Graphics Cards - Page 214

ASUS has announced its new ROG XG Station 2, their next-gen external graphics enclosure that replaces the original XG Station that was launched in 2007.

The new ROG XG Station 2 handles the best of the best GPUs on the market, with 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors - handling up to 500W. Not only that, but it can provide another 100W of power to give your notebook some battery love, with the internal PSU meeting 80 Plus Gold efficiency.

ASUS utilizes the high bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 for its new ROG XG Station 2, where it can use GbE network connectivity, and a 4-port USB 3.0 hub thanks to the additional bandwidth provided. If the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 isn't enough (40Gbps) you can slap on an additional USB 3.0 connection (with another 5Gbps of bandwidth) - with ASUS claiming it will improve performance, but I'm guessing not by that much (less than 10%).

We've been hearing rumbles of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for a while now, but it seems we might be closer to the release than we thought - now that NVIDIA is reportedly preparing "Club GeForce".

What is Club GeForce? PCWorld reports that NVIDIA's own GeForce Experience software teases it as: "I think of GFE Rewards as more than giveaways-it's a Club with exclusive benefits for GFE users. Through the Club we can help improve our customer's gaming experience and build a GeForce/GFE community". The benefits? One free indie game once a year, as well as a free skin or in-game item for a AAA game once every quarter. There's also weekly giveaways of full games, beta codes, hardware, and more.

In the post, there is a tease for "980 Ti users get first spot in line for 1080 Ti pre-orders"... which is, well, rather interesting to see. The post itself is from a LinkedIn post by NVIDIA looking for a Senior Marketing Manager - GeForce, Gamer Loyalty & Advocacy.

NVIDIA has announced a new indie VR game bundle for new GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 customers, or those buying a GTX 1050/1060-powered system or laptop at participating retailers.

Those who grab a new GTX 1050/1060-powered system, notebook or graphics card will get to choose from the following games:

Maize, from Finish Line Games, is a just-released first-person adventure game about what happens when two scientists misinterpret a memo from the U.S. Government and create sentient corn. Explore an abandoned farm and a not-so-abandoned underground research facility as you solve puzzles and uncover the mysteries around Maize, and possibly learn a bit about yourself along the way. With a colorful cast of characters and an absolutely absurd world, Maize offers up a unique experience that keeps the surprises coming.

If there's one thing to be excited for right now, leading into 2017 - it would have to be AMD's next generation GPU architecture: Vega.

AMD flew out select technology press to Sonoma, California for its annual Tech Summit - where we finally got our chance to see Vega 10 running in-person, but it was at the New Horizon event that the public got to see Vega 10 running 4K 60FPS in Star Wars: Battlefront's new Rogue One DLC.

AMD was also powering the gaming PC with its upcoming Ryzen CPU, which was announced a couple of days ago. It's an impressive showing so far, with DOOM being teased at 4K 60FPS+ on Ultra and Nightmare graphics settings during the event, something we wrote about here.

Now that AMD has let the Radeon Instinct cat out of the bag, with the Radeon Instinct MI25 accelerator powered by a Vega GPU, we can begin putting some of the pieces together. We don't know much about Vega 10 itself, but we can look at the servers that will be powered by the MI25 accelerator, and do some math.

We also now know that the Vega 10 with its 8GB of HBM2 is capable of running DOOM at 4K 60FPS+, which is impressive for a pre-production, very early board.

AMD teased the upcoming Inventec K888 server with Radeon Instinct MI25 accelerators (4 of them) capable of 100 TFLOPs of GPU power, meaning a single Vega-based Radeon Instinct MI25 has 25 TFLOPs of performance (MI25 = Machine Intelligence 25 TFLOPs, or at least that's how it seems to me). One big caveat here is that AMD is claiming FP16 performance, so we should expect 12.5 TFLOPs of single precision (FP32) performance.

AMD Tech Summit 2016 - One of the things I've been wanting to tell the world is that I got to see AMD's next-generation graphics card in action at their Tech Summit in Sonoma, California a few days ago - and now, I can.

I was witness to seeing Vega 10 rocking 8GB of next generation HBM2 technology running DOOM at 4K (3840x2160) on Ultra settings, with an average of 70FPS. Impressive stuff, considering that NVIDIA's fastest GeForce GTX 1080 and Titan X are required to hit those performance numbers in DOOM.

I had my hand behind the card, which had its fans cranked up to 100% - and it was pushing out some serious heat - but this is a prototype board that is months from being finished. Still, a major technology turn on for me. We don't know much else about the Vega 10-based graphics card that was inside of the PC, either. There have been leaks all over the place about this, and a few of you have been wondering why I haven't written about it.

AMD has hit the mainstream pretty hard this year with the Polaris-based Radeon RX 400 series, but now the Radeon RX 460 represents even better value for money with a BIOS unlock that unleashes 12.5% performance boost.

Over at the overclocking.guide, author der8auer has unlocked a Radeon RX 460 graphics card from its original 896 stream processors, to 1024 stream processors. The TMUs also get a boost, jumping from 56 to 64 TMUs - providing around 10-12% more performance, a great upgrade considering its free.

ASUS Radeon RX 460 Strix and the SAPPHIRE RX 460 Nitro have both been tested with the BIOS upgrade, and they worked - offering increased performance.

AMD really hit its stride throughout 2016, nailing software and driver releases - shifting from a company that was known for not-so-great drivers, to releasing solid drivers all year.

Today, the company has announced its new Crimson ReLive Edition drivers, a new initiative for 2017 - ready for the future of GPUs and games.

The new Crimson ReLive Edition drivers has a central theme of Features, Performance, and Stability - as well as the usual bug fixes, improvements, and more.

We have been sifting through many rumors and leaks on AMD's next graphics cards, something that needs to be cleared up. The latest rumor of the Vega 10 has me wondering if we're being thrown off track, and whether that's a good, or a bad thing.

Our friends over at VideoCardz have posted up what they are reporting as a new Device ID (687F:C1) alongside a benchmark of Ashes of the Singularity (which I hate using to judge performance, but that's just me). VideoCardz reports: "Judging from how AOTS benchmark recognizes dual-GPU graphics cards, the new card is most likely equipped with one processor. This device ID was not shown anywhere yet, so it's definitely something unreleased".

They added: "Whether that's a mobile prototype being tested in desktop platform, or full-fledged Vega 10 device, we don't know. If the rumors are true, this could be much awaited Radeon RX 490".

Leaked benchmark numbers on the purported Radeon Pro 490 have arrived, with keen eyed readers noting that I said Radeon Pro 490, and not Radeon RX 490. Here's what to expect with the next-gen Vega GPU architecture.

AMD's new Radeon Pro 490 is expected to be their 4K/VR focused graphics card, with rumors stating it'll arrive with 2 x Polaris 10 GPUs, or a new Vega 10 GPU. I doubt we'll see a Vega GPU powering the new Radeon Pro 490 graphics card, but a dual-GPU based on P10 GPUs would make sense, with 16GB of GDDR5 in total.

We should expect the Radeon RX/Pro 490 to arrive with 4608 stream processors (double the 2304 SPs on the Radeon RX 480) and reduced GPU clocks to around 1200MHz, down from 1266MHz on the RX 480. Since the TDP of the RX 480 was 150W, we should see AMD hitting 300W on the dual-GPU card.

AMD CEO Lisa Su was asked at the recent 20th Credit Suisse Annual Technology, Media & Telecom conference about the keys to growing and expanding their market share in the discrete GPU market.

Credit Suisse's semiconductor analyst John Pitzer asked: "How should we think about your share aspirations with Polaris now ramping, Vega next year? What do you think you can get your share back to within that market?" to which Su replied: "We have made very good progress I would say in the first couple of quarters this year in terms of graphics".

Su continued: "I think it's nice, when you look at graphics it's both in the consumer side on the channel as well as in the OEM business and on the professional graphics market. There's a large opportunity. I think we've gained a good amount of share over the last few quarters, we're going to continue and consistently drive [share growth]. We believe that there's no reason we can't be at 50/50 share overtime, but it will certainly take some time to get there. The key thing is enhancing our relationships with customers, because we believe that it's also important to have a very sticky business going forward."

AMD has been on the up and up this entire year, with the Radeon Technologies Group team reaching for the stars with its first new GPU architecture release under RTG: Polaris.

Polaris powered the Radeon RX 400 and Radeon Pro 400 series graphics cards, including the Radeon RX 480, RX 470, and RX 460. AMD aimed at the lower/mid-range markets where gamers are spending less than $300 on a graphics card, with around 80% of gamers falling into this category, concentrating on this market and owning it was an important first step for RTG.

But what about the high-end? The older Fiji-based Radeon R9 Fury X is an underwhelming card now with its limiting 4GB of VRAM, but impressive engineering work with the 4GB of HBM1 and the 28nm GPU on an interposer (the interposer sits under the GPU and HBM1, and is made like a chip as well). The work AMD did on the tiny Radeon R9 Nano at the time was just as great, my favorite card of the Fiji family.

We're swimming in a world with 14nm and 16nm products on the market, with AMD's new Radeon RX 400 series built on the 14nm FinFET process while NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 10 series and new Titan X are using the 16nm process - it's awesome. But, we're constantly looking to the future, right?

TSMC is said to be planning the production of 12nm technology, a new process technology that our friends at Fudzilla report will "enhance competition with 28nm and lower process nodes that have been adopted over the past few years". The new 12nm node will sit alongside the 16nm product portfolio, as a smaller option from TSMC that will better compete against Samsung and GlobalFoundries' offerings.

