Graphics Cards - Page 192

If you remember my exclusive report from April 2, 2018 you'll remember that I said t hat NVIDIA would be launching its Turing GPU later in the year, which it did, and then it would be launching Ampere "sometime in the future". Well, that future could be now.

NVIDIA is hosting its annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) next week in California, but what will they be showing off? Volta is old news in the high-performance computing (HPC) world, and Turing has been cut into countless variants throughout the Quadro RTX, GeForce RTX, and new GeForce GTX families of products. So, what's next then?

The next generation GPU architecture that will come after Turing will be Ampere, which we should expect to arrive on the 7nm node. Right now all of the Turing GPUs are made on the 12nm node, while I expect Ampere to be nailed into the 7nm node.

Intel is ramping up towards its industry event at GDC 2019 next week, with the official Twitter page for Intel Graphics recently teasing the new control panel coming to Intel and its future discrete GPUs.

The new control panel lookks very Steam-ish and that's not a bad thing for me, and it's a vast upgrade on the aging look of NVIDIA's GeForce control panel. As good as GFE looks, the NVIDIA control panel looks beyond Plain Jane compared to the tease of Intel's upcoming control panel. Lots of work has gone into it by the looks of things, with large buttons and various toggles we'll get to play with.

Hopefully we see more of this during The Odyssey event next week, as the hype train for Intel's first discrete graphics card since the Intel i740 (how good was Trespasser on it!) arrives in 2020.

NVIDIA is expected to unveil its new GeForce GTX 1660 any day now with a bunch of AIB partner cards being leaked, today we're starting off with the EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 and its XC series in both BLACK and ULTRA variants.

The always-great VideoCardz is on point with the leaks, with the GeForce GTX 1660 expected to launch on March 14 starting at $219, with 6GB of GDDR5 memory (not GDDR6 like its higher-end GTX 1660 Ti bigger sibling).

Starting with the EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC ULTRA which is a dual-slot card with a dual-fan cooler.

NVIDIA has announced that it is officially ending 3D Vision support with its next driver release, meaning 3D Vision had an 11-year run from its debut back in 2008.

3D Vision debuted in 2008 with the release of 120Hz capable LCDs (as well as certain CRT monitors, 3LCD and DLP projectors) with a 3D Vision kit rolling out with 3D glasses that in the end, didn't gain thatm uch traction outside of a small market of people. Still, an 11 year run is some major time on the market for 3D Visiion and its successor with 3D Vision 2, and now it's coming to an end.

NVIDIA explains: "Following the posting of the final driver from Release 418 in April 2019, GeForce Game Ready Drivers will no longer support NVIDIA 3D Vision. The NVIDIA support team will continue to address critical driver issues for 3D Vision in Release 418 through April, 2020. Those looking to utilize 3D Vision can remain on a Release 418 driver. Our software that enables the use of 3D gaming with 3D TVs, 3DTV Play, is now included for free in Release 418. It is no longer available as a standalone download. Our 3D Vision Video Player will continue to be offered as a standalone download, for free, until the end of 2019".

COLORFUL showed off its beast-mode flagship iGame GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KUDAN at CGU 2019, with some impressive cooling technology and custom PCB that was designed to be overclocked to the max. It has one of the most unique styles of any AIB maker in the world, and it'll also cost $3000.

The new iGame GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KUDAN continues the steampunk-style theme, with some awesome gear cog styling on the front of the card that is laid over the triple-fan hybrid cooling system.

The triple-fan cooler makes the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KUDAN a huge triple-slot card, but you'll also see at the top of the card there is a lot going on with heat pipes, and some access to get the card added to your custom watercooling setup.

NVIDIA has just stepped up its GeForce RTX game bundles with the announcement of the RTX Triple Threat, where the company will give you a code for Battlefield V, Anthem, and Metro Exodus when you buy a GeForce RTX 2080 or GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

These three games represent a hefty $180 value when purchased separately, and will be given to you with a qualifying GeForce RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, gaming desktop, or gaming laptop. The usual bundle with one of those games (not all three!) still applies, so if you purchase a qualifying GeForce RTX 2070 or RTX 2060 you'll get Battlefield V, Anthem, or Metro Exodus.

This is joined by the news of NVIDIA releasing its new GeForce 419.35 WHQL drivers which are Game Ready and optimized for Apex Legends, The Division 2, and Devil May Cry 5. They also fix the crashes to desktop in Apex Legends, which has been annoying countless people for weeks now. You can get the new GeForce 419.35 WHQL drivers here.

Jon Peddie Research has put out its latest Market Watch report on worldwide GPU shipments for Q4 2018, with the new quarterly report telling us what we pretty much already know: GPU shipments were down for the quarter.

The overall GPU shipments for the quarter were down 2.65% from last quarter, with NVIDIA taking the biggest hit with a decrease of 7.6% while AMD lost 2.65% for the quarter and Intel lost 0.7%. JPR notes: "AMD's market share from last quarter decreased -0.6%, Intel's increased 1.4%, and NVIDIA's market share decreased -0.82%.

Year-to-year total GPU shipments decreased -3.3%, desktop graphics decreased -20%, notebooks increased 8%".

