PNY
PNY Technologies told us that the company has decided to deviate from its previous stance on overclocked and reference design graphics cards. Over the past few years the industry has become more commoditized in that there is very little differentiation in the products available to consumers. The only way current graphics cards can be different from another these days is through faster clocks frequencies, product bundling, special cooling devices, and extensive warranties. PNY wants to capitalize on this trend by overclocking its models and improving its cooling solutions. The first products will be the XLR8 GeForce 8800 and 8800 Ultra graphics cards.
PowerColor
PowerColor showed us some of the developments that we have seen so far but in more forms. The first is more models of AGP Radeon cards. PowerColor is offering both HD 2400 and HD 2600 series cards in both PCIe as well as AGP versions. PowerColor has also introduced passive cooling solutions designed by Arctic Cooling for several models, including its HD 2600 Pro SCS3 available with either 256 MB or 512 MB.
From conversations with company representatives, we learned that the various versions of the dual HD 2600 cards are actually based on an ATI reference design. This makes it clear why so many companies were able to adopt this design as quickly as they have. PowerColor announced that it will also have a dual design but was not able to have a prototype available for Computex.
