Are you someone who takes their gaming hardware seriously? We’re talking about spending more on a single part than some people will invest in their entire system. If this sounds like you, then perhaps you’ve been considering dropping some cash on a pair of GTX 680′s. Let me just warn you that that might be a bad idea. After all, starting this Thursday, you can get a GTX 690, which Nvidia is saying should have performance similar to two 680′s in SLI, on a single chip. Something they weren’t able to do with last generations GTX 590

One of the reasons they should be able to achieve this performance is that the chips are using significantly less power than those found in the older 590. The 690 is said to have a TDP of only 300W, which is 75W less than the previous generations dual-GPU card.

The biggest news here is on the price tag. (No, it’s not good news.) Nvidia has announced that this will be the most expensive card they’ve ever shipped. The price clocks in at a cool $999, or exactly double that of the GTX 680. We’ll have to wait and see if the real-world tests justify the price once it officially launches later this week.

One of the biggest issues with PC gaming is that if you want the best experience, you have to constantly keep upgrading your hardware. After two or three years, that mid-range video card you bought is going to start showing its age. Wouldn’t it be great if you just bought one top-of-the-line card, and it would be upgraded every two years for you? Well you just might.

No, there hasn’t been a revolution in computer hardware that will rebuild itself every so often. Rather, Nvidia is running a contest that could get you a brand new graphics card every two years for the rest of your life (or 20 years, whichever is shorter). That’s right, in fifteen years, when you need something new to run Half-Life 3, you’ll know that a new GPU will be on its way to your door before you need it.

So what do you need to do? You need to go out and buy a GeForce GTX 570 or GTX 560 Ti, and you’ll be entered to win. Make sure that you purchase it from NCIX, Newegg, TigerDirect, or Maingear, as they are the only ones that are supporting the contest. For each card you purchase between now and April 16, you’ll get a single entry. Should you win, you’ll receive one new GeForce GTX (or equivilant) card every two years, valued at $499. You’ll also receive a Maingear SLI 3D gaming PC valued at $10,000, and $1,000 in cash. Not too shabby at all. Ten first-prize winners will get $1,000 cash.

With the new 600 cards coming, you have to admit that this is a great way to clear out old stock. These cards are still excellent, and the idea of having new GPUs every two years for the next twenty sounds pretty tempting.

When we start hearing whispers of next-generation hardware, the biggest question is just how much of an improvement we will see over what’s currently on the market. Estimates are almost always much higher than what we receive, however, there is always hope that we’ll see a huge jump. If we believe what we’re hearing from Epic Games, Nvidia’s next set of chips might very well blow the old ones out of the water.

If you’ve never heard of the “Samaritan” demo from Epic Games, that’s understandable. In fact, there’s a really good chance that your PC wouldn’t even run it. According to the company, until now, the only systems powerful enough were running three GTX 580s. However, while at GDC, they showed that it could be done with a single (yet unreleased card).

That’s right, they were able to replace three of the top GPUs with a single Kepler chip. Yes, this is only a tech demo, and real-world experiences will be vastly different. However, the fact that one chip can replace three GTX 580s for anything is pretty incredible.

Citing “industry sources”, Kotaku is reporting that the Playstation 4 will not be using the Cell processor technology that was developed for the PS3. They’ve also heard that AMD will be making the graphics chip for the PS4, instead of Nvidia who produced the graphics chip for the PS3.

The Cell processor has never really caught on with anything except the Playstation 3. It was designed in a way so that extra Cells could be added through other devices to increase the overall computational power. In fact, one of the early uses for Playstation 3’s came from universities and other outfits looking to make a cheap supercomputer, where many PS3’s were linked up to act as one big supercomputer at the fraction of the cost of a real one. However, it was that same technology to link up that frustrated developers.

It’s unknown exactly what Sony plans to do for its processor. Kotaku speculates that AMD might produce the processor as well, instead of Sony. Developers could then potentially work on PS4 games even before official development kits come out, as they can work with AMD’s Fusion technology and get an idea of what they’re doing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with all of this.

The month of March is just over a week away, which means that if previous rumors are to be believed, we should be expecting the next batch of Radeon cards soon. Specifically, the 7800 series. And today we have a little more insight than was previously given, including pricing.

Last we heard, the 7850 and 7870 were expected to fall into the $179-$249 price range. Now it’s looking like that those were considerably high estimates. New rumor has it that we will see the 7850 debuting at $139 for the 1GB version, and $169 for the 2GB. As for the 7870 2GB, it has been confirmed that it will hit the $199 price point. Prices aren’t the only thing we have learned, though. VR-Zone has been able to get their hands on the full specs for all three cards. Check them out below:

AMD Radeon HD 7850 1GB

• $139 (Rumored)
• 20 Compute Units
• 1280 cores (Stream Processors)
• 80 Texture Units; 72.0 GTexel/s
• 24 Color ROP Units; 21.6 GPixel/s
• 1 GB GDDR5 Memory; 156.25 GB/s
• 900 MHz GPU Core
• 1250 MHz QDR GDDR5 clock (5.0 GHz “effective”)

AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB

• $169 (Rumored)
• 20 Compute Units
• 1280 cores (Stream Processors)
• 80 Texture Units; 72.0 GTexel/s
• 24 Color ROP Units; 21.6 GPixel/s
• 2 GB GDDR5 Memory; 156.25 GB/s
• 900 MHz GPU Core
• 1250 MHz QDR GDDR5 clock (5.0 GHz “effective”)

AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB

• $199 (Verified)
• 22 Compute Units
• 1408 cores (Stream Processors)
• 88 Texture Units; 83.6 GTexel/s
• 24 Color ROP Units; 22.8 GPixel/s
• 2GB GDDR5 Memory; 171.88GB/s
• 950MHz GPU Core
• 1375 MHz QDR GDDR5 clock (5.5GHz “effective”)

While it’s easy to get excited about these, I imagine that after the lukewarm reception to the 77xx cards, most people will be waiting to see the real-world reviews of these cards before buying. If these cards really can replace the 69xx series at the price points listed, while consuming less power, this might be just what AMD fans have been looking for.