AMD is gearing up towards its next-gen Navi GPU architecture later this year, which will not only power the next-gen Next Xbox and PlayStation 5 consoles, but a bunch of new Radeon graphics cards for PC gamers.

A new patent application turned up on Twitter today teasing variable rate shading, or VRS, which will see certain parts of the scene in a game that will render at lower resolutions so that it increases the overall performance of the game being played. For example, if you were playing a first-person shooter like Apex Legends and zoomed into a sniper scope, it's not worth your graphics card rendering everything around the scope in full detail or full resolution, so performance can be increased.

VRS will handle particular frames and then decide which frames being rendered need to be at full detail, or not. This means you could be rendering in native 4K but certain parts of the scene could be rendered in lower resolutions, increasing performance across the board while not affecting the graphics that you're looking at.

NVIDIA has been on the offensive this year starting with the release of the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, a new $279 graphics card that surprised everyone in terms of price/performance and floors the Radeon RX 590 in the same price point. The Turing-based GeForce GTX family is about to grow by two new offerings; the GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1650.

The news is coming from DigiTimes that sources said NVIDIA is "slated to launch GTX 1660 on March 15 and GTX1650 on April 30, which will bear minimum price tags of US$229 and US$179, respectively". NVIDIA also filled out its sub $350 cards with the GeForce RTX 2060 in January, followed by the $279 card in the GTX 1660 Ti, and now the GTX 1660 will hit $229 and GTX 1650 at $179. This means we have a $50 drop between the new Turing-based GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660, and GTX 1650 cards.

It allows NVIDIA to better compete against the multiple cards AMD has in those price brackets with the Radeon RX 570/580/590 and then Radeon RX Vega 56 and Vega 64. I don't think anyone would want to buy any Vega card right now, especially with the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and RTX 2060 cards on the market. I'm sure this will be revisited by Team Red fans with the launch of Navi in a few months time, but for now NVIDIA has AMD pinned down in all price points and that grip is only going to strengthen with the GTX 1660 and GTX 1650.

NVIDIA shook up the sub $300 graphics card game with its new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (our review here) and now there are new rumors suggesting AMD is preparing price cuts to its Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 590 graphics cards.

No, these price cuts won't be like that fake news that spread like wildfire last week that saw rumors stating AMD had dropped the price of the Radeon RX Vega 56 to $279, rather it sees AMD dropping the price of the Radeon RX 580 to $199 and the RX 590 to $229. AMD launched the Radeon RX 590 at $279, so a large $50 price reduction would help sell many more units, while a solid sub $200 retail price on the RX 580 will make it an even bigger seller.

Remember that the Radeon RX 580 and RX 590 are both 8GB cards, and the RX 580 even comes in a 4GB model so expect that to be found a little cheaper than the rumored $199 price. We should expect these price drops to come into effect in the next couple of weeks and then after that it should be pretty quiet through to June or so when AMD reveals Navi.

NVIDIA unleashed its new price/performance monster today with the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (our review here) and now we have some drivers that will support it with the new GeForce Game Ready 419.71 drivers released.

The new drivers include the best support for Anthem, support for the newly released GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, a bunch of the usual fixes but a surprise that I didn't expect - SLI support for Apex Legends and Far Cry New Dawn. There are some fixes built into the new drivers, even for games that aren't released yet funnily enough with DOOM Eternal seeing decals rendered as black fixed.

If you've got GeForce Experience installed you'll be able to grab the new drivers if you didn't have them automatically downloaded, but if not you can find them here.

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing to launch a new Turing graphics card next month, with VideoCardz reporting that their sources have confirmed NVIDIA will be launching the GeForce GTX 1650 in March.

The site says that "so far there is no confirmation on GTX 1660 non-Ti, but according to 3rd party recent leaks, that card is surely happening at some point". We should expect that the lower-end GTX 1650 will roll out with the TU117 GPU, on the same 12nm node but with less VRAM, and most likely cheaper GDDR5 versus GDDR6.

NVIDIA should launch the GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB of GDDR5 on a smaller 128-bit memory bus and purported price of $179, meaning it will be great competition for AMD's mid-range Radeon RX 570 graphcis card.

NVIDIA is expected to drop another Turing hammer on AMD with the impending release of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, and then this morning news broke of AMD reportedly dropped the price of its Radeon RX Vega 56 to $279 to get ahead of the GTX 1660 Ti.

Yeah well, that's not the case. Excited press were a little excited about the price as it was looked at in a way that AMD was dropping the price of the RX Vega 56 to $279, but it was however Newegg that had a "killer deal" for the Radeon RX Vega 56. Newegg very temporarily dropped the price of the Radeon RX Vega 56 to $279, and just $279 after a mail-in rebate. It sold out incredibly quick.

I checked Amazon at the time of writing and the Radeon RX Vega 56 can be found starting at $400-$500, a much higher price than the tantalizing prospects of securing the card for just $250 after the MIR.

NVIDIA hasn't had the best time with its launch of the GeForce RTX series of graphics cards, which rode in on the tail end of the cryptocurrency market falling into a black hole. Well, things have just gotten worse.

