Biostar has been making only Nvidia cards since the days of the GeForce MX4000 (2004), but now they are ready to join the ranks of dual chipset manufacturers such as Asus, Club3D, MSI, Gigabyte, Palit, and Gainward. I was adding some more Newegg links when I noticed a Biostar HD 4650 and HD 4670 just sitting there. I actually had to confirm that Biostar has not made a Radeon card in the past by searching our site.

Well darn. I looked a little deeper and I found evidence that Biostar makes Radeon cards in other countries. And it looks like those countries include Russia or some other slavic-type place. Looking at those Google results, it seems like Biostar HD 3850 and HD 2600 Pros existed at some point. The Russian Biostar site does not have old Radeon cards listed, but it looks like they are about to add some HD 4600's soon. Same deal for their Latin America, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and even Global sites.

Well Biostar is new to the Radeon party on this side of the ocean at least...

Apparently Kyle has been hearing rumors about XFX partnering up with AMD. Will XFX venture forth into the red forest like Gainward did? I have asked an XFX Support guy for a comment on this and if I get a response (that I am allowed to share) you guys will be the first to know.

In other news, graphics card makers are slowing their production lines down due to the crappy economy of our fine country. First tier makers have already taken action and apparently second tier makers may be considering the possibility of merging with other makers. Hopefully these mergers will not be necessary because we all benefit (non-reference designs and cool bundles) from the competition of card manufacturers.

There are new ATI drivers out that will increase your performance in Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky for people who own HD 3000 and HD 4000 series cards. Enjoy them to the fullest.

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™

After reading four reviews I have come away with the following ideas.

1. Sapphire is the only manufacturer that will be making this card. As such the HD 4850 X2 will not get its own page.

2. The card is competitive with or better than a single GTX 280 depending on the game. If Driver Heaven is correct about the price of $419 (Overclockers Club says $350), it will be cheaper than almost any GTX 280.

3. The card is very loud when operating under load but the card does stay very cool.

4. The drivers need some improvement.

5. The card is long (long card is long?), a full one inch longer than the GTX 280.

They are calling it the Revolution 700 (R700 get it?) and... it is... thick. Even though Palit is saying that this card has the highest overclocking potential of any R700 card, they are shipping it with reference HD 4870 X2 speeds of 750/3,800. The card will ship with some "overclocking features" though. Here is a top down teaser pic. If you want to see a picture of the card's three slot thickness, please click on the Read The Full Article link.

I am now in the pocket of Galaxy Technology and it is my duty to inform you as such. I just received a free Galaxy GTX 280 from them this morning and now I am counting the hours left in the day before I can go home, install it next to my Evga GTX 280, and play some Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 in gorgeous detail.

You may be reading this and wondering why Galaxy has bestowed this gift upon me. I can assure you that I am not blackmailing them and that they are not paying me back for any sexual services that I have rendered. They are merely thanking me for being an obsessive compulsive grammar and website Nazi.

An insider has provided Expreview some spy shots of the HD 4850 X2 card. Then I go over to Sapphire's card picture area and get you guys official pictures of the card and box. You can find the dual GPU HD 4850 on our HD 4850 page for now until we get proof that more other manufacturers are going to make these. It is the same deal we did for Asus' HD 3850 X2.

Who's the man?

Mmmmm....blood...

That's right folks! You heard it here first! We have a GPUReview.com group in the Steam Community and we want you to join us! There are three easy steps to becoming 'one of us' and none of them involve becoming a zombie or ghoul. Here are the steps:

1. Be a person who reads this site occasionally. (I guess this first step is really two steps since being a person is kinda a step in itself...)

2. Have Steam installed on some sort of computer.

3. Leave your Steam name in a comment to this story. (Please make sure that your profile comes up when you enter your Steam name in the Search box in the upper right corner of this page because that is what I'll use to find you. For example, searching for mentok1982 will lead you to one person... me!)

