The pic below hails from China. I only wish there was more info populated in the GPU-Z fields.

Here is the invite written by Nvidia:

2K Games and NVIDIA would like to invite you to the official Mafia II Community Launch Events, being held in Chicago (August 21st), Miami (August 22nd), and New York City (August 28th).

If you live in within driving distance to the event locations, and are interested in attending, please visit our events page on Facebook to RSVP. Anyone who RSVPs before Wednesday, August 18th at 3:00 p.m. PST will be added to the VIP guest list, which lets you skip to the front of the line!

There is no cover charge at any of the events, but you must be at least 18 years of age to party; 21 to drink. Hang out with your fellow gamers and play the new Mafia II with 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround!

Once again, you need to RSVP to get on the VIP list! Hope you can make it!

Happy gaming from the NVIDIA and 2K crews!

Let me know if any of guys plan to attend and make sure to send me pics or video if you go!

I found the VisionTek HD 4670 X2 when I was looking for something interesting to post about. As far as I know, VisionTek is the only one making a 4670 X2 so I wanted to bring it to your attention. It features two HD 4670 GPUs, 2GB of GDDR3 and 4 DL-DVI ports. Unfortunatley the price for this unique card is over three times as high as the regular HD 4670s.

Here is the best and only picture that I could find:

Are these the design drawings for the GTS 450? Will the final PCB look as cool (a black PCB with red printing) as these drawings? I'll let you be the judge.

This is probably the largest overclocking roundup I have ever done. Lots of sites decided to put Nvidia's overclocking claims to the test. Then there is the additional data that comes as a result of there being two different models. The 1GB model is on top and the 768MB model is on the bottom. As you can see the 768MB version is just a little more overclockable than the 1GB model.

According to the reviews I've read the GTX 460 has a great price, it is quiet, it uses less power, it performs as well of better than the HD 5830 and it can overclock very well. There are two models that have been developed. The $220 model has 1GB of 256 bit GDDR5 and the $200 model has 768MB of 192 bit GDDR5. Based on what I have seen, both models overclock very well. For an example check out this graph from [H]ard|OCP.

The reviews are here and the verdict seems to be that this card is fast, heavy, expensive and loud.

Legit Reviews
Overclock3D
PC Perspective
Guru3D
TechPowerUp

 

Now that E3 is over I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the totally sweet PC games that were at the show. I'll devide these into genre categories to make it easy on you. Read on for decriptions and videos from the shows hottest PC games.

EXPreview has exposed what is reported to be the specifications for the upcoming GTX 460. Are these real? I'll let you guys be the judge.

Once again it is time for the overclocking roundup! Yeehaw! This time along with the usual chart I have included a comparison between a GTX 465 clocked to the average overclock speeds and a stock GTX 470. Notice how the overclocked GTX 465 has higher rates than the stock GTX 470 in all areas except for memory bandwidth.

Today from Galaxy's Computex booth we have a GTX 480 with a GT 240 GPU on board for PhysX processing purposes. Apparently this card can be combined with additional GTX 480s in SLI without affecting the operation of the GT 240.

In other news, the specifications and launch window for the GTX 460 have been leaked. The card will feature the new GF104 Fermi GPU and the intial models will be all reference designs like most Nvidia card launches, but unlike the GTX 465 launch.

HotHardware has been kind enough to share some pics of Galaxy's GeForce GTX 470 Dual prototype with the world. The card is a 12 inches long, requires two 8 pin PCI-E power connectors and in the realm of display connectors, it has only 3 DVI ports. Three DVI ports on a dual GPU Fermi card may mean nothing to you (or HotHardware) but I seem to recall that Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround requires two Fermi cards in SLI and three DVI ports (2 on one card and 1 on the second). So it seems like this one card could be marketed as the perfect 3D Vision Surround card.

Looks like I missed out on some big news when I was spending time with my family this weekend. Nvidia announced the GTX 465 and the cards were available in stores 2 days before the NDA expired. I have linked up all the cards that are available at Newegg and I have added the reviews to our GTX 465 page.

