SweClockers.com has posted a video of the new MSI Radeon HD 6990. It is kind of fun to listen to the video and see what words I do understand, even though I do not speak Swedish. However, thanks to Google, we can translate what they wrote:
The upcoming super-hot video card Radeon HD 6990 makes an appearance at Cebit 2011
Never mind. We already knew that. What we did not know was the GPU core speed and memory speeds. Those have been recently revealed by Hexus.net. Hexus.net says that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 will have a core speed of 800 MHz and an effective memory clock of 4.5 GHz. However, Fudzilla is reporting the 6990 will have a core speed of 830 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.0 GHz. Perhaps the difference is that someone is wrong, or perhaps the difference is that some board makers will be selling an overclocked version of the card. Until it is released, you can treat it as rumors.
The AMD Radeon HD 6970 currently has a core speed of 880 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.5 GHz. This makes the dual GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990 slower than the 6970, but that is to be expected since they need to limit the amount of power that it uses, as well as limit the amount of heat that it generates. Since the 6990 does have two GPUs, one could expect that it would have 3072 stream processors, 192 texture units, and 4GB of GDDR5. Of course, that is just simply doubling the specs of the 6970. The rumored release date for the 6990 is March 8th.
With pretty much all of the Fermi-based hardware out right now being just reprints of NVidia’s reference design, many people have been wondering who would be first to market with their own design. Looks like MSI is the current leader, with pics of their non-reference GTX460 on EXPreview.
This graphics card part number is N460GTX Cyclone 768D5/OC, it based on GF104 which has 336 CUDA Core, core/Shader/memory clocks of 725/1450/3600MHz; Features 768MB of GDDR5 memory as well as 192-bit memory interface, dual-DVI/HDMI output.
At CEBIT 2010, MSI is showing an AMD 870 based motherboard with the Lucid HYDRA chip. Lucid is a chip designer company with funding from Intel. The Hydra chip is an independent solution to allow multiple GPUs to render scenes in games. This means that you are no longer dependent on SLI from NVidia or Crossfire from ATI.
In the past, there seems to have been a lot of problems with the chip. Well, perhaps the problems were not with the hardware side of the chip, but with the software side of things. It has been almost two months since we have seen anything on the HYDRA chip, so perhaps many of the software issues have been solved.
The AM3 socket is powered by a 10-phase DrMOS based VRM. The CPU connects to four DDR3 DIMM slots for dual-channel memory. It connects to the AMD 870 northbridge over the HyperTransport 3.0 interface. Its lone PCI-E 2.0 x16 port is taken up by the Hydra Engine chip located between the two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots. Other expansion slots include three PCI-E x1, and one PCI.
Anandtech takes a quick look at the MSI’s GeForce 210. This video card costs $30, is low-profile, and is passively cooled. You can easily take that to mean that it is not for those who are looking for the latest and fastest card. Still it would work well in some cases. Personally I use such cards in machines that I want to be as quiet as possible. Another case where this may be of some use is in a Home Theater PC. On that note, the video card does have some problems with deinterlacing video signals. From the article:
Once we throw deinterlacing out of the equation however the G210 has no problem playing back progressively encoded MPEG-2 and H.264 material. It looks to only be serious limited when deinterlacing, which means the G210 is only at a serious disadvantage with interlaced material such as live television.
Another release from CES, MSI was on-hand demonstrating three new concept PC’s that show some interesting combinations of technology for gaming or home media. The first is an “All-In-One” 3D PC, similar to an iMac (completely integrated monitor, PC, everything) but with a 3D display that uses wireless glasses. The second is a similar design, but has a sliding design for storing the mouse and keyboard.
The third is,perhaps, the most interesting as it’s another all-in-one PC, but instead of a monitor it comes with an HD-resolution projector. Meant for home media, I have to wonder how well it would work for things like display-walls or virtual reality environments.
Guru3D and Anandtech have posted reviews on the MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard. This motherboard comes with the Lucid Hydra chip. Lucid is a chip designer company with funding from Intel. The Hydra chip is an independent solution to allow multiple GPUs to render scenes in games. This means that you are no longer dependent on SLI from NVidia or Crossfire from ATI. The MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard has been delayed until some time in Q1 2010, which is basically anytime in the next three months. From the Anandtech review:
We’ve had the Fuzion in our hands for over a month now, as the hardware has been ready well ahead of the software. Lucid has been continuing to develop the software side, and the two parties are finally ready to sign off on the finished product, although Hydra is still very much a work in progress.