If you have ever dreamed of playing games with me or even just talking directly to me, this is your Golden Ticket! I play lots of Team Fortress 2 and I am always able to chat with people through Steam when I am home. On and after November 18th, I will be playing Left 4 Dead a whole bunch. My clan will only have one server up at first and since each server only holds 8 people, I may be looking for another server to play on. Maybe I'll join whatever server you guys are on...

Some reviewers noticed that the HD 4830 samples that they received from AMD were missing 80 of their 640 stream processors and now it appears that around 400 HIS branded cards with this problem have made it into the hands of customers. That article says that you can go to HIS website to find updated BIOS that can fix the problem, but I was not able to find them there. Do not despair folks, you can find those BIOS files right here from TechPowerUP!.

Here are the overclock results I was able to gather. I scooped these numbers up while skipping to Grandma's house and I arranged them in pretty table for you.

I compared a HD 4830 clocked at 760/2,210 to a reference HD 4850 and in some ways, the overclocked HD 4830 has faster rates or more bandwidth.

With that in mind, I should remind you that you can get a Asus HD 4850 for $5 more ($135) than the HD 4830.

It is time to meet the new kid on the block. Will the HD 4830 be accepted by the community, or will the community ignore it and force it to eat lunch alone? Only time will tell.

AMD is "resetting" the performance bar below $150 with this launch. Did you notice how they decided to choose the word "resetting" instead of "lowering"? Lowering the bar is always a bad thing, but resetting the bar that is something that the consumer can live with.

Here are some reviews to tide you over while I get everything setup and ready for the new kid in town.

Legit Reviews Reference HD 4830 

Neoseeker Reference HD 4830

PC Perspective Reference HD 4830

techPowerUP! Reference HD 4830 and PowerColor HD 4830

UPDATE: The HD 4830 page is ready and I have entered all the cards I could find.

A [H]ard|Forum member has stated that Far Cry 2 will be packaged with all GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards soon "...without any charges to the card makers". So if you're looking at getting a GTX, you should probably wait a few days after Far Cry 2's release date (which is tomorrow) to see if you can get this awesome game for free.

I give this rumor about a 78% chance of becoming a trumor (a rumor that turns out to be true) and coolness rating of 8 apples if it is true.

[H]ard|OCP front page post.

The Ubersweet Far Cry 2 Map Editor Presentation from PAX 2008 Part 1 Part 2

UPDATE: [H]ard|OCP has performed some high resolution tests in Far Cry 2 with several cards from the HD 4850 on up to the GTX 280.

UPDATE 2: Escape from San Diego

Seems like this is a trumor after all. BFG is giving you Far Cry 2, 3DMark Vantage Advanced Edition and a BFG LED flashlight when you buy a GTX 260 or GTX 280. XFX is bundling the game with specific GTX 200 and GeForce 9000 series cards. Like BFG, Evga is bundling the game with every GTX 260 and GTX 280 they sell. Some models will ship without the game, but the game will be sent to you after you register your card.

Back in late July this blurry slide was leaked onto the Interwebs and after some hard work, [H]ard|Forum member Unknown-One helped us see it clearly. So where is this Big Band II that was supposed to arrive in late September? Well it may be coming in the form of the GeForce 180.10 driver release that VR-Zone just previewed. Along with the preview, VR-Zone posted these control panel screenshots that show multi-monitor SLi.

How long have you multi-monitor SLi setup owners been waiting for this? Your struggle is almost at an end!

I was gone for several days. (Did you notice? Did you long for my return?) I went to a magical place that is hidden in a very unlikely place...Ohio. I spent a few days at Cedar Point with some Internet friends that I know from PAX. I highly recommend Millennium Force and Maverick btw...

So what's been going on in the video card and PC gaming news lately? Nothing that I can really sink my teeth into unfortunately, but here are some bits of grissle to chew on:

The 178.24 GeForce drivers are out. These drivers feature support for GeForce 9300 and 9400 motherboard GPUs (mGPUs).

On the other side of the great divide, AMD has released the 8.10 Catalyst drivers. Some things were actually fixed in this release, most of it in Vista.

Lots of really sweet games are coming out this fall and many of them will be available on PC. I will even be getting a few of these titles on the PC (Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead) so that I am ready when we write another video card review.

