Graphics Cards - Page 163

ASUS has just kinda confirmed the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, which will reportedly pack a larger 20GB of VRAM over the RTX 3080 and its 10GB -- and 4GB less than the 24GB on the RTX 3090.

The new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of VRAM was spotted on the ASUS website and its support and services page, which lists the ROG STRIX variants of not only the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of VRAM -- but the RTX 3060 with 12GB of VRAM.

ASUS will have overclocked and non-overclocked models of both the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3060, with their new VRAM amounts to better compete against AMD using 16GB of VRAM across all three of their Big Navi graphics cards in the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT.

MSI has detailed its new Radeon RX 6800 XT GAMING X TRIO graphics card during its recent MSI Insider livestream, check the beast out:

We have the huge GAMING X TRIO look and style that MSI uses the same look and style -- for the most part, to the GeForce RTX 30 series GAMING X TRIO graphics cards. THatj's not a bad thing because they look great, but now theyu'll have some beefy custom Big Navi GPU underneath.

We have a large triple-fan cooler and 2.7-slot design, with cards expected to be with reviewers in very early 2021 and on shelves hopefully not too long after -- maybe, hopefully.

NVIDIA has reportedly signed a new deal with Samsung for the production of more Ampere GPUs on the 8nm process technology.

The Korea Economic Daily reports that "Samsung, the world's second-largest foundry player, has clinched a deal to make NVIDIA's next-generation graphic processing unit (GPU), the Ampere GeForce RTX30 series, using its 8-nanometer process technology".

"Analysts said the contract is significant in that Samsung won the deal amid market talk that NVIDIA's new GPU has been in tight supply due to unsatisfactory 8 nm process yield rates at its foundry partner Samsung, raising speculation that the US company may award the contract to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the industry leader".

NVIDIA will be showing something off on January 12, 2021 with the company announcing its new 'GeForce RTX: GAME ON' event.

NVIDIA's upcoming 'GeForce RTX: GAME ON' will be hosted by Senior Vice President of NVIDIA's PC business, Jeff Fisher. Fisher will "unveil the latest innovations in gaming and graphics". The GeForce RTX: GAME ON event will begin on January 12, 2021 at 9AM PST.

What to expect? Well, there's the rumors of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti coming in February-March 2021, and then the GeForce RTX 3060 in January 2021.

NVIDIA's next-gen GPU architecture was meant to be the new Hopper GPU which was expected to be a monster multi-chip module (MCM) GPU. Think of how AMD's new Zen CPUs are built from smaller chiplets, an MCM-based GPU would be very similar -- lots of small GPUs working together as one big beast.

But new rumors suggest NVIDIA has delayed its new Hopper GPU architecture, which was expected to pop its head up in 2021 sometime on the new 5nm node. But it seems that the new GPU architecture coming from NVIDIA will be code named Lovelace, after British mathematician Ada Lovelace.

We don't know which company NVIDIA will make its new 5nm GPUs on, but it have a choice between Samsung and TSMC when the time comes to start making 5nm GPUs. We also don't know if the Lovelace GPU architecture will find its way into gaming cards -- Hopper and Lovelace could be HPC GPUs for all we know.

NVIDIA only just released its new GeForce 460.89 Game Ready driver, which introduced support for the new Vulkan 1.2 Ray Tracing feature in certain games.

But, NVIDIA were quickly bombarded by users complaining about some key issues they addressed in this now new GeForce Hotfix Driver 460.97 release. NVIDIA explained: "The GeForce Hotfix driver is our way to trying to get some of these fixes out to you more quickly. These drivers are basically the same as the previous released version, with a small number of additional targeted fixes".

"The fixes that make it in are based in part on your feedback in the Driver Feedback threads and partly on how realistic it is for us to quickly address them. These fixes (and many more) will be incorporated into the next official driver release, at which time the Hotfix driver will be taken down".

COLORFUL has announced its new flagship iGame GeForce RTX 3090 Neptune OC graphics card, which is one of the most expensive cards in this new generation of cards with the price tipping over $2000.

The new COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3090 Neptune OC is a slimmer dual-slot design, with an AIO cooling solution and powerful 26-phase power design. We should expect this card to be one of the best overclockers, and best performers -- right up there with the high-end ASUS, EVGA, and MSI graphics cards.

COLORFUL's use of a powerful 26-phase power delivery system is used as a 14+8+4, meanwhile the out-of-the-box GPU clocks are at 1395/1755MHz for base and boost, respectively. COLORFUL provides you with that awesome Turbo Button on the back of the graphics card.

