Graphics Cards - Page 108

We reviewed both the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING X TRIO and the MSI GeForce RTX 4080 GAMING X TRIO, where both cards more than earned their awards thanks to impressive in-game performance, and excellent build quality and cooling. But here's the thing, neither card was white - they were both the standard black and metallic with RGB flourishes we've become used to.

And sure, having white components in your PC is like an all-in-or-nothing thing, but it's fantastic to see that MSI is launching RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti GAMING TRIO WHITE models. How a GPU looks is undoubtedly subjective, but even so, these look slick - especially when installed in an all-white rig. Even the GPU brackets are white, which is a nice touch.

As for the underlying hardware, both cards remain the same.

PowerColor has officially revealed details on its water-cooled Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU - the PowerColor Liquid Devil 7900 XTX. Described as "the ultimate overclocking performance for gaming enthusiasts," this Liquid Devil features a nickel-plated copper base and a custom PCB designed to push performance.

The GPU features a Dual BIOS, which is all about overclocking. There's the standard 'OC' mode for more balanced energy consumption and an 'Unleash' mode that PowerColor describes as delivering the highest clocks for breaking records - a bold claim-designed in collaboration with EK, the water block ships with an EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex for safe usage and testing. The custom water cooling here offers liquid cooling for the GPU, VRAM, and VRM.

It's also stylish too, with fully customizable RGB lighting effects, though on that front, we all know that blue RGB makes everything run cooler. At least, that's what they tell me. All in all, it's a stylish look with a great blend of logos, geometric shapes, and transparent flourishes.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series laptops are launching this week, bringing a massive generational leap to portable gaming performance. The results are impressive as per our review of the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI (2023) powered by a GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU. This brand-new laptop from MSI can push 90 frames-per-second in Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K and 123 fps in Forza Horizon 5 in 4K. Yeah, those are desktop numbers and incredible to see.

And with that, NVIDIA has released its latest GeForce Game Ready Driver, which adds support for all of the GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 laptops that are launching this week. The new GeForce Game Ready 528.49 WHQL driver isn't just about laptop gaming on the new Ada Lovelace architecture; there's plenty of love for PC gaming too.

NVIDIA DLSS support for Hello Neighbor 2 and PERISH is included. The former includes DLSS 2 support for its ray-traced reflections, ray-traced shadows, and RTXGI ray-traced global illumination, while PERISH includes both DLSS 3 and DLSS 2 for its ray-traced reflections and RT shadows.

Citing official embargo info from NVIDIA, we've got a report (via Videocardz.com) that GeForce board partners are looking at April 2023 as the launch window for the upcoming GeForce RTX 4070. A specific date isn't mentioned, but it's expected that GeForce RTX 4070 models from board partners will hit retail shelves sometime during the month.

Naturally, we've seen the release dates for GPU launches change and swap around right up until the last minute. Still, with the GeForce RTX 4060 expected to launch shortly after the RTX 4070, odds are we'll be seeing these more mainstream and affordable Ada Lovelace GPUs arrive before mid-year. The GeForce RTX 4070 is rumored to feature 5888 CUDA Cores, 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and a lower power rating of 200W compared to the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti.

The GeForce RTX 4070 is also rumored to feature a lower boost clock speed, 2475 MHz, compared to the RTX 4070 Ti's 2610 MHz boost clock. Using the same AD104 chip as its basis, albeit cut down, it'll be interesting to see how its performance stacks up to the 285W TGP rating of the RTX 4070 Ti. Interestingly the RTX 4070's CUDA Core count is identical to the Ampere generation's RTX 3070, though with much higher clock speeds, the RTX 4070 should beat it in benchmarks.

As GPU sizes increase due to more advanced cooling that requires all manner of fans, chunky heatsinks, and vapor chambers, the idea of an all-in-one water block solution is enticing. Not only does it dramatically reduce the physical slot size of the GPU proper (sure, you've still got a sizable radiator), but it offers what many see as a better cooling idea for overclocking or simply playing games without having to worry about temperatures and fan noise.

The PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Liquid Devil is the first water-cooled Radeon RX 7000 GPU, with a waterblock designed by EK - a name and brand trusted by many. It's a sleek unit, too, with the first pictures of the GPU surfacing via CornerJack from Overclocking.com on Twitter.

This requires an existing liquid loop to work, so it isn't an all-in-one solution but a solid (or liquid) option for those looking to get a Radeon RX 7900 XTX. With three 8-pin connectors, the board will likely be similar to what's found in PowerColor's Red Devil range.

