Technical Stuff

	D-Sub(VGA) The 15-pin VGA connector is common to most monitors and high definition television.

	Dual-Link DVI Equipped with the most popular Dual Link DVI (Digital Visual Interface), this card is able to display resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 at 60Hz.

	HDMI 1.4a HDMI 1.4a builds on previous generations of HDMI connectivity with support for Deep Color, 7.1 High Bitrate Audio, and 3D Stereoscopic support, ensuring the highest quality Blu-ray and video experience possible from your PC.

Microsoft DirectX® 11 Get intense gaming performance and unrivaled image quality with stunning 3D visual effects, realistic lighting and lifelike imagery with SAPPHIRE graphics cards supporting DirectX®11. New features in DirectX®11, such as Hardware Tesselation, HDR Texture Compression, Multi-threading support and DirectCompute bring lifelike gaming and an experience never possible on a PC before.

	OpenGL® 4.1 Supports the latest OpenGL API (Application Programming Interface) to accelerate performance of applications outside of DirectX®, i.e. Adobe Autodesk 2D/3D graphic design.

	Shader Model 5.0 Supports the latest Shader Model 5.0 feature set including VTF (Vertex Texture Fetch) which is a key feature used extensively in many of the games that ship today. Without support for this feature the game will fall back to a lesser shader path resulting in the loss of cool, lifelike effects made possible by Shader Model 5.0

	AMD Catalyst Control Center™ The AMD Catalyst Control Center™ software application gives you complete control over the performance and visual quality of your SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon™ based graphics card allowing for the best experience on your PC.

AMD PowerPlay™ Dynamically manage power efficiency and take control of your performance with AMD’s revolutionary AMD PowerPlay[tm] power management technology, delivering high performance features when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low. This seamless technology dramatically reduces the overall power consumption allowing for break-through energy efficiency.

	Enhanced Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD 3) Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p (and beyond !) display resolution. Enjoy a feature rich video experience with enhanced Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD 3), offloading the bulk of the video decoding tasks from the CPU to the GPU allowing for a cooler, quieter and more balanced system.

	Enhanced Internet Browser Applications Not just for video and games, the power of your GPU can now accelerate the latest versions of some Internet browsers (IE9/Mozzilla FireFox) utilizing Direct 2D rendering for a faster and more responsive browsing experience including high quality image rendering and media playback.

	Microsoft Office 2010 Take advantage of improved picture and media editing capabilities in Office 2010 as well as edit and share your content in real time. See more, and get more done. Enhanced productivity with accelerated GPU processing for Office applications.

	Windows® 7 support WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) Certified drivers and logos are available for all SAPPHIRE HD2000, HD3000, HD4000 and HD5000 series cards ensuring compatibility and reliability with Microsoft Windows 7.

AMD App Acceleration Use the power of your AMD Radeon™ GPU to speed up everyday applications like your web browser and Microsoft Office 2010 using AMD App Acceleration. Do more, and do it faster. Watch Blu-ray movies, online streaming video and other HD content using your AMD Radeon™ GPU and get smooth – high quality playback with amazing image quality.

There is really nothing special in the package and the software is just a basic driver package with what is needed to get one up and running. Considering all the bells and whistles that the Catalyst Control Center includes the only real addition that could be considered necessary is a DVI to D-Sub adapter.

Some words from GELID themselves:

The “Rev. 2 ICY VISION” cooler contains 5 power heatpipes in a unique heatpipe constellation. The heatpipes are interlaced into 85 optimized high-quality Aluminium fins. Together with a flat stack fin soldered Copper base, they enable the most efficient heat transmission and dissipation from GPU core in its class. Besides the heatsink, two 92mm UV-reactive fans with 11 blades in S-shape generate 20% additonal air flow than traditional fans. The fan contains a high-quality ball bearing to ensure a longer lifetime in high temperature environments.

The Icy Vision is packaged in blister style packaging. The design heavily utilizes the the light green that has come to be associated with GELID. It protected the cooler well.

GeLid Icy Vision front packaging

GeLid Icy Vision rear packaging

The Belly of the beast:

The very first impression we were struck with after removing the Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 from its packaging was, “Wow, this is light.” We anticipated something much heavier considering the sheer weight of the stock coolers on high end GPUs these days.

In the photo below, you can see the 5 heatpipes of the cooler and how they disperse to the dual heatsinks.

Gelid Icy Vision underside

The top view of the cooler showcases the dual 90mm fans.

Gelid Icy Vision top view

From the side, you can see that the Gelid Icy is actually quite tall. We will discuss what this means for the clearance of the heatsink a bit later on.

