GPUCafé

Modern GPU Failure Rates – 1H’09

AI — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:55:07 +0000

With vendors offering cut throat discounts, bundles, features to differentiate themselves from the competition, you may wonder what really sets one vendor apart from another; reliability. At least in our opinion, as if you get a really good product, bundle or a really good deal, what good is it when the product has an abnormally short life span? Hardware France have published their quarterly article featuring failure rates of various PC components and obviously we’ll be concentrating on the GPU failure rates.

First up is the single-GPU based products. Nvidia has mixed results in this case as the Geforce GTX 260 comes out on top as the most reliable where as the GTX 280 has the worst failure rate; almost thrice the industry norm for acceptable failure rates.

In the multi-GPU product face off, Nvidia comes out as the clear winner. However, it should be noted that both SKUs have higher failure rates than their single-GPU siblings for obvious reasons. The higher complex circuitry & heat dissipation have an impact on the reliability of these SKUs. Also make a note that these figures do not take into account the newer reference GTX 295 board (single-PCB) into account. In the past, Nvidia has claimed that the dual-PCB (sandwich) design was better in terms of efficient heat dissipation, it will be interesting to see if the failures rates of this new design pays off for Nvidia in the long run.

Next up is the failure rate breakdown for vendors. Although the vendor list is not extensive, it still gives us a rough idea of which vendors are more reliable than others. Surprisingly Sapphire & Gigabyte are not the worst despite have some SKUs which had really high failures rates.

Last but not the least is the least reliable products. Cards based on Nvidia GPUs are more common with 6 SKUs out of the top 10 least reliable are from the green team.

ATI Radeon HD 5700 – Review Roundup

AI — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:44:53 +0000

AMD has opened up a can of whoop ass on the competition by leveraging its Evergreen technology to bring DirectX11 hardware to the masses by introducing the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series. With a street pricing of $109-159, the SKUs are squarely aimed at the mainstream segment. No doubt this is ATI’s best chance of increasing its recoup of market share back from Nvidia. As usual, here is the review round up on the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series. So far there are 30 reviews and counting, please check back later for more additions to this list.

Nvidia Geforce GT220 Review Roundup

AI — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:07:32 +0000

The NDA is up and the reviews are flowing in; Nvidia’s G200 based entry-level products are finally here. We brought you the GT220 benchmarks a day earlier than anyone else, today we have the most comprehensive review round up (11 reviews and counting) of the GT220 for your convenience and reading pleasure. Please check back later as our crawler keeps populating this list.

Nvidia Geforce GT220 Benchmarks

AI — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:00:07 +0000

Fourteen months after the launch of the G200 series, Nvidia is finally going to introduce its G200 entry level GPU; the GT220. This marks the first 40nm product from Nvidia based on the GT216 ASIC. It is also the first G200 series entry-level SKU that is geared for the consumer retail space as until now the other 40nm ASICs were only limited to the OEM space. Nvidia is set to launch the GT220 tomorrow, its Thanksgiving present to gamers on a budget. Is it enough to whet their appetite?

Sadly no, going by the gaming performance. The Geforce GT220 falls short of the Radeon HD 4670 by 30-35% on average and only manages to come out on top in one title; GRAW2 by 10%. In majority of the games, the card seems like it is bottlenecked by the low memory bandwidth.

The big letdown is the pricing, the MSRP is set at $79USD. The Radeon 4670 can be found online for as low as $60USD or the Geforce 9600GT for $80USD offer much value for your money. Since there are no accurate numbers for the yields, we can only expect that Nvidia has a smaller die size advantage compared to RV730 (4670). The reference design PCB also requires fewer layers, so Nvidia should be able to drive down the price of this SKU pretty quickly.

The best aspect of the launch is that the Geforce GT220 is widely available from all the major retailers in decent quantities. Hopefully Nvidia is able to drive down the price of this product quickly to make it viable product against the competition, because the gaming performance is sub par and the feature set isnt great either, this product is not DirectX 11 compliant. The NDA for reviews expires tomorrow and as usual we’ll bring you the most comprehensive review round up, stay tuned.

ATI Radeon HD 5850 – Review Round up

AI — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:15:13 +0000

ATI launched the Radeon HD 5800 series last month but the availability of the slower sibling; 5850 was expected a few weeks later. Well reviewers have the card, retailers have the card, all you need is new some reviews to make your decision. Here are 20reviews for your reading pleasure, keep checking back as our crawler keeps populating this list.

ATI Radeon HD 5770 & 5750 Benchmarks

AI — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:12:02 +0000

ATI is about to take the wraps of the highly anticipated Radeon™ HD 5700 series in a few days. While the internet is abuzz about the performance figures and you might also be curious about it, today we bring you 25, yes 25 game benchmarks of both 5770 and 5750.

The above benchmarks are at 1920×1080. The 5770 is on average 17% faster than the 5750 with the most significant difference of 33% in LP:Colonies.

In the performance per dollar and performance per watt race, the 5750 slightly edges out the 5770 by a few points. This is generally the case with most price brackets, the top card offers the best performance at a price and or power consumption premium. In the mean time, Nvidia is prepping GT214/GT215 GPUs, which are the die-shrinks of the G92 midrange ASICs. It will be an interesting match up as the Radeon HD 5700 series is a clear winner in terms of feature-set coupled with the performance advantage. Will Nvidia try to shake things up with a price incentives or will the consumers prefer the 5700 series, time will tell.

ATI Radeon HD 5870 – Review Round up

AI — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:19:35 +0000

ATI, the GPG division of AMD seems to be firing on all cylinders ever since the RV670 and they have done it again with the Radeon HD 5800 series. Here we’ll be including the most comprehensive review round up on the top of the line SKU, the Radeon HD 5870. Here are 34 reviews for your reading pleasure:

Welcome – GPUCafé is back

AI — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:11:03 +0000

Welcome – GPUCafé is back!

Sorry for the delay, after months of internal problems GPUCafé is finally back. Please check back shortly.