Graphics Cards - Page 188

NVIDIA revealed its new GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards during E3 2019, revealing the full stack of SUPER cards in the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and RTX 2080 SUPER. But what did this mean for the current cards? They are all replaced apart from the RTX 2080 Ti, and many have wondered if there will be an RTX 2080 Ti SUPER -- the answer is simple: no.

During the SUPER reveal event senior vice president of NVIDIA's PC business Jeff Fisher took to the stage, and during his presentation he asked if any of the press had questions. Well, I did - after being introduced to the RTX 2060/2070/2080 SUPER cards I wanted to know if we'd see a SUPER successor to the RTX 2080 Ti. I asked "will there be a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti SUPER" to which Fisher said there "would not be" an RTX 2080 Ti SUPER.

I've got a slew of content on the new RTX SUPER graphics cards, check it out here:

EK Water Blocks has unveiled its new EK-Vector Radeon RX 5700 +XT water blocks which are made for the new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT reference graphics cards.

The new EKWB water blocks for the RX 5700 series cards use a cold-plate that spans across the entire surface of the board, cooling the Navi 10 GPU, 8GB of GDDR6, and multi-phase VRM. There will be a base model of the EK-Vector water blocks with a copper waterblock, while the other option is the nickel-plated copper varirant, while the higher-end variant is made of high-quality acrylic material or black POM Acetal material (depending on the variant). The plexi-based water block rocks RGB LEDs and can be configured through software on most major motherboard brands.

EK will also provide a single-slot I/O bracket for those who want some of that super-slim watercooled Radeon RX 5700 XT life, which would look truly awesome. I really want to get a set and test Navi on it... email is being crafted now, EKWB.

AMD just launched its new Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards (my review on those here) and in between we've had teases of the other SKUs in the Radeon 5900/5800/5700/5600 series graphics cards which use different Navi GPUs along the family.

The latest rumor is about Navi 14 that will go into the Radeon RX 5600 series graphics cards, based on the same 7nm RDNA architecture but knocked down from the Navi 10 GPU on the RX 5700 series. The new Navi 14 GPU should include 24 RDNA compute units (with 64 stream processors), for 1536 stream processors in total compared to the 2560 SPs inside of the Navi 10 GPU with Navi 14 taking up to 1900MHz GPU clocks, max.

We don't know what else the Radeon RX 5600 will feature, and whether it would still have 8GB of GDDR6 -- although, I think it will. NVIDIA launched its new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (my review here) with 8GB of GDDR6, up from the 6GB of GDDR6 on the regular RTX 2060. AMD would need to keep 8GB of GDDR6 on its Radeon RX 5600 series, while chopping down performance from the RX 5700 series.

AMD released the world's first 7nm GPU earlier this year with the Radeon VII (my review on that here) with it packing Vega 20 on 7nm, with a huge 16GB of super-fast HBM2 memory. I exclusively reported that AMD was only making 5000 units of its Radeon VII and trhere would be no custom boards, ever.

Well, fast forward 6 months and we have no custom boards and now the Radeon VII is reportedly end of life (EOL) just as the new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards (my reviews on those cards here) are released. Cowcotland has confirmed with their sources that the Radeon VII is no longer in production and that the cards that are on shelves and etailers' warehouses are the only cards left.

The move makes sense with my reports from 6 months ago, and underlined now that Navi is here and doing better numbers in games with lower power consumption, heat, and noise. AMD would be chewing up 7nm node fab time as well as HBM2 memory.

GIGABYTE has just unveiled its new Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G and Radeon RX 5700 8G graphics cards, with both sticking to the reference design from AMD -- no custom cards yet folks.

AMD's new Radeon RX 5700 series cards usher in the first 7nm Navi 10 GPU to the market mixed with 8GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory and a laundry list of new features from its RDNA architecture. We have the world's first PCIe 4.0 graphics cards in the RX 5700 series, with our reviews on those two cards right here.

The new GIGABYTE Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G and RX 5700 8G are not custom cards, and this is more for system builders. We should wait for the custom AORUS branded graphics cards in the new Radeon RX 5700 series, as I'm sure they can't be too far away. Hopefully not anyway, given that I've already got custom SUPER graphics cards in my hands.