Interestingly enough, we had posted a link to [H]ard|OCP’s review of the same motherboard back on December 9th. That review seems to be missing from [H]ard|OCP’s website now. That is curious. I wonder if the reason the article disappeared was due to the improvements made over the past month. Perhaps later today we will see an article from [H]ard|OCP. Switching over to the Guru3D review:
One can easily make the mistake that this review is solely about the Hydra chip used on the Big Bang Fuzion motherboard. In the grand scheme of things the Hydra chip is merely a little extra lovin’ to play around with and as such it should be seen that way. We definitely like what Lucid is trying to accomplish, but we also have to acknowledge that we ran into quite a lot of problems, compatibility issues and sheer limitations. Where it works it can work well, but in the end, in this time and age, the combination of two similar Radeons in Crossfire or two NVIDIA GeForce cards in SLI will simple make much more sense as you by far will not have to deal with the profile support and compatibility issues.
The MSI GTX275 Lightning has been pushed to unseen extremes by Belgium overclocker Massman, who has hooked it up to some KingpinCooling hardware and brought it to new depths of cold.
The MSI GTX275 Lightning default: 700/1404/1150MHz was successfully overclocked to 1375/2757/1435MHz, achieving the highest core clock we’re seen so far on an NVIDIA-based graphics card.
Several pictures, including the impressive 3dMark Vantage score of P20460, available an Expreview.
Both NVidia and MSI have responded to recent rumors that MSI delayed their Hydra-powered motherboard, the Fuzion, due to guidance from NVidia and rumors that NVidia plans to disable Hydra at the driver level. They claim they fully support the Hydra product, and it’s just regular product delays getting in the way.
The second product in our Big Bang line will be the MSI Fuzion motherboard featuring Lucid Hydra technology. Although we had planned to release this product by now, we decided to postpone it until early next year to make sure it delivers the best possible experience for our customers. We are continuing to work closely with Lucid to bring this exciting product to market.
We want to be clear that the reason for the delay has to do with software, and not external pressure from others. NVIDIA did not delay or impede the production of Fuzion in any way.
Remember the MSI Big Bang Motherboards we mentioned last week, specifically the Fuzion with the Lucid Hydra chipset allowing multiple-vendor SLI? Seems that the Fuzion board has been delayed, possibly terminated, due to some strongarming by NVidia.
Considering the product would impact NVIDIA’s profit coming from SLI fee, the green giant decides that it’s time to do something. Firstly, they will break support for Lucid’s chip at the driver part, and by unknown means force MSI to postpone their “Big Bang” motherboard. Though MSI claims the Big Bang Fusion powered by Hydra engine will be released by the end of 2009, we don’t think so, exactly. The site Overclock3D believes the board will be delayed to early next year, or even be killed finally.
Update: Real Nvidia & MSI’s official response to this, freeing NVidia of any responsibility.
MSI has unveiled their latest motherboard offering, the “Big Bang Gaming” series.
The first Big Bang branded mainboard, Trinergy is designed with eye-catching features such as NVIDIA SLI technology and QuantumWave™ audio processing with the latest THX TruStudio PC and Creative EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 plus exclusive performance boost design from MSI.
The really interesting part is that this is the first motherboard (in my knowledge) to offer the Lucid HYDRA chipset, meaning you can run multiple GPU’s from multiple manufacturers in the same system.
With pretty much all of the Fermi-based hardware out right now being just reprints of NVidia’s reference design, many people have been wondering who would be first to market with their own design. Looks like MSI is the current leader, with pics of their non-reference GTX460 on EXPreview.
Another release from CES, MSI was on-hand demonstrating three new concept PC’s that show some interesting combinations of technology for gaming or home media. The first is an “All-In-One” 3D PC, similar to an iMac (completely integrated monitor, PC, everything) but with a 3D display that uses wireless glasses. The second is a similar design, but has a sliding design for storing the mouse and keyboard.
The MSI GTX275 Lightning has been pushed to unseen extremes by Belgium overclocker Massman, who has hooked it up to some KingpinCooling hardware and brought it to new depths of cold.
Remember the 
MSI has unveiled their latest motherboard offering, the “Big Bang Gaming” series.
VizWorld.com 
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