Graphics Cards - Page 186

AMD has released its new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.1 drivers, which are optimized for -- and including more performance in Gears 5.

Gears 5 will receive up to 8% more performance when in DX12 mode with the new Radeon 19.9.1 drivers, as well as other improvements and support in other areas. One of those is Vulkan, which receives improvements with the new 19.9.1 drivers.

Some other improvmeents include Radeon FreeSync being enabled on 240Hz displays on the Radeon RX 5700 series cards, and higher VRAM clocks at idle or on the desktop on the Radeon VII.

I've been spending my time diving into the performance, visuals and technological side behind Remedy's latest masterpiece; Control, and I have to say -- it's one of, if not the best-looking game of all time thanks to RTX.

Control is powered by Remedy's latest in-house Northlight engine, a finely-tuned sandbox engine used in Quantum Break but with a totally new coat of paint thanks to RTX. Powering the game with a GeForce RTX 20 or RTX SUPER series graphics card unleashes almost an entirely new game (at least visually) but cranking it to 4K and beyond really begins to pull on every last transistor of that Turing GPU.

8K monitors aren't a mainstream thing yet, but they're on the market -- with the Dell UP3218K monitor. Dell's UP3218K is a true 8K monitor offering 7680x4320 natively, 4x the pixels of a 4K monitor at 3840x2160.

AMD launched its Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT nearly two months ago now, and since then we've seen custom Navi cards from MSI (RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC review), SAPPHIRE (RX 5700 XT PULSE OC review), XFX (THICC review coming soon), PowerColor, and now ASRock.

The upcoming Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+ models look absolutely awesome, with a large 2.5-slot design and triple-fan cooler.

I love the style of the backplate, well the whole design really -- it'll look awesome sitting inside of a new Ryzen-powered gaming PC and ASRock's own X570 Taichi motherboard.

I still remember getting my first 3dfx graphics card, the Orchid Righteous 3D -- a 3Dfx (capital D) Voodoo 1 with 4MB of RAM. I later had Voodoo 2 in SLI, and then a Voodoo 3 3000, but the Voodoo 5 was always a dream for me. But recently, TPU forum member 'SWZSSR' acquired a Voodoo 5 6000 Revision 3700A and it looks absolutely glorious.

3dfx announced and teased the Voodoo 5 6000 but it was never released, a halo product that rocked an insane 4 x VSA-100 processors each closed at 166MHz and each packing its own 32MB of 166MHz SDRAM. The Voodoo 5 6000 would've been the world's first graphics card with 128MB of RAM, but just 1000 test cards were made at the time.

In early tests the Voodoo 5 6000 was beating NVIDIA's at-the-time beast of a GeForce 2 Ultra, but it was just too expensive to make and in the end it didn't make it to market and 3dfx went out of business.

AMD has had a phenomenal past couple of years with it culminating better than anyone could've planned it to celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, with the company releasing their new 7nm CPUs and GPUs in the Zen 2 and Navi products.

The hype has become very real with AMD's new Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards, which has propelled the company into the headlines once again. According to Jon Peddie Research's new Q2 2019 GPU market reports, AMD shipped more graphics cards than NVIDIA for the first time in five years.

JPR's numbers includes all types of graphics processors, so we're not looking at just discrete graphics cards as this includes CPUs with integrated graphics. AMD has a boat load of those as well, but the new Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT have been immensely popular, even in a world where its competitor clearly has the superior product in terms of performance, technology, and feature set.

AMD looks to be working on a lower-end version of Navi with a new Navi 14 GPU showing up on Compubench, with 24 CUs that would put it into the Polaris 11 (or Polaris 21).

In total there are three different Navi 14 listings in Compubench, with 3GB, 4GB, and 8GB models. The internal name is Navi 14 but we should expect it as a Radeon RX 5600 series (or even RX 5500 series). Navi 14 has 24 CUs with 1536 stream processors, and what should be GDDR6 memory.

The three Navi 14 GPUs listed on Compubench:

XFX has officially launched the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC II, with the new THICC II variant from XFX is another custom Navi card that out of the few on the market, looks like the best.

XFX is no stranger to custom Radeon graphics cards, but it has been dormant for what feels like forever from its beautifully-designed custom AMD cards. The new THICC II design is a re-work of the great work on the XFX double dissipation custom card, something that used to be a thing back in the Radeon R200 series family.

