XFX has decided to give loyal AGP fans some high-end 7,000 series goodness. I just finished adding their 3 7950 GT AGP models and their 4 7900 GS AGP models to our database. Not only did I do that, I also located 4 sites where you can purchase these fine products!

Mwave XFX 7900 GS AGP
Eclipse Computers XFX 7950 GT 256MB AGP
Eclipse Computers XFX 7950 GT 512MB AGP
Eclipse Computers XFX 7900 GS AGP

I ran our wonderful video card parser today and two very interesting Gigabyte web pages were found. Both pages are blank right now, but the model numbers speak volumes. Ladies and gents, I give you Gigabyte's sites for their GV-NX86S256H-B and GV-NX86S256H video cards. These model numbers tell us that these are cards from the 8600 series and they both have 256MB of RAM. I will be watching these sites to see when Gigabyte adds more info or pics to them.

EDIT:

An observant member of the [H]ard|Forums provided me with this link to a XtremeSystems thread where you can see a pic of the Gigabyte GV-NX86S256H (8600 GTS) and its box. Mad props to Neist for this info!

[H]ard|Forum user Maximusneo701 would like to share a picture of a PNY GeForce 8600 GTS with us. His superior at Best Buy apparently jumped the gun a tad and placed their stock on the shelf. Maximusneo701 says that the video card is slated to be released on April 22nd. That date probably comes from Best Buy's inventory system. I am still expecting to see the 8600 GTS and its friends appear on the Internet on the 17th of April.

Another [H]ard|Forum user by the name of Neist has posted the 3DMark 2005 and 3DMark 2006 scores he got while using the new BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC that he bought from Best Buy. He earned 10,058 marks in 2005 and 5,245 marks in 2006. For his system details and full score breakdown, click the above link. Here is a link to the thread his post is located in. 

You can purchase your 8600 GTS card today folks! There are offerings from a few stores online and I will attempt to list them all here. Post a comment if you find another site from which you can purchase a 8600 or 8300 series video card please.

I can vouch for these sites:

eWiz Gigabyte 8600 GTS $214.24 + $11.67 = $225.91 (Page is back, even higher price now.)
eWiz Asus 8600 GTS $229.69 + $10.83 = $240.52
ZipZoomfly MSI 8600 GTS $189.99 + $0.00 = $189.99 (Sold out for now.)

I can't vouch for these sites:

Game Giants Gigabyte 8600 GTS $219.95 + ??? = ???

These two sites list two different Evga 8600 GTS models, but they are not available for purchase yet:

Evga GeForce 8600 GTS 256-P2-N751-TR
Evga GeForce 8600 GTS 256-P2-N761-AR

No longer must we bicker about what the new line from ATI will be called. Forget that Radeon X2800 XT or Radeon X2900 XT crap, ladies and gents, I humbly introduce to you the Radeon HD 2900 XT! The enitre R600 line will feature the letters "H" and "D" in their title due to the fact that all of the cards will contain the HD AVIVO technology. Are these cards less eXtreme now that the leading "X" is gone? Of course they are. How will consumers know that these cards are "eXtreme to the max" if there is no X in the product name?

DailyTech also wants you to know that the HD 2900 XT will feature HDMI out with full 5.1 surround sound output and that it supports anti-aliasing up to an insane 24x. That is hot! 

I have just finished adding the G84 and G86 chips and the pages for the GeForce 8500 GT , 8600 GT and 8600 GTS. The 8600 GTS is currently leading the pack with 3 retail cards! Please note that I am not an expert on graphic chip architecture like Mike is, so I left some of the values blank when entering the information on the new chips. Once Mike checks over my work, everything should be 100% correct. Enjoy-joy!

Boy do I have a treat for you golden swine lovers! Powercolor has released a special Radeon X1650 Pro in order to celebrate the Year of the Pig. Huzzah! I have added it to our database but you should really read the review over at Overclockers Club.

As you may already know, Nvidia has officially launched their new mid-range 8000 series graphics cards. I cannot recall that last time I have had so much work to do on a launch day. I have been entering the new cards into our database all day long today, and it is all for you loyal patron. Enjoy.

GeForce 8600 GTS (XFX used black magic voodoo to get GDDR3 up to 2,260MHz!)
GeForce 8600 GT (The Forsa Premiums and XFX's XXX editions really stand out.)
GeForce 8500 GT  (The info on Forsa's site is either wrong, or they made some really fast 8500 GTs.)

Now I have to go find all the rest of the reviews that are out there. Weeeeeeee! 

I went looking for some more reviews this morning and then I decided to put together a table that sums up the overclocks that the various review sites achieved. There are two cards in this table that are not in our database yet. The Asus EN8600 GTS TOP and the POV 8600 GTS EXO. The manufacturer pages for these cards are not online yet, so they have not been added yet. Back on topic, I hope you guys dig this table and please post your data analyses in the comments section!

DailyTech was kind enough to provide us with some benchmarks illustrating the performance difference between the HD 2900 XT and the 8800 GTS 640MB. So what do you folks think? The HD 2900 XT does not even have GDDR4 (1GB!) like its big brother, the HD 2900 XTX and yet the performance looks great!

DailyTech has titled their article that features benchmarks of the Radeon HD 2900 XTX: "ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX, Doomed from the Start". This time they have compared the HD 2900 XTX and the HD 2900 XT to an overclocked (650/2000) 8800 GTX. The 8800 GTX bested the Radeon's in every game and in some cases the 2900 XT out performed the XTX. These results are perplexing to say the least. I want to blame the drivers for the strangeness. What do you folks think?

In other news, they manged to overclock the 2900 XT to 845MHz on the core and 1,999MHz on the memory. The stock speeds for the 2900 XT are 745/1,600. Neat!

The OEM ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX:

Hooray! I was going to go home tonight and begin the overclocking process on my Evga 8800 GTX, and now I have a new nTune to help me out! Here is a short list of the release notes that got my attention:

• This is a complete, updated release of the NVIDIA nTune. You are not required to install a previous version of this application before installing the latest version.
• nTune 5.05 adds support for GPU temperature monitoring and overclocking on all motherboards.
• Supported operating systems for this release:
• Windows XP (32-bit)
• Windows XP x64 Edition
• Windows Vista (32-bit)
• Windows Vista x64 Edition
• Best when run at 1024x768 16-bit color