Graphics Cards - Page 131

UL has just announced its next-gen 3DMark Speed Way benchmark, which will stress test GPUs with ray tracing, and other DirectX 12 Ultimate features.

The new 3DMark Speed Way benchmark sees UL teaming with Lenovo for branding, stressing out your GPU with ray tracing, and real-time global illumination to render realistic lighting and reflections. Microsoft's new DirectX 12 Ultimate features will be stressed, including mesh shaders, and variable rate shading (VRS) to optimize performance and visual quality.

Lenovo's partnership with UL sees the company's Legion gaming brand having product placements in the Speed Way benchmark, including Legion gaming products (gaming PC + monitors + laptop) as well as merchandise. As for the benchmark, 3DMark Speed Way will be launching on Steam later this year -- but we don't know if it'll be an add-on available for free -- or a separate DLC.

NVIDIA should hopefully be unveiling its next-gen Hopper GPU architecture at its upcoming GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in March 2022 -- but now we're hearing about its successor -- the next-next-gen Blackwell GPU architecture.

Where is this news coming from? Well, that would be from NVIDIA being recently hacked, where one of the files refers to "ARCH_BLACKWELL" which would see NVIDIA's next-gen GPU architecture named after David Harold Blackwell, an American statistician and mathematician specializing in statistics, game theory and information theory.

The first mentions of Blackwell turned up in July 2021, with leaker "Kopite7kimi" tweeting out the Blackwell GPU architecture tease. NVIDIA has only mentioned "Ampere Next" and "Ampere Next Next" but we should see those GPUs as Hopper and Ada Lovelace, but now we have Blackwell thrown into the next-gen GPU mix.

NVIDIA hasn't confirmed whether it was hacked or not, but it looks like there's a bit of a conspiracy theory building around what happened to Team Green. Supposedly, a South American hacking group called "LAPU$" are responsible for the cyberattack on NVIDIA.

LAPU$ reportedly attacked NVIDIA's internal servers through a ransomware attack, taking over 1TB of NVIDIA's precious data. NVIDIA hasn't confirmed this, obviously... but another tentacle of this conspiracy is that NVIDIA reportedly hacked the hackers, in an attempt to encrypt their 1TB of data (that wasn't stolen, right?).

NVIDIA aren't hackers and I'm sure they might have a team of really smart people, but they wouldn't be anon-level digital soldiers like LAPU$ or Anonymous. The group made a copy of the 1TB of NVIDIA data in a virtual machine environment meaning that NVIDIA's attempt to out hack the hack will fail.

The Pentagon has some harsh words for Generation Z -- those aged between 18 and 25 years old -- with the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service's explaining in a press release that this generation is literally not built as strong as the last.

Major Thibodeau, a clinical coordinator and chief of the medical readiness service line at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri actually said: "The "Nintendo Generation" soldier skeleton is not toughened by activity prior to arrival, so some of them break more easily".

The weaker skeleton of Gen Z is because of the sedentary, you know... too much time sitting around like I am right now writing, or when you're playing games... and this isn't something that previous generations did. At least not as much, as there wasn't the allure of gaming surrounding them. This has led to more skeleton-related injuries as the "Nintendo Generation" bodies aren't used to the stress that soldiers are put through... even in basic training.

NVIDIA has just silently launched its new GA103-200 GPU-based GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, at least with ZOTAC China launching its new custom RTX 3060 Ti... meanwhile, the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is nowhere to be seen. Righty-o.

ZOTAC's new custom GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards come in three new flavors: Apocalypse, X-GAMING, and PGF which all pack the fresh new GA103-200 GPU. So what's the difference here? Well, ZOTAC has added an "X" to the end of the product name of these GPUs.

So for example the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti non-LHR (GA104-200) is joined by the RTX 3060 Ti LHR (GA104-202) which is why ZOTAC is bringing the "X" in. So we would then have:

NVIDIA has reportedly been slammed by a cyber attack, seeing parts of their systems taken offline including their mailing system. A spokesman for NVIDIA said: "We are investigating an incident. We don't have any additional information to share at this time".

The Telegraph reports that NVIDIA's internal systems were possibly compromised, forcing the company to take them offline -- mailing systems, developer tools could've been compromised -- so they were the first to be taken offline.

As for the cyber attack, of course, they're being connected to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with many countries around the world preparing for more cyber attacks. As for the cyberattacks, they're nothing new as they've always happened, but now it's hit a company closer to home in the gaming world. I don't like the speculation and rumor that Russia is behind it, it's like what's happening overseas gives everyone a boogeyman to blame (like usual) as we don't know who is responsible for the cyberattack on NVIDIA.

In a news post yesterday I reported about the "NVIDIA RTX LHR v2 Unlocker" tool that would reportedly un-gimp an LHR-based GeForce RTX 30 series GPU... but man, we could not have been more wrong.

The tool is actually made by a hacker and is actually filled with malware, and most likely connects to a remote server somewhere and the world and siphons data from your PC. I reported on it but didn't include a link to it, just the articles that had reported on it, so I won't include a link here.

