Graphics Cards - Page 224

You might be too busy enjoying the Battlefield 1 open beta right now to realize AMD has released new Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers that are ready for both Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Battlefield 1. You can grab the new drivers right here.

AMD says it has also added new DX11 CrossFire profiles for both games, with the new 16.8.3 hotfix solving some of the issues with random blank or colored screens when gaming on Radeon RX 400 series cards. AMD is also working on various other issues, noting that there are a list of things the company is working on as we speak:

Download the new Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.8.3 drivers here.

AMD has confirmed it will be launching its next generation Vega architecture in the first half of 2017, saying it will launch Vega-based graphics cards for the "enthusiast market" in 1H 2017. The last we heard, Vega-based graphics cards were launching in March 2017.

If we look at the Polaris announcement to retail launch, it was announced in December 2015 and released to market with the introduction of the Radeon RX 480 graphics card in the last days of June. If the same timeframe is used for Vega, we should expect an unveiling in December and a launch earlier than Polaris, and maybe sometime in March-April in order to make a bigger impact on the market - especially against NVIDIA's formidable Pascal-powered graphics cards.

AMD's next-gen Vega architecture will be an interesting upgrade over Polaris, which I've been hearing from industry sources will be a superior architecture in many ways. Vega will be using HBM2 technology, so we can expect much more VRAM than the HBM1-based Radeon R9 Fury X offered, which featured just 4GB of HBM1. We will probably see 8GB and 12GB models, but I'd like to see a higher-end Vega graphics card with 16GB of HBM2 - ok, AMD?

I reported on HBM3 a few days ago, but all of the details weren't clear - until the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino this week, where Samsung and SK Hynix shared some more details on the next leap in HBM technology.

HBM3 will offer improvements over HBM1 and HBM2 in nearly all areas, with HBM3 offering more RAM stacks. HBM3 will feature 8 or more stacks connected via through-silicon vias (TSVs), which is up from the 2/4/8 stacks on HBM2. The upgraded HBM3 tech will see individual memory dies of up to 16Gb, up from the 8Gb on HBM2, meaning 64GB of VRAM on next-gen graphics cards will become a reality.

Lower core voltage and twice the peak bandwidth will be offered on HBM3, which is another great thing to see, but HBM3 won't be arriving until sometime in 2019-2020.

NVIDIA revealed its Tesla P100 graphics card at its GPU Technology Conference earlier this year, the first Pascal-based graphics card, and the first HBM2-powered card from NVIDIA. It was a compute monster, and it was only today during the annual Hot Chips symposium that NVIDIA revealed their first die shot of the 610mm2 GPU die.

The company released the GP100 die shot as part of their presentation on Pascal and NVLink 1.0, but die shots have not frequent from both NVIDIA and AMD, so it's nice to see the GP100 die out in the wild. GP100 is NVIDIA's first part that features HBM and NVLink, which is an important time in the company's history, as this exciting technology isn't available for the consumer GeForce graphics cards... yet.

NVIDIA's new GP100 die shot teases the HBM2 interfaces at the top and bottom of the picture, with the 4096-bit memory bus able to transfer information at over 1TB/sec.

AMD is continuing its push against NVIDIA, securing itself more discrete GPU market share from NVIDIA according to the latest data from Mercury Research, which has AMD gaining throughout 2016.

Mercury Research's data shows that AMD has gained GPU market share for the fourth consecutive quarter, driven by strong GPU sales in late 2015 and throughout 2016. AMD has pulled itself up to 29.9% market share, which is a big deal considering this time last year AMD was sitting at around 18%. This is a big deal, as Mercury Research notes in their press release that this is the first time AMD has experienced an increase since Q1 2012.

Where did AMD's gains come from? According to the report: "The decline in low-end units shipped by NVIDIA resulted in substantial unit share gains for AMD in the desktop standalone segment, though by our estimates revenue share was unaffected due to NVIDIA's strong gaming mix improvement". So AMD is hitting the lower/mid-end markets while NVIDIA doesn't just dominate, it owns the high-end market right now.

PCIe 3.0 has been a staple of motherboards and graphics cards for close to 6 years now, but the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) have PCIe 4.0 nearly ready, and man is it going to be a huge launch.