Gelid Icy Vision side view

The Icy Vision Revision 2 ships with mounting hardware for over 25 different video cards. If you have pretty much any of the last three generations put out by ATI/AMD or Nvidia, they have you covered. One caveat for owners of 6900 series hardware: you’ll need to pick up an additional pack of RAMsinks, called the Enhancement Kit.

Heatsinks and Backplates

Next: Our Test Bed

Micro Star International, or MSI as it better known, brings us one of their new G3 line of Intel Z68 motherboards today. The MSI Z68A-GD65 G3, is a feature rich, socket 1155 motherboard, designed for use with the current Intel Core i second generation series, Sandy Bridge CPUs as well as the forthcoming Ivy Bridge processors. Compatibility with a product that will not even be out for another year, implies an expectation of quality, and MSI backs the GD65 (and its big brother the GD80) with a 5 year warranty.

MSI is a known entity among the DIY/Enthusiast market. After building their brand as a “behind the scenes” player in the PC market, they took their technical know how and delved into the enthusiast and overclocking markets like gang busters.

From MSI

Since its founding in 1986, MSI has been demonstrating continued success in digital age. To achieve the best user experience, every component is essential. In the past 25 years, MSI always strives to provide digital products based on its core values –“Innovation” and “Style”. The results are products with superior performance, trusted reliability, excellent user experience and expressive style.

Embracing years of experience in design and manufacturing, MSI mainboard and graphics card have achieved maximum productivity by becoming one of the top 3 in the world. Our hard work has led us to become one of the finest brands in the industry with accumulated sales in more than 120 countries, 150 million mainboard users and 100 million graphics card users worldwide.

Z68 Gen 3

For a complete break down of the specifications arranged nicely with iconic graphics, please visit MSI’s website. We will cover the important aspects here of course.

• Warranty – 5 years
• PCI express – 3rd generation
• CPU support – Current and future LGA1155
• Military class II – Tantalum (Hi-c) and solid caps
• Click BIOS II – Same interface in BIOS as in Windows
• OCGenie II – One button overclocking
• Virtu – Hybrid Graphics between Intel IGP and Discrete video
• THX Studio Pro – High Fidelity audio
• Super Charger – Charge your Cell or media player quickly
• Winki 3 – Quick boot to Linux OS from DVD or USB drive
• 3TB+ Infinity – Use 3TB drives as boot device

MSI is committed to building a superior product that will last well into the next generation. This commitment is evident in the following features.

The warranty period of 5 years applies to both the GD65 and the GD80 G3 motherboards. The Military Class II technology; Hi-C Tantalum solid caps and Super ferrite chokes also play a key role. Tantalum caps were introduced by MSI last year, the ceramic devices offer up to 6 year lifespan at 85C operating temp. While these superior components are more expensive, they offer greater reliability to the end user and actually save money for the manufacturer with reduced repair authorizations (RMA’s).

The PCI Express 3 slots give the motherboard Ivy Bridge compatibility, and ensure that future generations of cards will work to their full potential. Lastly the 3TB+ Infinity support means that not only are the highest density hard drives supported on the motherboard, but that with a compatible OS they can be used as boot drives as well.

*NOTE: Installing Winki 3 also enables HDD backup. Imaging software is used to restore your OS in case of HDD failure. It is surprising not to see this displayed on the package as a feature, it is a great one.

The GD65 is more than just a durably designed motherboard. Features are what users look for with motherboards in the enthusiast range of products. The board sports the usual accessories you would expect on a LGA1155 motherboard: USB 3.0 (supplied by Renesas), SATA 6G, a push button OC tool and a USB super charger utility.

MSI takes it a step further though, including the new Lucid Virtu technology, that gives the user power saving and performance improving options by combining both the IGP located on the Intel CPU as well as a discrete card. THX Studio Pro licensing gives high fidelity controls to the onboard Realtek audio chip, enabling fine control and improvement of audio output. Winki 3 is also included and can be run from the included Driver DVD or installed to a separate USB stick.

The last key feature of the MSI Z68A-GD65 G3 is Click BIOS II. While mouse control in a UEFI BIOS is not unheard on motherboards these days, MSI has taken the next evolution in BIOS control. Installing Click BIOS II in Windows offers the user the same screen layout and features as the BIOS from within your operating system. While some changes will still require a restart, the implications for simplicity are readily apparent.

Due to time constraints for the review, exploring every feature of the board is not going to be possible. Key features are covered however, as well as performance testing with the Virtu GPU enabled. On to the photos!