MSI's first Radeon RX 7000 GPUs have hit the US retail market, with the MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX Gaming Trio Classic listed for USD 1099.99 on Newegg and the MSI Radeon RX 7900 XT Gaming Trio Classic listed for USD 949.99. In terms of cooling, these feature custom designs separate from AMD reference designs, namely MSI's recognizable Gaming Trio design.

Similar in look and feel to the Gaming Trio designs seen in MSI's Radeon 6000 GPUs, both cards use MSI's TRI FROZR 2 thermal system with TORX FAN 4.0 technology, enhanced PCB materials, and an anti-bend backplate. Interestingly both cards feature a 2.5-slot design as opposed to the more prominent real estate we've seen in high-end GPUs of late. Both cards also feature 3 x 8-pin power connectors, so there might be room to overclock manually.

Here are the specs for the MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX Gaming Trio Classic.

ASUS is rolling out a GPU trade-in program in the UK where you can hand in your old NVIDIA or AMD graphics card for a discount towards a brand-new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti or RTX 4080 GPU. The promotion is live now, will end on March 17, 2023, and isn't something we've seen before. At least, I haven't.

Typically, second-hand GPUs are on-sold to friends of a friend or a workmate. Or put up on Facebook Marketplace or another auction platform. And with that, even though the amounts and cash-back offered by ASUS might not be up there with second-hand pricing, it covers pretty much every major GPU release for the past several years - and is an excellent little all-around promotion. So yeah, we'd love this to make its way to the US or Australia.

ASUS has listed the participating retailers where the cash-back offer is available for the following GPUs.

NVIDIA's AD106 chip from its new Ada Lovelace GPU range is rumored to power the GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, which has yet to be formally revealed. According to a new listing and 3DMark benchmark results (via Chiphell), the AD106 GPU from NVIDIA boasts 4608 CUDA Cores, a 2535 MHz boost clock, a 128-bit memory bus, and a power rating of only 180W.

The benchmark results compare the chip to GA104 (the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti) and TU104 (the older GeForce RTX 20 Series). And based on the results, it looks either faster or slower than the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, depending on the test. DirectX 12 and raytracing look to be the clear winner. Still, the big takeaway is that the generational jump means that the level of performance for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060's AD106 will be RTX 3070 Ti at around 27% less power.

Harukaze5719 on Twitter has posted the results in a handy chart you can see here, where apparent wins in 1080p and 1440p tests like FireStrike and TimeSpy showcase that NVIDIA will be positioning AD106 GPU products as mainstream. As x060 class GPUs from NVIDIA are always the most popular, it will be interesting to see what price point the RTX 4060 eventually hits.

Back in the day, graphics cards from 3dfx Interactive - namely those with the Voodoo name - were what you craved to play cutting-edge games like Quake and Unreal. And although the rise of GeForce and Radeon slowly overtook Voodoo as the PC gaming GPUs of choice, those that have a fondness for classic late-'90s PC games and tech will no doubt have fond memories of 3dfx hardware.

This makes this eBay listing for a Voodoo 5 6000 interesting because it was the last 'Voodoo' card from 3dfx and a product that never actually made it to market. One of the reasons it never did come out was its use of multiple chips and four 166 MHz VSA-100 processors, each with 32 MB of 166 MHz SDRAM. The Voodoo 5 6000 was going to be the first 128 MB graphics card, and according to reports, it went through various prototype stages with only test cards produced. This is why this for-real Voodoo 5 6000 (Rev 3700A) on eBay currently has a bid of USD 9,500.

As per the seller, gtastuntcrew302.

As per our report last week, it has been over two months since AMD released a driver update covering RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 GPUs and older. The past four driver updates have been exclusive to the new RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs, which launched in December 2022. Even though it makes sense for AMD to focus on the new product launch and fix any issues that might have been discovered in the following weeks, it's still strange.

Namely, because day-one drivers are critical for new game releases, ensuring performance and compatibility is where it needs to be. On this front, high-profile PC games like Forspoken (an AMD-sponsored title) and the impressive Dead Space remake have launched without non-RDNA 3 Radeon driver support.

Naturally, the community has been wondering what's happening - especially when unified drivers are supposed to be the norm. On the NVIDIA front, even with the arrival of the GeForce RTX 40 Series, the current 528.24 WHQL GeForce Game Ready Driver still supports GeForce GTX 10 Series GPUs.

