Among the many products MSI showed at its ECOlution press conference in Taipei today was its upcoming GeForce N9600GT Diamond graphics card.
It’s a rather special product in that MSI said that it has crammed all its current and future VGA technologies onto this one product. It will get 2GB of GDDR3 memory as well HDMI, DisplayPort, dual DVI and optical audio output. Is that enough for you people?
It will also get Dr.MOS power saving technology that monitors in real-time via hardware controller to properly adjust fan speeds and whatever else - we are yet to confirm what that is all about exactly.
The star of the show is the red button on the back of the card. After you push that button, the card will automatically destruct in five seconds overclock the graphics core and memory clock speeds as well as increase voltage.
When asked what would happen if the button was pushed when two of these cards were in SLI dual graphics mode, we were told that the technology is still being polished and it is unable to be overclocked in SLI at the moment but it is something MSI plans to have working very soon.
MSI couldn’t tell us just how far the card gets overclocked as it is still fine tuning things before Computex next week. MSI did say that it will be ready for the show and show goers will be able to push the button and get all the thrills of this simple form of overclocking. When asked when consumers would see this product on store shelves, we were told by the end of June and while an RRP hasn’t be set yet, we were told that it will easily sell for under $300 USD and closer to the $250 USD mark.
We can’t wait to get our hands on one for a full review to see what it is capable of.
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Not to mention, that on a video card one would be so unwieldy as to prohibit using it in the first place.
Yeah...
Overclocking has been getting easier every year, with BIOS aides and various programs. I guess it was only a matter of time before someone took it to its logical conclusion. Whether there's a market for something so user friendly when only enthusiasts really care remains to be seen I guess.
Generally, the "turbo" switch was wired so that, when active, the CPU would be run at full speed. When off, the clockspeed would be lowered (66 MHz -> 33 Mhz when off, for instance). So, the "turbo" on isn't supercharging the computer or anything, it's just making the computer run at normal speed.
But that doesn't negate the fact that the switch's main use was, indeed, for slowing down your computer. It was for compatibility for older programs that relied on specific processor ticks for timing. You know, back when 66 MHz was ultra-fast.
Sillyness aside, I just see it as another gimmick.
The problem I have with these huge-GB boards is they aren't reference boards (built to nvidia/ATI spec) so while it's nice to have all that extra ram, it feels like it's "tacked on" and the GPU isn't really suited to take advantage of it all.
Tacked on? thats an understatement noone who buys a 9600GT is ever going to need an overclock cause they would never know how to use it really. 2 gigs of vram!? once again who the fuck would buy a 9600GT if there was someway in hell you could even use that much
and thats not to mention the overkill on the outputs.
Anyways, MSI has done this before with an 8600, where the turbo button got you 20Mhz of overclock! http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQwOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
No game or similar program will be able to take advantage of that amount of vram. A 1gb 8800 GT shows no performance increase over a 512MB. So I ask why does it have 2gbs of vram? No one is going to doing Cad or anything like that with a 9600GT. There are far better options out there for those applications.
Why do think ATI's soon to be out cards sport high speed GDDR5? It's to overcome limitations of the 256bit memory interface. Nvidia is going the opposite route. Lower Latency and lower speed GDDR3 on a 512bit interace.
This card is an overpriced gimmick. Nothing more.
That is precisely what I mean. I guess I could have made that clearer.
Has 3d card tech finally reached the point where gimicky "technology" is going to dominate the market?
Things that are funny when taken out of context, part 1.
That was completely intentional. :>
LOL yeah sorry I replied to you as a nub, my bad :P
No doubt there'll be people out there running 32-bit Windows with 4GB of system ram and 2GB of video ram thinking it's making a difference