Graphics Cards - Page 203

It looks like everyone is now thinking that graphics card prices will remain high throughout 2018, with Massdrop recently hosting NVIDIA at the Massdrop HQ where they talked about the current graphics card shortage.

Massdrop's Tech Community boss Brian Hutchins said he talked to NVIDIA about the graphics card shortage, with Hutchins writing: "All new cell phones coming out by Apple and Samsung (and others) last year started using the same memory as graphics cards. Apple and Samsung are willing to pay more for this memory to make sure they get it first and all of it that they need. This has created a shortage of memory for the much smaller companies like MSI, GIGABYTE, ASUS, and EVGA to make graphics cards".

Hutchins continued: "As long as I can bring them a better deal than what is currently available I will continue to do so. That being said MSRP is kind of out the window at this point so keep your eye on market price VS Massdrop as you will not see any cards out there anywhere close to MSRP for a while to come".

It was the year of cryptocurrency mining last year, and now that Jon Peddie Research's new GPU market report is out, we can get a better idea of just how many graphics cards AMD and NVIDIA sold to crypto miners.

GPU shipments actually decreased in Q4 2017 compared to Q4 2016 by around 1.5% but comparing these numbers year-over-year, GPU shipments actually decreased 4.8%. The report does state that 3 million graphics cards were sold to cryptocurrency mining, making $776 million in total.

AMD shipments increased 8.08% quarter-to-quarter while NVIDIA's shipments dropped by 6%. Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, said in the report: "Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales, augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners. We expect demand to slacken from the miners as margins drop in response increasingly utilities costs and supply and demand forces that drive up AIB prices. Gamers can offset those costs by mining when not gaming, but prices will not drop in the near future".

If you want to cool that $3000 graphics card of yours, then your TITAN V deserves EK Water Blocks' new EK-FC TITAN V full cover GPU water block that will keep your GPU, HBM2, and VRMs nice and cool.

NVIDIA's super-fast TITAN V is a dual-slot graphics card in stock form, but the EK-FC TITAN V water block will reduce it to a sleek single-slot beast. EKWB's water block directly cools the GPU, HBM2 memory, and VRMs so that you can hit maximum overclocks without any part of the card cooking too much and reducing your OC headroom.

EKWB's new EK-FC TITAN V is available through EK's own Webshop and the Partner Reseller Network. It's availabble in four different varieties:

I've just gotten off the phone with a well-placed source in the industry who has told me that NVIDIA will indeed be launching a new GeForce GTX series at GTC 2018.

During NVIDIA's own GPU Technology Conference we should see the company launch the GeForce GTX 2080 and GTX 2070, although the naming scheme on them could change. We could see the GTX 1180 and GTX 1170, which wouldn't surprise me. Inside, the card will be running a refreshed Ampere architecture that should have even more power under the hood, as well as improved power efficiency over Pascal.

NVIDIA should be launching their new cards in late-April or early-May. NVIDIA traditionally hosts an Editor's Day to unveil their new GeForce graphics cards, but my source said this is being shifted around to GTC 2018.

ASUS has just unveiled their latest in their line of Phoenix branded graphics card with the new GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Phoenix, coming in with a compact design.

The new ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Phoenix is short, at just 18.3 inches long on a custom-made PCB. ASUS cools the new card with a simple aluminum heat sink, spiral-looking fans, and an 80mm cooler.

ASUS ships the GTX 1060 6GB Phoenix with NVIDIA's reference clocks, so we have 1506/1708MHz for base/boost GPU clocks, respectively. There's 6GB of GDDR5 memory on-board at its stock 8Gbps frequency.

BITNAND sent out an email overnight letting everyone know they have their new stock of NVIDIA P106-090 6GB Mining Cards about to drop, where they will begin shipping later this month.

The new NVIDIA P106-090 Mining Card can be purchased directly from BITNAND for $389, with individual card performance varying from batch to batch. BITNAND notes that the "overclocked performance is not a guarantee and will depend on individual card's performance". This is what BITNAND are promising, but these results will vary from card to card slightly:

As for the technical specifications of BITNAND's new NVIDIA P106-090 Mining Card:

AMD have just released their latest Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.2 drivers that are optimized for some of the latest, and biggest games on the market.

The new RSAE 18.2.2 drivers are optimized for the just-released Kingdom Come: Deliverance, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Epic Games' runaway hit Fortnite. There are performance gains for the Radeon RX 580 and RX Vega 56 in Kingdom Come: Deliverance of 4% and 3%, respectively.

The new drivers improve Fortnite performance on the RX Vega 56 by 5%, while PUBG enjoys an additional 7% on the RX 580.

NVIDIA kicks off its GPU Technology Conference late next month and now we're hearing that the company will be launching its new Turing GPU architecture during GTC 2018.

