Graphics Cards - Page 231

The final specification for GDDR5X, the successor to GDDR5, has been decided, and though it doesn't allow for quite as much bandwidth as HBM or HBM2, though it's a technology that's a lot easier to implement than the latter, with fewer modifications needed to the GPU design to use.

GDDR5X allows for up to 14Gbps of total bandwidth and because it's based so heavily on its predecessor, it's pin compatible though highly internally revised in order to facilitate actual advancements in memory speed and bandwidth without making something entirely new. How JEDEC and Micron have done this is by increasing the prefetch by double, mandating the use of Phase Locked Loops and Delay Locked Loops as well as being able to transmit data at a rate that's quadruple the actual clock speed. In other words, it's fast. For comparison, GDDR5X running at the top-end 14Gpbs could potentially provide 448GBps of full bandwidth, which isn't too far off of the memory bandwidth of the R9 Fury X.

Micron, one of the leading manufacturers working on GDDR5X, estimates around a 10% power consumption decrease at the same VRAM size. VRAM sizes of 4Gb up to 16Gb can be used with the new specification. The reason for coming out with this new specification is to further address every segment of the market, especially those where HBM2 might not be economical, despite AMD's efforts to implement HBM in all segments of their GPUs. Now all GPUs can enjoy a healthy bandwidth increase for very little, if any, cost increase.

Now that HBM2 is beginning to flow into the market, thanks to Samsung making 4GB HBM2-based DRAM, NVIDIA is getting confident with Pascal - with the latest rumor stating that the company will unveil its next-gen GPUs in the first half of this year, with availability to follow in 2H 2016.

We know this will happen, where my sources tease that both AMD and NVIDIA will have next-gen GPUs prepared for June/July, but I've got a feeling NVIDIA will introduce a next-gen enthusiast GPU at their GPU Technology Conference in early April. NVIDIA is reportedly already playing around with the 16nm-based Pascal GPUs internally, but we should expect GDDR5X- and HBM2-powered offerings, with a GeForce GTX Titan X successor to be unveiled at GTC 2016. We might see the new Titan X with 16GB of HBM2, and possibly a professional-grade Tesla/Quadro GPU with 32GB of HBM2 teased, too.

As for the GP100, I don't think NVIDIA will unveil the GeForce GTX 980 Ti successor just yet as the GTX 980 Ti is still one of the best video cards you can buy. We should see a Titan X successor unveiled - powered by HBM2, followed by a successor to the GTX 980 - powered by GDDR5X. The HBM2-powered offerings will be able to pack 32GB of HBM2, and offer up to 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 334GB/sec on the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and its GDDR5.

GPU's are fantastic tools for completing scientific computational work. They're effective at calculating math that's highly parallel, doing it far faster than any CPU could do alone. And now the GPU is going open-source with Binghamton University's new Nyami architecture that researchers have developed.

Timothy Miller and his colleagues have finally been able to test their open-source GPU design, called Nyami. It's essentially a GPGPU focused design that's borrowed a lot from Intel's Larrabee (Xeon Phi) while still being, at it's heart, a GPU.

This is the first open-source modifiable and synthesizable GPU made by anyone. The architecture has a measure of modularity so that any aspiring researcher or scientist can modify it to their hearts content, provided they have the expertise to do so, though. But really this is revolutionary because now software and hardware can reach a nexus and be developed with the help of the open-hardware community, which is a well supported community. The problem has always been getting an architecture started, which is a highly technical engineering problem. But now the first part is solved, and we might see some great scientific progress that could even spill over to consumer GPU's one day. Just keep in mind this isn't something you'll be playing Assassin's Creed Redundancy on.

There's a rumor floating around the Internet that seems to suggest that NVIDIA is very close to releasing their top-end mobile GPU, the GeForce GTX 980MX as well as the little brother, the GTX 970MX. Keep in mind that these are strictly mobile parts, and not related to the full-fat GTX 980 that's being stuffed into laptops.

There doesn't appear to be any actual source to confirm the imminent release, though they seem to be very adamant that NVIDIA is intent on releasing these high-end mobile parts soon. And these chips will be plenty fast and actually provide power efficiency that'll be necessary in thinner laptops.

The GTX 980MX is rumored to have 1664 CUDA cores, 104 texture units, 64 raster devices and a clock speed of up to 1048MHz on a 256-bit memory bus. This is slightly more CUDA cores than the slightly smaller part, the 980M. Oddly the TDP is only 25W less than the full-blow 980 laptop variant at 125W. That's still a lot of power, and you definitely wouldn't be gaming with a notebook powered by this monster without being tethered to the wall.