Galaxy, and Gigabyte have non-reference coolers on their models, but I like Palit's design the most. The card has a nice dual fan cooler and it features full size HDMI and DisplayPort ports as well as two DVI connectors.

There are sales going on this weekend because of the holiday. I have decided to gather some great to excellent deals here for your consumer enjoment.

•    Zotac 9800 GT 512MB $49.99 After Rebate 
•    HIS HD 5870 iCooler V 1GB $389.99 with free 8GB USB Flash Drive 
•    Gigabyte HD 5870 Special Cooler $399.99 with free Avatar DVD
•    HIS HD 5850 iCooler V 1GB $289.99 with free 8GB USB Flash Drive 
•    PowerColor HD 5770 512MB $134.99 After Rebate
•    HIS HD 5770 1GB $139.99 After Rebate
•    Evga GTX 260 Core 216 $174.99 After Rebate with free game download
•    Evga GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked $184.99 After Rebate with free game download
•    ECS GTS 250 1GB $99.99 After Rebate
•    Evga GTS 250 512MB $89.99 After Rebate with 2 free game downloads
•    Evga GTS 250 1GB full clock speed $119.99 After Rebate with 2 free game downloads
•    Evga GTS 250 1GB $99.99 After Rebate with 2 free game downloads
•    Galaxy GTS 250 512GB $73.49 After Rebate and 10% off code
•    PNY GTX 470 $329.99 After $20 Instant Savings ends 5/28
•    Asus GTX 470 $329.99 After $20 Instant Savings ends 5/28
•    MSI GTX 470 $329.99 After $20 Instant Savings end 5/28
•    Zotac GTX 470 $329.99 After $20 Instant Savings ends 5/28

Snehagj (also known as Sneha Tammineedi) is our final contest winner! There were only 28 re-tweets this week and she had 16 of them so I was not very surprised that one of her numbers came up. I have sent her a tweet to let her know she won and I have already heard back from her. Once she signs up for (and installs) Steam she will let me know what game she wants.

To all our contest winners, remember to use your $50 Sideshow Collectibles gift cards before the end of the year on an eligible item on this page. I will remind you all again via a news post in December. Also, I would love to know what you folks end up getting from Sideshow so please drop me a line when you decide.

Somehow the Radeon HD 5550 escaped my unblinking gaze (it pierces flesh!) but I have now added it to our database. We got 6 of them linked to Newegg so far but make sure to check the memory type before you buy. The card can come with DDR2, GDDR3 or GDDR5 so make sure you grab the one you want. According to the very few reviews that I found, the HD 5550 is slower than the GT 240 and HD 5570 but faster than the HD 5450. Shocking right?!

Easter_Hunter has been participating in the contest since it began and his number finally came up this morning. The hunter will finally claim his prize. I have sent him the email and now I await his reply. I wonder if Easter_Hunter will choose Toki Tori from Steam. The game features a baby chick that must collect all the eggs in each level. It sounds very... Eastery.

I was just talking to Ultima (our latest winner) and the subject turned to the site redesign that Mike has been working on (off and on) for a good while. I attempted to find the post where I linked to it, but I could not find it, thanks to our craptacular archive system. I did however remember the URL for it.

Please note that these pages are not fully functional and are merely cosmetic. Here is what the new main page may look like, and what a typical video card page may look like.

Out of 59 re-tweets the random number generator chose number 52 which belonged to ultimaone who is known as simply Ultima here. Congratulations man! He joined the contest late this week and his winning re-tweet was of the last tweet of this week which I left after midnight last night. I have sent him the notification tweet and I will be sending him an email very soon.

Three weeks and prizes down, two more to go! Who will walk away with the prizes? Could be you so stay tuned to find out!

Out of 72 re-tweets the random number generator chose number 9 which belonged to the craziest Chuy of them all, CrazyChuy1. Huzzah! I have sent him the notification tweet but I don't see him on our member list so I'll have to wait until he emails me.

This week I am going to try really hard to tweet more often so that there are more messages for you folks to re-tweet. The second week was only 7 days long instead of 9, but I only tweeted 16 times instead of 33 times like the first week.