Henry Cavill is no stranger to PC gaming, with the Man of Steel and Witcher actor an avid PC gamer and was even in a World of Warcraft raid when his agent called to tell him he secured the role of Superman in Man of Steel.

Earlier this year in July 2020, Cavill was upgrading his personal gaming PC. But now Cavill is upgrading his PC with NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, with a post on his personal Instagram.

NVIDIA has pushed out its new GeForce Game Ready 460.89 WHQL drivers -- which weigh in at over 600MB, by the way -- with support for the new Quake II RTX update that supports the new Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions.

The Khronos Group is behind the Vulkan API, releasing its new Vulkan SDK that includes support for Vulkan Ray Tracing. The new Quake II RTX v1.4.0 update enables support for the just-released Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions in the game, which means any GPU that supports Vulkan Ray Tracing can play Quake II RTX with its path-traced graphics.

Andrew Burnes from NVIDIA explains: "Quake II RTX was initially released in June 2019, reimagining the classic game's graphics with amazing ray-traced lighting, shadows, and reflections. With the 2019 release coming well ahead of cross-vendor Vulkan APIs for ray tracing, Quake II RTX implemented ray tracing using NVIDIA's 'VKRay' extensions".

Corsair has just announced its new Hydro X water blocks that were made for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090, and GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards -- not just the Founders Edition cards either, but a range of custom AIB models.

The new Corsair Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Blocks has over 50 high-density cooling fulls, a full-length aluminum backplate, and 16 individually addressable RGB LEDs. This brings some of the best cooling, style, and customization to a water-cooled GeForce RTX 3090 or GeForce RTX 3080 yet.

Corsair's cooler doesn't just keep the Ampere GPU cool, but the GDDR6 memory and VRMs will also stay much cooler with the Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Block. The Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Blocks comes pre-applied with thermal material and thermal pads, making installation into your system easier.

NVIDIA has just announced its new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card, offering the full Ampere GA102 GPU with all of the CUDA cores enabled.

The new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card packs a huge 10752 CUDA cores, compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 with 10496 CUDA cores and the Quadro RTX 8000 with 4608 CUDA cores. But the single-precision compute performance on the new RTX A6000 is 3.1 TLFOPs higher than the RTX 3090, with the RTX A6000 pushing 38.7 TFLOPs.

NVIDIA has used 48GB of GDDR6 memory on the new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card, which at 16Gbps, provides 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth. This is higher than the 672GB/sec on the Quadro RTX 8000 workstation graphics card, but less than the gaming-focused GeForce RTX 3090 with its 24GB of GDDR6X at 19.5Gbps and 936GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

NVIDIA ends 2020 with the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 priced at $1499 -- a price that I'm sure won't change before the end of the year, but what about the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card?

The latest rumblings on NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is that it will be launching after Chines New Year -- which takes place between February 11-17, 2021. The news is coming from Igor's Lab, with his new story being confirmed by multiple sources right through to suppliers.

Igor says that all of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti boards "already exist" and that "switching to the GeForce RTX 3090 boards that can be equipped with memory on both sides is a mere formality for the board partners. After all, even the matching coolers and backplates are only for further use. So NVIDIA has all the time in the world to sort out its own current delivery problems first. That, in turn, remains to be hoped for".

We know that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 series launch was a disaster -- where AMD finally has a kick ass flagship Radeon graphics card... yet it can't get any on retail shelves or into gamers' hands. Well, now GIGABYTE has priced its custom Big Navi cards and they aren't cheap.

AMD might start pricing of its Radeon RX 6800 XT at $649, but GIGABYTE is leading the charge here with $899 pricing on its higher-end flagship Radeon RX 6800 XT AORUS MASTER graphics card. This is $250 over the MSRP of the Radeon RX 6800 XT reference model.

It does make me question if AMD ever intended to sell much of its Radeon RX 6800 series at its advertised MSRP, especially if AIB partners like GIGABYTE are charging a huge premium -- it will be interesting to see how the price of Big Navi and Ampere cards flows in 2021.

PowerColor has just unleashed what could be the Big Daddy of all Big Navi graphics cards, with the introduction of the new Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Limited Edition graphics card. Check it out:

The new PowerColor Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Limited Edition is a gigantic, devil-ish looking triple-slot, triple-fan behemoth. It has triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors which PowerColor says are good to draw a huge 480W from the card -- a 900W PSU is recommended.