AMD's new Polaris chip might have just been caught on the Zauba import/export table, if we can truly believe what other sources have decoded while reading these manifests.

The price of per unit of this particualr "printed circuit board assembly for personal computer(video/ video card)" is such that it lines up with other AMD shipments in the past. It also indicate that the bigger Polaris die which we were able to see at CES, might be well into production. That's good news for us enthusiasts.

But then again, decoding the serial numbers and the entire manifest is very difficult, and even though some might claim that they know that these particular shipments are indeed for AMD and are a chip with a particular architecture, we don't actually know. But it is exciting that at least production appears to be marching on as you read this. Just don't forget the tablespoon of salt. And yeah, it's okay to be excited too. I know I am.

Whether you need to upgrade your outdated Radeon card or want to ensure your PC is ready for the incoming VR boom, we've found a duo of GPU deals that will fit the bill nicely. Today we have two different flavors of AMD's Radeon R9 390's discounted over at Newegg, both of which offer some impressive performances with 4K resolution support.

These sales are complimented by mail-in-rebates, which is par for the course for NewEgg sales. First up we have a PowerColor Radeon R9 390 for just $268 after a $20 mail-in-rebate (regular price $268), and the eggmen are tossing in a free $10 gift card to boot--but I don't think you can use the card for this purchase, only future purchases. The PowerColor R9 390 sports 1x HDMI, 1x Display Port and 2x DVI slots, and requires a 6-Pin / 8-Pin connectors with a 750W PSU.

Next up is an XFX Radeon R9 390 dropped down to $274 after a $30 MIR (original price $304). This card is similar to the PowerColor model, featuring a single HDMI and DisplayPort slot accompanied with two DVI ports. The power requirements are the same, with a minimum 750W PSU and the 6 and 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

During NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference last year, NVIDIA unveiled its new NVLink interconnect that would find its BFF in their upcoming Pascal architecture.

At the time, we wrote that NVLink had 5x the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, with NVLink opening up the possibilities for 8-way GPU setups - compared to the limit of 4-way SLI that we have now. Well, AMD is now talking about its upcoming next-gen coherent fabric, which will offer speeds of an insane 100GB/sec throughout multi-GPU setups. AMD has said that its new APUs will also be supported, with compute machines set to benefit greatly, too.

The big question for AMD is still in the air - but RTG boss Raja Koduri has said that he can't reveal if memory coherency and sharing between the GPUs and APUs will happen with the new interconnect. It would make sense to see it happen, but I'm sure AMD is rolling towards a big reveal in the near future with its Polaris architecture.

We are beginning to find out more and more about AMD's enthusiast-powered Polaris GPUs, thanks to a chat between RTG boss Raja Koduri, and VentureBeat.

During the chat, Koduri said: "We have two versions of these FinFET GPUs. Both are extremely power efficient. This is Polaris 10 and that's Polaris 11. In terms of what we've done at the high level, it's our most revolutionary jump in performance so far. We've redesigned many blocks in our cores. We've redesigned the main processor, a new geometry processor, a completely new fourth-generation Graphics Core Next with a very high increase in performance. We have new multimedia cores, a new display engine".

He added: "In summary, it's fourth generation Graphics Core Next. HDMI 2.0. It supports all the new 4K displays and TVs coming out with just plug and play. It supports display core 4.3, the latest specification. It's very exciting 4K support. We can do HAVC encode and decode at 4K on this chip. It'll be great for game streaming at high resolution, which gamers absolutely love. It takes no cycles away from games. You can record gameplay and still have an awesome frame rate. It'll be available in mid-2016".

Something I mused on about in September 2015 was that AMD and NVIDIA would use both HBM (and HBM2) as well as GDDR5, or GDDR5X on their next-gen cards throughout 2016. Well, AMD has confirmed this news.

Robert Hallock, the Technical Marketing Lead at AMD, explains: "We have the flexibility to use HBM or GDDR5 as costs require. Certain market segments are cost sensitive, GDDR5 can be used there. Higher-end market segments where more cost can be afforded, HBM is viable as well".

This will work out perfectly for AMD, as I think we'll see cards under $350 or so using GDDR5/GDDR5X while the HBM2-powered cards will arrive as enthusiast video cards, priced at $400 and above.

