Graphics Cards - Page 240

According to the latest data from JPR, NVIDIA has pushed into owning 81.9% of the GPU AIB market. AMD on the other hand, dropped from 22% to just 18% this quarter, and when looking at the year-over-year data, AMD has dropped down from 38%.

JPR's report finds that total AIB shipments decreased this quarter, down to 9.4 million units. AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased by a sharp 33.3%, while NVIDIA's dropped 12%. JPR also noted that the "demand for high-end PCs and associated hardware from the enthusiast and overclocking segments has bucked the downward trend and given AIB vendors a needed prospect to offset declining sales in the mainstream consumer space".

With MSI enjoying the fruits of its labor with the just-released MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning, we should all turn our attention to ASUS which just teased that they've got their ROG MATRIX GeForce GTX 980 Ti and ROG MATRIX Radeon R9 Fury on their way.

The company will reportedly unveil the two new enthusiast video cards during IFA 2015 on September 2. The new ROG MATRIX cards look like they'll feature the same cooler shroud as previous cards, but the color theme has changed a little - and we think it looks great. It looks like both ROG MATRIX cards could be dual-slot cards, boasting improved PCBs, much higher clock speeds, and much more.

We should definitely expect a new ROG MATRIX card based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but it shouldn't be too far out of our expectations to see a new ROG MATRIX card based around the AMD Radeon R9 Fury as well as the Radeon R9 390X. We will be reporting on any new video card launches from ASUS as they happen.

It looks like we're just weeks away from the official release of AMD's Radeon R9 Nano, with DGLee from IYD.kr posting up some of the best shots of the Radeon R9 Nano yet.

Thanks to the tear down on the card, we get a better look at the small PCB that the Radeon R9 Nano features, with its single 8-pin PCIe power connector powering the card. We have a full Fiji GPU inside, the same chip that powers the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X. The entire card measures in at just 15cm, sitting just over the PCIe connector itself.

As for the price, we are expecting it to fall under $499. AMD's Radeon R9 Nano has a TDP of 175W, and should offer performance similar to that of the Radeon R9 290X (so around 5-10% less than the rebadged R9 390X and less than the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X, obviously. But for its size, this is one of the more exciting cards in AMD's Fiji-powered line up.

One of the more surprising video cards in AMD's new Fiji-powered lineup was the super-small Radeon R9 Nano, which is only as long as the PCI Express x16 port that it gets installed into.

The Radeon R9 Nano uses the same Fiji GPU that the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X are based on, with 4GB of HBM on-board. AMD is teasing that the R9 Nano has 2x the performance-per-watt compared to the Hawaii-based R9 290X, which is quite the claim. Especially when you consider that the R9 Nano will be using just 175W of power.

As for the performance compared to the Radeon R9 Fury X, it will reportedly have up to 85-90% of the performance that the Fury X does, leaving it toe-and-toe with the R9 Fury. If this is true, the R9 Nano will become AMD's most exciting video card released out of all of the Fury and 300 series cards.

We've been hearing about AMD's next generation GPUs for a while now, but it looks like they're beginning to take more form. It's being reported that AMD's upcoming 'Greenland' GPU will be an entirely new microarchitecture, with development on Greenland starting some two years ago.

But more interestingly, rumor has it that it's not just going to be yet another Graphics Core Next architecture (GCN), but it'll feature a new ISA (instruction set architecture) that will be so different to GCN, that it will be very exciting. On the surface, it'll be like previous generation Radeon products, with so much more happening underneath.

Greenland will reportedly usher in twice the power efficiency of GCN, where we can expect these GPUs to be made on the 16nm FinFET or 14nm process, with a serious jump on the number of stream processors when compared to the Fiji architecture. Fiji is the GPU behind the Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Fury X cards, powered by High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. More importantly, it's being reported that Greenland will pack HBM2, with enthusiast level and professional cards packing up to 32GB of HBM2. The consumer orientated Greenland-powered Radeon cards will come in two flavors: 8GB and 16GB, both of the next-gen HBM2 technology.

Today NVIDIA unleashed the GeForce GTX 950 card aimed at gamers who want to play PC games at 60fps 1080p without breaking their wallets.

The Maxwell-based GTX 950 has an entry-level price point of $159 and packs in 768 CUDA cores clocked in at 1021 MHz that can be boosted to 1188 MHz, and sports 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM operating on a 128-bit bus clocked at 6.6GHz. Power will be supplied via 6-pin connector, and the card will draw 90 Watts of power.