MSI released its new GeForce RTX SUPER graphcis cards in the last 24 hours with two new Turing-based offerings: the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO and the RTX 2060 SUPER GAMING X. I have both cards here in my lab with my review on the MSI RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO already out and the RTX 2060 SUPER GAMING X being benched as I type.

If you didn't see my review check it out here, as well as the review of the RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition from NVIDIA. Both cards are kick ass, but the new MSI card is a custom variant with a higher-end TRI-FROZR cooler that keeps the entire card wicked cool at 66C under load. Even when heavily overclocked, the TRI-FROZR cooler keeps the MSI RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO at between 66-68C.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards are here (my review on the RTX 2060 SUPER, and my review on the RTX 2070 SUPER, oh and the MSI RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO) we need some new drivers, right? Until now I've been using the press drivers NVIDIA supplies reviewers with, but now official GeForce 431.36 WHQL drivers are here.

The new GeForce 431.36 WHQL drivers add support for the new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards as both of them go on sale the day of the driver drop: July 9. The new drivers also include optimizations, SLI profiles, and fixes to games like The Division 2, F1 2019, and Metro Exodus. F1 2019 recieves an SLI profile -- something I'll be testing out in 8K and NVLink and SLI as I did with my RTX 2070 SUPER NVLink benchmark article).

There is also support for 3 new G-Sync compatible monitors, as well as some fixes for the FPS counter issues when upgrading to Windows 10 May 2019 Update and a bunch of other fixes resolved in the new GeForce 431.36 drivers.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards are now here with my reviews (so far, plenty more coming) of the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER cards:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER review

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER review

AMD has just launched its new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 graphics cards (my review here) and then I happened to stumble upon news that the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for June 2019 with some interesting numbers.

In terms of graphics cards used by gamers on Steam, we have a dominating 75.53% owned to NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards while its main competitor in AMD has 14.75% and the integrated GPU competitor (and soon to be discrete GPU competitor) in Intel has 9.58%. When it comes to the most popular graphics card used by Steam gamers we have the GeForce GTX 1060 as #1 with 16% of gamers using the GTX 1060 while the GTX 1050 Ti is owned by 10.6% and GTX 1050 with 6.22%.

AMD's first card on the most-used graphics cards by gamers on Steam is the Radeon RX 580 which comes in at #11 with 1.32% sitting in between the GTX 960M with 1.41% and the GTX 1070 Ti with 1.28%. We won't see these numbers change with Navi in the coming months, but it'll be interesting to see where these numbers will be in 18-24 months from now.

It started off as a rumor and now it has been officially confirmed online, and by my own sources at AMD -- they have indeed reduced the price of the Radeon RX 5700 series cards. NVIDIA increased the competition right before luanch with its new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER, forcing AMD to drop its prices.

AMD says it dropped the prices because it "embraces competition, which drives innovation to the benefit of gamers. In that spirit, we are updating the pricing of our Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics cards, launching July 7". The new prices on the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series are as follows:

AMD continues: "We know that gamers will be thrilled once they have the opportunity to experience the amazing performance, stunning visual fidelity and highly responsive gameplay these new graphics cards provide. Making history on 7/7 as the first company to launch gaming CPUs and GPUs together - the first in 7nm and PCIe 4.0 - is all about pushing the ultimate gaming experience forward for as many gamers as possible".

AMD looks to have reduced the price of its next-gen Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 in the last hours before its launch on 7/7, with VideoCardz reporting that AMD has reportedly dropped the Radeon RX 5700 to $399 down from $449 and the RX 5700 to $349 down from $379.

This move makes sense as it's something I was genuinely concerned about at the AMD Next Horizon Gaming event and expressed my dismay to other tech journalists and AMD themselves, saying that at over $399 the new RX 5700 XT would be dead in the water to whatever SUPER would end up being. Days later NVIDIA unveiled SUPER to a very limited number of press in LA at E3 2019 which I attended, and it was then that it was absolutely confirmed without a doubt that Navi was in trouble at $449.

If AMD is genuinely pricing the new Radeon RX 5700 XT at $399 then it is in a much better position to compete against the new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER from NVIDIA, we just have to wait until our NDA expires on 7/7. Until then, back to benchmarking my Navi GPU samples -- and if you didn't see it, I just tested NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards in NVLink mode!