The Steam Hardware Survey is a pretty good gauge to see what's popular in the PC gaming space; for example, most Steam users (63.46%) are running Windows 10 64-bit and are gaming in 1080p.

The most popular GPU is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (6.04%), which is closely followed by the GeForce GTX 1060, GeForce RTX 3060, GeForce RTX 2060, and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. These GPUs represent around 30% of all Steam users, and with that, most PC gamers use the GPUs to play games.

It gets interesting with the arrival of new GPUs and how the numbers change from month to month to reflect growth and change.

The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada workstation GPU isn't designed for gaming, but that hasn't stopped someone from putting its traditional 2-slot blower-fan cooling design to the test using the 3DMark Time Spy performance benchmark.

The 30518 graphics score represents a 72% boost over its workstation predecessor, the RTX A6000 Ampere-based GPU. The card is slower than the GeForce RTX 4090, but its intended use isn't gaming. According to the source, it reportedly hit closer to 36000 before a Windows update, so its performance could be much closer to the RTX 4090.

Specs-wise, the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada's 18,176 CUDA cores is an 11% increase over the RTX 4090's 16,384 CUDA Core count, and it also features more memory in the form of 48GB GDDR6 over a 384-bit interface. The card is also rated at 300W, which makes it an efficient powerhouse for workstation tasks.

As per a new report at The Wall Street Journal, the state-run China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) - reportedly the country's top nuclear weapons research institute - has managed to get a hold of Intel and NVIDIA hardware. Which we assume have been used to do all of that atomic research.

Hardware from both suppliers has been on an export blocklist since 1997, but even so, the chips were obtained from resellers in China. The CAEP is specifically on the blocklist because of its work in nuclear science, with the report claiming that the study of "computational fluid dynamics" is code for nuclear explosions. To circumvent the restrictions, the CAEP has set up multiple entities and over a dozen aliases, and many of these have been added to the blocklist as recently as June 2020.

So then, how did they find out about the chips? A review of research papers published by CAEP over the past decade found references to hardware from Intel and NVIDIA - like an Intel Core i7-7800X processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. Multiple research papers feature sections about "maintaining nuclear stockpiles," which is a scary thought in its own right. The report notes that the chips used cover everything from 7nm to 14nm process nodes, though there are no records of Intel and NVIDIA chips launched within the last two years being used.

And not just DirectX 9 gaming, but modern titles also benefit from performance increases. And with a price drop for the Intel Arc A750 to USD 249 - Intel is positioning the GPU as a more affordable mainstream alternative to NVIDIA's most popular GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060. Those who buy an Arc GPU before July 31 will also be eligible for two free games; Nightingale and The Settlers: New Allies.

With the new price and impressive driver-based performance increases, Intel claims that the Intel Arc A750 delivers 52% more performance per dollar compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 across several DX9, DX11, and DX12 titles.

From Metro Exodus to popular competitive jams like Overwatch 2, Fortnite, and League of Legends, Intel is looking to deliver on the promise of Arc with this new driver update.

With AMD RDNA 3 "Navi 31" GPUs now out, specifically the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX, it looks like there could be room for a significant update for the tech via the implementation of 3D V-Cache. Stacking cache in this way has led to AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D and the new Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 X3D CPUs being touted as ideal for gaming. With significant performance boosts found specifically in gaming-related tasks.

And with that, it's fair to expect that a Radeon RX 7000 GPU with 3D V-Cache could lead to similar results. Engineer Tom Wassick noticed the potential for an RDNA 3 upgrade after dissecting a Radeon RX 7900 XT, where he saw "keep-out zones" in the design that are similar to what's found on the Ryzen X3D CPUs.

"A linear array of 'spots' that look remarkably like the keep-out zones on X3D," Tom Wassick writes. "Could they be considering stacked MCD functionality?" With the groundbreaking multi-chip design in RDNA 3, it makes sense that AMD would also be looking into something like a 3D V-Cache to boost performance that isn't all about power and clock speeds.

The first GeForce RTX 4070 testing results (the non-Ti model) have surfaced via the GPU-Z validation database, covering a Colorful RTX 4070 iGame Ultra White OC. Indicating that partners are testing cards in their labs, the listing also confirms a few things related to the card's clock speeds.