Standard NVIDIA performance tech is compatible with the GTX 950 including SLI, V-Sync adaptive sync, and PhysX. This budget model will fully support the new DirectX 12 API and will be able to play DX12 games when they become available.

The last time we had GPU market share numbers, NVIDIA was dominating AMD with 76% of the discrete GPU market, leaving AMD with scraps. This was back in Q4 2014 (with our article released in February 2015), where NVIDIA's best video card was the GeForce GTX 980.

This was before the release of the Titan X in March, and before the GTX 980 Ti in June. At the time, AMD had its Hawaii architecture inside of the R9 290X, and the dual-GPU in the form of the R9 295X2. At the time, all signs pointed to the R9 390X turning things around, but the R9 390X ended up being yet another rebrand, while the R9 Fury X was discovered with our world exclusive during Computex 2015 in June, powered by High Bandwidth Memory.

Fast forward to now, where we're in Q3 2015, and AMD has multiple new products on the market: the R9 Fury X, R9 Fury, R9 390X and a bunch of rebranded 300 series video cards. According to Mercury Research's latest data, NVIDIA has jumped from 76% of the discrete GPU market in Q4 2014 to 82% in Q2 2015. This leaves AMD with just 18% of the dGPU market share, even after the release of multiple new products from Team Red.

According to the latest rumors, NVIDIA is preparing a new mobile GPU in the form of the GeForce GTX 990M. With the GTX 980M already being quite powerful, it still isn't as fast as a desktop GTX 980, but the new GTX 990M will fix that.

NVIDIA's purported GeForce GTX 990M would reportedly be as fast as current GTX 980M SLI configurations, with the GTX 980M being based off of the GM204 die with 1536 CUDA cores. A laptop powered by GTX 980M SLI beats a desktop GTX 980 by around 10%, so for a GTX 990M to beat both of those setups, we're talking about some serious mobile performance.

One of the big problems that NVIDIA will have is power consumption, with the GTX 980M SLI using around 180W TDP. Either NVIDIA is going to have to work some magic on the purported GTX 990M, or we're looking at around 150-180W TDP on the mobile GPU. After using the ASUS ROG G751 gaming laptop and its included GeForce GTX 980M for a few months now, it doesn't get too hot or loud at all. All NVIDIA would need is some half decent cooling, which all gaming laptops feature these days, and we could be looking at mobile 4K 60FPS gaming on the GTX 990M.

It looks like MSI is preparing what could be the best GeForce GTX 980 Ti on the market with its 980 Ti Lightning card, a beast that the company was teasing at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany over the last few days.

MSI confirmed they were making their GTX 980 Ti Lighting, with no prototype card on display. We should expect the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning card to sport the usual custom PCB, beautiful design and kick-ass cooling. Rumor has it MSI is going to have a stock GPU clock of 1217MHz resulting in a Boost clock of 1342MHz, but I would dare say we should expect more than that considering the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition is clocked higher than that, without a custom PCB.

We should hopefully have the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning in for review as soon as its released, so we'll keep you updated on what could be the most exciting GM200-based card yet.

An interesting turn of events for AMD's latest video cards has been discovered by 'TX12' from the OCN forums, where he has a universal tool that lets you unlock any Hawaii, Tonga or Fiji-based GPU to its full potential.

Some users have already managed to unlock their air-cooled Radeon R9 Fury cards to a full-blown Fury X, which requires water cooling. In the case of the Fury X, AMD disabled a number of CUs on the GPU, but this universal tool lets you unlock them and enjoy the full 4096 stream processor count from the Fury X, on your air-cooled Fury.

There are dangers of doing this, as you can completely brick your very expensive card, so use caution. The thread on the OCN forums has a full rundown of how to do it, with benchmarks and screenshots of a fully unlocked Fury to Fury X, increasing its stream processor count from 3840 to 4096.

We knew that NVIDIA's Pascal architecture was going to deliver a massive update over the current Maxwell-based offerings in the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Titan X, but the transistor count is going to be insane. Titan X features 8 billion transistors while Pascal will reportedly contain an insane 17 billion transistors.

NVIDIA will be tapping TSMC's 16nm process for its Pascal architecture, as well as using HBM2, which should see a massive increase in horsepower. But even with 17 billion transistors, the Pascal-based GPU will be "significantly smaller" than the 28nm-based Maxwell GPUs, reports Fudzilla. NVIDIA will be making use of HBM2 on the next-gen video cards, offering up to 32GB of the next-gen VRAM technology on its highest end card.