The upgraded PCIe 4.0 specification will allow for double the bandwidth, from 8GT/s to 16GT/s but there are a bunch of other changes we should be more excited over. As it stands, PCIe 3.0 is capable of delivering 75W of power through the connector, with most graphics cards requiring additional PCIe power connectors to get up and running. Well, PCIe 4.0 will be the end of that.

PCIe 4.0 will provide a minimum of 300W, and possibly up to 500W, which is more than enough power for any graphics card on the market. Imagine a world with a new NVIDIA GeForce Titan X graphics card, or a new Radeon RX 480 without the need of PCIe power connectors. It would be a mess-free, clean-looking gaming PC - something that is simply impossible today because there's no way around delivering power to graphics cards without the PCIe power connectors.

HBM3 is being worked on by SK Hynix and Samsung and will offer up to 64GB VRAM at higher speeds than HBM2, but a low-cost version of HBM is also in the works, which will feature less bandwidth but a lower cost point than HBM1 and HBM2.

The new low-cost HBM will feature increased pin speeds, from the 2Gbps on HBM2 to around 3Gbps on the new low-cost HBM while the memory bandwidth shifts from 256GB/sec per DRAM stack, to around 200GB/sec per stack. This means the upcoming low-cost HBM could reach the mass market, so we could be looking at HBM-powered notebooks and consumer graphics cards, more so than just the three from AMD that we have now in the Radeon R9 Fury X, Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Nano graphics cards.

When the first wave of HBM arrived, we were blown away by its bandwidth (512GB/sec) but it was the form factor that really made me take a step back, allowing for super-fast graphics cards like the Radeon R9 Nano from AMD. Well, HBM2 is already here and used by NVIDIA on their Pascal-based Tesla P100 graphics card, but not in the consumer space... yet.

SK Hynix and Samsung are working on new HBM technologies, with HBM3 sitting at the top of the hill. HBM3 will offer twice the bandwidth, but it will feature a lower cost. Right now, HBM3 is known in multiple forms - SK Hynix refers to it as HBM3 or HBMx, while Samsung calls it xHBM or Extreme HBM. Either way, the next generation HBM technology is an improvement over both of its predecessors in HBM1 and HBM2.

HBM2 offers 256GB/sec of bandwidth per layer of DRAM (1024GB/sec total), while HBM3 doubles that to 512GB/sec (2GB/sec+) of memory bandwidth. Better yet, HBM3 should usher in higher-end graphics cards with 64GB of HBM3, which will just be incredible. I don't think we'll see HBM3 on consumer graphics cards anytime soon, but the low-cost HBM technology that is on the way will instead be used - that or GDDR5 and GDDR5X which still offer great performance.

MSI has just announced its new GeForce GTX 1060 3G range of graphics cards, which will be mostly the same as the normal GTX 1060 except it has 3GB of VRAM instead of 6GB of VRAM.

There will be five different models of the GTX 1060 3GB from MSI, with the GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X 3G, GTX 160 GAMING 3G, GTX 1060 ARMOR 3G OCV1, GTX 1060 ARMOR 3GV1, and GTX 1060 3GT OC graphics cards. There are varying clock speeds, with the GTX 1060 GAMING X 3G featuring its GP106 GPU clocked at 1594/1809MHz for base/boost, respectively. The GAMING X cards will feature MSI's infamous TWIN FROZR VI cooling technology, while the ARMOR models will feature the ARMOR 2X cooling tech.

As for pricing, we should see MSI's GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING 3G priced at around $215, while the GAMING X will be a little more expensive, and the ARMOR models a little cheaper.

NVIDIA has released its 372.54 GeForce driver, and with it comes cool feature additions and key optimizations for new and upcoming games as well as GTX-10 Series laptops.

Games helped this time are No Man's Sky (which now supports SLI, and possibly gets some general performance love), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (general optimizations and SLI support), Obduction (which features NVIDIA VRWorks' Multi-Res Shading for better framerates), F1 2016, and Paragon (beta).

As for the laptops, you get improvements to BatteryBoost and a DPC fix for single-GPU systems.