Reuters is the source behind the news so we have some credit behind it, but the site says that Turing will be NVIDIA's new 'gaming GPU' which leads me to believe that my world exclusive story from a couple of days ago is right: NVIDIA will launch two new GPU series, with one focused on gamers and one for miners.

Turing is an interesting choice as the codename is a nod to Alan Turing who was "highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine" according to Wikipedia. Since Turing has roots in cryptography, it would make sense that the Turing-based card will be for miners, while Ampere will be aimed at gamers.

It's no surprise that COLORFUL has dived right into the world of Battlegrounds, as it is one of the biggest AIB partners of NVIDIA, and the biggest GeForce GTX 10 seller in China - one of the largest markets for gaming in the world.

COLORFUL has double downed on the entire PUBG frenzy, with the company releasing a performance chart that tallies up all of COLORFUL's custom GeForce GTX 10 series cards, starting from the GTX 1050 Ti right through to the GTX 1080 Ti.

As you can see, starting with the GTX 1060 3GB you can safely play PUBG at 1080p 60FPS on Ultra settings, which is not too damn bad at all. If you're after 120FPS or higher, that is GTX 1080 Ti territory, while the middle of the road GTX 1070 Ti pushes 103FPS average.

NVIDIA is poised to release its new GeForce GTX 20 series in the next couple of months, with sources telling me it'll happen in March and then other sources saying April. Whatever the release is, it's comign in the next couple of months and it's going to be big. I recently wrote one of our biggest stories of the last 12 months with 'Could NVIDIA block GeForce 20 series cards from mining' and have been thinking about it ever since.

We should see the revised Ampere GPU architecture with it being a refreshed Pascal GPU, but made by Samsung on their 14nm FinFET node, versus Pascal's entire GP10x lineup that is on 16nm by TSMC. On top of the refreshed Ampere GPU we'll see the introduction of GDDR6 which is really going to change things at the high-end side of memory bandwidth.

The perfect card for NVIDIA's new Big Format Gaming Displays (BFGDs), as driving the 65-inch 4K 120FPS with G-Sync and HDR isn't going to be easy, even with the current flock of GTX 10 series cards. But with all of this purported brute speed and bandwidth, the GTX 20 series cards will be even better in miners' eyes as they'll have what should be some amazing hashing rate for cryptocurrency miners.

NVIDIA is preparing a new GTX 20 series of graphics cards that should debut with the purported GeForce GTX 2080 in April under the new Ampere GPU family, a refresh of the industry-leading Pascal GPU family released in 2016.

This reveal would see the new GeForce GTX 2080 revealed, which would have to pack more performance than the GTX 1080 from nearly two years ago. But how much faster can it be before it beats the GTX 1080 Ti? What if the new GTX 2080 could beat the GTX 1080 Ti at a price point of $599 but it is not capable of cryptocurrency mining?

NVIDIA will be shooting themselves in the foot with a refreshed GA104-based GeForce GTX 2080 that even comes close to the performance of the GTX 1080 Ti, because at that point gamers won't want to buy a graphics card from March 2017 when the new GTX 20 series is here. So NVIDIA has to find a way to make its GTX 1080 Ti relevant in a market where the GTX 2080 is out, and that could be from a GPU-level ban of crypto mining on the GTX 20 series cards.

The latest rumor for NVIDIA's refreshed GeForce GTX 20 series is that the company will be unveiling the new Ampere-based series in April, close to two years after the reveal of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in Austin, Texas.

The new rumors are coming from readers that were posting on German site 3DCenter, teasing that TSMC has stopped production of GP102, the GPU that powers the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. This would mean that current-gen GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN X graphics cards would stop, or at least heavily slow down throughout the rest of 2018 for the unraveling of the GTX 20 series from NVIDIA.

I've been talking about the GeForce GTX 2080 since October 2016... if you can believe it... and it seems we should expect big things from the GTX 20 series. Now that GDDR6 is ready, we'll see NVIDIA use the super-fast new VRAM technology on a smaller bus than the GTX 1080 Ti (and soon GTX 2080 Ti).

We all know there is a massive graphics card shortage that is being blamed on the rise of cryptocurrency mining, but now we're seeing companies sell 6 packs of graphics cards in a bundle on both Amazon and Newegg.

The 6 x GPU bundles arrive in both Team Green and Team Red combos, with 6 x GTX 1060 Founders Edition cards from EVGA costing $3780, while 6 x MSI Aero ITX OC GTX 1060s (which are great for mining) cost $3465. There's also the higher-end 6 x GTX 1080s for $6300, which is quite insane.

AMD isn't left out of the 6-card bundles, with a 6 x RX 580 4GB pack for $3600, the higher-end MSI Armor RX 580 8GB cards cost $3990 in a 6-pack.

NVIDIA has just posted their Q4 2017 earnings report, where company shares rose 10% in after-hours trading.

