Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 55

A stealthy GPU release from MSI, with a brand-new GeForce RTX 4090 GPU from the popular brand, is not getting anything in the way of an official announcement or reveal. However, it's not hard to see why, as the new MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S looks to be exclusive to the Chinese market and features a traditional blower-fan cooling design.

It's not something we expected to see, but there looks to be some interest in GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs using this cooler design to keep the overall thickness down to a more manageable two-slot size. We reported on the new AFOX RTX 4090, another GPU with a blower-fan design, a week ago.

Without recognizable branding on the MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S, odds are this GPU is positioned as a workstation RTX GPU for the Chinese market. Although less capable than high-end Ada-powered workstation GPUs, it could present a more affordable alternative for intensive workloads. Especially when crowded workstation PCs are designed for GPUs not to be at most two slots thick.

ASUS has showcased an interesting concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, adding a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD slot onto the back of the GPU to use unused PCIe lanes. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti uses x8 lanes, so the full PCIe x16 slot has extra room for a Gen4 M.2 SSD to utilize a PCIe x4 interface. Although strange, the M.2 SSD-equipped GeForce RTX 4060 Ti that features storage on the same PCB begins to make sense.

Tony Yu, ASUS's General Manager,gave a close look at the concept showcasing that the placement of a Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD on the back of the GPU means that the heatsink and cooling for the efficient GeForce RTX 4060 Ti eliminate any concerns around the SSD overheating. We saw temperatures remain low during a benchmark, so the excessive cooling on the GPU helps keep the SSD storage cooler than the traditional install-it-on-the-motherboard route.

Due to the small size of M.2 drives, the cutout on the concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti blends in with the backplate of what looks to be a customized version of the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti - and it looks very cool.

AMD's new HYPR-RX technology was announced before the launch of the new Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX late last year, created as a means to boost performance in games with no tweaking required on the user's side. HYPR-RX isn't a new technology per se, but a one-click solution within AMD's Adrenaline software that enables AMD Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) in supported titles.

The combination of technologies is designed to deliver fast frame rates and lower latency instead of separating these options. This would be an excellent tool for competitive games where smooth and reliable performance is the goal.

According to AMD's roadmap, HYPR-RX was on track for the first half of the 2023 release, but that window has now come and gone, with no word from the company on when we can expect to see the technology.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X3D has been one of the more interesting nuggets from the CPU rumor mill of late, but this processor is no longer a purported piece of hardware - it's really happening, although there's a weighty caveat attached here.

The Ryzen 5 5600X3D will be available from Micro Center only (in the US, and no other regions), and as the tweet carrying the revelation notes, you'll be able to buy it at your 'local' store, which rules out purchasing the chip online. And not everyone lives that near to a Micro Center, of course.

The 5600X3D will carry a price tag of $229, but there will also be a bundle deal. This consists of the 5600X3D and ASUS B550-Plus TUF motherboard along with 16GB of G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 memory, all of which you'll be able to snag for an asking price of $329.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 graphics card is reportedly struggling for sales right out of the gate, or so we hear from sources in Japan and Europe.

For starters, take a look at the above tweet. It shows a shop in the Japanese Akihabara shopping hub that didn't even bother to open for the launch, and a second store that was open for business.

The latter had a launch day queue of... wait for it... one keen gamer. No, technically a single person isn't a queue, but you get the point. The interest level in Japan was pretty low, then, we can guess.

Graphics card sales are very much flagging for current-gen products, if the latest gossip from the GPU grapevine is to be believed.

Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) provided the inside scoop from various sources in the retail industry - add your own seasoning as ever - as part of the YouTuber's latest video (which focuses primarily on analyzing performance levels of the RTX 4060, though that's not what we're interested in here).

One source at a major retailer outside of the US (presumably in Europe) that MLID spoke to said that NVIDIA's RTX 3060 and RTX 3050 were still selling well at under the $300 (US) mark (the RTX 3050 especially, for those models under $250). And that on AMD's side, the RX 6700 XT and 6600 XT are selling decently.

Intel has released a new beta driver for its Arc family of graphics card, and it boosts the frame rates of Assassin's Creed Unity (an admittedly very old game) by a colossal amount.

According to Intel's release notes for driver version 31.0.101.4514, Assassin's Creed Unity (which was out in 2014) runs a rather staggering 271% faster at 1080p (on very high graphics settings), and 313% faster at 1440p (on high settings). That's four times as fast - or rather, 'up to' four times, as Intel observes.

Why is there such a huge jump here? Well, Intel has made no secret that it's (obviously) a mammoth task to optimize Arc drivers from scratch for all PC games out there, so it has concentrated on modern titles naturally (and DX12 or Vulkan).

According to a new report at Seeking Alpha, the per-wafer cost of TSMC's upcoming 2nm process technology will be USD 24,570 when production begins in 2025. This represents a 25% increase over 3nm wafer costs, the current cutting-edge node at TSMC. Wafer costs for 3nm already increased by up to 40% over 5nm, so we're getting a clear picture that more advanced chipsets will also advance in cost.

With the price of consumer-focused enthusiast CPUs and GPUs for gaming and other tasks increasing in recent times, not to mention the unprecedented price increases for consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, we could see the next few generations of gaming hardware cost more than we're used to.

When it comes to GPUs for PC gaming, which feature TSMC process technology, if AMD or NVIDIA choose to use 3nm or 2nm process nodes - then it could see the price of flagship GPUs from both companies dramatically increase. This is wild to think about when the GeForce RTX 4090's MSRP is already an eye-watering USD 1,599.

As part of an AI training demonstration showcasing the prowess of NVIDIA's H100 hardware, which saw a whopping 3,584 Hopper GPUs train a GPT-3 AI model in 11 minutes, the company also revealed a roadmap for its upcoming products - including what will eventually become the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

The roadmap refers to the technology as "Ada Lovelace Next" alongside "Hopper Next" and "Grace Next," so there are no clues as to what architecture will be called. It highlights a 2025 release, so we might have to wait longer than usual before seeing the GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090.

Traditionally new GeForce hardware and architecture arrived every two years, give or take a few months. The Pascal-based GeForce GTX 10 Series arrived in 2016, the Turing-based GeForce RTX 20 Series in 2018, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 Series in 2020, and the Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 Series in 2022.

Last week MSI announced its line-up of GeForce RTX 4060 graphics cards, with models set to launch this week in the company's well-known Ventux and Gaming product lines. Today, over at Newegg, we've got pricing for three models with retail pages live ahead of launch. These are currently listed as "Out of Stock," though that will change on June 29.

And with three models listed, we have confirmation that pricing for the GeForce RTX 4060 starts at USD 299, with the more premium variants costing USD 329. At least for MSI, we expect other brands to release higher-end variants to target the USD 329 price point.

For MSI, its MSRP model is the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G for USD 299, and the specs listed detail that it features 3072 CUDA Cores and a Boost Clock of 2490 MHz. VENTUS cards from MSI represent the entry-level GPUs from the company and, as we've seen from previous releases, deliver great results with adequate cooling and silent performance. These cards are also smaller than more premium models, and the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G's length of 199 mm is compact.