Intel's current Extreme Rig Challenge is still going, with the biggest custom PC makers in the US competing to make the most extreme gaming PC around Intel's new Core i7-6950X processor and Intel SSD 750 Series drive. All you have to do is tweet towards whoever you think has the best PC, but now you can win a graphics card for just voting for one of the PCs.

AVADirect is sitting in fourth position under NXIC PC, Origin PC and Digital Storm - and are now giving away a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card in order to say thanks for the support during the Intel Extreme Rig Challenge. AVADirect is letting you enter the competition to win the GeForce GTX 1060 daily, so you can vote 20 more times before it ends.

Which gaming PC will you be voting for? If you want to win the GeForce GTX 1060, just visit AVADirect's website and vote!

AMD has now finished the launch of its entire desktop GPU stack of its Polaris-based graphics cards, with the new Radeon RX 480, RX 470 and RX 460 now released and in gamers' hands. The next thing for AMD is the next-gen Vega architecture, but before that - we'll see another release from AMD with the Polaris architecture.

Chris Hook, the Senior Director, Global Marketing and PR for Radeon Technologies Group has teased on his personal Facebook wall that the above image is from the "Vega launch venue", adding "Shh, don't tell the press...". AMD first teased the next-gen Vega architecture during the Capsaicin event at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, and then again when RTG boss Raja Koduri celebrated a Vega development milestone in June.

Now, how close are we to the reveal of Vega? Well, I think we're a little further off than you might think. In the next couple of months, AMD will follow the release of its Radeon RX 480 with a faster version, and I don't think it'll be the Radeon RX 490 - but maybe the Radeon RX 480X. An improved graphics card after the power draw issues that plagued its launch, with a revamped PCB and cooler, alongside a more finely tuned Polaris 10 GPU. But Vega? AMD has said that Vega will use HBM2, and I can't see AMD diving into HBM2 head first anytime this year as their GPU roadmap has Vega coming in early 2017.

NVIDIA flew a bunch of tech press and YouTubers out to London for the announcement of its Pascal-based GeForce graphics cards making their way into gaming notebooks. During the event, NVIDIA announced that the GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 would be finding their way into various gaming notebooks in all different shapes and sizes.

First, the specs: the top of the line GeForce GTX 1080 will feature 2560 CUDA cores and a 1733MHz boost clock with 8GB of GDDR5X at 10GHz. This is the identical CUDA core count and VRAM on the desktop GTX 1080, while the GPU boost speeds are down from the ~2GHz or so on the desktop GTX 1080.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 has been slightly bumped up from its desktop counterpart, with 2048 CUDA cores, 1645MHz boost clock, and the same 8GB of GDDR5 at 8GHz that is found on the desktop part. The mid-range GTX 1060 has the same specs as its desktop version, with 1280 CUDA cores and 1670MHz boost, with 6GB of GDDR5 at 8GHz.

NVIDIA has been absolutely dominating the high-end graphics card market for a while now, and even more so with the release of the Pascal architecture and the GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070 - and then the monster that is the new Titan X.

Well, according to the latest rumors from Baidu user USH Ishimura, NVIDIA's next generation Volta architecture is going to be an absolute powerhouse. The user said that the successor to the GP104 (which is the GPU that powers the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070) will offer "really strong" performance.

The rumor continues, adding that there will be three high-end gaming graphics cards unveiled with the next-gen Volta architecture. Right now under the Pascal architecture, we have the GP102 which powers the Titan X, GP104 which powers the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, while the GP106 powers the mid-range GTX 1060.

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards are made on the 16nm FinFET process, with NVIDIA contracting long term partner TSMC to manufacture the Pascal-based GPUs.

According to South Korean newspaper Chosun Biz, Samsung has secured a contract manufacturing order to make NVIDIA's next-gen GPUs. Chosun Biz said that Samsung will make the next-gen GPUs using its 14nm process before the end of the year, based on the Pascal architecture.

This is interesting news for a few different reasons; firstly, NVIDIA shifting to the 14nm node is an interesting move since it seems to have nailed the 16nm node with its GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 graphics cards. Secondly, does this mean Volta has been delayed and we're going to see a 14nm-based Pascal refresh in early/mid-2017?