Though the packaged is a rather plain, no frills, box; the Sapphire Radeon HD6770 is anything but plain looking. Stepping away from the flashy packaging of most other Sapphire branded products this package is pure function and utility. By focusing on the product contained inside rather than marketing a pretty box Sapphire presents this card (and a few others) with a bold and different approach.

Packaging:

Looking at the card itself makes one forget about the rather plain box:

For a size comparison a GTX 465 was used to represent the more massive cards in this price range. The smaller size of the Sapphire HD6770 makes it more versatile increasing its usefulness in applications where space is at a premium.

Next: Features

If extreme overclocking had a name, it’d be k|ngp|n. Vince Lucido (a/k/a “k|ngp|n”) is arguably the man who got such things started in the United States. Back when most people were still gawking at the extreme ventures of a few folks pushing overclocking to new heights with water cooling, this guy started to bring the truly extreme methods of employing liquid nitrogen (LN2) to achieve even more outrageous performance. While Vince was not the first person to use LN2 too cool a computer system, he was one of the very first to experiment with cooling not only the CPU, but also GPUs and motherboards with the cryogenic liquid. Breaking world records and taking overclocking and benchmarking to the extreme is his passion, and he has done it over and over again.

Here is a brief video introduction to k|ngp|n.

When k|ngp|n got started, one of the major hurdles was how to properly cool his components with LN2. Since devices did not exist with which he could accomplish thos, he started designing and building prototype LN2 containers (“pots”) which he could mount to the computer hardware in order to apply the LN2 to effectively cool the components. He started out doing this for his own adventures, but very quickly became overwhelmed by requests from other enthusiasts seeking to buy copies of the containers he was building. Seeing a golden opportunity, in 2006, k|ngp|n founded his business kingpincooling.com (aka “KPC”) and is now mass-producing his pots for enthusiasts all over the world. And R&D has not stopped, so he has continuously reevaluated and improved his designs to perfect his containers according to user demands and the changes in computer hardware. That brings us to the subject of our review today, the new line of KPC’s LN2 containers.

The new KPC LN2 containers

Note: The CPU and GPU container internals have been blocked out at k|ngp|n’s request. The containers shown in our pictures are pre-production components, and look slightly different than the production models; please see the images on the next page for details.

Next: A closer look…

Packaging:

The ASUS HD 6950:

Specifications:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

MSI has seen the potential in the new AMD Fusion CPU. The MSI E350IA-E45 is a feature rich micro ITX board with the potential to be the heart of your next HTPC with it’s excellent integrated graphics; an effective home server with its 4x SATAIII ports, or even an adequate daily driver with DDR3 support and low heat output.

The packaging is pretty standard, including two SATA cables. The rear panel has a nice set of external connections. With 8 USB ports (two of which are USB 3.0), PS2 port, Gigabit LAN, Optical audio out, COAX audio out, standard audio jacks, D-Sub and HDMI out, this board is not lacking.

Internal headers and connections include: com port header, 2x USB 2.0 connectors, 1x front panel audio connector and a TMP connector. This little board seems pretty well outfitted.

The HSF is well designed with a decent amount of surface area and is also pleasing to the eye. In addition, the PCIe slot is good for those wanting a little more horse power out of an add-in GPU. Keep in mind that it is only 4x V2 and big cards may not work due to the proximity of the 24 pin connector and the memory slots.

The standard slots and sockets are great compared to some boards that require a non-standard power supply and use laptop memory.

The only potential issues with the design of the board were the single fan header and the battery location. The other limitation is the 4x PCIe slot, but that is more related to the CPU/Chipset than the actual board design itself.

Next: Background

Test System:

Overclocking:

With a slight oversight on our part in the last review, we wanted to come back and clear it up in this follow up. The ASUS HD 6970 can be unlocked passed the 950 core limit when you enable the Overclocking Range Enhancement (above picture) option in the settings menu. Yes, we missed this in our initial review, and we do apologize for this oversight.

With that embarrassment out of the way, we go onto reach a maximum overclock of this card. We ended up with a 9% overclock on the core speed and a 3% overclock on the memory speed. We had an improvement in core speed overclocks, obviously, with the range enhancement option enabled. The memory dropped down 1%, which ended up being 11Mhz and that will not be noticeable at all.

Next Page: 3DMark 11, 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 06

Packaging:

The ASUS HD6970:

Specifications and features:

Next: Test System, and Overclocking

The AMD 6850:

Specifications and features:

Next: A Look into the Architecture