Graphics Cards - Page 233

Right off the back of the news that AMD is close to launching its Radeon R9 Fury X2 dual GPU card, news has broken that the company has dropped the price on its Fiji-powered cards in the R9 Fury X, R9 Fury and R9 Nano.

The Radeon R9 Fury X launched with an MSRP of $649 but has dropped to $589 or even $569 after a rebate. The R9 Fury has dropped from its MSRP of $549 to a competitive $499 while the super-small R9 Nano dropped from $649 to $569, or $549 after a rebate. The Radeon 300 series has also received some price cutting love, with the R9 390X dropping from its MSRP of $429 to $379, while the R9 390 drops from $329 to $279.

The mid-range R9 380 2GB drops from $199 to $169, or down to $139 after a rebate while the 4GB version drops from $225 to $179, or only $159 after a rebate. Check out your e-tailer and local retailers to see if these price drops are in effect before purchasing of course.

ASUS has been making video cards for 20 years and is seeing fit to celebrate the milestone with a limited edition golden version of the GTX 980 Ti, pictured here.

They claim it's the fastest 980 Ti available with a base clock of 1,266Mhz and boosted clock of 1,367Mhz, offering about 21% more frames per second over the reference design. As well, it's said to be 30% cooler and three times more quiet during demanding gaming sessions, thanks to DirectCU II cooling tech, which houses a 10mm direct-GPU-contact heat pipe, a 325%-larger heat dissipation area, and two 0dB wing-blade fans. Other specs include 6GB GDDR5 VRAM, 2816 CUDA cores, 7200Mhz memory clock, and a 384-bit memory bus.

Features include a Memory Defroster for LN2 overclocking, a color-coded Load Indicator, a Safe Mode button for easy restoration of default settings, and the environmentally-friendly ASUS AUTO-EXTREME technology for higher quality parts ("Digi+ voltage-regulation modules (VRMs) with 14-phase Super Alloy Power II components - long-life capacitors, concrete-core chokes, and hardened MOSFETs") and more overclocking headroom.

We knew it was coming before the end of the year, but it looks like AMD is preparing to launch its dual-GPU beast in the form of the Radeon R9 Fury X2, very soon.

AMD is reportedly holding a special event in December where they'll release the Fury X2, which should be an interesting card. Considering the Radeon R9 Fury X has 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the Fury X2 might use two Nano cards combined, to keep under that 300W TDP. Where is the news coming from? Well, Johan Andersson from DICE, of course.

Andersson posted to his Twitter account: "Dat feeling when your just arrived closed liquid cooling pre-release GPU turns out to not be so closed after all". If that's not proof enough, we don't have long to wait to see if AMD does indeed unveil the Radeon R9 Fury X2 next month.

Brandishing 768 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory, BIOSTAR's GeForce GAMING GTX 950 is set up for DirectX 12 and 1080p gaming. With further support for NVIDIA PhysX and DSR technology, this new card will set users back only $199 off the shelf.

Outputs on this new product include four monitor support through dual-DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI, with NVIDIA-exclusive features on offer to improve user experience, including GeForce Experience, Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), Multi-Frame SuperSampling, native PhysX acceleration and more.

Branded as DirectX 12 ready, this video card features an LED illuminated BIOSTAR logo with it's own 'Warship design'. More information can be found on BIOSTAR's GeForce GTX 950 here.

Today SAPPHIRE welcomed AMD's new mid-ranged R9 380X GPU to its PC gaming Nitro family. SAPPHIRE has outfitted the R9 380X with its noteworthy Dual-X cooling array, which consists of easily-removable 10cm fans optimized with Intelligence Fan Control (IFC-II), a 10mm heat pipe with a diecast heat sink for improved heat dissipation, and Black Diamond chokes that boost power efficiency and heat mitigation.

The SAPPHIRE Nitro R9 380X features 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM with a 256-bit bus clocked at 1500mHz, with 32 compute units and 2048 stream processors running at 1040mHz. The card can hit high 1080p 80FPS performance in today's demanding games like GTA V, and even delivers 50+ FPS in Star Wars: Battlefront running at 2560x1440p resolution on high settings. The card consumes only 225W of power and needs a minimum power supply of 500W, and hooks up via 2x 6x6 AUX pins.

SAPPHIRE's Nitro R9 380X is priced at just $229, making it a great mid-range GPU that serves as a gateway to 1440p gaming while hitting great performance at 1080p. AMD contends that the R9 380X is a great step up for users looking to upgrade from an NVIDIA GTX 950 or GTX 960, and the new card fleshes out Team Red's R9 300 lineup with another 1440p option.

Hardware.info has leaked images of the forthcoming ASUS, XFX, and GIGABYTE versions of the R9 380X video card in preparing its reviews. The images, now pulled, show the R9 380X has 4GB GDDR5 memory, as previously rumored. As well, you can expect DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort for all display output configurations.

The ASUS card is known as the STRIX R9 380X and is said to come factory overclocked; the XFX card is known simply as the XFX Radeon R9 380X and looks similar to the 380, and the GIGABYTE card -- known as the GIGABYTE R9 380X G1 GAMING -- will employ dual-fan WindForce 2X cooling.

Last we checked in, other specification rumors for the R9 380X included pointed to a 256-bit memory bus, a core clock speed of 1000MHz, and a memory clock between 5500MHz and 6000MHz. We should have these confirmed one way or the other come November 20, if 4Gamer is to be believed.

The latest time we saw the discrete GPU market share numbers, NVIDIA was dominating with 82% of the market. We thought with the release of the Radeon R9 390X and the hyped to hell Radeon R9 Fury X (as well as the Fury, and R9 Nano) that AMD would win back a considerable chunk of the dGPU market in the last three months... well, they didn't.

AMD only took back 0.9% of the dGPU market, leaving NVIDIA with 81.1%, according to the latest data from analyst firm JPR. Back in February of this year, NVIDIA had 76% of the market leaving AMD with 24% of the market. But, we should hopefully begin to see a change in these numbers now that AMD is finally doing something about it, splitting its GPU division off recently into Radeon Technologies Group.

The biggest GPU fight is about to happen, with the shift from 28nm to 14/16nm set to happen next year. Not only that, but HBM2 will be used by both sides, versus just AMD using HBM right now. If that wasn't exciting enough, Windows 10 delivered DirectX 12 to the world, so we should begin to see some truly interesting things begin to happen early next year.

Following the launch of its take on the GTX 950, GIGABYTE is adding five more high-end video cards to its Xtreme Gaming lineup.

First is the Titan X (GV-NTITANXXTREME-12GD-B), which boasts 1165MHz/1266MHz clock speeds, a 7Gbps memory clock, 12GB VRAM, and a 384-bit memory bus.

The GTX 980 Ti comes in two flavours: Windforce Edition (GV-N98TXTREME-6GD) and Waterforce Edition (GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD). The Windforce Edition features the normal air cooling system; Waterforce features an all-in-one closed-loop water cooling system that houses FEP tubes, a 120mm silent fan, and a low-noise pump. GIGABYTE claims full coverage (GPU, VRAM, and MOSFET) and 38.8% better cooling over the reference design -- plenty enough that no additional fans are needed. Both include LN2 BIOS and an extra 6-pin PCI-E power connector for overclockers. As for specs, you get 1216MHz/1317MHz clock speeds, a 7.2Gbps memory clock, 6GB VRAM, and a 384-bit memory bus with both.

NVIDIA doesn't just release video cards for gaming you know? Yeah, we thought so - but check out their latest NVS 810 video card, which has an insane 8 x mini DisplayPort outputs - each capable of taking 4K displays at 30Hz each.

If the 8 x 4K @ 30Hz was a bit too much and you needed some 60Hz display action, you can knock it down to 4 x 4K at 60Hz. Also, we're not just talking about the normal 4K either - which is 3840x2160, we're talking full 4K - 4096x2160. Each of the miniDP ports on the NVIDIA NVS 810 can handle 4K @ 4096x2160. You can install four of the NVS 810 into a single system for 32 display support... yes, 32 x 4K displays!

The board takes just 68W of power, and is a single slot card for systems where you can have them nice and thin - think display-heavy and digital signage systems. As for what makes the NVS 810 tick, we have 1024 CUDA cores thanks to the use of two GM107 GPUs with 512 CUDA cores on each GPU. There's 4GB of RAM, but NVIDIA doesn't specify if its DDR3 or not.

AMD is expected to drop its mid-range Radeon R9 380X next month, based on the Antigua XT GPU, it should rock 4GB of GDDR5 spread out across a 256-bit memory bus.

Gamers have been expecting the release of the R9 380X for a while now, ever since the R9 285 was released last year. The Radeon R9 380X should feature 2048 stream processors, 128 TMUs, and 32 ROPS alongside the 4GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory bus. Earlier rumors had the R9 380X pegged to include a 384-bit bus, but it looks like 256-bit is where we'll sit.

AMD is gracing the R9 380X with its GCN 1.2 architecture, providing it with the same iteration of architecture that the Fiji GPU includes - the chip that powers the HBM-powered Fury range of cards, as well as the R9 Nano. As for power consumption, we should expect the Radeon R9 380X to use between 200-220W, with aftermarket designs of the card to sport better coolers, lower temperatures and possibly higher power consumption - depending on the card, of course.

When we heard whispers of NVIDIA using GDDR5X on its upcoming Pascal GPUs, it made sense. HBM2 is going to be sparse, and with AMD reportedly having 'priority access' to HBM2, the use of GDDR5X is going to come in handy, big time. Not only is NVIDIA said to be set to reveal GDDR5X-based video cards, but AMD will, too.

According to a new presentation, GDDR5X is going to provide twice the data rate per memory access. We're going to see it jump from the current 32B data per memory access, to 64B data per memory access. GDDR5 has hit a ceiling at around 7Gbps, but GDDR5X is going to have a much higher I/O rates of around 10-12Gbps.

It looks as though GDDR5X is going to be used well into 2018, while GDDR5 will most likely be kept for lower-end cards. I think we're going to see $50 - $300 cards with GDDR5, $300 - $500 cards (and possibly higher) with GDDR5X, and $500+ left for the higher-end HBM2 technology. The use of GDDR5X by AMD and NVIDIA is going to save much more money on R&D, because instead of moving over their entire next-gen GPU product lines, they can continue to use GDDR5X, which is not all that different to the current GDDR5 technology.

One of the big deals about DirectX 12 is that you can use two different GPUs, from two different companies - such as an AMD Radeon card mixed with an NVIDIA GeForce card - in tandem, for more performance. AnandTech has gone ahead with quite an elaborate article, looking at Ashes of the Singularity with mixed GPUs running under Windows 10 and DirectX 12.

Ashes of the Singularity is the first game demo that makes use of DX12's multi-GPU Explicit Multi-Adapter feature, which has some surprising results in such an early game. The results using an R9 Fury X + GTX 980 Ti together are surprising, as it comes out on top - even compared to an R9 Fury X and R9 Fury combination at 2560x1440.

The same can be said for 4K, where the R9 Fury X + GTX 980 Ti comes out on top of even the GTX 980 Ti + GTX Titan X combo, as well as the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury combo. But where it gets exciting is with older cards, so for gamers who might own something like an AMD Radeon HD 7970, and have a GTX 680 laying around not being used (or you could pick one up cheap second hand) - the performance addition dropping the second GPU into the system is great. The HD 7970 on its own at 1440pis capable of 30FPS, but when mixed with the GTX 680, it gets bumped up to 46FPS average - not too bad at all, huh?

When AMD released the Radeon R9 Nano, we fell in love with not only its performance (for being such a tiny, tiny card) but its ultra awesome aesthetics. Well, it looks like we can expect ASUS to release a new R9 Nano, but the shroud on the cooler will be white.

According to ComputerBase.de, ASUS has used its own custom PCB (which isn't white) while dipping the shroud in white paint. The fan is still black, but you can't deny that it doesn't look slick. I would've expected something different from ASUS, maybe doing a black and red theme (in line with AMD's reference card) and in line with their Republic of Gamers brand.

But, you can't deny this R9 Nano doesn't look cool. Now I want to build a new black and white themed system with this new R9 Nano from ASUS.

It looks like NVIDIA is testing out a new GPU, with a new 'JM601 graphics processor' spotted on Zauba. The most mysterious part of this is that it's called 'JM601', which is completely out of place, and totally unexpected.

So what do we think the new JM601 GPU is? Well, for one it could be a dual GPU card based on NVIDIA's current Maxwell architecture - think GTX 990 (dual GTX 980s, or heaven forbid, dual GTX 980 Ti/Titan X GPUs). Alternatively, it could be there to throw us off - but the most exciting part is that it could be a huge Pascal GPU and the name used here - 'JM601' - is to throw us off.

The new JM601 GPU is sitting on Zauba where it was sent on October 14, priced at 73,917 INR - which converts to around $1136. This isn't a cheap chip, so we should expect a monster dual-GPU, or this is the first Pascal-based card, possibly with GDDR5X as we reported not too long ago.

It's getting closer to the end of the year, where we're learning more about what the New Year will bring in terms of new GPU technology. AMD has reportedly taped out two of its next-gen GPUs, with "Ellesmere" and "Baffin" both taping out - and both part of the upcoming Radeon 400 series of video cards.

AMD has also reportedly secured itself a major OEM design win, according to a "source with knowledge" close to rumor site WCCFTech. The Ellesmere and Baffin GPUs aren't high-end parts, but they will fill the shoes of the most important part of AMD's graphics portfolio, the performance, and mainstream markets.

These aren't the successors to the Fury range at all, but more the Radeon 300 series that was rebranded earlier this year from the Radeon 200 series. We should expect more news on AMD's new cards in the coming months.

AMD will be in a much better position this time next year, as we should have a full top-to-bottom next-gen GPU release, powered by its Arctic Islands GPUs. During AMD's latest chat with analysts, the company teased its hand for 2016.

AMD CEO Lisa Su was asked about their GPU business being "down quite a lot year over year" from Joe Moore of Morgan Stanley, to which Su responded with: "Yes, so Joe, I think one quarter is good progress. Now you will have to watch us over a number of quarters regain that graphics momentum. And when I think about it, relative to the Fury launch we did have some supply constraints in the third quarter. They were - they are largely solved in the fourth quarter, so I don't think there will be any supply constraints".

She continued: "I think it's also fair to say that the graphics portfolio is quite broad, and so you will see us updating the entire portfolio over the coming quarters". Su added: "We are also focused on delivering our next-generation GPUs in 2016 designed to improve performance per watt by 2X compared to our current offerings, based on design architectural enhancements, as well as advanced FinFET process technology". The biggest tease, is where Su said: "And in the third quarter, we also taped out multiple products in FinFET technologies across both of our foundry partners that are on track to enter production next year".

Microsoft has been quiet about the GPU specifications for its 2-in-1 Surface Book, so enthusiastic Reddit users took to the Microsoft Store, sneakily installed GPU-Z on Surface Books, and found out for themselves what's inside.

The results may be familiar to you, as they're not unlike the 940M. The custom hardware is an upgrade though, including 1GB dedicated GDDR5 RAM, among other things. You can see the specs in the images here, as well as in the rundown below.

We don't know much about AMD's next-generation GPU, apart from the fact that it'll feature HBM2 with over 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth, and some delicious speed upgrades over the more-than-capable Fury X.

The latest news comes from AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, where she teased: "We are also focused on delivering our next generation GPUs in 2016 which is going to improve performance per watt by two times compared to our current offerings, based on design and architectural enhancements as well as advanced FinFET products process technology".

Now, if that's not enough to get you excited, I don't know what is. If we're talking about a 100% jump, we can expect 4K 60FPS in every single game out right now without a problem. It'll also be the perfect GPU for VR headsets, as you'll be needing to pump 90FPS minimum to get the best experience on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. NVIDIA isn't far behind the GPU game, with its next-gen Pascal card also using HBM2 and expected to pack an insane 17 billion transistors.

We heard rumors not too long ago that NVIDIA was internally testing its new Pascal architecture, but this news is even more exciting. Rumor has it NVIDIA has been testing not only the high-end GP100 card, but the GP104.

Some of you might know the nomenclature NVIDIA uses for its GPUs, with the current GM204 GPU powering the GTX 980 and GTX 970 while the GM200 powers the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti. The GP100 GPU will be the monster GPU that will power a new super-enthusiast and professional-orientated card, such as a new Titan X and Tesla/Quadro range, while the GP104 will most likely find its way into a new consumer GeForce product. We don't want to say the GTX 1080, as we really think NVIDIA will change gears with a next-gen product and shift around the product naming.

The latest rumor is that there will be a successor to GDDR5 called GDDR5X, and it will debut with NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce product. GDDR5X will reportedly keep the same 256-bit memory interface we have on the current GTX 980 while ramping up the memory bandwidth to 448GB/sec - higher than the best AMD cards, save the Fiji-based HBM-powered cards. HBM2 is still obviously on the cards, and will include a 4096-bit memory bus at 1GHz with memory bandwidth hovering at 1TB/sec.

AMD teased that its dual-GPU beast was coming earlier this year, but now we're beginning to hear talk of a "Radeon R9 Gemini' shipping from AMD's HQ in Canada.

The Radeon R9 Gemini will most likely arrive to us as the Radeon R9 Fury X2, as it can't succeed the Radeon R9 295X2 because of its name - where if it was the R9 395X2, people would think it features two R9 390X GPUs, versus the Fiji GPU found on the Fury X. The dual-GPU card should feature two fully-enabled Fiji XT cores, the same found on the Fury X, with 4GB of HBM each.

AMD would have the most powerful single video card solution on the market with this card, where it would easy beat the pants off of a GTX 980 Ti or Titan X from NVIDIA. As for pricing, we should expct somewhere over $1000, and most likely headed into the $1199 or so price point. As for availability, we should hopefully hear about this card in the very near future.