There are three different 16nm FinFET variations that TSMC makes, with high-performance options and ultra-low power uses where only 0.6v is used. 12nm should provide us with around 50% less power consumption, and 15% more power over current FinFET technologies, at least that's according to GlobalFoundries' recently-announced 12nm process utilizing Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) planar technology.

Colorful has a second wave of GTX 10 series cards on its way, with the impressive new GTX 1080 KUDAN and now the GTX 1070 SNAKE X-Top, made specifically for League of Legends pro gaming team 'Snake'.

The new graphics card from Colorful has Snake's logo on it, teased on the out fans, and backplate. Colorful has used a fully custom design, triple-fan cooler, backplate, 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and a BIOS switch on the back of the card. GPU clocks are set at 1657/1860MHz for base and boost respectively, making it one of the fastest GTX 1070s on the market.

It looks like Colorful will be making just 200 of these cards, so they'll be an extremely limited edition run for fans of Snake, or custom graphics cards for specific markets. I think it looks slick as hell, and I want one.

Colorful has just brightened up my day with news of their new iGame GTX 1080 KUDAN, which features the same GP104 we've all come to know and love, but the GPU is clocked at up to 1.93GHz under Boost, which means we'll hit 2GHz without a problem with some overclocking.

The 8GB of GDDR5X sits at its default 10GHz frequency, but there's an overclocked BIOS that will allow for higher speeds which we all want. Colorful is doing something different here, with a 4-slot form factor - even though the card is a 3-slot design, the separate waterblock on the back takes up additional space, requiring 4 slots in your PC.

Colorful powers its new iGame GTX 1080 KUDAN with 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but the company has deployed a high-performance, custom PCB that provides higher overclocks and increased stability. It's an insane card, with an estimated price of somewhere between $800-$900 when it launches late-December or early-January 2017.

Following NVIDIA's earlier release of Watch Dogs 2-optimized drivers, AMD has released its own.

Apart from improving that game experience, these drivers -- numbered 16.11.5 -- include a CrossFire profile for Dishonored 2 in DirectX 11, and fix flickering in the Division and Battlefield 1 when using CrossFire.

Hit the source for the download and/or known issues list. Otherwise, boot Radeon Settings and grab the drivers. If you want to remain on the cautious side, use AMD Clean Uninstall Utility before installing 16.11.5 to ensure no issues arise from overwriting your old drivers.

NVIDIA has released its new 376.09 drivers, specifically aimed at optimizing three major titles.

The first is Watch Dogs 2, due out tomorrow. Word is both the game design and PC optimization are much improved over the first game, so you should probably give it a shot if you wrote it off after the last go round.

The other two are Capcom's comedy zombie smasher Dead Rising 4 (due out December 6), and Steep, Ubisoft's winter sports game (due out December 2). You hardly see any winter sports games, especially on PC, so that's definitely one to look forward to, especially with NVIDIA's optimizations.

Details on the HIS single-slot Radeon RX 460 Slim-iCooler OC 4GB graphics card have emerged, with the new card being a single-slot solution packing the Polaris architecture.

HIS will be the first AIB partner with a single-slot Radeon RX 460, with the card packing its upgraded iCooler. HIS has used a strong lion image on the card, which makes the single-slot card look awesome. The Slim-iCooler itself has a 0dB fan, with the 50mm fan spinning up only when the GPU hits 60C.

HIS has overclocked the GPU, with the Polaris 11 chip running at 1220MHz, while the 4GB of GDDR5 runs at 7Gbps.

A few weeks ago we looked at the mid-range market and DX12 performance with Battlefield 1, where we versed the AMD Radeon RX 480 against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 - with AMD coming out on top.

We've done it again, this time with some higher-end graphics cards with the older HBM1-based Radeon R9 Fury X and the newer, 16nm-based GeForce GTX 1070 from NVIDIA. The results are impressive to say the least, but AMD loses in a big way in DX11 mode in Battlefield 1 - and completely, and utterly swings it around with DX12 leadership.

Do you want to see more GPU showdowns like this?

EVGA has been in the headlines over the last couple of weeks over their GeForce GTX 1080 FTW catching fire, and one user even caught it on video - but there were obviously questions surrounding this issue.

Our friends over at GamesNexus, and Steve with his glorious lock of unicorn-quality hair™ has investigated the EVGA VRM thermal issues, concluding that it's not the killer of the cards. GamersNexus did state that EVGA isn't shining perfectly here, adding that "Overlooking thermal pads was silly, if only because their performance is measurably worse in at least one aspect when compared to competition".

They spoke with EVGA, with the company saying they're getting about 200 DPPM (Defective Products Per Million), which means for every 1 million cards shipped to consumers, 200 are defective. GamersNexus are still strict on EVGA, wrapping up: "To restate: This isn't saying EVGA is in the right. The card could have been designed better, and there are still failures, it's just not the reason everyone seemed to think. Maybe bad caps, maybe the usual mix of workmanship / supply-side quality control, but not the VRM temperatures".