Now that NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards are on the market, new details have emerged on the TU106 GPU inside of the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. TechPowerUp noticed that the TU106 GPU has markings on it for 'Korea', which is strange as NVIDIA gets its Turing GPUs fabbed at TSMC which does NOT have a facility in South Korea.

NVIDIA reportedly signed a contract manufacturing order with Samsung back in 2016, which I'm sure is still in play today and now being tested with the new SUPER-infused Turing GPUs. The most interesting part of this news is that Samsung doesn't have a 12nm FinFET process, but instead offers both 14nm and 11LPP. 11LPP is an 11nm nodelet which Samsung uses to compete against the 12nm node from TSMC.

TechPowerUp reached out to NVIDIA, which responded with: "The answer is really simple and these markings are not new. Other Turing GPUs have had these markings in the past. The chip is made at TSMC, but packaged in various locations. This one was done in Korea, hence why his says "Korea". On an unrelated note: We already use both TSMC and Samsung, and qualify each of them for every process node. We can't comment in any further detail on future plans, but both remain terrific partners".

MSI has just unveiled its new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards with all three in tow: the RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and RTX 2080 SUPER. MSI will offer a higher-end triple-fan cooled RTX 2070/2080 SUPER, which will act as their flagship GAMING cards.

The higher-end RTX 2070/2080 SUPER GAMING TRIO graphics cards use improved TWIN FROZR/TWIN FROZR 7 designs to keep them cooler than ever, with temps on the RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING TRIO maxing out at 65C. The RGB lighting comes courtesy of MSI's own Mystic Light RGB technology and it looks awesome, it's not too hardcore and adds to the overall style of what MSI is using on their RTX 2070/2080 SUPER GAMING TRIO.

MSI's flagship GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series family are the GAMING series cards, which offer TWIN FROZR/TWIN FROZR 7 cooling technology which not only performs great, but it looks awesome with its Mystic Light RGB coursing through the card. Great performance, overclocking headroom, and style with the GAMING series from MSI.

GIGABYTE has just unleashed its range of GeForce RTX 20 SUPER graphics cards led by the new flagship AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8G graphics card and boy... does it look good. All of the new AORUS GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series cards look awesome, but the flagship AORUS RTX 2080 SUPER 8G takes the cake.

The new AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8G features a huge triple-fan WINDFORCE STACK cooler with 3 x 100mm fans keeping the graphics card nice and cool, and a metal backplate on the back. GIGABYTE is keeping the entire card cool with VRAM and MOSFET cooling, especially the high-speed GDDR6 at 15.5Gbps on the new RTX 2080 SUPER cards.

As you can see the cooling system is pretty elaborate. GIGABYTE has infused the AORUS card with a "multi-layered design" that features wing shaped contours and resembles, in their words "the falcon's high velocity ascension and dive through the skies".

Now that NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards are here, with my review on the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER available right here, ZOTAC has officially unveiled its new range of GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards.

ZOTAC have 3 of each card in the RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2080 SUPER. First off we have the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER AMP Extreme, followed by the RTX 2080 SUPER AMP and RTX 2080 SUPER TWIN FAN. The custom RTX 2070 SUPER cards are the same from ZOTAC in that there'll be a SUPER AMP Extreme, SUPER AMP, and SUPER TWIN FAN version while the RTX 2060 SUPER cards change things up offering a SUPER MINI variant for tiny-but-powerful gaming PCs.

The ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER AMP Extreme will have its GPU boost clocks at 1875MHz and I'm sure with much more OC headroom, as well as its 8GB of GDDR6 clocked at 15.5Gbps (a normal thing for the new RTX 2080 SUPER cards). It features ZOTAC's beautiful use of RGB lighting, with a triple-fan cooler keeping the Turing GPU and GDDR6 nice and cool. This will be the one to look for when it comes to brute performance from SUPER and ZOTAC.

NVIDIA has had ray tracing capable hardware in the form of the kick ass GeForce RTX graphics cards for close to a year now, and even AMD's next-gen-and-finally-nearly-here Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series cards launch on 7/7, they still won't pack ray tracing abilities.