NVIDIA reported EPS of $1.78 on revenue of $2.91 billion, beating out analysts' expectations of $1.17 per share on $2.69 billion of revenue. NVIDIA stock has risen by an incredible 83% in the last 12 months, with just their gaming and data center businesses increasing revenue by a huge 24% year-over-year.

The company wasn't clear on how much money it made from the massive boom of cryptocurrency mining, but NVIDIA's CFO said that the demand for its GPUs for crypto mining had "accounted for a higher percentage of revenue than the previous quarter" and that it had "exceeded expectations".

We all know NVIDIA is a mammoth company and now their Q4 2017 earnings call has seen NVIDIA throw out some fighting words against AMD.

During their Q4 2017 earnings call, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that they are "10x bigger than our GPU competitor" and that they have "a lot more suppliers... supplying us". Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective picked the tweet up, where Shrout added he isn't agreeing with AMD's statement that "memory is holding back GPU ramps".

Now some of you are probably thinking "10x bigger, whatever" but I checked both companies market caps at the time of writing. AMD has a market cap of $10.8 billion while NVIDIA stomps around with a massive market cap of $131 billion, so yes, NVIDIA are truly 10x bigger.

It has been a few weeks of manically high graphics card prices, but things are finally starting to settle - at least a little, with pricing now falling on the higher-end cards to not-so-insane-but-just-as-insane prices. I broke a story about GPU prices a couple of weeks ago, but now things have gotten slightly - but not totally better.

The most expensive listing on Amazon for a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition is $3370, but you can buy an EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING for $859, or an ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for $1099. EVGA's other GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 GAMING costs $1159, while the AORUS GTX 1080 Ti costs $1197. Crazy stuff, but a few hundred dollars cheaper than the post-crypto crash over the last couple of weeks.

Over on the Team Red side of things, the most expensive listing of a Vega-based graphics card goes to the GIGABYTE Radeon RX Vega 64 that costs a whopping $1999, or the retail version of the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition which rolls out with a $1799 price tag. Other than that, we have a PowerColor RX Vega 64 for $1099, while SAPPHIRE's RX Vega 64 is $1329, and the XFX RX Vega 64 is $1449.

AMD released their updated GPU roadmap not too long ago, and for the last month or so I've been thinking long and hard about it, as well as talking to sources of mine within the industry to find out WTF is going on over at AMD in regards to their Radeon products.

Back in October I exclusively reported that AMD would be launching Navi during SIGGRAPH 2018, in July/August this year. At the time everyone else called me crazy and that it wasn't going to launch that early, but now I've got other sources that are backing up my claims and saying that I was right. The first Navi reveal will be a professional card and not a consumer-focused Radeon RX Navi at all, that card will launch in 2019.

Then a story on WCCFTech popped up which said that "Navi will be the last GCN-based architecture" and that it will be "succeeded by brand new micro-architecture in 2020/2021 timeframe, execution of GCN successor being led by new RTG leadership". This is interesting, so I reached out to some sources to clarify a few things.

AMD has finally announced that they've appointed Mike Rayfield as their new Senior Vice President and General Manager of Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), alongside David Wang who will act as Senior Vice President of Engineering. Both of the new RTG members will report directly to Lisa Su.

Rayfield will handle the strategy and business management side of AMD's graphics business, something that includes consumer graphics, professional graphics, and semi-custom products. Wang will handle graphics engineering, with his tasks including technical strategy, architecture, hardware and software for all graphics-related products made by AMD.

Lisa Su, President and CEO of AMD said in a press release: "Mike and David are industry leaders who bring proven track records of delivering profitable business growth and leadership product roadmaps. We enter 2018 with incredible momentum for our graphics business based on the full set of GPU products we introduced last year for the consumer, professional, and machine learning markets. Under Mike and David's leadership, I am confident we will continue to grow the footprint of Radeon across the gaming, immersive, and GPU compute markets".

A few days ago we broke the story about virtually all graphics cards at insanely high prices, with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti selling for $1600 and even the Radeon RX Vega 64 selling for a huge $2100.

But now German site ComputerBase.de is reporting that NVIDIA isn't happy (about selling out of their graphics cards completely) and that they are targeting gamers, and not miners with their GeForce graphics cards.

NVIDIA said: "For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers' needs as usual".

Samsung has announced it is officially producing 16-gigabit GDDR6 modules, something that ramps bandwidth up to an incredible 18Gbps, up from the 11Gbps on the GTX 1080 Ti and its 11GB of GDDR5X.

Samsung's new GDDR6 modules are made on their industry-leading 10nm process, with Jinman Han, senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering at Samsung Electronics explaining: "Beginning with this early production of the industry's first 16Gb GDDR6, we will offer a comprehensive graphics DRAM line-up, with the highest performance and densities, in a very timely manner".

He continued: "By introducing next-generation GDDR6 products, we will strengthen our presence in the gaming and graphics card markets and accommodate the growing need for advanced graphics memory in automotive and network systems".