I saw this headline for a story over at the [H] so I had to make fun of it. Apparently AMD is higher than it has ever been in the last 6 years... and it is spinning. As a rule, I do not think being high and spinning are two things that one should do at the same time but if it feels good, do it man.

Seriously though. If you own lots of AMD stock, you should celebrate by getting some really expensive and exotic stuff, a bunch of munchies and get nicely toasted.

Then spin around and around really fast. Let me know how that last bit works out for you.

There is a story on ars technica about what AMD/ATI said at CEATEC. Apparently hardware tessellation will be a part of the DirectX 11 standard and AMD is totally ready for it because of their work on the Xbox 360's hardware tessellation. AMD is also making some claims about moving to a 40nm process sometime next year.

So it looks like AMD is the first to lay its DX 11 'cards' on the table, but I would not be surprised if Nvidia makes some noise very soon. Perhaps at CES in January (I'll be there btw) or perhaps even sooner.

Back in July we told you guys about Gainward's plans to begin making ATI cards. Well now Gainward has put together their first collection of ATI products and you can view all of them (except for their HD 4870 X2) from this page. Most of these cards are based on reference designs, but there are a few dual slot cooler models and one Gainward trademark Golden Sample HD 4850. Have any of you seen these cards available online or offline yet?

I promised it, but then I had trouble finding more reviews. I found one more review today and then remembered to post this thing. So here it is!

And for once I am not talking about jewelry. Diamond Multimedia could be responsible for shipping defective 512MB HD 3800 models to system builders like Alienware. Before you all get your panties in a twist, I should point out that the article mentions that Diamond may have been screwed by its contractor, ITC (GeCube). Aside for the units shipped to system builders, there are also more than 15,000 defective units that have been sold at retail or that are still in the retail channel waiting to be sold. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Of course, if our sources are correct - and the documents we received support their claims - then more than 15,000 potentially defective Diamond graphics cards were sold in retail/etail or are still in the channel.

Have any of you guys had trouble with your Diamond 3800's?

But there is no official press release or website update from Nvidia. As a result, I am not sure what to call the new GTX 260 because Nvidia has not told me. So for now, our new GTX 260 entry is "GeForce GTX 260 (216 Shaders)".

From the looks of the reviews, the new 260 can give a 5 to 10 percent frame rate boost when compared to the old GTX 260 depending on if the game being tested is thirsting for more shader power. The overclocking potential of the BFG OCX and Zotac AMP²! models is frankly astounding. I will post our patented overclocking chart after I find some more reviews, but increases of almost 25% over the core reference speed, 29% over the reference memory speed and 24% over the reference shader speed is phenomenal!

I have only read the AMD press release so far, but these cards seem like they are pretty cool. If the reviews show that the HD 4670 actually can give you twice the FPS in Crysis as the 9500 GT for the "same" (Newegg rebates are making the 9500 GT $25 less) price I will be impressed.

I will be working hard to get pages created for the new cards today so stay tuned.

AMD's HD 4600 page.

Update!

Here are our HD 4670 and HD 4650 pages.

Here is what the reviews have to say about the HD 4670 vs the 9500 GT in Crysis:

FiringSquad shows that the 4670 is exactly twice as fast at resolutions starting at 1280x1024 at Medium settings. HotHardware shows that the 4670 is twice as fast at 1280x1024 at High settings. Anandtech does not actually give their readers numbers, but it looks like the 4670 can give you twice as many FPS at resolutions at or above 1024x768 at Medium settings. TechPowerUp's findings are a tad outside the norm, but it looks like that is because they actually turned on AA at all resolutions except for 1024x768. This results in the 4670 only being twice as fast at 1024x768 and pretty close (12/22.5, 9/16.9 and 7/12.5) at higher resolutions with AA turned on. TweakTown's numbers are also pretty close. Running at High settings at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 they recorded 13.56/24.33 and 9.8/18.22 respectively.

So it looks like this is one PR claim that is actually more fact than fiction. This must be the End of Days!