In the original article, I stated: "The way this new tool works is that the software implements a modification extracted from BIOSes that are detected by mining operating systems like HiveOS. The modification is then added into the BIOS of cards that have limited hash rate performance, while the new Unlocker software modifies, flashes, and gives you a backup of your BIOS. It's safe, and reversible, says Sergey".

If you thought the 300W+ that your GPU uses now, or even the 450W+ of past dual-GPUs and even NVIDIA's maybe-it-might-release-one-day GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and its 450W power... but man, Ada Lovelace is power-hungry in the latest rumors.

NVIDIA's new Ada Lovelace GPU will debut later this year with the GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, with new rumors from industry leaker "Greymon55" that there are 3 x TDP numbers of AD102: 450W, 650W, and a monster 850W.

We should expect the 450W TDP with the GeForce RTX 4080, the 650W TDP for the GeForce RTX 4080 Ti, and the bonkers 850W TDP for the GeForce RTX 4090. THis is all rumor mill right now, so I've included some salt in the Amazon affiliate link just in case. You can never be sure that you don't have enough salt, especially with these rumors. But then again, Ampere is a power-hungry GPU monster... and it seems NVIDIA is really having to dial things to 11 for Ada Lovelace and the GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture is in the headlines again, with the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 looking like it could chew through up to 850W of power.

In a new series of tweets, industry leaker "Greymon55" tweeted that NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU would "be available in September". Greymon55 replied to his own tweet, adding: "I am not clear at the moment whether one model has three TGP ranges or whether it has three models but the TGP number of the AD102 is 450W-650W-850W, of course this is not the final specification and there may be some deviation".

NVIDIA's upcoming-but-who-the-hell-knows-when-it-will-launch GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is meant to ramp up power consumption considerably, with up to 450W at its disposal and up to 600W through the new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector. But the next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture and GeForce RTX 40 series looks to be a power-hungry, and with an expected doubling in performance over the RTX 3090, the power consumption numbers on the RTX 4090 might not matter at the end of the day.

I don't know why this is 'new' news but I'm still reporting on it anyway: Intel's new Arc Alchemist GPU family will have multiple performance tiers (that I reported on back in November 2021) in the form of the A300, A500, and A700 series GPUs.

The news is coming from SiSoftware which has a roundup of OpenCL benchmarks where we get a look at the higher-end A500 and A700 series Arc GPUs which should see the flagship Intel Arc A700 featuring the DG2-512 GPU with the full 512 Execution Units.

Intel Arc A500 should see the DG2-384 GPU, while the Arc A300 will find its way into our motherboards with the DG2-128 GPU. We should see 16GB of GDDR6 memory on the Arc A700, 12GB of GDDR6 memory on the Arc A500, and 6GB of GDDR6 memory on the Arc A300. Intel has already confirmed that its upcoming first-gen Arc Alchemist GPUs will be made on TSMC N6 process technology.

NVIDIA refreshed its Ampere cards last year with the LHR variant, otherwise known as Lite Hash Rate, gimped for crypto mining... but not anymore, well, it seems so at least.

Now we have Sergey releasing his new "NVIDIA RTX LHR v2 Unlocker" tool that will unlock the crypto mining performance on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series and Workstation RTX Ampere GPUs. There have been previous 'solutions' to un-gimping LHR cards, but this reportedly unlocks the "full mining performance" according to MyDrivers.

The way this new tool works is that the software implements a modification extracted from BIOSes that are detected by mining operating systems like HiveOS. The modification is then added into the BIOS of cards that have limited hash rate performance, while the new Unlocker software modifies, flashes, and gives you a backup of your BIOS. It's safe, and reversible, says Sergey.

Intel has scooped up yet another member of AMD's core Radeon GPU team, with AMD Senior Fellow and Lead Radeon Discrete GPU Architect of AMD Technologies, Rohit Verma, joining Team Blue.

Verma began his journey at AMD as a Fellow and Lead SoC Architect inside of the Semi-Custom Business Unit, where he called home for close to 5 years. In that role, he matured into a Senior Fellow and Lead Senior SoC Architect for Discrete GPUs at AMD for over 3 years.

But now that Verma is at Intel, he has become the new Lead Product Architect of Discrete GPU SoCs -- something he actually did, with Intel back in 1999-2013 in a 15-year stint. Intel's new CEO Pat Gelsinger has been turning things around for the company in record time, with his vision for 2022 pretty clear: "The brain drain, well that's changed. We now have brains coming back".

Intel might not have even launched its new Arc Alchemist GPU but it is confident in announcing "Project Endgame" which is shaping up to be a GeForce NOW-style cloud computing competitor.

The new Project Endgame was announced during a flurry of announcements and reveals at its recent Investors Meeting -- where we had many more details on the upcoming and future-gen Arc GPUs, 13/14/15th Gen Core CPUs, and so much more -- but Project Endgame is big for Intel, but is it too early?

Intel explains Project Endgame: "Project Endgame will enable users to access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for an always-accessible, low-latency computing experience. Project Endgame will be available later this year".

