GPUs should make this one of the more affordable dual GPU cards we ha...

Buying Guide: GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 6950

By TechRadar, published 17-04-2011

The change in the multi-GPU game over the last eighteen months or so has been dramatic. It's been a long time coming but the technology is finally coming of age, but there's now a real reason to be dropping a second card into your home system other than just bragging rights: straight performance. When the technology first became available in our home gaming rigs though it was very different situation. With a combination of flaky driver support, dodgy hardware implementation and frankly shoddy performance, it was hard to recommend anyone part with the extra cash for the second card. The diminishing returns you got from dropping in that second GPU made it a very expensive and ineffectual luxury. With driver improvements, and far better graphical silicon coming from both the giants of the gra...

Buying Guide: GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 6950

By TechRadar, published 17-04-2011

The change in the multi-GPU game over the last eighteen months or so has been dramatic. It's been a long time coming but the technology is finally coming of age, but there's now a real reason to be dropping a second card into your home system other than just bragging rights: straight performance. When the technology first became available in our home gaming rigs though it was very different situation. With a combination of flaky driver support, dodgy hardware implementation and frankly shoddy performance, it was hard to recommend anyone part with the extra cash for the second card. The diminishing returns you got from dropping in that second GPU made it a very expensive and ineffectual luxury. With driver improvements, and far better graphical silicon coming from both the giants of the gra...

Buying Guide: GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 6950

By TechRadar, published 17-04-2011

The change in the multi-GPU game over the last eighteen months or so has been dramatic. It's been a long time coming but the technology is finally coming of age, but there's now a real reason to be dropping a second card into your home system other than just bragging rights: straight performance. When the technology first became available in our home gaming rigs though it was very different situation. With a combination of flaky driver support, dodgy hardware implementation and frankly shoddy performance, it was hard to recommend anyone part with the extra cash for the second card. The diminishing returns you got from dropping in that second GPU made it a very expensive and ineffectual luxury. With driver improvements, and far better graphical silicon coming from both the giants of the gra...

How-To Build An AMD/CrossFire Powerhouse PC

By MaximumPC, published 04-11-2011

Can we build an AMD machine—any AMD machine—that can compete with an Intel-powered rig? In the forever war between CPU vendors, AMD and Intel have traded places many times—one leads, then the other. Since the advent of Intel’s Core i7, though, AMD hasn’t been able to touch the performance of Intel’s high end, and Sandy Bridge further increases the gap. But, well, you couldn't buy Sandy Bridge motherboards when I wrote this build-it story in February for the May print issue—something about a bad chipset—and I’d been meaning to build an AMD-powered machine for a while now—with CrossFire, even. Why? Partially because I can, but I also want to witness the performance delta firsthand. Just for kicks, I’m also going to put some effort—and money—into making this system p...

Build It! A Sandy-Bridge Powered Gaming PC (for under a grand)

By MaximumPC, published 17-02-2011

You don’t need to spend a fortune to take advantage of Intel’s newest platform Previous builds in this section have tended toward the expensive side, whether they’ve been the $8,600 photo studio or our $1,800 mini-ITX gaming build. While we stand by those choices (this is Maximum PC), we’ve also heard your cries for more affordable options. Often, a budget build means buying parts that are a little past their prime—and don’t get us wrong, you can find great deals there. But for this month’s build, I knew I wanted to explore Intel’s hot new Sandy Bridge architecture—and, if I could swing it, one of AMD’s new Radeon 6800 series GPUs—while keeping my total budget under $1,000. (Editor's Note: This was written before the Sandy Bridge snafu, but hey, it's still a great bui...

Updated: 15 best PC upgrades for gamers

By TechRadar, published 17-02-2011

What are the best gaming upgrades for your PC today? How do you turn a whimpering little PC into the gaming goliath you want, nay, deserve?Well, stick around because no matter what you can afford to spend, we've got a the best PC upgrade for you.Obviously the key components we'll be looking at are the graphics card, CPU, motherboard, memory and your storage devices. Upgrading any of these will always help, and we're here to tell you which ones are right for you.To get the most out of your machine you need to know first what you're mostly going to be using it for and secondly which components will deliver the best performance increase for the things you're going to do with it.After all, there's little point in forking out £500 on a dual-GPU graphics card when all you're using it for is pla...

AMD vs Nvidia: 10 Videocards Go Head-to-Head

By MaximumPC, published 02-11-2011

A new generation of GPUs from Nvidia and AMD has hit the streets. Both camps are offering incredible performance and the widest array of features ever before seen in graphics cards. But, inevitably, each side brings its own unique strengths and weaknesses. What better way to determine the performance champ than by letting this season’s new crop of cards duke it out in the various price categories? On one side is AMD, the self-proclaimed master of efficiency, looking to hold onto the glory it grabbed when it shipped the original Radeon HD 5870—a surprise contender that knocked former champ Nvidia to the canvas at the time by offering DirectX 11 feature sets at impressive performance levels without requiring a nuclear reactor to power it. On the other side is Nvidia, looking to score a ...

Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition Chassis Review

By MaximumPC, published 02-07-2011

Son of an unholy union between a chassis and a SATA dock We’ll admit it: When the Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition mid-tower chassis showed up on our doorstep, we thought it was a joke. “Surely,” we said, “Thermaltake didn’t just slap one of its dual-bay BlacX hard drive docks onto a cheap mid-tower chassis and call it a day.” Well, Thermaltake did, and in a really confusing way. The V9 BlacX Edition is virtually identical to the plain ol’ V9, true, except the BlacX Edition has more features, better build quality, and a $60 dual-SATA dock slapped on the top. And it’s $30 cheaper than the plain ol’ V9. Er, what? It’s not the most inspired design, but from this angle the Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition looks pretty good. The V9 BlacX Edition is a black mid-tower chassis, painte...

iBuypower Paladin XLC Review

By MaximumPC, published 26-01-2011

Hexa-core’s white knight? Ever since the appearance of Intel’s smoking-fast second-gen Core i7 processor in January, we’ve been wondering if Intel’s hexa-cores still have a purpose. When iBuypower’s Paladin XLC strode into town with a hearty Intel six-core inside its shining white armor, we expected an epic battle. And we got one. Outfitted with Intel’s priciest hexa-core, the 3.33GHz Core i7-980X, the Paladin XLC seemed destined to take on Falcon Northwest’s black-clad Mach V system that we reviewed in February. Using NZXT’s excellent Phantom case, the Paladin XLC certainly strikes an impressive pose. Along with 12GB of DDR3/1600, a 128GB A-Data SSD, a 2TB hard drive, and a 10x Blu-ray burner, the Paladin XLC fields an imposing collection of hardware, and at a decent pric...