PowerColor's new Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Limited Edition includes different packaging than the non-Limited Edition, with some awesome custom PowerColor keycaps included. As for GPU clocks we're looking at 2105/2340MHz game and boost GPU clock while PowerCOLOR has a SILENT setting at 2015/2250MHz (AMD RX 6900 XT reference) clocks.

XFX has just unveiled its new Radeon RX 6900 XT Speedster MERC 319 graphics card, a new custom take on the Biggest Navi in the RX 6900 XT.

It looks virtually identical to the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster MERC 319 that I just reviewed, but it packs a lower-clocked GPU at 2340MHz versus 2360MHz on the RX 6800 XT Speedster MERC 319. We should expect some great overclocking out of this card, at least I hope -- helping out with the full Navi 21 XTX GPU and its 5120 Stream Processors.

XFX is giving gamers a dual BIOS switch on the card, and something I love to see -- only dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors required, versus the now more traditional (for custom RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT) cards with 3 x 8-pin PCIe connectors.

GIGABYTE has unveiled its new Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING OC graphics card, a new custom RX 6900 XT that features a triple-fan cooler and 3-slot design. Check it out:

We don't know the clock speeds of GIGABYTE's new custom Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING OC graphics card, but we do know that it should be a little better than the reference AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT -- which battles the GeForce RTX 3090 and costs $500 less.

GIGABYTE goes a little different here with its display connectivity on the Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING OC graphics card, offering up 2 x DP 1.4 and 2 x HDMI 2.1 ports.

ASUS has just unveiled its new Radeon RX 6900 XT ROG STRIX LC graphics card, a custom liquid-cooled Big Navi beast that will surely be one of the best RDNA 2-powered cards money can buy (if you can buy it) when it drops. Check it out:

The new Radeon RX 6900 XT ROG STRIX LC joins the just-released Radeon RX 6800 XT ROG STRIX LC graphics card, except this has the Radeon RX 6900 XT underneath. We still have the 16GB of GDDR6 memory, etc -- with my review on the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT reference card for your viewing pleasure here.

ASUS is requiring 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, normal display connectivity (so 2 x DP 1.4 + 1 x HDMI 2.1 + USB Type-C). But what ASUS is doing huge here is the massive AIO cooler with a 240mm external radiator, with 60cm tubing -- it requires two additional cables (power + RGB) so there are a lot of cables into your PC with this card.

Intel Senior Vice President, Chief Architect, General Manager, Intel Architecture, Graphics, and Software -- what a title, right?! -- Raja Koduri is geeking out about GPUs on Twitter and I love it.

Koduri tweets that it's "exciting to see these next to each other" which he is referring to the picture that has some delicious GPUs on show -- Intel Xe-HP, Xe-HPG, and Xe-HPC. We can see in the photo that the card on the right packs a single 8-pin PCIe power connector and a passive single-slot design with a short PCB.

But in a follow-up tweet, Koduri began geeking out about all the GPU releases this year, where he said: "A100, Xe LP, RTX 3X, Navi2, MI100, M1 - moved the GPU bar significantly forward, all the way from devices through edge to the data center. Can't wait to see what developers will do with all of this performance + Xe HP/HPG/HPC in 2021 and beyond - GPU Golden Age...".

ASRock has just unveiled its new custom Radeon RX 6900 XT Phantom Gaming D 16G OC graphics card, the highest Big Navi card that is on offer.

We don't know much about it, but it is a larger 2.5-slot card with a triple-fan cooler -- and should be cooler than the reference Radeon RX 6900 XT that reviews will go live in in the next hour. We should see clock speeds 200-300MHz higher than the reference card, something you'll be able to see on my review here on TweakTown today.

ASRock will require 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which is up from the 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors on the reference Radeon RX 6900 XT. We have the Phantom Gaming 3X Cooling System taking care of things, with ARGB lighting providing some style. There's no details on GPU clocks just yet.

We first thought it wasn't going to happen -- then it was rumored, then it was kinda like 'yes they're coming' -- and now we're at the stage of 'yes, they're really coming'.

ASUS is the first to unveil a custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, with its new TUF GAMING Radeon RX 6900 XT rolling out with a huge 2.9-slot triple-fan design. I'm a huge fan of the new TUF GAMING cards with an upcoming review on the RTX 3090 version of it and it being one of my favorite cards of the year.

We should expect some factory overclocking out of the ASUS TUF GAMING RX 6900 XT, but we won't know how much until later. It looks identical to the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3090, and that isn't a bad thing -- I've got one of my shots of that for you to check out below: