Graphics Cards - Page 109

Pictures of what we assume will be NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 Ti graphics card have surfaced, showcasing a massive four-slot cooling design that features what looks to be a two-slot exhaust. This could be the reason for the vertical orientation of the I/O ports, which is an interesting design change. The images were posted by the aptly named MEGAsizeGPU.

The RTX 4090 Ti, or next-gen Titan based on Ada Lovelace architecture, is expected to become the flagship GPU in the RTX 40 Series line-up. The image lists 699-1G137 SKU as the card, confirming this. The overall design will make it the largest Founders Edition GPU to date - with a more considerable physical presence than the already chunky RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs. It also features a gold-colored cooler design, putting it in the Titan-class range for NVIDIA.

It could be a prototype or the real deal; it's hard to say. As per established NVIDIA leaker Kopite7kimi, the RTX 4090 Ti, or "the beast," is the PG137-SKU0 shown here. Granted that info comes from July 2022, where AD102-450-A1 is listed as the chip alongside 18176 FP32 (CUDA Cores), 48G 24Gbps GDDR6X memory, and an eyebrow-raising 800W power limit. And with that, it would also require dual 12VHPWR 16-pin connectors.

The GALAX GeForce RTX 4090 HOF (Hall of Fame) might be the most powerful version of the most powerful GPU on the planet. Rocking dual 16-pin '12VHPWR' power connectors, and a huge 666W power limit, it also features a robust 28+4 phase power design.

A 4.3-inch full-color LCD panel dubbed the "HOF Panel III" can also display system info and play videos, which is cool but probably unnecessary. All of this is wrapped up in a physical design that is more eyebrow-raising and gaudy than something you'd call sleek or stylish.

The triple-fan cooler design includes 112mm fans on both sides, and a 92mm fan in the center, not to mention a chunky heatsink. There's even a "hyper boost button" to increase fan speeds which GALAX notes will reduce GPU temperatures by around 10 degrees Celsius.

A new AMD article titled "Never a Better Time to Upgrade with Radeon Graphics" outlines the reasons to choose either an AMD Radeon RX 7000 or 6000 Series graphics card but ends up making RDNA 3 cards like the Radeon RX 7900 XT look like poor choices.

The pricing surrounding the new flagship GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA has been one of the most talked about parts of the next generation of PC gaming tech. Especially when it comes to the models that sit right below the top - the GeForce RTX 4080 and the Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Starting with the GeForce RTX 4090 (USD 1599) compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 (USD 1499), we see a massive leap forward in 4K gaming performance. And a slight difference in launch pricing. It's a similar story for the flagship AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (USD 999) compared to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (USD 999), which also presents a giant leap forward in terms of 4K and ray-tracing performance.

Microsoft's DirectStorage technology brings lightning-fast loading times to PC games, with near-instantaneous gaming similar to what we saw when the PlayStation 5 launched. How it works is that it uses the GPU for asset decompression, which dramatically improves loading. And it requires a modern M.2 SSD to work. Forspoken, from Square Enix, is the first game to use the DirectX technology on PC, and German publication PC Games Hardware has been checking it out to see what effect it might have on in-game performance and frame rates.

For the GeForce RTX 4090, you're looking at a 10% drop in overall frame rates when comparing a standard SATA SSD without DirectStorage enabled to it running on an M.2 SSD. An average FPS of 83.2 compared to 75.3/74.4. Interestingly the 1% lows aren't affected, which means that the overall performance was smooth despite the lower average.

Of course, this is a single system, one game, and unspecified hardware, so it might not point to a situation where a 10% drop in performance would be the norm for DirectStorage-enabled games. The tests are also limited to 4K, so it could be a different story in 1440p. Also, with NVIDIA RTX IO being NVIDIA's implementation of DirectStorage for its GPUs, we're unsure if there were any specific driver accommodations for this feature for Forspoken -an AMD-sponsored title.

It's no secret that high-end CPUs and GPUs perform better in colder temperatures, especially when overclocking enters the picture. It's the reason why LN2 or liquid nitrogen is used to cool hardware pushing insane speeds - as opposed to, say, lava.

Thanks to a Chinese content creator by the name of "苏打baka," we've now got confirmation that a powerful gaming PC rocking an Intel Core i9-13900K CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 will have no problem functioning during the next Ice Age.

