Graphics Cards - Page 241

Another impressive addition by this video card brand to add to the wish-list is the newly announced Colorful NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti iGame Ymir-X. Set to offer a big range of features, this card is cooled by a dual-slot, three-fan setup complete with a twin aluminum fin-stack heat sink and six 8mm-thick nickel-plated copper pipes to help draw out heat.

The three fans change speeds with temperature and come coupled with a red LED Colorful iGame logo. Complete with a custom PCB, this 8-pin PCIe powered card uses a 14-phase VRM and silver contact points, doing away with the regular copper offering.

Factory overclocking is just the beginning, with this GeForce 980Ti running at a core speed of 1127 MHz and a 1216 MHz boost with 7 GHz of memory. If all of this isn't enough for you, there's even a toolkit included in the box - but no pricing just yet.

Now that AMD has launched its new Radeon R9 Fury, something we were very impressed with in our review of the SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 Fury, NVIDIA's add-in board (AIB) partners are very silently dropping their pricing on the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and GTX 980 cards.

When NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, it dropped the pricing of the GTX 980 from $549 to $499, but the price has been dropped to $479 after the Fury launched. The GTX 980 Ti has been dropped to $629, down $20 from its MSRP of $649. This brings AMD to the point where they have to look at the price of their Radeon R9 390X, which is priced at $429 or so on Amazon.

It's an interesting turn, and while it's only $20, every little bit helps.

We noticed the annoying pump noise on both of our AMD Radeon R9 Fury X samples, but with cards going to consumers with this noise, it's not good. What is good however, is that AMD is finally addressing the issue, shipping cards with 'sound baffling adhesive' that will make the card quieter.

AMD said in a statement: "We have received feedback that during open bench testing a small number of Fury X cards emit a sound from the high speed liquid cooling pump that, while not loud, is bothersome to some users. While the vast majority of initial Fury X owners report remarkably quiet operation, we take this feedback seriously, as AMD's mission is to always deliver the best possible experience to our Radeon customers".

"While not loud" is quite the statement, as it is incredibly annoying. The question is, how did any of these cards make it out of AMD like this? Did they not test the cards at all, and just send them out? The pump noise is very apparent, to anyone sitting near the Fury X when its under load. AMD continued: "AMD Radeon R9 Fury X customers demand and deserve the best, so adjustments in the sound baffling adhesive compound were applied in the assembly of the high speed cooling pump to address the specific sound a few end users experienced as problematic. This improved the acoustic profile of the pump, and repeat testing shows the specific pitch/sound in question was largely reduced through adjustments to the sound-baffling adhesive compound in the pump".

According to VideoCardz.com, NVIDIA will be launching its new GM205-260 based card as the GeForce GTX 950, and not the GeForce GTX 950 Ti like we reported last week.

This new card will most likely be a "cut down version of [the] full GM206-300 processor" according to the site. The new GeForce GTX 950 will reportedly be available in both 2GB and 4GB versions, with the GDDR5 being spread out on a 128-bit memory bus. The only difference between the GTX 960 and the upcoming GTX 950 will be the CUDA count, and its clock speeds.

We should expect NVIDIA to announce the new cards in the coming weeks.

One of the key features of the new Radeon 300 and R9 Fury series of cards was something that AMD introduced as 'Frame Rate Target Control', which effectively limits how many frames per second that your card renders, which in turn has some serious power savings and limits the total heat output of your card - great, huh?

Jason Evangelho, a contributor for PCWorld has played around with it with some great results. He reports that there's a limited of between 55FPS and 95FPS for most DX10- and DX11-based games. The benefits of FRTC is reduced power consumption, heat output, and fan noise. In games where your new Radeon R9 390X or Radeon R9 Fury X might not be doing much work - in something like League of Legends - the power savings could be immense.

Instead of pushing 200FPS+, you can limit your AMD GPU to your monitor's refresh of 60Hz (for example) and have your card doing one-third the work. But what are the benefits like? Let's start with GPU temperatures:

It wasn't more than 12 hours ago that we reported on what the Radeon R9 Fury will have in store for us, but now we're seeing that the pricing on the upcoming ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX video card.

The ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX will include the 3584 stream processors that will come on the Fiji PRO based GPU, 4GB of HBM, and the awesome STRIX cooler from ASUS. We should expect the ASUS made R9 Fury STRIX to be priced at around $700, which is really jumping into the GeForce GTX 980 Ti territory.

Now we have to hope that ASUS is able to do something with the clocks on the card, because the SP count is down from the Fury X, which is only toe-to-toe and not a total GTX 980 Ti beater. If the R9 Fury can't beat the GTX 980 Ti, this pricing might be far too high for most people.

World exclusive: AMD launched the Radeon R9 Fury X not too long ago, and while it was a great card for 4K gaming, the requirement of a radiator and watercooling setup stopped it from greatness. But, the Radeon R9 Fury is the card that will really see AMD fight back at NVIDIA, but the specs have been kept under wraps, until now.

