Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 51

The AMD FidelityFX Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available for developers to download. It gives them an easy one-stop solution for adding AMD FidelityFX tech into games like FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 1.1 and FSR 2.2.1) and AMD FidelityFX CACAO (AMD FidelityFX Ambient Occlusion).

"The AMD FidelityFX SDK is the result of our aim to bring simplicity, structure, and consistency into all our great AMD FidelityFX technologies," writes AMD in the announcement, which also introduces three brand new FidelityFX tech for developers (and gamers) to play with.

The first is AMD FidelityFX Blur 1.0, a hardware-based "gaussian blur technique" for creating more cinematic visuals. The second is AMD FidelityFX Depth of Field 1.0, which is about recreating the "bokeh depth of field effect produced by camera lenses." Finally, there's AMD FidelityFX Lens 1.0, which also adds access to cinematic tools like chromatic aberration, vignette, and film-grain effects to in-game visuals.

NVIDIA has slightly altered the power connector design on its flagship Lovelace graphics cards, according to a fresh report.

This comes from a Redditor (as spotted by VideoCardz) who posted to show the purported design change on a new RTX 4090 Founders Edition, which theoretically has been made to ensure that the well-publicized instances of cable meltdown no longer happen.

You surely can't have missed the fracas around melting cables after the RTX 4090 was launched, with NVIDIA admitting that if the power cable isn't properly plugged into the graphics card, such a loose connection could cause overheating issues.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card with 16GB of VRAM is supposedly launching next week - if the rumors are correct - but word is that reviews will be thin on the ground.

Hardware Unboxed tweeted to let us know that there is no official review program for this 16GB spin on the RTX 4060 Ti, and even outside of NVIDIA - which isn't producing a Founders Edition - the company's graphics card making partners "really don't want to know about it [the 4060 Ti]."

Hardware Unboxed further notes that every NVIDIA partner says they won't be providing any review samples, and they aren't even certain of the launch date (rumored to be July 18).

Last week we saw American overclocker Allen "Splave" Golibersuch break the 4.0 GHz barrier using the flagship liquid-cooled ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 all-in-one from ASUS. An impressive milestone and a conclusion of sorts to a race that was heating up between Splave and German overclocker CENS that saw a back-and-forth over the course of days and weeks to see who could get to 4.0 GHz first.

For a brief moment, CENS held the crown by pushing a Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB to an incredible 3.975 GHz. And although the race to 4.0 GHz is over, this hasn't stopped CENS from grabbing some LN2 and going again with the overclocker posting "a fun one" with a 4095 MHz GPU clock speed, or basically 4090 MHz to match the naming of the GeForce RTX 4090.

CENS posted the results on Twitter with an accompanying picture showing his setup, and it's very cool to see what it looks like when a GPU is pushed beyond what we thought was possible.

NVIDIA is planning to launch the new 16GB variant of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti this month, but with an MSRP of USD 499, the consensus is that, sure, more VRAM is great to see, but the price is too high for a GPU with the same underlying specs as the 8GB variant.

For MSI and its premium GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Slim, we'll see the revised 2-slot cooling design that debuted at Computex 2023 in the stylish white color. Images of the GPU have appeared online via Twitter user hongxing2020, and it also looks like this GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB will use a 16-pin power connector even though it's a 165W graphics card.

It's hard to tell without full specifications, but the connector could also be the new 12V-2x6 power connector seen on the GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition model. Interestingly, due to low power requirements, most RTX 4060 Ti models feature the standard 8-pin power connection, so there shouldn't be an issue with the switch to 16-pin.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM has been a controversial graphics card since it was first announced, and just ahead of its launch, the divisive feelings around this model are very much still present.

This time we're hearing from NVIDIA's partners who manufacture graphics cards using Team Green's chips, via Andreas Schilling, editor of a German tech site.

Note that we must be cautious about rumors on Twitter, but we're told that Schilling spoke to some add-in board (AIB) makers and that it looks like "very few" are interested in promoting the graphics card in a "big way," as you can see in the tweet.

Here's a bit of a weird one, ASUS is launching a new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector that debuted with GeForce RTX 40 Series. The 'ATS-RTX3060TI-O8GD6X-GAMING-V2' or ASUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Atlas Shark initially made use of the 12-pin connector that we saw across many Ampere GPUs to minimize the need for multiple 8-pin plugs.

Pictures of the new connector on this GPU were posted by Extreme Player over at Bilibili, with confirmation that the new model was shipped to consumers and retailers in April 2023. The physical design looks unchanged outside the switch to the new 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.

Regarding the make-up of the GPU, the older 12-pin and newer 16-pin connectors share the same physical make-up. It's believed that no revisions were required to the rest of the GPU design outside of accommodating the new connector. With the controversy surrounding melting connectors and word of a revision to the existing 12VHPWR coming soon, you might wonder why ASUS has decided to ship a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.

Intel's Battlemage GPUs have a sizeable question mark hanging over their future, if one leaker is to be believed - and don't expect these graphics cards to debut any time soon (indeed, if the 2nd-gen products turn up at all - more on that later).

This is from Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), who has got a whole bunch of info from sources with their ears to the ground, and the overall - worrying - message here is that Battlemage has had a whole pile of issues.

Apparently things are so bad with the 2nd-gen range from Intel that its future is "very uncertain," we're told - hinting that it may not even come out. (That cancelation rumor is something Intel has strenuously denied in the past, it has to be noted).

AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 23.7.1 is here for Radeon graphics card owners. Although it doesn't feature anything brand-new in terms of game optimizations for upcoming releases, it does manage to resolve one big issue that has been around since the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX launched in December 2022.

And that is, it resolves the high-idle power issue that became an ongoing issue when pairing either one of these GPUs with a 4K FreeSync display or multimonitor display configuration. Another big fix comes to VR performance, with the release notes for the new Radeon drivers noting that "suboptimal performance or occasional stuttering" when playing VR games on the Radeon RX 7000 series has also been resolved.

It's great to see these fixes from AMD, as it showcases that even though some issues can linger for months, the Radeon team is paying close attention to the 'Known Issues.' Hopefully, we'll see the 'Factory Reset' installation issue resolved soon, too - as that one has been listed for a while after reports of the feature causing havoc with Windows.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card launched in an initial incarnation that offered 8GB of VRAM, much to the chagrin of many gamers, and if you were waiting for the 16GB variant, it's almost at hand now.

We already knew that NVIDIA was planning on bringing the 16GB flavor out in July, of course, but we're still not sure exactly when - info that MEGAsizeGPU, a regular hardware leaker on Twitter has provided.

As ever, treat this with a good deal of caution, but the theory is that the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB will emerge on July 18, which is just under a fortnight away.