Some regions of China are experiencing some of the coldest temperatures they've seen for decades right now, so she decided to take her gaming rig to see how it holds up in a sub-zero -53C climate. And apparently, no hardware was damaged in the creation of the video.

AMD has released Adrenalin 23.1.2 drivers for its Radeon GPUs, except that the update is exclusive to the Radeon RX 7900 Series of graphics cards that launched late last year. Alongside support for the new game Forspoken it expands Vulkan API support, though what's missing is support for older AMD GPUs - specifically the Radeon RX 6000 Series. And with Forspoken being an AMD-sponsored title on PC, having no day-one support for the RX 6000 Series is baffling.

This means no optimized support for those playing Forspoken on a Radeon RX 6950 XT, and it's been 48 days since AMD released a driver covering its full line-up of GPU offerings. That driver update arrived on December 8, 2022, so this is the third Radeon RX 7000 Series exclusive driver from AMD in a row. Perhaps AMD is currently focused on optimizing the new RDNA 3 architecture and fixing bugs related to power-draw and performance, outlined by the "Known Issues" section of the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition update.

And even though the new drivers are limited to the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX GPUs, the download package is still a sizable 590 MB.

With crypto mining using off-the-shelf gaming GPUs now a thing of the past (or maybe it's just hibernating until the next boom), miners are now looking to offload graphics cards onto the used market. And really, if you're looking at buying a used GPU in 2023 - especially something from the Ampere or RDNA 2 generation - there's a good chance it might have been used to mine a cryptocurrency like Ethereum.

And with that stigma based on crypto mining pushing GPU memory and VRAM, it's not surprising that some mining cards are being sold as brand-new. A new investigation from YouTuber Iskandar Souza and computer technician Paulo Gomes looking at the Chinese market has discovered some new tricks people employ to make their GPUs appear brand-new. And it involves painting memory chips to make them look new because the easiest way to spot a used GPU comes from a yellow tint visible on the GPU and memory.

The video showcases the various degradation stages, which are made more prominent on mining cards based on the high temps and memory clock speeds. Resoldering valuable components onto new boards are common, too, even to salvage high-end materials to be re-used. Using paint to make a GPU look fresh is a new one - and you can see the paint being scraped off in the video to reveal the actual component color.

The latest GeForce Game Ready Driver has been released, GeForce Game Ready 528.24 WHQL, bringing DLSS 3 to HITMAN World of Assassination and Marvel's Midnight Suns. It also brings optimizations and day-one support for Dead Space, Deliver Us Mars, and Forspoken. All three include DLSS 2 support.

DLSS 3 includes NVIDIA's new Frame Generation technology alongside DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 2) and NVIDIA Reflex, with Frame Generation being exclusive to the new GeForce RTX 40 series of GPUs. Using the beefed-up AI hardware inside the new Ada cards, it leverages AI to generate entire frames to bring a massive boost to performance - especially in cases where there are CPU limitations or bottlenecks. In the case of Marvel's Midnight Suns, it will bring more frames to those with that game's ray-traced reflections and ray-traced ambient occlusion enabled.

DLSS 2's addition to Dead Space is great to see and is a remake of one the greatest horror games of all time it's Frostbite-engine-enhanced visuals make it one of the biggest releases this month.

Google trends can often indicate popularity, especially regarding product interest. In a new study by Raul Bilc over at Razzem, compiling 62 graphics cards from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, we get a breakdown of Google searches for currently available GPU models. The results are surprising, and not that most searches were for NVIDIA products but that 78% of total searches were for current NVIDIA GPUs.

AMD followed this with 22% of overall searches, and Intel trailed with only 1%.

The winner was the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, which racked up almost 9% of the total. This is in line with the mainstream Ampere card's popularity on Steam, as the most recent hardware survey results list it as the most popular GPU amongst PC gamers. This was followed by the GeForce RTX 3050, NVIDIA's most affordable Ampere generation GPU.

Many people were expecting AMD's flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX to compete or trade blows with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 when it came to in-game performance that didn't include ray-tracing. As per AMD's pre-release unveiling and launch day reviews, its performance was closer to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 than the RTX 4090.