Intel's flagship Arc Alchemist GPU has been benchmarked once again, with its GPU boost clocks hitting 2.4GHz in a new Geekbench OpenCL test.

The new Intel Arc Alchemist desktop GPU was tested with a 2.4GHz boost clock, alongside an Intel Core i9-9600K processor (with 6 cores, and 6 threads). As for the GPU, it's rocking the DG2-512 GPU so we're looking at 512 Compute Units -- the flagship Arc Alchemist GPU.

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the Intel Arc Alchemist with 512 EUs and 2.4GHz GPU boost clock, hits 85448 points which see it competing against NVIDIA's previous-gen Turing-based GeForce RTX 2070/2060 graphics cards.

GIGABYTE has formally announced its next-gen UD1000GM PCIe 5.0 power supply, which will support the next-gen wave of PCIe 5.0 graphics cards. GIGABYTE joins the ranks of ASUS and just recently, Cooler Master, with next-gen PCIe 5.0 ready PSUs.

The new GIGABYTE UD1000GM PCIe 5.0 PSU of course has the nifty, and very powerful, 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector that can drive up to 600W to a next-gen GPU. GIGABYTE admits that "traditional power supplies need a three 8-pin to 16-pin adapters to support the latest PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics cards" but their new UD1000GM PCIE 5.0 power supply "needs only a single 16-pin cable to directly supply power to the PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics cards".

A single 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power cable to your next-gen GPU... delicious. I'm sure those next-gen 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connectors will be exclusive to NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (and their new flock of Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs later this year and into 2023).

Intel has teased its very future-gen Arc Celestial GPU, its 3rd Gen Arc discrete GPU codenamed Celestial will enter the "Ultra Enthusiast" segment in 2024+.

The company revealed the plans of its next-gen Arc Battlemage for 2023-2024, and then its next-next-gen Arc Celestial for 2024+. Intel's first-gen Arc Alchemist GPU will be offered in multiple SKUs that will handle the Entry, Mainstream, Performance, and Enthusiast segments.

Intel's next-gen Arc Battlemage will handle everything and then reach the new Ultra Enthusiast segment, while in 2024 and beyond we'll have Arc Celestial that will burst through that Ultra Enthusiast.

Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist is still a few months away and while it'll use the new DG2 GPU, the DG1 GPU is being put to --- well, I wouldn't say "good use" but more like some use -- by Chinese company GUNNIR.

The new GUNNIR Iris Xe MAX Index V2 is the "flagship" one of the DG1 GPU bunch, which has been joined by the Iris Xe Index V2 and then the DG1 low-profile. The cost isn't too high at all, with the highest-end DG1-based GPU costing around $110 while the low-profile model is $90.

GUNNIR's new Iris Xe MAX Index V2 graphics card includes 96 EUs (768 shading units) and a GPU boost clock of up to 1.65Hz. There's 4GB of LPDDR4X memory clocked at 4.2Gbps on a 128-bit memory bus that is capable of just 68GB/sec. You won't be playing Crysis or Cyberpunk 2077 on this graphics card, that's for sure.

AMD has pushed out its new Radeon Adrenalin 22.2.2 drivers which have some pretty damn good performance increases in a bunch of games, as well as support for Total War: Warhammer III.

The performance improvements come from AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology, where if you've got a newer Ryzen GPU and play Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Battlefield 5, Borderlands 3, F1 2021, Gears 5, Fortnite, and Cyberpunk 2077.

You've got up to 24% more performance in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla @ 1080p Ultra High settings when using an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with the new driver, versus the previous 22.2.1 driver. In something like Borderlands 3 you can enjoy up to 18% more performance with the Ryzen 9 5900HX and SAM enabled in Borderlands 3 @ 1080p Badass settings.

SK hynix has just announced a next-generation memory chip with onboard computing capabilities, with the introduction of GDDR6-AiM (Accelerator In Memory).

The company revealed its first sample of GDDR6-AiM memory clocked at 16Gbps at ISSCC (The International Solid-State Circuits Conference) which is being hosted virtually between February 20-24. GDDR6-AiM does things differently by adding computational functions to the GDDR6 memory chips, where GDDR6-AiM and a CPU or GPU -- instead of regular DRAM -- will speed up computational speed by up to 16x.

SK hynix is aiming its new GDDR6-AiM memory for machine learning, high-performance computing (HPC), big data computation and storage. GDDR6-AiM is at 1.25V, lower than the 1.35V on GDDR6 -- but then PIM reduces data movement to the CPU + GPU -- reducing power consumption by a huge 80%.

NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is nowhere to be seen, now a month since I exclusively revealed to the world that NVIDIA had ordered AIB partners to "halt production" of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.

It's still not here... and no one knows why.

The Verge spoke with NVIDIA UK staffer Jen Andersson, who at least had some words to say... versus the total silence every single other person who works for NVIDIA. Andersson said: "We don't currently have more info to share on the RTX 3090 Ti, but we'll be in touch when we do". I'll tell you: this is more BS, kicking that can (of Whoop Ass) down the road a little.