Graphics Cards - Page 239

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.

We know it's coming, and we can't wait - NVIDIA begins showing off more and more of its new Pascal architecture, teasing the HBM-powered Pascal GPU at GTC Japan 2015 recently.

The last time we saw Pascal was when NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed off a prototype board at GTC 2015 in March, but now we're seeing a slightly different Pascal GPU board than we saw earlier this year. The board features an actual Pascal GPU now that it has taped out, with the consumer GeForce card to feature a huge 16GB of HBM2 while the professional side of things will bump things up to 32GB of HBM2.

The design of the board is very similar to the Fiji-powered cards from AMD, as NVIDIA's Pascal chip is on a similar interposer to AMD. It looks slightly bigger, but we should expect the Pascal-powered cards to blow the doors off of the Fiji-powered cards from AMD. We will see DirectX 12 support, around 17 billion transistors, a 4096-bit memory interface, and so much more. Expect more news on this as we get closer to the New Year.

AMD has released its Catalyst 15.9.1 beta driver, a slight update over the recently released 15.9 beta driver.

The latter improved performance in the Fable: Legends benchmark and The Star Wars: Battlefront beta, but also gave rise to a severe memory leak bug that triggered when resizing windows. That bug is fixed in 15.9.1, so download and install via the source link to your heart's content.

Driver notes are below.

Exclusive: AMD has enjoyed being the first to market with a HBM-powered video card, with the Radeon R9 Nano, R9 Fury and R9 Fury X all powered by High Bandwidth Memory. But it looks like the company might run into troubles sourcing HBM2 in 2016 according to our industry sources.

Our source reached out to us today, saying that they "wouldn't count on [AMD] using HBM2 next year", but wouldn't elaborate further. This is an interesting rumor, because if it were true, it would mean that the use of HBM2 would shift primarily to NVIDIA. NVIDIA's next-gen Pascal architecture is already being tested internally by the company according to the latest rumors, and will rock HBM2. But AMD's next-gen GPU is rumored to rock between 8GB and 16GB of HBM2, is something we don't know too much about yet.

If AMD is in trouble with HBM2 next year, they might be stuck with short end of HBM2 yields. If so, we could see AMD utilizing HBM2 for their highest end GPU, which will most likely be a Fury X successor. Under that, we could see the company possibly using HBM1, but personally, I think HBM1 is something that should be used on mid-range cards for AMD's next-generation product stack.

AMD has added six new discrete, embedded Radeon GPUs to its lineup. The company says these are being released to meet increased demand for "rich, vibrant graphics in embedded systems", and that the additions will "help designers build mesmerizing user experiences with 4K multi-screen installations and 3-D and interactive displays" as well as "address the toughest parallel compute challenges."

The E8950MXM module is intended for power users, where the E8870 series (MXM and PCIe) is for those a little less so, and then there's the balanced, power-conscious option in the E6465 series (MCM, MXM and PCIe). The full breakdown of each from AMD is below.those a little less so, and then there's the balanced, power-conscious option in the E6465 series (MCM, MXM and PCIe). The full breakdown of each from AMD is below.

E8950MXM

AMD released its Catalyst 15.9 beta drivers earlier today. While beta drivers are usually smooth sailing, this was not the case with this release, which contained a memory leak bug. According to the aptly named Reddit user "MemoryLeakBug", it triggers when resizing any window, at which point RAM usage skyrockets to about 1GB per few seconds of resizing.

"AMDJoe" confirmed the issue and says a fix is in the works. In the meantime, roll back to an earlier set of drivers while you wait on a new release. That or just don't resize any windows...

According to the latest rumors, NVIDIA is working on a new dual-GPU video card that would use two of the company's GM200 GPUs, the same GPUs that power the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Titan X, on a single card.

WCCFTech is reporting that NVIDIA held "secret" meetings in NYC last week, but they failed to report that there were meetings in LA, too. We were in LA and NVIDIA said nothing to us about a dual GPU card coming soon, as the event was all about the GTX 980 going into laptops. We might have been left out of the loop of course, but we are throwing a lot of salt across our shoulders on this one folks.

But, that doesn't mean it's not credible. NVIDIA is more than capable of releasing a new dual GPU card thanks to its super-efficient Maxwell architecture. Better yet, the "secret" meetings that were held did concentrate on how the company had shrunken down the board that the new GTX 980 goes onto, so what I will add to these rumors is that with two of these boards, a dual GTX 980 could be easily possible and not break through a 300W TDP.

TSMC has confirmed that it has made the first samples of NVIDIA's next generation GP100 GPU, with NVIDIA now testing the new Pascal architecture internally. When should we expect the consumer release? Sometime mid next year.

NVIDIA has been sent the first GP100 samples to its subsidiary in India, but we don't know anything other than this. The company taped out its GP100 GPU in June, which is going to be made on the 16nm FinFET+ process, and we should see it utilizing HBM2, providing 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth. This will be quite the increase on the 334GB/sec that the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X are capable of, and is double the 512GB/sec that AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X can muster with its HBM1.

The new Pascal architecture should also deliver its own upgrades over the Maxwell architecture that has been so good to NVIDIA across 2015. The GP100 rocks 17 billion transistors, and should see NVIDIA pack in some 6000 or so CUDA cores, up from the 2816 CUDA cores found in the GM200-powered GTX 980 Ti. Personally, I think we might see NVIDIA release multiple Pascal products - where I would love to see a GDDR5-based offering for the cheaper mainstream side, and a HBM2-powered GeForce 1000 series card for the enthusiasts.

The GeForce GTX 980M is already quite the mobile GPU, but as usual, NVIDIA isn't just sitting around doing nothing on the mobile GPU front. The company is reportedly preparing a new, very powerful mobile GPU that would pack the full GM204 GPU.

What's the 'full GM204' GPU you ask? Well, it's the identical GPU that is found on the GeForce GTX 980, the desktop video card from NVIDIA that was released last year. This means we can expect the full 2048 CUDA cores, 256-bit memory bus, and 4GB of GDDR5. We did expect a GTX 990M according to the rumors that we last reported on, but it looks like this new GPU is going to be the GM204-based GTX 980, this time inside of a gaming laptop.

The mobile GTX 980 would feature 2048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPS - just like its desktop counterpart. If we compare this to the GTX 980M, found inside of gaming laptops like the ASUS ROG G751 that we reviewed here, it has 1536 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and 64 ROPs. Moving over to clock speeds, the desktop GTX 980 has a GPU clock of 1126MHz and a Boost clock of 1218MHz while the GTX 980M comes in at 1038MHz, while the new GM204-based mobile GTX 980 will reportedly clock in at 1190MHz.

We have had one of AMD's new Radeon R9 Nano cards for around a week now, and we've only just gotten into testing it after testing out 4-way Fury X cards in a bunch of different games and resolutions.

Well, we just so happened to throw our R9 Nano into our system and straight away went to GPU-z, which said it was an 'AMD Radeon R9 Fury series' video card. But what happens when you throw in the full-blown Radeon R9 Fury X in? It works in Crossfire with the R9 Nano, that's what. The same goes for the normal R9 Fury, which also works in Crossfire with the super-small R9 Nano.

We can't share performance numbers on the R9 Nano until later this week, but we think that our review is going to be something worth reading, that's for sure.

PowerColor has just unveiled its new Devil 13 R9 390 video card, which features two R9 390 GPUs for some serious horsepower. The card is absolutely huge, with a triple-slot design and triple-fan cooler.

The new Devil 13 R9 390 requires an insane 4 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors so that it can draw between 1000W and 1275W of power. But all of that power won't be wasted, as it packs dual Grenada PRO GPUs, each with 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 8GB of GDDR5. Each GPU has 345GB/sec available memory bandwidth, so the card has 691GB/sec memory bandwidth in total.

PowerColor adds that the Devil 13 R9 390 has been "built with carefully-designed Platinum Power Kit and ultra-efficient thermal design. It consists of massive 15-phase power delivery, PowerIRstage, Super Cap and Ferrite Core Choke that provides the stability and reliability for such high-end graphics solution. To support maximum performance and to qualify for the Devil 13 cooling system, 3 Double Blades Fans are attached on top of the enormous surface of aluminum fins heat sink connected with total of 10 pieces of heat pipes and 2 pieces of large die-cast panels. This superb cooling solution achieves a perfect balance between thermal solution and noise reduction. The PowerColor Devil 13 Dual Core R9 390 has the LED backlighting that glows a bright red color, pulsating slowly on the Devil 13 logo".

It looks like NVIDIA is really ramping things up for GRID 2.0, so that it can power an insane amount of virtual desktops thanks to its Maxwell GPU architecture.

GRID 2.0 was announced at the VMworld conference yesterday, where NVIDIA unveiled two new video cards based on their Maxwell architecture. The first is a dual-GPU, high-end card in the form of the Tesla M60 while the other is a single-GPU, high-end offering in the Tesla M6. Starting with the Tesla M60, we have 4096 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR5 and 7.4 TFLOPS of single precision performance. The Tesla M60 is capable of handling 36 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once and uses up to 300W of power.

The Tesla M6 features just 1536 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR5 and it can handle 18 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once. It arrives on a bare board on its own, using up to 100W of power. NVIDIA is coy on pricing at the moment, with both of the new Maxwell-based Tesla offerings being made available on September 15.