Graphics Cards - Page 237

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.

Now here's something interesting that's going around the Internet just before the New Year hits in North America. Several sources are claiming that the next generation architecture from AMD, previously thought to be codenamed Arctic Islands, might actually be called "Polaris".

The sources of the supposed leak, HWBattle and WCCFtech are citing the information based off of a photo that doesn't appear to have any context whatsoever to corroborate the evidence. WCCFtech is also reporting that the Polaris name was tweeted about just before the RTG Summit was held by AMD.

The photo, however, has recently been taken down from HWBattle at the request from the leaker of the image and in its place is a cautionary statement from slides that are no longer under embargo from AMD that references the codename "Polaris" as well. The tweet above also specifically refers to Polaris being 2.5x brighter today than it was in the time it was first observed. That number might have significance. I can say that we'll just have to wait and see. Perhaps more information will be revealed at CES. I'd take the above information with a huge pile of salt, however. The information could very well be fabricated and not necessarily correlative to anything.

After promising that their dual GPU video card would be released in late 2015, AMD has delayed its Radeon R9 Fury X2. The reason? Because they expected the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to be out in late 2015, but both VR headsets were delayed into early next year, forcing AMD to delay its dual-GPU efforts.

Hardware.fr talked with AMD, which said: "The product schedule for Fiji Gemini had initially been aligned with consumer HMD (Head Mounted Display) availability, which had been scheduled for Q415 back in June. Due to some delays in overall VR (Virtual Reality) ecosystem readiness, HMDs are now expected to be available to consumers by early Q216. To ensure the optimal VR experience, we're adjusting the Fiji Gemini launch schedule to better align with the market". AMD continued: "Working samples of Fiji Gemini have shipped to a variety of B2B customers in Q415, and initial customer reaction has been very positive".

AMD has reportedly sent out key people their new dual Fiji card, with these lucky people including DICE god Johan Andersson. We should expect AMD to show off the "Gemini" dual-GPU card at CES hopefully, but I think we're going to see an April-June launch - possibly at Computex in early June 2016.

An industry insider has indicated to the Korea Electronic Times that Samsung will be mass producing Greenland graphics chips for AMD starting in the second quarter of 2016. This follows the recent news GlobalFoundries will be producing for AMD, so it has two partners on its hands as of now.

Word is AMD will be "fluidly regulating" how many chips are produced by each company based upon yield and other factors.

It's said Greenland, which is based on the 14nm FinFET process technology, is twice as efficient as the 28nm Fiji. It's also said that shortly after Greenland begins production, Zen production will begin, and will also see production split amongst Samsung and GlobalFoundries facilities.

It looks like AMD's next-gen GPU will be arriving in Q2 2016, which is the rough timeframe that we expected from all the rumors over the last few months.

AMD's new part will be made on the 14nm process by Samsung and GlobalFoundries, with it reaching mass production at the end of Q2 2016 - or in June. This is perfect timing for Computex 2016, as we saw the rumors - and the TweakTown exclusive during Computex 2015 that the new card would be called the Radeon R9 Fury X, and not the Radeon R9 490X that the world thought.

The new GPU will feature HBM2, which will not only increase the amount of VRAM that the new GPU will have - up from the 4GB of HBM1 found on the current Fiji cards like the Fury X and R9 Nano - but it will also see an increase in memory bandwidth. HBM1 allows for 512GB/sec, while HBM2 drives the memory bandwidth numbers through the roof to over 1TB/sec. We should expect to see cards from AMD featuring up to 18 billion transistors, and up to 16GB and even 32GB on the professional cards in 2016.

Today Taiwanese PC hardware maker BioStar has launched its new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti OC video card aimed at gamers on a budget.

BioStar's new GeForce GTX 750 Ti OC GPU is based on NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture and sports 2GB GDDR5 VRAM on a 128-bit bus. The card's main selling point is its new OC revision: the GPU's 640 CUDA cores are factory overclocked to 1127Mhz and can be further pushed to 1178Mhz speeds to boost frame rates and performance for DirectX 11 gaming. As far as a cooling solution, BioStar's GTX 750 Ti OC revision features the company's GAMING FPS dual-fan setup that's optimized to mitigate heat during overclocking or normal use.

The card can hit a max resolution of 4096 X 2160 via digital output, but doesn't come equipped with a Display Port outlet, instead featuring Dual-DVI ports and a single mini-HDMI. BioStar's GeForce GTX 750 Ti OC can perform alongside other NVIDIA GPU's in SLI, and is specifically designed to complement BioStar-branded motherboards.

SAPPHIRE Is preparing a new Radeon R9 Fury Nitro card, something that will be a slight step up on its R9 Fury Tri-X. SAPPHIRE's new R9 Fury Nitro will feature a custom PCB, and so much more.

The Fiji PRO GPU will reportedly be clocked at 1050MHz, with the card being a little longer than the current R9 Fury Tri-X model - the Nitro measuring in at 307 x 125 x 45mm, while the Tri-X model measured in at 300 x 110 x 400mm. SAPPHIRE will allowing the R9 Fury Nitro to expand a little wider too, moving to a 2.5-slot card, versus a 2.2-slot card from the Tri-X model. SAPPHIRE's new Radeon R9 Fury Nitro will still use 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but the custom PCB can be seen as significantly larger than the Tri-X model - so expect some higher power draw on the Nitro.

This means we can hope for some decent overclocking on the SAPPHIRE R9 Fury Nitro, and if SAPPHIRE has been provided approval by AMD for overclocking the Fiji GPU, that means other AIB partners can't be too far behind. The R9 Fury Nitro will still rock the same 3584 stream processors, 4GB of HBM1 on a 4096-bit memory bus providing 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors will require 275W of power. The R9 Fury Nitro will include 3 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI and 1 X DVI-D (compared to the Tri-X which had the same display output configuration, minus DVI). As for pricing, that's TBD for now.

It looks like AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners are preparing new Radeon R9 390 video cards with 4GB of VRAM, compared to the 8GB of framebuffer on the current R9 390 models.

The new Radeon R9 390 4GB models will feature the Grenada Pro GPU, which is a revised version of the Hawaii Pro GPU on the 28nm process. This means we'll see 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a GPU clock speed of 1GHz. The 4GB of GDDR5 will be clocked at 1.5GHz (6GHz) with a 384-bit memory bus. The original R9 390 8GB models were aimed at 4K gaming, but the new 4GB models should hit the 1080p/2K gaming market, with more than enough horsepower to drive 60FPS at both resolutions.

The Radeon R9 390 8GB models still sell for around $329, while the new 4GB models will fall into the $299 price, or lower. This means that the R9 390 will be priced right against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970. As for the models, SAPPHIRE is preparing its Radeon R9 390 4GB Dual-X OC card, XFX has its Radeon R9 390 4GB Black Edition OC, PowerColor with its R9 390 4GB OC Edition and more. On average, the new R9 390 4GB model is around 10% faster than the Radeon R9 290, so if you're upgrading your old R9 290, now could be the time.

A couple of days ago we wrote a story about GDDR6 being teased, and that it could've been a rebranded version of GDDR5X... well, that was wrong. Micron reached out to us clarifying it all, saying that "the new memory advancements coming from Micron in 2016 are going to be called GDDR5X, not GDDR6".

They continued, adding that "GDDR5X and GDDR6 are not the same product and Micron has not announced any plans involving GDDR6". This fully clears things up for not only us, but the world. We will see GDDR5X released onto video cards next year, allowing for much higher memory bandwidth - and while it won't be high as HBM1 or HBM2, it will be significantly higher than the normal GDDR5 we have today.

AMD's big Crimson Edition driver launched a few weeks ago with many major changes and feature additions. As is often the case with significant releases such as this, there have been problems. First there was the fan speed issue, and now reports have surfaced about an underclocking issue caused by the driver.

Asked about the issue on Twitter, AMD yesterday stated it's aware of it and investigating. The fan issue was resolved very quickly with a hotfix driver, so the same is likely here. In the meantime, if you find yourself experiencing it and/or stutter in games, AMD says you can get around it by reverting to Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta or 15.7.1 WHQL drivers.

We heard about NVIDIA using GDDR5X on its next-gen Pascal-based offerings, and shortly after it was rumored that AMD would also use GDDR5X on their forthcoming 14nm-based parts. A new report has surfaced about GDDR6 arriving in 2016, which could be a rebranded name for GDDR5X - before it was even allowed to be released.

It makes sense though, as some users might think an 'X' isn't enough of an indication of increased performance between GDDR5 and GDDR5X, with a full number increase from GDDR5 to GDDR6 being a much better marketing strategy. The new GDDR6 is under development at Micron, but we don't know anything on the performance or specification side of things. We do know that the jump from GDDR5 to GDDR5X was actually quite significant, and while not quite as revolutionary as HBM, it was a great jump for cards not based on HBM.

Considering GDDR5 debuted on the 60nm process all the way back in 2007, it has matured greatly since then, where it is down to 20nm on current cards - including the GeForce GTX Titan X. I think GDDR5 and GDDR6 could be used starting next year in cards that are under $400, allowing the rest of the market above $400 to use the much more expensive HBM2 technology.

In the coming weeks, there's going to be a surge in sales for ASUS and its Radeon R9 Fury STRIX card, as reports are suggesting that some users have been successful in unlocking the card to the full Fury X specs - with 4096 stream processors, up from the 3584 on the R9 Fury.

On the XtremeSystems forums, user '2good4you' said he was able to unlock all of the stream processors, leading to rumors that ASUS is using the full-blown Fiji XT GPU, the same used on the Radeon R9 Fury X. But, this trick is limited to specific batches of the ASUS R9 Fury STRIX, and in specific locations - so your results will vary. The steps to get your ASUS R9 Fury STRIX unlocked to the full 4096 stream processors is relatively easy, with OCN user 'TX12' releasing a universal tool that will allow any Hawaii, Tonga or Fiji GPU to be potentially unlocked to its more powerful variant.

Once the ASUS R9 Fury STRIX had its stream processors unlocked from 3584 to 4096, he achieved silent fan operation with a GPU clock of 1050MHz, at 1.19V. Cranking the GPU up to 1150MHz required much higher voltage, with 1.3V required and maximum fan speed. This will depend on multiple factors of the card, like the ASIC quality, and more. But still, receiving a free performance improvement to the Fury X is not too bad at all, and it reminds me of the days of unlocking my previous ATI Radeon cards to their higher-end parts, for free. Oh, those were the days.