NIVDIA is on the eve of launching its mobile GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards, with VideoCardz providing some new details on what the mobile versions of Pascal will deliver.

According to the site, Clevo is already teasing its GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070 powered gaming notebooks, which can be configured up to the desktop Core i7-6700K processor. Clevo's new P870DM3-G gaming laptop will arrive with a 17.3-inch display that can be optioned as a 1080p or 4K panel, both with NVIDIA G-Sync technology. There will be support for up to 64GB RAM, but we're all here to know how fast the mobile GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070 is, right?

We know that the mobile GeForce GTX 1070 will feature more CUDA cores than its desktop counterpart, as they would be trying to reach the same performance in a notebook, as we have on a desktop. This would be an interesting move, as it means NVIDIA is not cutting down the GTX 1070, but beefing it up in CUDA cores. As for the VRAM, we're expecting the full 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8GHz, with a 256-bit memory bus and 256GB/sec memory bandwidth - not too damn bad for a gaming notebook, huh?

NVIDIA is preparing some pretty delicious mobile GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, and according to the latest rumors it could offer similar performance to the desktop GeForce GTX 1070, and nearly as fast as the desktop GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

This means the upcoming mobile GTX 1070 would be faster than the current GTX 980 that's for notebooks, but to be nearly as fast as the desktop GTX 980 Ti, which is considerably faster than the GTX 980? Impressive stuff. The report has the GPU clock on the mobile GeForce GTX 1070 reaching 1822MHz, while the typical boost sits at 1645MHz.

We should hear more information on the mobile GeForce GTX 10 series soon, but if this rumor turns out to be true, we could be in for some seriously fast gaming notebooks that could also be thinner and more power efficient.

AMD has officially launched its new Radeon RX 470, the second graphics card powered by the new Polaris architecture and made on the 14nm FinFET process. AMD's new Radeon RX 470 starts at $179 and is capable of 1080p 60FPS gaming on a 120W TDP. I have received a few Radeon RX 470 models, with the SAPPHIRE Nitro RX 470 4GB review going up very soon - but I thought I'd brief you on what to expect from the new $179 graphics card from AMD.

Inside, we have 2048 stream processors with up to 4.9 TFLOPs of performance and 32 compute units, this is joined by 4GB or 8GB of GDDR5 RAM at up to 7Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus, providing 211GB/sec memory bandwidth.

The Polaris architecture is about as future-proof as you can get, including DisplayPort 1.4 which supports up to 8K 30Hz displays as well as 4K 120Hz which isn't far away. HDMI 2.0 is finally here, after the Fiji architecture being let down without 4K 60FPS support through HDMI 1.4 at the time. We also have HDR display, which will allow High Dynamic Range monitors to provide Polaris-based graphics cards like the Radeon RX 470 with an experience that really is like no other. The Radeon RX 470 has FreeSync support, with over 80 monitors powered by FreeSync now on the market.

My review of NVIDIA's new Titan X graphics card will be up in the next couple of hours, and it's completely glowing - due to the fact that the Pascal-based $1200 graphics card has amazing performance.

But, I like the push the boundaries of everything that I test, so I set up my triple 4K monitor rig and cranked the resolution up to 11,520 x 2160 and tested out the new Titan X to see if it would have the same ~20% or so performance benefit over the GP104-based GeForce GTX 1080. Well, I was wrong - it's faster than that, with a huge 51.4% lead in Heaven so far.

I'm currently testing a few other games at 11,520 x 2160 and will write a full article up once it's done - but for now, a 51.4% increase in Heaven at this mammoth resolution is making me weak at the knees.

NVIDIA's new Titan X was launched in the last few hours, and while it's priced at a wallet-busting $1200 - it has already sold out on NVIDIA's website.

NVIDIA's GeForce.com website is the only place in the world where you can buy the Titan X graphics card on its own, and I've just checked the site to get some detailed specifications for my own review (which is coming as fast as my fingers can type) - and it is listed as "Out of stock".

The new Titan X is a monster of a graphics card, with 12GB of GDDR5X (up from the 8GB on the GTX 1080) and a nice bump in performance over the impressive GTX 1080. We'll have some content on it flowing in the next few days, but considering they're already sold out - I'm blown away with the response so far.