This doesn't mean RTG engineers haven't been working on ray tracing in Navi, as the GPU architecture finds a new home inside of both the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles which will both have ray tracing abilities, meaning AMD has been working on ray tracing for years. According to a new report by Tom's Hardware, AMD filed for a patent in 2017 which described a "hybrid" ray tracing solution that wouldn't solely rely on hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

NVIDIA has dedicated hardware on every GeForce RTX card for its real-time ray tracing, but AMD is looking to simplify things for next-gen Radeon cards. According to the recently discovered patent AMD will be using both existing shading units and "fixed function" hardware while saying "flexibility is preserved" for developers. This method, according to AMD's latest, would see performance and processing issues for hardware and software-based ray tracing be solved.

ASUS is about to launch 33 different SKUs of GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards, but GIGABYTE has its Taiwanese competitor beat with an insane 69 different SKUs coming in the next few months.

GIGABYTE's more extensive list of GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards is a little more interesting as the company is going to be launching a Mini-ITX range of GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2060 SUPER cards. These Mini-ITX cards will be small but hella powerful as the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER are great upgrades on what the current models are, and will fit into small form factor (SFF) gaming rigs.

The flagship AORUS RTX SUPER range will include RTX 2080/2070/2060 models, while the GAMING RTX SUPER brand will also host all three SUPER models, the TURBO range will only pack RTX 2080 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER versions. GIGABYTE's popular WINDFORCE range will have RTX 2080/2070/2060 SUPER models, the Mini-ITX range only has RTX 2070/2060 SUPER, while the 'other models' include two additional RTX 2060 SUPER SKUs.

As we get closer to the official launch of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards, we're finding out more and more from AIB partners like ASUS and GIGABYTE.

ASUS looks to have a huge 33 different SKUs of the GeForce RTX SUPER series, with custom versions of the RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and RTX 2060 SUPER all in the pipeline. We're looking at the ROG STRIX RTX 2080 SUPER being the flagship model in the RTX 2080 SUPER range (which is coming later this month) while the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER will both have their own ROG STRIX custom models available very soon.

The company will be launching ROG STRIX, DUAL, TUF3, TURBO, and PHOENIX variants of the GeForce RTX SUPER series, with the PHOENIX limited to just the RTX 2060 SUPER, and a single TURBO model of the RTX 2080 SUPER (as well as a TURBO model of the RTX 2060/2070 SUPER, too).

AMD is just over a week away from launching its new Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards based on the new Navi GPU architecture, and while we'll see the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 -- there won't be any high-end flagships to compete against the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti.

According to new leaks stumbled upon by Komachi on Twitter, it looks like SAPPHIRE is working on a bunch of new Navi-based Radeon RX 5000 series cards including some purported flagship models we haven't heard about yet. We're looking at the Radeon RX 5900, RX 5900 XT, RX 5950 and RX 5950 XT as the new high-end Navi-based graphics cards to be excited for -- but are they based on Navi 10 or 20? That we don't know.

We could expect a dual-GPU variant in the Radeon RX 5950 XT which would be really cool, but I can't imagine the power numbers on that thing.

VESA has just announced the fresh new DisplayPort 2.0 standard that drives supported resolutions right up to 16K, which comes in at an eye-weltering 15360x8460, and DP 2.0 can do it at 60Hz.

DisplayPort 2.0 can also do dual 8K monitors both at 120Hz which is astounding, considering DP 1.4-based 8K monitors use dual DP cables to hit 8K60. This is the first update to the DisplayPort spec since 2016 with DP 1.4a, which compared to that DP 2.0 has 3x more bandwidth which is the driving force behind the huge uptick in resolution support. VESA Board Chair Alan Kobayashi explains: "DP 2.0 represents one of our most significant milestones in the history of DisplayPort, and is the culmination of several years' effort and major enhancements to this ubiquitous standard".

DP 2.0 supports multiple high-res, high refresh rate displays with the increased bandwidth allowing for 2 x 8K 120Hz monitors, or 2 x 4K 144Hz monitors which is just incredible. Not only that but we'll have support for 10K monitors as well. This is all thanks to that increased bandwidth that the new DP 2.0 standard is capable of, speaking of which here are the raw bandwidth and effective bandwidth numbers: