Graphics Cards - Page 209

Update: ASUS reached out to me about this article to clarify some of the going-ons of this benchmarking. I will put ASUS' replies under each one of the points they addressed, so you have the entire picture.

AMD is struggling with the launch of Radeon RX Vega, but it won't help that custom RX Vega cards are suffering from WORSE performance than the reference cards... something that is now being tested.

The new ASUS STRIX RX Vega 64 has been sampled out to a few reviewers so far, with the sites testing the new STRIX card. ASUS' latest Radeon graphics card has a 260W TDP, which is massive - even compared to the already large 240W+ on the reference card. This increased TDP allows for higher clock speeds than the reference card, but does it result in more performance? Nope. Actually, less performance.

Update: AMD has provided us with the following statement: "Radeon RX Vega64 demand continues to exceed expectations. AMD is working closely with its partners to address this demand. Our initial launch quantities included standalone Radeon RX Vega64 at SEP of $499, Radeon RX Vega64 Black Packs at SEP of $599, and Radeon RX Vega64 Aqua Packs at SEP of $699. We are working with our partners to restock all SKUs of Radeon RX Vega64 including the standalone cards and Gamer Packs over the next few weeks, and you should expect quantities of Vega to start arriving in the coming days".

Radeon Technologies Group seems to be in a world of tumbles right now, with the SEP on Radeon RX Vega stated to be $399, $499, and $599.

During AMD's recent Ryzen Tech Day in LA, the company underlined the pricing of Radeon RX Vega and the media (including TweakTown) were surprised with the strong pricing of RX Vega. Well, that has all changed after a huge $100 increase in price. Gamers Nexus is reporting that AIB partners confirmed the $499 launch pricing on Radeon RX Vega 64 was a limited time offer, with AMD reportedly offering e-tailers a $100 voucher - now that those vouchers have run out, RX Vega pricing has hit $599.

AMD's new Radeon RX Vega graphics cards run a little on the hot side, which is going to open up a huge market for companies to make, and provide new cooling solutions... just like Alphacool.

Alphacool has announced their new Eiswolf 120 GPX-Pro ATI RX Vega all-in-one cooler, and their new Nexxxos GPX ATI RX Vega waterblocks - yeah, that's not a typo, I did mean to say ATI.

Starting with the Eiswolf GPX-Pro ATI RX Vega, we have an all-in-one liquid cooler that features a copper waterblock and pump assembly, teamed with the copper-based Nexxxos radiator. The normal version rocks a 120mm radiator, but there's the option for a bigger 240mm radiator. The kit includes Alphacool's Eisbaer expandable CPU AIO liquid cooler kit, which features spill-minimizing quick release fittings.

AMD might have just launched their next-gen Radeon RX Vega graphics cards with HBM2 in tow, but it looks like SK Hynix and Samsung might be ruining the high-end/enthusiast graphics card market with increases in VRAM pricing.

DigiTimes is reporting that the market prices for graphics memory from both Samsung and SK Hynix rose by over 30% in August, with the blame being placed on both DRAM manufacturers "repurposing part of their VRAM production capacities for server and smartphone memories instead", reports AnandTech.

We should expect VRAM pricing to continue to increase according to DigiTimes' sources, with PC DRAM chips to continue getting more expensive through to 2018. Both Micron and SK Hynix have announced GDDR6 recently, with NVIDIA set to use the new standard on their Volta-based GeForce graphics cards in early 2018.

AMD might not be enjoying much positivity with the first waves of Radeon RX Vega reviews, but the company is looking after miners (who they called out and blamed for global GPU shortages in LA two weeks ago) with a new beta driver that provides improved cryptocurrency mining performance.

The new beta driver increases block chain compute performance, with AMD naming the driver "Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute". What does this new driver have on offer?

I'm going to install these drivers soon and run our Radeon RX Vega 56, Radeon RX Vega 64 air-cooled, and Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition through their paces.

AMD has officially released their new Radeon RX Vega family of graphics cards, led by the flagship Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, and the new GTX 1070 killer with the Radeon RX Vega 56.

Now that we have the gaming stuff out of the way, I wanted to do some testing with Ethereum mining. As much as we get flak for doing mining on graphics cards, there were an overwhelming amount of readers and FB fans asking us for Ethereum performance... so here you go.

There were reports a couple of weeks ago that Radeon RX Vega would be pushing 100MH/s mining Ethereum, and I'm here to tell you that is far from the truth. I never reported on the story because I knew it was bogus and technologically impossible to have Vega pushing 300% above Radeon RX 580 or GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and now I have Vega in my hands I've done my own testing.

AMD just launched their new Radeon RX Vega 56 and Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics cards (my review here), but this hasn't stopped NVIDIA ramping up the production of 12nm GPUs with TSMC.

NVIDIA's upcoming 12nm production will be ready for next-gen Volta-based GeForce graphics cards that will be released early 2018, and even possibly teased earlier than that. NVIDIA has already released Volta in the form of the AI-ready Tesla V100 graphics accelerator, but it looks like we'll see the 12nm FinFET process and Volta, and I'm sure GDDR6, in early 2018.

