Graphics Cards - Page 242

With the launch of the new Radeon 300 series from AMD, SAPPHIRE has just unveiled its new Nitro series of products. The new Nitro series from AMD is an "evolution of our market-leading, award-winning, high-end video card technology developed with features designed to be attractive to the majority of PC gamers" says SAPPHIRE. At the same time, the video card maker is also launching SAPPHIRE NATION, which is a new community website for gaming enthusiasts.

The new SAPPHIRE Nitro series is a new high-end range of products, where SAPPHIRE has used long-life capacitors and award-winning SAPPHIRE Black Diamond Chokes, on top of SAPPHIRE's usual top-class cooling solutions. The company has unveiled the Nitro series with a Radeon R9 390, R9 380, and R7 370.

SAPPHIRE's new Nitro series video cards are available right now.

We knew it was coming before it was announced, and this was one of the cards I was most excited about. AMD has finally detailed the Radeon R9 Nano, based on its new Fiji architecture and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

The AMD Radeon R9 Nano features the Fiji GPU, 4GB of HBM on a 4096-bit wide memory bus with 512GB/sec of bandwidth. We're looking at 200% the performance per watt of the Radeon R9 290X, with the Radeon R9 Nano only featuring one 8-pin PCIe power connector and a TDP of just 175W.

AMD is expected to launch the Radeon R9 Nano later this summer.

NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 980 Ti at Computex 2015, blowing us away initially, but we were more excited over what the AIB partners were going to provide with custom cards. Well, here we are with GAINWARD teasing its new GeForce GTX 980 Ti PHOENIX "Golden Sample" card.

The GAINWARD GeForce GTX 980 Ti PHOENIX "Golden Sample" card features a Base Clock of 1152MHz (1241MHz Boost) and 6GB of VRAM at 7GHz. This represents an 11% overclock on the reference design from NVIDIA. Better yet, GAINWARD has used a triple-fan design to keep it cool, with a "Zero RPM fan design" that sees the fans stay stationary until the GPU itself reaches 60C.

We have reached out to GAINWARD to secure a sample, so with my fingers crossed we should have a review of this beast sometime in July.

E3 2015 - Now that AMD has made its Radeon R9 Fury X official, we're finding out the official specifications behind the HBM-based, Fiji XT-powered video card.

The Radeon R9 Fury X is built on the 28nm process with 4096 stream processors, 64 Compute Units, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 4GB of HBM on a 4096-bit memory bus resulting in up to 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth. You'll need two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to get it running, with the Radeon R9 Fury X having a TDP of 275W.

The total compute performance of the card sits at 8.6 TFLOPS with the GPU clocked at 1050MHz and the RAM at 500MHz/1Gbps. The texture fill rate on the Fury X is at 268.8 GT/s, with FreeSync, DirectX 12, Mantle, Vulkan support and much more.

E3 2015 - Our friends over at Hardware Canucks were able to snap a photo of the PCBs of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and Radeon R9 290X, where we get to see what's making them tick.

As you can see, the top card being the Radeon R9 Fury X is much smaller than the R9 290X thanks to its use of High Bandwidth Memory. You can see the 4GB of HBM sitting next to the die itself, which when compared to the 16 chips of GDDR5 on the R9 290X which surround the entire GPU, it saves some considerable physical space on the PCB.

This space saving and use of HBM also saves space to the right of the GPU, where memory VRMs aren't needed. VRMs require more power, and pump out a great amount of heat, but the omission of these on the R9 Fury X means we should get a card with a ton of power, without making huge amounts of noise or running overly hot. Even if it does require watercooling by default.

During Computex 2015, we delivered the world exclusive news that AMD would be calling its HBM-powered next-gen video card the Radeon R9 Fury X, something that SKHynix just confirmed through a press release.

SKHynix said that the new HBM1 used on the Radeon R9 Fury X is made on their advanced 20nm-class DRAM process technology, offering a 1024-bit memory interface, with 128GB/sec. Not only that, but it will consume over 50% less power than traditional GDDR5 used on today's video cards. Thanks to four chips being stacked on top of one another, that 1024-bit interface turns into 4096-bit on the Radeon R9 Fury X, with 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth being made available.

In the press release, SKHynix said: "AMD announced the Radeon R9 Fury X, the world's first video card with HBM technology in Los Angeles on June 16th. The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video card utilizes 4GB HBM1 to achieve up to 512GB/second memory bandwidth performance while reducing memory subsystem power by up to 85%".

It's now the week of the launch of AMD's new video cards, with the rebranded Radeon R9 390X now being teased from SAPPHIRE in the form of the SAPPHIRE Radeon R9 390X Tri-X OC.