The company has just reported its fourth quarter and fiscal 2019 earnings, with a gigantic 45% year-over-year loss in gaming revenue. NVIDIA's quarter is down 24% in total, with gaming down 45% but professional visualization up 15%, datacenter revenue up 12% and automotive revenues up 34%. OEM and IP revenues dropped hard as well, down 36% for the quarter.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that the GeForce RTX launch is a historic one, as it was the first time in NVIDIA's history that it launched with only high-end models first. Normally we see the two higher-end models released with the Ti variant coming later, but this time it launched with the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti out of the gate.

AMD is ready to take a proper swing at NVIDIA with its upcoming next-gen Navi GPUs, which were reportedly launching in July with the first rumors and then the new 'it's launching in October' rumor surfaced that seems to be squashed with yet another rumor.

The latest on Navi is that it will launch on July 7 which would see AMD using as many 7s as it can to launch Navi, with Navi coming on 7nm (one) and then the rumored 7/7 launch (two, three). If AMD launches a mid-range 'Navi 7' GPU there could be four 7s which would be quite the trick from AMD. The mid-range Navi GPUs will compete with NVIDIA's soon-to-be-released GeForce GTX 1160 Ti graphics card, and whatever other GTX 16 series cards that I'm sure will launch in the coming months.

It looks like AMD will launch its new Navi range of graphics cards during Computex 2019 alongside the second-gen Zen 2 architecture and Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs. It will be a big event for Team Red as they'll have a bunch of new products to launch that will have consumers and gamers alike excited.

NVIDIA was first out of the gate with some new GeForce 418.91 WHQL drivers ready for RTX and DLSS technologies that have just arrived for Metro Exodus and Battlefield V, but Team Red also has a new driver with AMD releasing its Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.2 drivers.

The new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.2 drivers have support built-in for the new Radeon VII graphics card, as well as a slew of new games including Metro Exodus, Far Cry New Dawn, Crackdown 3, and Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. There are a bunch of fixed issues with the new drivers, and a bunch of other improvements that arrive with new drivers.

You can grab the new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.2 drivers here.

NVIDIA has just released their latest GeForce 418.91 WHQL drivers which add support for both ray tracing and DLSS technologies in Metro Exodus and Battlefield V. You can grab the new drivers right here.

NVIDIA recommends that in order to hit 60FPS on the RTX 2060 at 1440p in Metro Exodus with DLSS and DXR reflections, you'll need to run graphics settings on High, and DXR reflections quality on Medium. If you want 1440p with DLSS on, graphics on Ultra and DXR reflections on Medium then you'll need the RTX 2070 while DXR reflections at Ultra will cost you an RTX 2080. If you want it all up on Ultra with DLSS enabled and at 4K, you'll need the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

When it comes to Battlefield V, here's what NVIDIA recommends for 60FPS gaming:

NVIDIA is all but expected to launch its GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card on February 22, with another AIB having its packaging leaked. This time we have GALAX and its upcoming GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, with no fancy 'OC' or other branding on the end. Plain and simple.

We can see here that NVIDIA is making AIB partners replace the word 'ray tracing' with 'Turing shaders', as the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti will not be capable of real-time ray tracing, but still feature a Turing GPU. The Turing GPU in question is the TU116 which will feature 1536 CUDA cores and is joined by 6GB of super-fast GDDR6 memory that should see the GTX 1660 Ti becoming a GTX 1060 successor.

The back of the GALAX GeForce GTX 1660 Ti doesn't really tell us much, but there's not much here that we need to know.

AMD just launched its new Radeon VII graphics card, but that'll be it for GPU releases for the company until the new Navi GPU architecture and its unveiling that should take place at Computex 2019.

According to the latest rumors, Navi will be unveiled in June at Computex, but won't be in gamers hands until October. This makes sense as the unveiling will have to take place after Sony and Microsoft announce and detail their respective next-gen consoles that will feature custom Zen 2 processors and custom Navi GPUs.

An October retail launch allows AMD to build larger numbers of Navi graphics cards especially considering they'll be on 7nm and most fab time for 7nm is being chewed up incredibly quick. AMD will be using GDDR6 memory which will see AMD having many more Navi cards than Radeon VII, which are according to our exclusive story, less than 5000 units in total.

We've all read the rumors of NVIDIA's purported GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti graphics card coming, a new Turing-based card that won't have real-time ray tracing abilities.

We have seen teases of both an MSI and GIGABYTE family of GTX 1660 Ti graphics cards, but after speaking with an AIB source of mine, it's confirmed: the GTX 1660 Ti is coming, and it isn't far away. I would dare say that NVIDIA will launch the new cards in the not too distant future, as it'll have to better compete with AMD's upcoming Navi-based graphics cards that should fall between $299-$599 in various SKUs.

To add to this news, VideoCardz is reporting that new listings have turned up for GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics cards on Russian retail websites with MSI and Palit custom GTX 1660 Ti cards teased. We are to expect the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti to be launched on February 15 (which is right around the corner) and then the GTX 1660 in 'early March' for prices of $279, and $229 respectively.