Not only that, but its power draw and efficiency were a step behind the competition and not in line with claims of a 50% increase in performance-per-watt compared to RDNA 2 and its flagship GPU the Radeon RX 6900 XT.

And with that, many began speculating that somewhere along the way, something went wrong. AMD's high-end RDNA 3-based GPUs feature groundbreaking multi-chip designs, which is the next significant leap forward. So teething problems aren't unusual. This is not to say that Radeon RX 7900 XTX performance isn't impressive; per our review of the reference model, it's a powerful triple-digit frame-rate 4K card.

The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada workstation GPU has been listed with a price point of USD 6800, representing a 46% increase over the previous Ampere-based NVIDIA RTX A6000. Dropping the 'A' in naming the new graphics card it's aimed at the workstation market and not enthusiast gamers.

Though one assumes you'll be able to use it for gaming even though it uses NVIDIA's Pro driver suite.

The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada specs are higher than the flagship consumer-focused GeForce RTX 4090, with its 18,176 CUDA cores presenting an 11% increase over the RTX 4090's 16,384 CUDA Core count. It also features more memory in the form of 48GB GDDR6 over a 384-bit interface - though it's clocked slower than the RTX 4090's 24GB of GDDR6X memory. The difference in specs points to some headroom for an eventual GeForce RTX 4090 Ti.

Recently we reported that a German retailer received a batch of older Radeon RX 6000s GPUs (RX 6800 and RX 6900) that had failed with cracked GPUs that were beyond repair. It was a concerning sample size at the time, with 48 GPUs out of 61 showcasing the same problem.

All cards were received over three weeks, and using the latest AMD graphics drivers from December 2022 was seen as a potential issue or starting point for the investigation. This was born from the fact that all users were using the cards differently, not simply pushing them to their limit when gaming.

It turns out it wasn't a driver issue after all, with KrisFix finding out that many of the cards were sold by a single seller where it's presumed they were being used for crypto mining. Getting a second-hand GPU that was previously used for mining is not uncommon, and when it comes to the health of a GPU in the long term, it's generally understood that mining wouldn't lead to the sort of failure rate seen here. That is, GPUs that are destroyed and cracked.

Recently it was reported that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti would launch with a TGP power rating of only 160W - which would be 20% less than its Ampere counterpart. We also got a potential glimpse at the more mainstream Ada card's specs - the AD106-350-A1 chip, 4352 CUDA Cores, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

Even though being a 160W card would make it super efficient compared to the rest of the Ada line-up. It will still use the new PCIe Gen5 12VHPWR connector, which would point to NVIDIA, making this the norm.

The most significant point of contention with the specs is the news that the memory bus would only be 128-bit, with an effective bandwidth of 18 Gbps/288.0 GB/s. This brings into question the card's capabilities, alongside 8GB of memory, when playing games in 1440p and 4K. That said, the 32MB of reported cache represents a significant increase over the RTX 3060 Ti.

NVIDIA provided an engineering sample of the new GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU to Jarrod'sTech to compare it to the last gen laptop flagship, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU. Although NVIDIA hasn't sponsored the video, it did provide both laptops, and the initial testing results are mainly limited to DLSS 3 performance in games. However, some impressive productivity results were also shown.

The RTX 4090 laptop featured in the video is the impressive Razer Blade 16 for 2023, which includes an Intel Core i9 13950HX CPU and 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory.

With DLSS 3 enabled, running five titles in 1440p - Portal with RTX, Microsoft Flight Simulator, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and Cyberpunk 2077 - the performance increase compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU is more than double. Going up to 2.6X in Portal and Flight Sim.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU is a beast of a GPU, the most powerful currently available. But all that performance comes in a sizable physical package, with both Founders Edition and AIB models having chunky 3.5 to 4-slot thicknesses. This can limit the number of cases and builds the card can comfortably slot into, not to mention requiring brackets and additional support depending on the orientation.

The existence of GeForce RTX 4090 cards using old-school blower fan designs for cooling is interesting for several reasons. It's a style of cooling that is no longer used because of the noise it can generate, not to mention that it is less efficient and capable of cooling a card when temperatures go high.

The silver lining is, of course, that the blower design means an overall smaller card, and that's one of the key reasons Redditor BottleneckEvader bought this custom USD 2675 variant of NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card. It fits inside their Fractal Torrent Nano case because it's a 2-slot RTX 4090.

Depending on the workload, it looks like AMD's flagship RDNA 3 GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, can easily push beyond 3.0 GHz with clocks going as high as 3.5 GHz in Blender. These figures come from German outlet ComputerBase, using the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ model instead of AMD's reference design.

The report notes that the card wasn't entirely stable with these settings, but still, it's an impressive showing for AMD's flagship RDNA 3 card mainly because the official specs list a 2.5GHz boost clock frequency - a full 1 GHz lower than what was achieved here.

It's also worth noting that these results were achieved at 374W of power, which equates to a 13% boost in frequency at around 20% more power usage than the reference model. Sapphire's custom 7900 XTX features improved cooling compared to AMD's design and is considered one of the best partner cards.

One of the most significant controversies surrounding the launch of the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 was the switch to a new 12VHPWR connector and how in some cases, the cables were melting and burning out.

This sparked a series of investigations from NVIDIA, board partners, and even tech enthusiasts and the media. Ultimately, it was deemed that the new 12VHPWR cable standard can be fragile at the connection point on the GPU side if there are any bends and the cable itself isn't pushed in or firmly secured.

All cards in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series lineup come with a 12VHPWR connector, so the potential for them to burn up opened the door for alternative solutions. One came from CableMod, a company specializing in high-quality, durable cables. Its take on the 12VHPWR connector was one of the first to hit the scene, designed to resolve the clearance and bending issues with NVIDIA's cable. And as soon as the product went on sale, it immediately sold out.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti will reportedly launch with a TGP of only 160W, which would be 20% less than the Amper generation's GeForce RTX 306 Ti. Power efficiency has been one of the most impressive things of the new Ada Lovelace generation, so it's cool to see the power draw in the mid-range coming down.

The still-to-be-revealed GeForce RTX 4070 (the non-Ti model) will also feature a lower power rating than its Amper counterpart, with a TGP of only 200W. This news arrived courtesy of an established GPU leaker of pre-release information - @kopite7kimi.

We also got word that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti will use the AD106-350-A1 chip, 4352 CUDA Cores, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory. It remains to be seen how well the RTX 4060 Ti performs against the RTX 3060 Ti. Still, as that GPU ended up being one of the most popular of the Ampere generation due to its impressive performance and reasonable price point, it wouldn't be unusual to expect a decent gen-on-gen performance uplift. Plus, all the benefits of the 40 Series, like DLSS 3.

It's only a matter of time before NVIDIA lifts the lid on the next Ada Lovelace desktop GPU, the GeForce RTX 4070, which is rumored to launch later this quarter. But this hasn't stopped the RTX 4070 logo from appearing on marketing materials from GALAX for some cool-looking EX Gamer White and SG White edition graphics cards.

Weirdly the official marketing materials showcase both logos on the same box, as captured by Videocardz.com, where we can see RTX 4070 Ti on the side of the box and RTX 4070 on the front.

Historically Ti and non-Ti models share similar specs and cooling configurations, so this could be a case of someone over at GALAX putting the wrong logo on the box. Mistakes from GALAX like this aren't uncommon either, as the company made the mistake of creating a banner for an RTX 4090 Ti HOF GPU that doesn't exist. Yet.

MSI is releasing some interesting new models for the GeForce RTX 4090 - the GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM X CLASSIC 24G and the GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM CLASSIC 24G. So then, what makes these cards different from the existing GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM models? Well, the 'Classic' here looks to be about using a previous-gen SUPRIM (GeForce RTX 3090 Ti) shroud and cooling.

This isn't bad, as you've got an impressive TRI FROZR 2S Thermal Design with TORX Fan 4.0, a copper baseplate, and decent airflow. Plus, dual BIOS support pushes NVIDIA's flagship Ada card to its limits - thanks to the 480W gaming mode in the SUPRIM X version. The non-X SUPRIM CLASSIC features a lower boost clock of 2535 MHz compared to 2640 MHz of the X.

We reviewed the current SUPRIM X RTX 4090 back when the GPU launched last year, alongside the cooling and build of the GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM X CLASSIC 24G in GeForce RTX 3090 Ti form.