The company is using a 2.7-slot design with XFX tapping its own Ghost Thermal 2.0 cooler which promises great thermals and noise, with 35% less fan noise, it'll also be quiet. XFX uses 2 x 100mm fans to keep the Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC II nice and cool (and quiet).

Remedy has just released Control in what will now be cemented in as the 'new Crysis' when it comes to melting gaming PCs across the world, with NVIDIA releasing new GeForce Game Ready 436.15 WHQL drivers optimized for the new game.

The new GeForce Game Ready 436.15 WHQL drivers can be found here, or download them through GeForce Experience.

NVIDIA walks through just how much RTX is infused in Control in the above video, when compared against just RTX reflections in Battlefield V, RTX shadows in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and RTX global illumination for Metro Exodus. Control has the entire RTX feature set, including the kitchen sink.

AMD has had a super-successful year this year with the launch of its next-gen Zen 2 architecture and it powering the next wave of CPUs from the company in the form of the Ryzen 3000 series and just-released EPYC 'Rome' server CPUs with up to 64C/128T.

Not only that but the company has pushed out the new Navi-based GPU with the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards, with all of the new Zen 2-based CPUs and Navi-based GPUs made on the 7nm node. One of the things absent from the new RX 5700 series cards is multi-GPU support, something that Vega could do with CrossFire, but Navi can't.

In a recent chat with the press at the Hot Chips press conference, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su replied to a question regarding the future of multi-GPU technology. She said: "To be honest, the software is going faster than the hardware, I would say that CrossFire isn't a significant focus".

MSI recently launched its Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC graphics card (my review here), its first custom Navi card -- but the company isn't finished, it has just teased its new GAMING variant at Gamescom 2019.

The new MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT GAMING series card is a chunkier triple-slot, dual-fan graphics card with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We can expect higher GPU clocks on the MSI RX 5700 XT GAMING than the MSI RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC, but the company hasn't detailed those just yet.

MSI has even got a countdown for the RX 5700 GAMING launch, which is 3 weeks away. Above and below, we have some photos of the card. They're from screengrabs from a YouTube video, so I apologize for the quality.

It almost feels like NVIDIA had a bigger Gamescom this year than it did last year, considering the company launched its new Turing GPU architecture and GeForce RTX series graphics cards at the time.

NVIDIA announced its new Gamescom Game Ready 436.02 Driver, a special edition driver that celebrates the GeForce gaming community with huge software optimizations for Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Strange Brigade and World War Z.

is offering some pretty crazy performance improvements in games like Apex Legends, with up to 23% more performance in Respawn's currently embroiled in drama battle royale hit. Forza Horizon 4 gains as well, with GeForce RTX SUPER graphics card owners getting some nice benefits. I will be doing my own testing across the non-SUPER cards as well.

NVIDIA went on an RTX rampage at Gamescom 2019 with the company unveiling a bunch of new real-time ray tracing infused game trailers like Minecraft with RTX, Watch Dogs: Legion getting RTX -- and the first fully loaded RTX game: Control.

The new trailer above is from Gamescom 2019 which has kicked off in Cologne, Germany and comes in at just under 1 minute. There's not much more to say about Control if you haven't looked into it already, but it's from developer Remedy Entertainment that made one of my favorite games; Max Payne as well as Alan Wake and Quantum Break.

Control runs on the latest version of Remedy's in-house Northlight engine, with the full set of RTX real-time ray tracing features. It looks great in-person, with my hands-on time with it at E3 2019 leaving me wanting more -- I now have it here on my PC but can't talk about it just yet. All I can say is it sure does look great and I can't wait to sink my teeth deeper into Control.

NVIDIA has just released the world's first look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with real-time ray tracing enabled, with a new trailer comparing the two (RTX on and off) against each other. Check it out:

NVIDIA is the Official PC Partner for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with the GeForce RTX maker working closely with Activision and Infinity Ward to inject ray traced shadows and NVIDIA Adaptive Shading into the game. NVIDIA teases that it is working with Activision and IW to take graphics in COD: Modern Warfare "to never before seen levels".

There are also three interactive comparison images that NVIDIA has released, comparing RTX and real-time ray tracing enabled and disabled. You can check those out here:

ASUS has just launched another range of custom Navi graphcis cards in its new TUF Gaming X3 Radeon RX 5700 series, with both custom RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT cards on offer.