Expect around 50% or more performance over the already fast GTX 980 Ti, which will see NVIDIA easily dominate AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X. But where does this leave AMD? Right now, AMD is in dire need of a huge architectural change, as Fiji didn't really bring anything new to the table. All AMD has done is used HBM1, but it's benefits weren't really shown on Fury X, apart from the card being smaller than usual. NVIDIA is really going to leapfrog AMD next year with its triple-punch in 16nm + Pascal + HBM2.

It looks like NVIDIA is all systems go to launch its Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 950 next month according to HWBattle, where we now have some specs and a better idea on price to share.

NVIDIA will be pricing its GeForce GTX 950 at under $150, $50 less than the GTX 960 which kicks off at around $199. The new video card will be based on NVIDIA's successful Maxwell architecture, with a GM206 GPU and 786 CUDA cores, 2GB of GDDR5 spread out over a 128-bit memory interface. We should expect memory bandwidth to be around 107GB/sec, while it uses a single 8-pin PCIe power connector using up to 90W of power.

NVIDIA will position this at MOBA and casual gamers, but that sub $150 pricing is going to be very enticing for many gamers.

While the Radeon R9 Fury X is already one of the smallest flagship video cards ever released, the upcoming R9 Nano is going to shrink that down to a whole new level. The R9 Fury X measures in at around 19cm, but the R9 Nano is just 15nm.

How much power does the R9 Nano have behind it? Well, according to some leaked benchmarks, the R9 Nano would feature similar performance to the massive R9 290X, but with half the power consumption. Considering the size of the card, this is quite the achievement, with most of the thanks going to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Another benefit over the Fury X is that the Nano features an air-cooler, and not an all-in-one liquid cooler like the Fury X.

Back to the benchmarks, where DGLee from IYD.KR reports that the Unigine Heaven benchmark running at 4K with the R9 Nano pushing out 26FPS. These numbers are from AMD themselves, showing off the bandwidth per stream processor. The R9 290X has 320GB/sec of memory bandwidth, with 2816 stream processors, leaving the R9 290X with 0.1136GB/sec. The R9 Nano with its 4096 stream processors and 512GB/sec bandwidth courtesy of HBM, delivers 0.1250GB/sec. When it comes to the power efficiency, the R9 Nano has 0.152 FPS/watt, while the R9 290X features 0.076 FPS/watt... a large increase in the R9 Nano's favor.

With our exclusive report that AMD would be making just 30,000 units of its HBM-powered Radeon R9 Fury X, the news that it is receiving help from United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) in the form of the company entering volume production of TSVs (Through Silicon Vias) which is used in the production of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory).

AMD has already acknowledged the supply issues of the R9 Fury X, but with the release of the air-cooled Fury and the imminent release of the R9 Nano, these HBM supply issues are only going to get worse. UMC had kept AMD at bay until July 20, where it entered volume production of TSVs, which means the bottleneck that AMD is experiencing, should be gone.

UMC said: "AMD has a successful history of delivering cutting-edge GPU products to market. This volume production milestone is the culmination of UMC's close TSV collaboration with AMD, and we are happy to bring the performance benefits of this technology to help power their new generation of GPU products. We look forward to continuing this fruitful partnership with AMD for years to come".

It was only earlier last month that NVIDIA had reportedly taped out the GP100 process on TSMC's 16nm process, but now we're hearing that we should expect two GPUs from this, both featuring HBM2.

The first GPU will use 8-Hi stacks, while the other will have 4-Hi stacks, both featuring the Pascal architecture, 16nm process, a 4096-bit memory bus and HBM2. The 4-Hi variation of the GPU will be clocked at 1GHz, which will end up as a consumer-orientated GeForce GPU of some sort (the GeForce GTX 1080 if NVIDIA continues along its naming path) while the second variation has four HBM2 stacks at 1GHz, each with 8-Hi.

For those not in the know, the x-Hi (x representing 4 or 8) denotes the number of stacked DRAM dies, so we'll see the GP100 GPU with 8-Hi HBM2 stacks aimed at the professional market (think Quadro, Tesla), while the 4-Hi HBM2 will be the next-gen consumer GeForce card, expected in 2016.

One of the most exciting GM200-based video cards is nearly here, with EVGA all systems go to release their GeForce GTX 980 Ti KINGPIN video card tomorrow, priced at $850.

