Video Cards News - Page 1

Microsoft just made it easier for developers to get DX12 features and technologies into their games, for gamers to enjoy, much easier than ever before with the introduction of DirectX 12 Agility.

DirectX 12 Agility will allow new DX12 features to skip around Windows Update, and right to gamers -- normally there would be a required Windows Update that PC gamers would need to get new DirectX features. Microsoft points out that Variable Rate Shading (VRS) was a recent feature that couldn't be deployed quickly because of the way updates are pushed to PC gamers through Windows 10.

But now, DirectX 12 updates have been disconnected from Windows Updates with the new DirectX 12 Agility toolkit for developers. Game developers can control which features they use at an SDK level and then push them out to many more PC gamers at once, versus a select few that might have the very latest version of Windows installed -- as that very latest version would be required to use those new DX12 features.

If you have managed to find 1 of the 10 (it's a joke) ASUS TUF variant of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT or Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards -- EK has some water cooling that might be of interest to you.

EK has just introduced its new EK-Quantum Vector TUF water blocks made specifically for the custom ASUS TUF versions of the Radeon RX 6900 and Radeon RX 6800 series GPUs. We have an Open Split-Flow cooling engine design which should provide some of the best cooling for your Big Navi GPU.

There's low hydraulic flow restriction which means you can use weaker water pumps or use low-speed settings and still keep your RDNA 2-powered GPU nice and cool. EK is using a block that was CNC-machined out of nickel-plated electrolytic copper, with a CNC-machined glass-like cast, or durable black POM acetal.

It was only a few weeks ago that I was writing about GIGABYTE reportedly having no less than 12 custom GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards with 12GB of GDDR6X -- and now MSI not only has its own custom RTX 3080 Ti cards, but they're already on their way to the USA.

An entire shipment of MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti VENTUS 3X OC graphics cards are headed to LA right now, alongside other custom GeForce graphics cards from MSI including custom GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, the even lower-end GeForce GTX 710, and the Radeon RX 580.

If there's one thing we can take away from this it's that we kinda now know that NVIDIA will have 12GB of GDDR6X memory on its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card -- sandwiched in-between the 10GB of GDDR6X placed on the GeForce RTX 3080 and the monstrous 24GB of GDDR6X on the flagship GeForce RTX 3090.

ASRock has just released its new custom Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula graphics card, an impressive new custom Big Navi powered GPU. Check it out:

AMD has given ASRock its full-fat Big Navi 21 XTXH GPU for the new Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula graphics card, which ASRock has a 2295MHz Game and 2475MHz Boost GPU clock out of the box -- and I'm sure some room to move in regards to overclocking.

There's of course 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit memory bus and 128MB of Infinity Cache, while the triple-fan OC Formula 3X cooling system will keep the entire card cool. ASRock provides the usual 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.1 for display connectivity on the Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula graphics card.

MSI announced its water-cooled GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk X earlier this year, but in the middle of the biggest GPU shortage of all time -- the company has now launched the GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk X.

The new MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk X graphics card is a new custom AIO-cooled GeForce RTX 3080 with a 240nm radiator and 2 x 120mm MSI Torx 4.0 fans. MSI is using a new "low profile" liquid pump that it co-designed with water cooling company Asetek.

MSI attaches the pump to a huge micro-fin copper base that spans across both the Ampere GPU and 10GB of GDDR6X memory, with the GPU boost at 1785MHz I'm sure there will be room for overclocking. MSI is using a fully custom PCB on the GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk X while the card will require dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Look -- you might have tried to buy one of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards in the past 6+ months to no avail, but that doesn't mean NVIDIA is shouting from the rooftops at how good the Ampere launch has been.

NVIDIA said during its latest investor presentation that the Ampere GPU architecture was their best launch ever, seeing double the amount of end market sales of its new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards. NVIDIA shows that in the first 18 weeks of the new Ampere GeForce RTX 30 series being launched that demand for cards was insane... and it has only gotten stronger.

When compared to the end market sales of the previous-gen Pascal and Turing GPU architectures, the new Ampere GPU architecture and kick ass GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards are wanted more than Pascal and Turing cards ever were in the first 18 weeks of their release -- but both of those cards also didn't have to contend with an out-of-nowhere, never-before-seen GPU shortage like we have witnessed through the last 6+ months.

NVIDIA has just pushed out some new drivers with the GeForce Game Ready 466.11 WHQL drivers arriving as a 640MB download, with day-one support for Mortal Shell's new RTX update and so much more.

NVIDIA is adding more than just DLSS support for Mortal Shell's new RTX update but also support for 6 new G-SYNC compatible gaming monitors, a new NVIDIA Reflex feature in Valorant, as well as support for the AI-powered NVIDIA Noise Removal technology inside of popular streaming software OBS Studio.

The new Mortal Shell RTX update adds DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) support that radically improves performance in the game. NVIDIA provides some benchmark charts for Mortal Shell and its new RTX update -- turning ray tracing on and setting DLSS to "Performance Mode" we have performance on the GeForce RTX 3060 skyrocketing from an unplayable 15FPS at 4K to 36FPS average.

Sorry everyone -- if you have been having a hard time (everyone is) trying to buy a new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics card -- it's not going to get better this year, at all.

NVIDIA is now saying that 2021 isn't going to get better for PC gamers and that GPU shortages will continue through the entire of 2021 and into 2022. NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress explained during NVIDIA's annual investors day: "We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year. Our operations team is agile and executing fantastically. We expect our supplies to increase as the year progresses".

The company is noticing a lot of its graphics cards being scooped up by not just scalpers but crypto miners, with NVIDIA reacting to crypto miners buying GPUs in huge numbers with the introduction of the new Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) series of mining GPUs.

NVIDIA will have its kick ass DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology powering Unity-based games with news that the Unity Engine 2021.2 engine will natively support DLSS by the end of 2021.

Game developers that are already using the Unity Engine can now use DLSS through HDRP (the High Definition Rendering Pipeline) while gamers will have to wait for those developers to do their magic while Unity-powered games will receive DLSS support by the end of the year and into 2022 and beyond.

It comes at a perfect time, with Intel launching a new GPU later this year with its purported XeSS -- their answer to DLSS while AMD will have their own DLSS competitor in FSR or FidelityFX Super Resolution technology for Radeon RX gamers of the future.

PowerColor has just released its new Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate graphics card, with some devilish tricks of its own against competing custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.

The new PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate graphics card packs a higher-binned Navi 21 XTXH GPU, with out-of-the-box game GPU clocks set at 2235MHz while boost GPU clocks are at 2425MHz. But some reviewers have got their cards already (I was blacklisted by PowerColor years ago for leaking out a card that I triple-checked I could at a previous Computex -- that's for another day).

HotHardware received their new custom PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate graphics card and were able to hit GPU speeds that couldn't be done on current Radeon RX 6900 XT cards. This is because AMD is using higher-binned GPUs on the new PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate graphics card which uses a new PCI Device ID versus the original Radeon RX 6900 XT cards, and isn't recognized by GPU-Z.