We were the first to bring you news of AMD calling its next generation video card the Fury X, and here we are again with the first official specs on the Fury. According to our industry insiders, the Radeon R9 Fury will feature 3584 Stream Processors, down from the 4096 on the full Fury X. The Fiji-based GPU will be clocked at 1050MHz, which is identical to that of the Fury X. We have 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory that provides the same 512GB/sec of bandwidth, clocked at 500MHz (1GHz effective). We are being told to expect temperatures of the Fiji PRO-based R9 Fury to be less than 75C, which is considerably higher than the 50C or so from the watercooled Fury X.

The biggest difference between the Fury and Fury X is that the Fury is air-cooled, with AIB partners able to put on their respective coolers onto the card. The other big difference is that the Fiji PRO GPU is what is powering the Fury, with 512 less Stream Processors. We shouldn't expect performance to be that much less, probably 10-15% less than Fury X. But, without that huge radiator and pump, we're going to have an impressive card to combat the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti.

After a week with the new AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, one of the things that has annoyed me was the very loud noise coming from the pump. It sounds like coil whine, and under heavy stress, the Fury X really begins to sound quite loud.

But it looks like a member of the AnandTech has noticed that AMD is shipping an updated version of the radiator with the latest batches of the Fury X. It looks like the first batch that mostly went to selected press and a handful floating out into the world is the only one effected, with the second batch and hopefully beyond including a radiator that isn't as noisy.

The unit that the news of the revised radiator was from SAPPHIRE, so we should expect other AIB partners to use the revised pump as soon as possible.

Forbes' Jason Evangelho has kicked one of the most awesome things I've ever seen for video cards, where he started off by posting a picture of himself on his Facebook cuddled up to the HBM-powered AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

AMD's Roy Taylor kicked in posting his own photo, and then offering $2 to the charity of Jason's choice for every picture, up until $500 is raised for the hashtag #guyscuddlingwithvideocards. Well, I have countless video cards here in my office, so I covered my daughter from head to toe in video cards and snapped the above photo! Great fun!

You can support Jason right here.

Adding to the myriad of announced AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video cards is PowerColor's offering, marking yet another year of AMD manufacturing, continuing since 1997.

Also featuring 4GB of High Bandwitdh Memory, PowerColor has released this card with a core speed of 1050MHz, a memory speed of 500MHz, a HDMI output, three DisplayPort outputs and with DirectX 12 support included.

A 3000RPM fan cools the all-in-one closed loop watercooling unit, a real time eight LED indicator helps keep you informed at all times as to what's going on inside this beast and this 7.5-inch card claims to pack memory into a 94% smaller space than previous renditions. Further supporting Virtual Super Resolution, FreeSync, Liquid VR, and 4K resolution, this card can be researched here.

If you're thinking about upgrading, maybe now is the time as VisionTek announces its launch of a Radeon R9 Fury X card alongside the R9 300 and R7 300 series - all made available from June 24th 2015.

Michael Innes, President of VisionTek is excited for this release, stating in a recent press release that "We are focused on alignment with PC Gamers and are excited to announce the new features embedded in AMD's Fury X design." Also interested in the advancement of Virtual Reality, Innes continued "We believe Virtual Reality will transform the way we experience and interact with our PC. We are embarking on a new universe of entertainment and the new VisionTek AMD powered cards create the required platform for launch."

Offering LiquidVR Technology, Freesync Technology and Virtual Super Resolution, these cards by VisionTek cater towards 1440p and 1080p gaming situations and all feature a similar styling scheme, brandishing a mainly-black color outlay with hints of red.

Soon after the official global announcements came, Club 3D's AMD Radeon Fury X offering has also been unveiled, self-claimed as "the fastest GPU in the world and it's here to take your gaming performance to a completely new dimension."

Boasting High Bandwidth Memory, an all-in-one cooling system, 6K surround capabilities and a marketing spiel tailored towards 4K gaming, the Club 3D 4GB HBM AMD Radeon Fury X seems to be available for purchase immediately, or so as the press release eludes to.

If you're wanting one for yourself, we've been told that websites like Newegg and Amazon should have pricing listed, however after a quick look no results came back positive. Either you're going to have to wait or email them yourselves for a copy of this model.

A few days ago we were in Sydney, Australia for the AMD unveiling event for the new Radeon 300 series and the new Radeon R9 Fury X. During a Q&A session with AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist, Richard Huddy, we asked if the Radeon R9 Fury X could be used in 4-way CrossFire configurations.

Huddy replied saying that you can indeed use the Radeon R9 Fury X in 4-way CrossFire setups, but that the team has already played with 8-way setups under Linux. But, I also asked if it was a problem with the massive radiator that is attached to each Fury X, and that a 4-way CrossFire configuration would be quite hectic, even inside the biggest chassis.

AMD didn't seem to clearly answer the question, but noted that Fury X in 4-way CrossFire has been done before. We have secured ourselves a second Fury X for some CrossFire lovin', so expect some Fury X CrossFire scores in the coming days.

