Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 135

We might not ever see the next-gen graphics card released this year that actually uses PCIe 5.0 power connectors, but the PSU market is gearing up for the big launch of next-gen PCIe 5.0-ready GPUs.

Well, now the official specifications of the new PCI-Express 5.0 cable for next-gen GPUs has been leaked, with data approved by Intel who are part of defining the ATX specs. We now know there should be up to four different power settings, with the PCIe 5.0 power cable supporting 150W, 300W, 450W, and a huge 600W over a single 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power cable.

It looks like the binary configuration of the Sense0 and Sense1 sideband signals, but when both of the signals are grounded, the GPU will have up to 375W of power pumped into it, with a maximum of up to an insane 600W of sustained power.

The ongoing NVIDIA issues are surely causing massive meetings inside of Team Green, with the cyber attack now seeing the DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) source code being leaked... and that's not the worst of it.

NVIDIA has kept its magic DLSS technology close to its chest, and while this is good for the company, its competitors -- AMD and Intel -- have their similar upscaling tech being open source. NVIDIA hasn't pushed into the world of open-source with DLSS, but hackers might actually force their hands.

DLSS beats the pants off of FSR (AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution) and even more so with DLSS 2.2 and DLSS 2.3 if the games support it, because when they do... NVIDIA reigns supreme by a (very) long shot. But now that the DLSS source code is out in the wild, it could end in a ball of blames for NVIDIA as their secret sauce is out in the nude.

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture could have a big surprise up its sleeve, with new information that continues to flow from the leaked cache of content that hackers gained access to when they cyberattacked NVIDIA.

Inside of some of that information are some files that refer to the "Ada" GPUs with 16MB of cache per 64-bit memory bus, up from the 512KB per 32-bit memory on Ampere GPUs. This is a huge change, so the fact that the flagship AD102 GPU has 96MB of cache means it'll have a whopping 90MB more L2 cache than the GA102 Ampere GPU.

AMD has up to 128MB of Infinity Cache on its RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, with the likes of the Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT both rocking 128MB Infinity Cache. NVIDIA's next-gen AD102 GPU should power the GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080 Ti, and GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards if the company keeps its naming system the same.

NVIDIA's systems have reportedly been compromised, with hackers now threatening to leak out confidential NVIDIA data, information, and even crypto gimping unlocks.

Things continue to go from bad to worse, where now the hackers are threatening to leak out information -- and unlocks to the LHR-based GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs. The LHR V2 bypass for NVIDIA's gimped GA102 + GA104 GPU, and now those unlocks are being sold.

This means that the hacking collective has found a solution to the algorithm that gimps crypto mining on the RTX 30 series GPUs that are LHR-gimped, should be un-gimped soon enough. NVIDIA has admitted it has been attacked now, but I guess we'll see how much deeper this goes in the coming hours, days, and weeks.

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.