Starting in Q4, the company will ramp up 12nm Volta GPU production preparing for the big next-gen GeForce launch. It was only just recently that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang talking to investors, where he said that gamers shouldn't expect a Volta-based GeForce until the end of 2017 or early 2018. Huang said that "Pascal is just unbeatable", and even with Vega here from AMD, I still agree.

AMD is launching its new Radeon RX Vega graphics cards in a few days, but between now and then - we're allowed to show you something about the card, with no performance numbers just yet. I can tell you that I have the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, and the air-cooled Radeon RX 56.

At the top we have the GTX 1080 competitor, while the RX Vega 56 takes on the GTX 1070. We've got them running through their paces as I tap away on this keyboard, but we can show you the inside of the packaging of the RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition. The box itself looks cool, but because it's 11:30PM my time here in South Australia, I'm going to do a FB Live video in the morning my time (10-12 hours from this post going live).

Until then, I've got some pictures to enjoy that I snapped between my frantic benchmarking. More details to follow, with full thoughts on the performance, temperatures, power consumption (uhhh), and some exclusive tests (8K, and some others). It has been an interesting journey so far, with AMD flying a staff member out to my city to hand deliver me my samples. It was down to the wire, and I'm still down 48 hours on other reviewers. This is the rush of a GPU launch!

We're hours away from the first part of the AMD Radeon RX Vega embargo, and only a couple of days away from our full review - and already, we're hearing about AMD's next-gen Navi GPU architecture.

Navi is destined for sometime in 2018, and will be baked onto the much smaller 7nm node - but according to our friends at Fudzilla, AMD will be using some dedicated AI circuitry. This isn't new, as NVIDIA has what it calls Tensor cores in their next-gen Volta-based V100 GPU.

The only news here is that AMD is rumored to be building AI-specific technology onto its next-gen GPU, which will mean AMD is pushing more into data centers and AI applications, and away from gamers. There will be a gaming-based Navi GPU, that I'm sure - but AI is the big thing right now, and AMD would be silly to not capitalize on it.

AMD is on the verge of launching their next-gen Radeon RX Vega graphics card family, with the flagship Radeon RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 cards now in reviewers' hands. Our friends at TechGage have already posted up some pictures that were quickly removed.

TechGage received their Radeon RX Vega 64 in a beautiful package, with the reference air version and its RX 480 style design.

RX Vega 64 requires 8+8-pin PCIe power connectors for its huge 295W TDP, while we have 3 x DP 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.0 display connectors on the back.

SIGGRAPH 2017 - AMD were on fire at SIGGRAPH 2017, debuting their new Radeon Pro SSG and Radeon Pro WX 9100 graphics cards, both based on the new Vega GPU architecture and both featuring HBM2 tech, and HBCC.

The new Radeon Pro WX 9100 is AMD's new workstation graphics card that is built for today and tomorrows video and design/manufacturing workloads, featuring 12.3 TFLOPs of peak single preciion compute performance. Inside, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 features the full Vega 10 NCU, 16GB of HBM2 ECC memory, and AMD's next-gen High Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC).

AMD's new Radeon Pro WX 9100 handles 8K 60Hz, 4K 120Hz and everything in between with its DisplayPort 1.4 HDR-ready connections for up to 6 displays.

Update: I've talked to AMD about this article since it went live, and I've been informed that something isn't right here - and that the new Radeon Pro SSG will wipe the floor with NVIDIA's Quadro P6000 graphics card. AMD has promised to send me a Radeon Pro SSG when it launches to do my own in-house testing against the P6000 with real-time 8K video editing, something that is meant to be only capable on Radeon Pro SSG.

AMD debuted their upcoming Radeon Pro SSG during Capsaicin just before SIGGRAPH 2017 kicked off, with their next-gen Vega GPU architecture featuring a 2TB NVMe drive soldered to the graphics card as 2TB of massively-fast cache. Perfect, and reportedly needed for real-time 8K video editing from RED Cinema cameras... until we visited NVIDIA a couple of days later.

NVIDIA were showing off their Quadro P6000 graphics card, which has been available for months and months now, editing 8K footage from a RED camera - all in real-time, without 2TB of cache.

AMD launched their new Radeon RX Vega graphics cards last week, and while we were introduced to the new Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56, there was no news on a dual-GPU of any kind. Until now.

There are rumors from WCCFTech that ASUS is working on a new dual-GPU graphics card, since AMD approved AIB partners to tweak the designs of Vega to their liking. ASUS is looking to build a new beast with 2 x Vega 10 GPUs that would feature over 50 TFLOPs of compute performance, 25 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, and consume up to an insane 600W of power.

AMD might have gotten away with air-cooling on Radeon RX Vega, but liquid cooling is absolutely required on a dual-GPU of this size. Performance would be monstrous, easily beating everything NVIDIA has on the market, including the GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN Xp. Price wise, I think we'll see it at $1500 or so - given that Vega 64 is $499 and the liquid cooled version is $599. ASUS probably won't make many of them, as I'm sure they'll be a very limited edition card.

AMD announced their next-gen Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 graphics cards last week, with EK Water Blocks quick to announce their new EK-FC Radeon Vega.

EKWB's new product is a full-coverage waterblock for the reference design Radeon RX Vega graphic cards, with a electrolytic copper baseplate that blends right into its reversible cooling engine design that can be run backwards if that's what you like.

Radeon RX Vega owners will be able to choose from the black acrylic or clear Acetal for the front of the block, while the baseplate comes in nickel-plated or bare copper.

AMD announced their new Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 graphics cards, but didn't provide too many details about benchmark numbers in games - but I've got the solution to that.

An industry source of mine has provided me with some raw benchmark numbers on Radeon RX Vega 56, which looks to be the new $400 mainstream king, beating the GTX 1070 in some of the biggest games on the market. My source said that the RX Vega 56 card was running on an Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz, had 16GB of DDR4-3000MHz RAM, and was running Windows 10.

The benchmarks were run at 2560x1440 with the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 easily beating NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 in Battlefield 1, DOOM, Civilization 6, and even Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. My source said that Battlefield 1 was run on Ultra settings, Civ 6 was on Ultra with 4x MSAA, DOOM was at Ultra with 8x TSAA enabled, and COD:IW was running on its High preset.

We've only just reported about the new Vega 10/11/12/20 leaks, but now VideoCardz is reporting on the first official renders of Radeon RX Vega.

Interestingly, the new Radeon RX Vega 64 (cool name, AMD) is based on the reference design of the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series, with 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, 3 x DP and 1 x HDMI output. I'm loving that tweaked 'R' logo on the fan.

This card looks ridiculously awesome, with a different style cooler - but it's still the same card underneath. I'm loving the Vega logo on the front and red/black 'R' in the corner, just like the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition.

AMD might be on the precipice of releasing Radeon RX Vega, but we're now hearing about a slew of Radeon Vega products - from Vega 10 through to Vega 20. We've heard about some of these cards before, but now we have much more details on them.

The Euroasian Economic Commission (EEC) is a regulatory body that is like the FCC in the US, with any and all products needing to be certified before they can be released into the market. Our friends at VideoCardz were alerted to these new details which have emerged on Reddit.

This is a beast... Vega 20 with a whopping 32GB of HBM2, now imagine a few of those alongside Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X. Vega 20 rocks four HBM2 stacks, providing up to 32GB of HBM2. This won't be a consumer card, with EEC noting that this is a GL variant, so expect a Radeon Pro or new Radeon Instinct accelerator.

AMD's new Radeon Software 17.7.2 drivers are nearly here, with the company including their Enhanced Sync technology - an alternative to Vsync. This will result in no more tearing and lag, with all of the goodies that Vsync provides without the latency.

ReLive will also be capable of pushing 100MB/sec, something that will let Radeon owners recording gaming footage at a higher bitrate. The new ReLive in 17.7.2 will also be capable of driving a webcam on the stream, and boosting the volume on the microphone all from the Radeon panel.

Radeon Chill also receives some love, where it can now be enabled on mobile graphics cards, multi-GPU setups, and even external graphics cards. We will have a link to Radeon Software 17.7.2.

We've had so many custom GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards released this year, but Colorful isn't stopping, with the announcement of their new iGame GTX 1080 Ti Kudan graphics card.

Colorful has carefully selected each GP102 chip from 100 chips to ensure it has maximum OC out of the box, with the company including their own iGame Pure Power and Silver Plating Technology. We have GPU clocks of 1657/1784MHz for base and boost GPU clocks, respectively - while the 11GB of GDDR5X sticks to its 11Gbps frequency. But that's not all.

Where this card takes a hard spike to the right, is that Colorful ships the iGame GTX 1080 Ti Kudan with a new cooler: Waterspout Cooler II. It's a massive integrated pump, water block and cooling fins, with Coloful using customized high air pressure fans to keep the card nice and cool. The radiator isn't as big as some out there, so you don't need to worry too much about fitting it in your case - and let's face it, anyone buying Colorful's new iGame GTX 1080 Ti Kudan would be making sure it'll fit before purchasing it.

EVGA has finally announced its new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti K|NGP|N graphics card, which is the company's latest flagship GTX 1080 Ti that is better than the already great GTX 1080 Ti SC2 and GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 graphics cards.

EVGA has included its impressive iCX cooling technology, and then unleashed professional overclocker K|NGP|N and given him GP102 and I'm sure countless hours of working and tweaking to make the GTX 1080 Ti K|NGP|N. EVGA sets the GPU base and boost clocks at a respectful 1582/1695MHz, but I'm sure you're going to hit the same 2.2GHz ceiling that GP102 is known for.

The company is providing a guaranteed 2025MHz GPU overclock with the GTX 1080 Ti K|NGP|N, a sleek dual-slot profile and single-slot capable with the Hydro Copper Waterblock. EVGA has placed the 8+8-pin PCIe power connectors on the end of the card, which is such a great move - as it keeps the annoying PCIe power cables tucked away and out of sight.