Sure, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X gets all of the attention, but I think one of the best video cards to be released this year is going to be the Fiji-based Radeon R9 Nano. I think we're going to see an entire new class of Mini-ITX-based PCs that will pack a serious performance punch, made possible by the R9 Nano.

The Radeon R9 Nano is a tiny little card, as long as the x16 PCIe port it goes into, and consumes just 175W of power from its single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

As you can see, it fits in my hand without a problem - which can't be said for any flagship video card on the market right now. Just imagine a super-powered Steam Machine or 4K-capable PC that can sit next to your PC, virtually silent, thanks to the HBM-powered R9 Nano.

Exclusive: I've just run back to my hotel room after being at the Australian launch of the new Radeon 300 and Fury line of video cards, where AMD teased their new Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Nano, and the PCB of a dual-GPU based on two Fiji cores using HBM. When I pressed AMD about a release date for the dual-GPU solution, we were exclusively told that it would be "this year".

With only six months of the year left, we should see AMD until what I'm predicting will be the Radeon R9 Fury X2 in November. I also pressed them about the name, but they said they weren't confirming that at this time.

But it was the PCB of the dual-GPU that I wanted to run to first, so while the rest of the Australian media and partners walked to the rear of the room to check out the Fury X-powered PCs and Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype headsets, I rushed the stage to get my hands on the PCB. You can see the PCB packs two Fiji GPUs, both rocking High Bandwidth Memory which you can see quite clearly.

Adding to the myriad of AMD Radeon Radeon R7 300 and R9 300 releases is that of PowerColor and its PCS+ series announcement, marking a long stint of AMD graphics manufacturing ranging back to 1997.

The PCS+ R9 390X/390 models come complete with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 2816 stream processors adding to a 1060MHz and 1010MHz core clock respectively. As for cooling, PowerColor claimed in its latest press release that "the anodized back plate is attached to the back of the card to protect the components as well as helping to lower the temperature" in addition to a fan controller which ensures minimal RPM is upheld in low-use environments.

Supporting Virtual Super Resolution, FreeSync, Liquid VR and 4K resolution applications, the whole range of cards is expected to be released soon with no pricing currently listed.

If silent is what you're seeking, ASUS has now shown off its Radeon R9 390 and Radeon R9 390X cards featuring an all-new triple-fan STRIX DirectCU 3 cooling setup - this technology ensures that all the fans are switched off when the card is at idle, quoted by TechPowerUp as "common desktop / light-3D loads."

With this air cooler said to be identical to that seen in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, ASUS has developed a giant aluminum fin-stack heat sink, attached to the GPU by four 10mm nickel plated copper pipes and cooled by three 100mm fans.

Complete with a 50MHz core overclock when compared to the 1000 MHz reference, the R9 390 STRIX is slightly edged out by the 390X which sits at 1070 MHz compared to 1050 MHz reference.

Adding to the range of video cards on offer is GIGABYTE with its AMD Radeon R9 300 and R7 300 Series, running off its very own WindForce air cooling technology.

With the whole G1.Gaming range being factory overclocked, its GV-R736OC-2GD brandishes core speeds of 1200 MHz out of the box cooled by a single 90mm fan. This sits alongside the GV-R737WF2OC-2GD/4GD (2GB and 4GB models) which sits at a factory overclocked core speed of 1015 MHz and is cooled by a WindForce 2X setup.

The top of the range is pictured through the R9 390 and 390X, featuring 2-slot designs complete with 2 fan WindForce 2X cooling and running at core speeds of 1025MHz and 1060MHz respectively.

Our friends over at Legit Reviews were at the AMD event where the Radeon R9 Fury X was officially unveiled, taking in the beauty that is a triple 4K setup with a resolution of 11,520x2160.

The 11,520x2160 was powered by a single AMD Radeon R9 Fury X running Dirt Rally, with Legit Reviews adding that it "was pushing 60FPS" with AMD telling the site that two Radeon R9 290X cards, or a single R9 295X2 gets around 45-50FPS with the same resolution.

If you haven't heard about Fury X, it's powered by AMD's new Fiji architecture and uses High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). There's a 4096-bit memory bus with 4GB of HBM1 on it, with 512GB/sec of available bandwidth. We will have our Fury X sample arriving next week, so prepare for some very interesting tests to take place.

AMD released its Radeon R9 390X, and the entire Radeon 300 series this week, with our reviews on the SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X 8GB and MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G already up and running.

But what we really wanted to see was the super enthusiast side of things, so we've tested out two of our 390X cards in CrossFire at 4K to see what the scaling is like on them. Well, we were more than blown away with the performance, with 4K 60FPS and above in every single one of our tests. But it was the power consumption that blew us away the most, with up to 805W of power being consumed by our setup.

Yes, 805W. Comparing this to the single Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti in our test system, with the entire rig using 360W, this is a big difference. We found during our normal testing (Battlefield 4 at 1440p with the Ultra preset minus AA) the AMD Radeon R9 390X cards in CrossFire were consuming 760W, but during some of our testing (Shadow of Mordor) the cards were pushing up to 805W.