The new TUF Gaming series sits under the premium ROG Strix family of custom RX 5700 series cards, still offering a custom deisgn but it is priced cheaper than the premium offering. There's a singel look bet ween the custom TUF Gaming X3 RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT cards, with a triple-fan cooler keeping everything cool.

As for clock speeds, ASUS has the TUF Gaming X3 RX 5700 XT at 1650/1795/1905MHz for base, gaming, and boost clocks respectively. The lower-end sibling in the TUF Gaming X3 RX 5700 is clocked at 1565/1720/1750MHz respectively.

NVIDIA has had a ray tracing graphics card on the market for close to a year now, with NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang having some fighting words for gamers (and its competitor). In NVIDIA's recent earnings call Q&A session, Huang said you'd be crazy to buy a GPU in 2019 without ray tracing support.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: "SUPER is off to a super start for and at this point, it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to buy a new graphics card, and it's going to the last 2, 3, 4 years to not have ray tracing is just crazy".

Huang continued: "Ray tracing content just keeps coming out. And between the performance of SUPER and the fact that it has ray tracing hardware, it's going to be super well positioned for throughout all of next year".

AMD posted a blog detailing the way that the GPU boosting algorithm and thermal management systems work on the new Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards, just as the custom Navi cards are dropping.

There has been some mystery with how it all works but Mithun Chandrasekhar -- senior manager, product management, Radeon Technologies Group at AMD posted a lengthy and detailed blog on the official AMD website.

In the post, Chandrasekhar writes that with AMD taking its extensive network of thermal sensors spread out across the Navi GPU on the Radeon RX 5700 series cards to "intelligently monitor and tune performance in response to granular GPU activity in real-time".

SAPPHIRE launched its new Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC graphics card today, one of the first custom Navi cards to be released and a kick ass offering for Radeon gamers. You can read my review on it here.

The new SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC has more performance than the reference RX 5700 XT, runs significantly cooler (16C cooler in my testing), and much quieter than the reference model. It offers performance roughly 5-10% better than NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, and all for $409.

SAPPHIRE also includes a new feature in TriXX Boost, which reduces the rendering resolution and upscales it using Radeon Image Sharpening resulting in up to 10-15% more performance in games.

Update: AMD has issued a statement, clarifying the situation: "We expect there will continue to be strong supply of Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards in the market, with multiple designs starting to arrive from our AIB partners. As is standard practice, once the inventory of the AMD reference cards has been sold, AMD will continue to support new partner designs with Radeon RX 5700 series reference design kit".

AMD only launched its Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 just over a month ago now, and now we have reports from Cowcotland that the new Navi-based cards have been pushed into EOL status, or end-of-life.

The news is a surprise, but it does make sense if you think about it. The reference cards eat up AMD manufacturing time and most likely cost them a decent amount of coin to produce, and in a few days the third-party custom Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 cards launch.

This news is dripping with so much rumor mill juice that you're going to need both a bucket, and a tub of salt -- but according to RedGamingTech AMD is working on two new high-end Navi GPUs.

AMD's new Navi 21 and Navi 23 GPUs are reportedly known internally as "NVIDIA killers" with the latter powering a next-gen Radeon RX series graphics card that will dethrone NVIDIA (can't wait to see this go down). The new Navi GPUs are based on the second-gen RDNA architecture, will use the refreshed 7nm+ node, and battle it out against NVIDIA's next-gen GPUs.

NVIDIA's next-gen cards should arrive sometime in 2020 under the GeForce RTX 30 series, and will battle it out with AMD but on better footing this time. Ray tracing is going to be a gigantic deal in 2020 with both next-gen consoles launching with ray tracing support thanks to unreleased AMD hardware powering both consoles.

It seems like today is the day for custom Navi reveals, with the new HIS Radeon RX 5700 XT IceQ X2 teased and now something from GIGABYTE.

Here we have the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 5700 XT GAMING OC, with its triple-fan cooler and 2.5-slot design. It's nothing fancy and I would dare say that the OC this card is going to be mild, so that there's some distance between the GIGABYTE and AORUS (enthusiast/OC) models.

We still have a (plain) backplate, which will take some heat from the rear of the card.