We’ve covered the latest GPU offerings from AMD, as well as given some ideas about their future releases. Nvidia has been a bit quiet during all of this, and the question on everyone’s mind is whether they’ve got an ace up their sleeve, or if this next generation of cards will be ruled by AMD.

While we don’t have anything solid from the company, EXPreview claims to have gotten their hands on some inside information. If it’s to be believed, Nvidia fans will have a lot to be excited about in the coming months.

The big news is that the source claims that the forthcoming GTX680 will have a whopping 45% increase in performance over the HD7970, with only a slightly higher price. Even the $500 GTX670 will be 20% faster than AMD’s current champ. Before you get too excited, bear in mind that this is from an unverified source. It’s very possible that this information is completely false, so don’t put too much stock in it just yet. We’ll let you know when we have more solid specs on the upcoming cards.

With the new Radeon 7900 cards topping the performance charts, people are getting eager to see how the other cards in the 7000 series stack up. With the 7970 and 7950 currently available, it looks like the 7770 and 7750 will be the next ones to hit the market, according to a leaked slide from MSI.

If it is to be believed, we should see the 77xx cards hitting in just two week’s time. These are on the lower end of the scale, with only a 128-bit memory interface, with 1GB of memory. Pricing should be in the range of $99-$159.

For those with a bit more patience, you’ll find the 78xx cards sometime in March. These are going to be the higher-end of the mainstream cards. Look for 256-bit memory, and 2GB of memory. We should expect these to keep on part with the performance of current 69xx cards, with a better price point, ranging from $179-$249.

When it comes to video cards, most people will spend a good bit of time researching which specific card to get. The last stage of this decision-making process is to decide which of the many companies to actually purchase the card from. After all, aside from varied cooling solutions, it’s basically the same hardware. However, the biggest deciding factor can be the warranty service. For years XFX has been one of the video card kings, thanks to their Double Lifetime Warranty.

Unfortunately it looks as though those days are behind us. After reading through their revised warranty service, it seems that they are no longer interested in staying on top of the game. Rather, they are happy to be “on par or better” by simply offering a Two-Year Limited Warranty. Here’s the full text:

Regarding our revised warranty policy:

1) XFX will transition to a Two-Year Limited Warranty for all new XFX Radeon HD 7000 series models. The standard two-year limited warranty is on par or better than warranties offered by other brands in the industry. While we have had an increasingly small percentage of warranty related occurrences after the two-year mark, we have eliminated the extension and transferable options for these models. Simplifying the operational requirements will allow XFX to commit our resources on developing and manufacturing the highest caliber and best selection of graphics cards available.

2) For the new XFX Radeon HD 7000 series Double D models, we will continue to provide an option to extend as these products are geared for our top-tiered enthusiasts and XFX will continue to offer this benefit on our top products.

3) Most importantly, all XFX Radeon HD 6000, 5000, and 4000 series models also offer the two-year limited warranty as standard, and will continue to be supported by the optional Double Lifetime Limited Warranty (with registration within 30 days of purchase). Restrictions and limitations may apply and specific details are available on our website.

It seems that they will be offering some sort of extended warranty to Double D models, but they haven’t really made that clear. It’s sad to see that one of the warranty champs in the industry has decided to step down like this. Knowing you had the peace of mind of not only great warranty service, but that you could transfer it to someone when you sell the card later was a great feeling.

When you’re looking to upgrade your PC for gaming, as long as you have a moder quad-core processor, you’re probably going to be looking at your GPU. The big question that always seems to come up is whether you should keep the one you have and add a second in Crossfire/SLI, or just toss it out and get a brand spankin new one from the latest series.

I’ve always had a hard time justifying buying a second card and running Crossfire. Sure, it does add a boost in speed, but it’s not as if we’re seeing double frame rates from two GPUs. And buying two top-of-the-line cards is rarely worth your money, for the same reason. But that all might be changing with the new Radeon 7000 series.

Over at Guru3D they’ve managed to get their hands on a pair of Radeon 7970′s, and put them to the test. During their tests of older DX9 and DX10 games, the performance was much as  you’d expect from a Crossfire setup. However, on nearly every DirectX 11 game, the Crossfire setup was getting almost double the FPS when compared to the single GPU. Just to give you an idea, here’s the results of their Battlefield 3 tests (all tests are ran on Ultra):

I have to say, I’m pretty excited for these new cards, even in a single configuration. However, it’s great to see that newer games are able to scale with the addition of a second card. It also gives you an idea of what the upcoming 7990 should be capable of.

With the new Radeon 7000 series on its way soon, we’re all eagerly waiting to find out just how the new 28nm processing technology is going to stack up to what’s on the market right now. We could start seeing official reports as early as the end of the week, but why not jump the gun with some rumors?

According to a couple of charts that GuruHt has discovered, it seems that the 7970 could have a performance gain of 1.6x over the current champ, Nvidia’s GTX580. That’s a hefty boost, if the nubers hold true.

Unfortunately, even if these results are 100% true, we have no real basis for comparison. We don’t know anything about the other hardware used, or what settings each game was tested on. It’s fun to look at these sorts of rumors, but we’ll have to hold out for some solid info before getting too excited.