Based on the information datamined by Matthew Smith on Twitter, we learn that the GeForce RTX 4070 has a Base Clock speed of 1920 MHz and a Boost Clock speed of 2475 MHz. No official word on the power rating, but previous reports indicate that the RTX 4070 will be an efficient 200W or so card.

Compared to the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti's 2610 MHz, it's a 135 MHz reduction in Boost Clock speed. Based on the same AD104 chip as the RTX 4070 Ti, the baseline RTX 4070 is rumored to feature 5888 CUDA Cores versus the 7680 in the Ti model - another reduction. How the difference in clock speeds and specs relate to performance remains to be seen, but it sounds like we won't have to wait too long to find out.

AMD driver updates for its Radeon GPUs have been limited to the new RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 Series for two months, leaving RDNA 2 GPUs behind. Although listed as a December update, the last RDNA 2 driver for the Radeon RX 6000 Series (which includes the 6700 XT, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT) surfaced at the end of November 2022.

The driver, AMD Radeon Software 22.11.2, marks the last time a Radeon software update supported the RX 6000 Series - with the four subsequent driver releases being exclusive to the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX. As both cards made their debut in December 2022 and launched with some significant issues relating to power draw, it makes sense that that was the focus for AMD. That said, it doesn't make sense that the bulk of the Radeon GPUs out in the wild have been forgotten, especially when driver updates are crucial to improving day-one performance for many PC games.

With the release of high-profile games like Square Enix's Forspoken (AMD sponsored) and the Dead Space remake from EA - not getting timely Radeon software updates for these games is a little concerning. On the NVIDIA side, Game Ready Drivers supporting the company's entire GPU line-up have continued without pause, even with the arrival of three brand-new GeForce RTX 40 Series cards.

NVIDIA might be planning to release a GeForce RTX 4090 Ti with 24GB of GDDR6X and a 600W TGP in addition to a TITAN-class Ada Lovelace graphics card with a whopping 48GB of GDDR6X and a 800W TGP. This comes as NVIDIA leaker kopite7kimi releases specs for the currently planned GeForce RTX 4090 Ti.

He lists RTX 4090 Ti using PG136/139-SKU310 and featuring 18176 FP32 (CUDA Cores), 96M L2 Cache, 24G GDDR6X memory, and total power of 600W. The CUDA Core count here represents a 10.9% increase over the GeForce RTX 4090.

This sits alongside his previous leak of "the beast" using PG137-SKU0 featuring the same CUDA Core count as this new RTX 4090 Ti leak but with double the memory (48G GDDR6X) and a total power rating of 800W. With images we posted today showcasing a new four-slot cooler for an upcoming Founders Edition card from NVIDIA, we assumed that it was related to a single product.

Intel Arc GPUs launched last year as a new player in the discrete GPU market, with products that would compete directly with offerings from NVIDIA and AMD. As with GPUs, drivers play an essential role in overall performance, stability, and compatibility. Ahead of Intel's Arc debut, the company made it clear that DX9 (DirectX9 API) performance hasdissues.

Last December, Intel released a driver update for Arc that presented a massive bump to DX9 performance. For example, popular online shooter CS:GO saw an 80% increase in 1080p performance on the Intel Arc 770.

The word is that Intel is prepping another driver update for the Arc line-up, which is said to remove a bottleneck or issue that could lead to an across-the-board improvement. As per PC Games Hardware's translation via Videocardz.com, "Intel is currently preparing a major driver update intended to increase performance across the board one of the undoubtedly existing [bottlenecks] has been identified and eliminated."

GPU manufacturers use ECC (Eurasian Economic Commission) listings to register GPU model names for use at a later date, often indicating that a product launch is happening relatively soon. A new ECC filing by Chinese graphics card maker Shangke Group (MaxSun and Soyo) lists A GeForce RTX 4060 and GeForce RTX 4050 alongside the RTX 4070.

The list doesn't mention any upcoming "Ti" models but indicates the expected release cadence of the GeForce RTX 4060 to follow the launch of the RTX 4070. What's interesting is that both of these cards represent the mainstream offerings for the GeForce RTX 40 Series, so even with a price increase over the previous Ampere generation - we should expect them to launch with prices relatively close to the RTX 3050's USD 249 and the RTX 3060's USD 329.

Also, the fact that both have shown up in this listing points to board partners being made aware of the entire Ada line-up and that NVIDIA could release these cards sooner than expected. And with NVIDIA launching its full laptop/mobile RTX 40 Series line-up, we could also see an accelerated timeline for desktops.