There were some fears when AMD split its GPU division into Radeon Technologies Group, but ATI 2.0 is really hitting the ground running with Polaris, and its continued commitment into VR. I think we'll see 'Big Polaris' powering VR, something we exclusively reported on last week.

During CES 2016 last week, RTG boss and cricket fan (yeah!) Raja Koduri spoke with VentureBeat about wanting to put the GPU division of AMD back into center focus. He said that 2016 is going to be a huge year for the company, as it hits its stride with the excited FinFET process, which will provide more performance per watt, HBM2 (which will provide 1TB/sec memory bandwidth) and the new Polaris architecture.

But when it came to the future of GPUs, Koduri said that VR will drive a large portion of this and that he won't be happy until we get 3D graphics that support 16K screens, and at 240Hz - yeah, 16K @ 240FPS. Just as Neo said in The Matrix: "whoa". Koduri says that this is when we'll reach the point of "true immersion that you won't be able to tell apart from the real-world". Koduri makes me excited about the future of not just RTG, but GPUs and VR, especially with quotes like that.

HBM2 is nearly here, with JEDEC releasing the official specification behind the fastest VRAM we've ever had on a video card, and this is incredibly exciting.

The official specification on HBM2 sees cards ramping up to 32GB, with up to 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth. This is a huge leap in the available VRAM over HBM1, which was limited to only 4GB on the Fiji-powered cards from AMD, including the super-small R9 Nano, Radeon R9 Fury and the R9 Fury X.

The power consumption of HBM2 will be lower than HBM1, with 8% saved over HBM1, on top of the 48% saved over GDDR5. The most important part of HBM is the amount of DRAM stacked, with HBM2 driving it up to 4/8 Hi Stacks (4/8GB) over the 4 Hi Stack of HBM1 (1GB total).

We've spotted some decent discounts on some higher-end video cards from AMD's R9 series fleet, including the ultra-small but potent Radeon R9 Nano and the beefy 8GB VRAM toting Radeon R9 390X.

Newegg is currently holding a sale on a few powerful, future-proof GPU's that are perfect solutions for ultra gaming and beyond. The sale includes a PowerColor Radeon R9 Nano for just $456 with a $20 mail-in-rebate promo code BTEMEFD32, and a Sapphire TRI-X Radeon R9 390X for just $369 after a $15 mail-in-rebate.

Both cards reap the benefits from AMD's R9 series, including support for the DirectX 12 API, FreeSync support for ultra-fast low-latency monitor refresh rates, and EyeFinity technology for multiple monitor setups. Either Radeon R9 card is a great solution for 1080p, 1440p and 4K gaming.

SAPPHIRE has just unveiled the best Radeon R9 Fury yet, with its new Nitro Radeon R9 Fury, something it says is "faster and quieter than any competing product".

The Fiji Pro-powered Nitro Radeon R9 Fury has 3584 stream processors, with the GPU overclocked to 1050MHz. The included 4GB of HBM has the usual 4096-bit memory but resulting in 512GB/sec memory bandwidth, ensuring smooth performance in the latest titles.

SAPPHIRE's new Nitro Radeon R9 Fury features the company's impressive Tri-X cooler, something the company calls "the most efficient cooling solution ever built by the company". The GPU and core components are cooled by a solid copper plate and a slew of copper heat pipes, including the industry-leading 10mm one.

CES 2016 - During our CES 2016 travels, we spotted a big GPU - the big version of Polaris. Not the 1080p 60FPS version that the company showed off in Sonoma at its RTG Technology Summit, but the enthusiast version of Polaris.

We don't know anything about it just yet, but this could be either the Radeon 400 series GPU, or the successor to the Fury X. I'm leaning on the side of the Fury X successor, but it could very well be the Radeon R9 490X - the Polaris-powered successor to the Radeon R9 390X.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of it, and the person showing it to us had a huge grin on their face the entire time. Maybe because of my good looks, but probably because they knew how much I wanted to steal it.

It looks like NVIDIA is already playing around with its next-gen Pascal GPUs, with a new listing spotted on a shipping manifest from Zauba.

NVIDIA's upcoming GP104 will be the mid-range part, just like the GM204 which resulted in the GeForce GTX 980. The new GP104 GPU arrives in a 37.5 x 37.5mm BPA package, which is smaller than the GM204 which arrived in 40 x 40mm. It has more pins than the GM204, with 2152 vs 1745, which will be thanks to the 16nm FinFET process.

The report from 3DCenter says that the GP104-based card will use GDDR5X, where I was the first to ponder that the mid-range (GP104 and under) will be powered by GDDR5X while the higher-end offerings will be powered by HBM2. This will make the GP104 and cards under that much cheaper, versus the more expensive HBM2 technology on the enthusiast products.

The price of the R9 Nano from AMD just dropped by $150 to $499, which makes it a much better value and accessible to more people than it has been before.

In our review we really enjoyed the form-factor and performance given the power target of the Nano compared to it's big brother. In most cases it was 90% or above of the performance of the Fury X while sucking far less power and only being slightly louder. But what we didn't like was the high-price when it wasn't exactly performing at the same levels as the other $649 card in AMD's stable. It just didn't make sense, even if it was a fully enabled Fiji XT. Now that's been fixed.

This allows the Nano to potentiall be a more viable option in the eyes of gamers for their ITX rigs. It can do 4K when paired with the right CPU (and with the right graphical settings), and is now the only card of it's kind at this price point in this form factor. NVIDIA doesn't have anything to compete with it. The 970 ITX flavors are cheaper, but also not nearly as fast in any metric. So now there's no excuse not to at least consider team red when looking at your next minuscule system.

If you're planning on jumping on the VR bandwagon and just need to upgrade your video card, then we've found a good deal for you.

We've seen some pretty stellar deals from Tiger Direct over the last few weeks, including a VisionTek AMD R9 Nano for just $400. The latest sale sees a pretty beefy discount on a tremendous VR-capable video card: an XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X for just $251.99.

The deal shaves a clean $128 off of the card's retail price tag, and arms you with a substantial graphical contender that will carry you through this generation of virtual reality tech. The XFX Radeon R9 290X Black Edition's specifications include 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM, a core clock speed of 1050MHz with a memory clock speed of 5,000MHz, double dissipation Ghost2 Thermal cooling, 2,816 stream processors, and is packed on a 512-bit bus.

CES 2016 - During NVIDIA's CES 2016 press conference, CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage to talk about where NVIDIA is in its journey on automotive technology.

Huang announced that NVIDIA's next-generation Pascal architecture would be powering their automotive efforts this year, with it being as fast as 150 MacBook Pros. But, during my downtime in my hotel to read up on some of my favorite tech sites, I stumbled across AnandTech's piece on Drive PX 2.

One of AT's readers noticed that NVIDIA didn't use Pascal GPUs when Huang held up a prototype PCB with two Pascal GPUs. AT reports: "Kudos to our readers on this one. The MXM modules in the picture are almost component-for-component identical to the GTX 980 MXM photo we have on file. So it is likely that these are not Pascal GPUs, and that they're merely placeholders".

CES 2016 - EVGA prepares for the incoming storm of VR by converting NVIDIA's champion GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPU into a quick and easy solution for VR gaming.

EVGA has announced the VR Ready flavor of NVIDIA's graphics powerhouse GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which supports VR head-mounted displays right out of the box. It's the first card to feature VR-ready HDMI output. The card comes with a 5.25-inch x 3.5-inch front header panel outfitted with front-facing HDMI 2.0 ports and 2x superspeed USB 3.0/3.1 ports for Users can slide in the front header into a PC chassis, making for easy interfacing with VR headsets.

Apart from the front panel setup, EVGA's VR Edition GeForce GTX 980 Ti also sports a mini-HDMI port on the rear side of the card for compatibility with various virtual reality hardware. The card sports two different kinds of cooling solutions, ranging from ACX 2.0+ and a customized blower-type cooler, and EVGA has clocked the VR Ready GTX 980 Ti at reference clock speeds. Pricing and availability have yet to be revealed.

CES 2016 - Within 24 hours of AMD taking the NDA lift off of its next-gen Polaris architecture, NVIDIA announces that its Pascal architecture is being used in its new Drive PX 2 system for cars.

NVIDIA's upcoming Pascal GPU will be pushed onto the 16nm FinFET process, but outside of that we don't know too much. The automotive market will see a liquid-cooled, 250W beast inside of cars that is capable of taking in a crazy amount of information - up to 2500 images per second worth - which will drive the autonomous car market going into the future.

When it comes to video cards, we should expect NVIDIA to unveil its Pascal-based video cards at GTC 2016 in early April.