EVGA is offering its new card with pre-binned GPUs, which allow consumers to choose their GPU ASIC quality before the purchase is made. Inside, we have the same GM200 GPU that powers the reference GeForce GTX 980 Ti, with the 2816 CUDA cores, 176 TMUs and 96 ROPS. But the Base Clock has been increased from 1000MHz on the reference design, to 1203MHz. This results in the Boost Clock being increased from 1075MHz to 1304MHz. With these clocks, it's certainly not the fastest GTX 980 Ti out there, an award that goes to the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition.

Powering the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti KINGPIN card are two 8-pin PCIe power connectors joined by a 6-pin PCIe power connector. This will provide the board with up to 450W of power, which is simply insane. EVGA has deployed an extended PCB on the card with a beautiful custom design sporting extra copper filling for smoother power delivery. 12 layers have been stacked together to form the PCB, with 14+3 phase fully digital VRM will provide the card with all of the power it needs to keep it stable during those overclocking sessions.

Before we exclusively revealed AMD was opting with the Radeon R9 Fury X name for its next-gen, HBM-based video card, we reported on the purported Radeon R9 490X that would arrive in 2016. We knew it would be based on the 16nm process, and use HBM2, but it looks like we were wrong with the name.

During AMD's recent earnings call, President and CEO Lisa Su talked about the company playing around with a couple of its first FinFET designs. Su said that FinFET is going to be very important for the company as we move into the new year. But, she also reiterated that a good design and architecture is just as, if not more important than the manufacturing process - something we definitely agree on.

AMD will be releasing its 'Arctic Islands' architecture next year, its next-generation GPU architecture based on the 16nm manufacturing process, and using the next-gen HBM2. HBM2 will deliver 8GB of HBM2 on a video card, with memory bandwidth of 1024GB/sec - up from the 512GB/sec found on the Radeon R9 Fury X. But what we need to know is: what will AMD call this card? Surely it can't be the Fury X 2, as I'm sure the dual-GPU card coming out later this year will take up the Fury X2 (no space) name. Could AMD release it as the Fury XX? Because I can't wait to see the third iteration: Fury XXX.

AMD will be launching one of its most exciting video cards ever next month, with the High Bandwidth Memory-powered Radeon R9 Nano to launch mid-August, according to company CEO Lisa Su.

Su announced the release window during AMD's Q2 2015 earnings call, where she said: "Fury just launched, actually this week, and we will be launching Nano in the August timeframe". We don't know exactly what to expect, but we do know it's going to be a super-small video card with a TDP of just 175W.

Inside the Radeon R9 Nano, we know that HBM will be used, and that it will have 2x the performance-per-watt compared to the R9 290X, as well as 2x the performance density of the 290X. This will see AMD be the Mini-ITX champion, so if you've got a super-small PC that you need to buy a video card for, the R9 Nano should be the one.

PowerColor (TUL Corporation) has added to its R9 lineup with this 4GB Fury HBM model, said to deliver 60% more memory bandwidth over GDDR5 thanks to this technology advancement.

Tailored towards 4K and VR applications, the PowerColor R9 Fury offers cooling through three 90mm fans, six 8mm heat pipes and a black NI plating clip.

Complete with support for AMD LiquidVR, DirectX 12, Vulkan APIs, AMD CrossFire and FreeSync technology, this card offers a 4096bit memory interface, three DisplayPort outputs and a single HDMI option too. With the clock sitting at 1000MHz, this card looks quite sleek.

One of the main benefits of AMD's Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Fury X cards is their use of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and thanks to AMD's relationship with SK Hynix, AMD has 'priority access' to HBM2, according to WCCFTech.

HBM2 is going to be limited in supply at first, the same problems associated with HBM1 right now, and with NVIDIA set to use HBM2 on their upcoming 16nm-based Pascal architecture, AMD will have the one-up on its competitor. AMD should be able to secure most of the HBM2 produced at the time, which is exactly the position AMD wants to be in, come 2016.

If this is true, it is going to force NVIDIA into a corner. NVIDIA needs to jump to HBM2 with its shift to 16nm, and its first GPU based on the Pascal architecture. But, if NVIDIA finds it hard to secure HBM2 because AMD has 'priority access' to the first batches of the super-fast VRAM, this could cause a big issue for NVIDIA's next-gen cards. HBM2 is expected to drive memory bandwidth to 1TB/sec, up from the 512GB/sec possible on the Fury X, and 334GB/sec on the GTX 980 Ti.