gtx

We're far from sold on Asus' range of desktop systems and its R.O.G. series has yet to really impress, but the new CG8580 does at least have some pretty decent specs to say the least. This time around Asus has pulled out all the stops and gone with an Ivy Bridge CPU, a GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, Xonar DX audio and even a pair of SSD's in RAID, although most of these features are optional.

Overclocking guru K|ngp|n has managed another incredible feat. It wasn't too long ago that he managed to take an NVIDIA GTX 680 up to 1957MHz with the help of some extreme cooling. This time he has managed to push an EVGA GTX 680 up to 1442MHz on basic air cooling alone. That is quite the feat and proves just how great the Kepler architecture is.

"SHANGHAI, Apr 28 (Marketwire) --
GEFORCE LAN/NVIDIA Game Festival 2012 -- NVIDIA today announced the GeForce(R) GTX 690, the world's fastest consumer graphics card(1) -- with a bold industrial design to match. Powered by dual Kepler(TM) architecture-based GeForce GPUs, the GTX 690 is meticulously designed inside and out -- to deliver the most refined, elegant and smooth PC gaming experience possible.

According to what we are hearing now, Nvidia might also launch its GTX 670 together with GTX 690. Our sources are currently talking about May 10th as the launch date for both cards.

Check out the KFA2 GeForce GTX 680 Hall of Fame (HOF) Edition. Overclockers UK listed the card for pre-order, it wil sell for £529.99, including VAT (US $854).

The card features an all customized PCB and cooling assembly on .. yep yep all white PCB. The card is locked and loaded with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface. The GPU is factory overclocked with a base core speed of 1202 MHz and the boost core speed is locked in at 1267 MHz.

As expected, the GK104 chips which did not "cut the mustard" will be recycled and named GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 670 Ti. According to German publication 3DCenter.org, GK104 will take the GF100 (GeForce GTX 465/470/480) route: GK104 on the new cards will have one SMX less (7 in total), bringing a total of 1344 cores (should we still call them CUDA cores given the amount of GPU performance castration performed with Kepler?).

Galaxy released a picture of a new GeForce GTX 680 graphics card it's working on, a liquid-cooled model that beats EVGA's GTX 680 HydroCopper at being truly single-slot capable. It does this by using the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors in the same plane, instead of using an 8+6 pin piggy-backed connector that spans across two expansion slots. Also changed here is the stacked DVI connector cluster, it's replaced by two mini-DisplayPort connectors next to a full-size HDMI and a full-size DisplayPort.

Palit Microsystems Ltd, the leading graphics card manufacturer, announced a brand new Jetstream series at the GeForce GTX 680 The Palit Jetstream series of graphics cards features innovative cooling and an optimized product design to deliver gamers the ultimate gaming experience. As the latest and most powerful GPU in the series, the Palit Jetstream GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream guarantees gamers cutting-edge performance and an explosive new gaming experience.

According to 'Gibbo' on the Overclockers.co.uk forums, we should expect the new NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670Ti and GEFORCE GTX 670 to launch late-April, or early-May. These two GPUs will be placed into price segments aimed at AMD's Radeon range of GPUs.

The GTX 670Ti will replace NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, and take on the HD 7950 3GB. The GTX 670 on the other hand, replaces the GTX 570 and should be slightly faster, too. The GTX 560Ti and 560 are not expected to be replaced with 600-series GPUs until much later into 2012.