SAPPHIRE's Radeon R9 390X Tri-X OC will rock the Grenada XT (Hawaii XT) GPU, which will include 2816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, and 64 ROPS. We should see 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 6100MHz on its 512-bit memory bus, while the Core is clocked at 1055MHz. SAPPHIRE has rated the Radeon R9 390X Tri-X OC with a 375W TDP, consuming its power through two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Where this card is different to other cards, is its Tri-X cooler which sports triple fans and a huge aluminum heat sink array with 10mm copper heat pipes.

But it's the news of the Radeon R9 Fury X that has me excited, based on the Fiji XT core and running that sure-to-be delicious High Bandwidth Memory. We should also expect the Fury, another HBM-powered card that will sport the Fiji Pro GPU. Both of these new cards are expected to be unveiled at the PC Gamer Show hosted by AMD on June 16 during E3 this week.

We were the world exclusive on posting the first images of the Radeon R9 390X, but the leaks continue with ASUS and now MSI. The MSI Radeon 300 series has been leaked, headlined by the Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G.

The MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G is based on the Grenada XT (Hawaii XT) GPU, which means we're getting a rebadged Radeon R9 290X. This has us seeing 2816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, and 64 ROPS. MSI has clocked its card at 1100MHz, using 8GB of GDDR5 sitting at 6.1GHz on a 512-bit memory bus. This card features the always impressive Twin Frozr V cooling technology that MSI is known for.

Under that we have the Radeon R9 280 Gaming which uses the Tonga Pro GPU, with 1792 stream processors, 112 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The GPU is clocked at 1GHz, while the memory sits at 5.7GHz for the 4GB part, or 5.5GHz for the 2GB version. Then we have the Pitcairn XT-based Radeon R7 370 which has 1280 stream processors, 80 TMUs and 32 ROPs. This is pretty much the Radeon HD 7870 with 4GB of VRAM, a clock speed of 1070MHz on the 4GB model while its just 1050MHz on the 2GB model.

We had a world exclusive when we outed the name of AMD's new Radeon R9 Fury X, which has been 'confirmed' with the official marketing material for AMD's Fiji-based product. We are to expect this to be AMD's best GPU yet, aimed at the ultra enthusiasts and those who want to run 4K and beyond.

The new Fiji GPU will measure in at around 560mm2 making it the biggest GPU that the company has ever produced, where inside we'll have 64 Compute Units each featuring 64 stream processors. This brings us to a total of 4096 stream cores, 128 raster operation units, and 256 texture mapping units.

But it's going to be the High Bandwidth Memory that sits next to the GPU die that is going to make the Radeon R9 Fury X special. The GPU and HBM have allotted space on an interposer die which measures at around 1000mm2, and while this chip is far larger than any other previous GPU released, HBM saves countless space on the PCB that would normally have GDDR5 chips sprawled throughout.

Exclusive: According to our industry sources, AMD is going to have just 30,000 units of its HBM-based Radeon Fury and Fury X video cards. This is not many at all, considering that the only other cards that AMD will be releasing will be rebrands of its Hawaii-based Radeon 200 series cards.

The HBM-based cards will have short supply thanks to the limited supply of High Bandwidth Memory itself, which isn't AMD's fault exactly, but it's going to hurt them. Limited stock of a super hot new, next-gen card is going to look quite bad, if our source is correct. The Radeon R9 390X is going to be rocking 8GB of GDDR5, but is just a rebrand and slight overclock of the Radeon R9 290X that launched in late 2013.

AMD could have more than 30,000 units of its HBM-based cards, but with yield issues popping their head up this early, we could be in for some trouble if the rumors are true. The issues could subside moving into 2016, as the yields of HBM improve, but with HBM2 right around the corner... well, things could get messy.

We know that the shift over to 16nm is going to be an incredible one, but AMD is really aiming for some super jumps in power efficiency.

During an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD said that the move to 16nm FinFET will have a possible 2x energy efficiency improvement over previous generation GPUs. 16nm is going to be a large jump for both NVIDIA and AMD, but we are going to see HBM2 used at the same time. NVIDIA's use of HBM2 will be the first time they will use High Bandwidth Memory, but it'll be AMD's second time, since Fury X will be powered by the next generation RAM.

We've teased that the Radeon R9 490X (which we guess might change now, and possibly to Fury X II) could have up to 1.2TB/sec memory bandwidth (1200GB/sec) up from the 336GB/sec that is found even on the super-fast GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

We have been posting AMD Radeon news all week, but as we get closer to the announcement next week, the details become more clear. VideoCardz.com has posted some 3DMark FireStrike results, showing that the Radeon Fury X can keep up with the Titan X from NVIDIA.

As you can see, the Fury X scores 7873 while the Titan X is just a tiny bit better with 7989. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti is only a little bit behind Fury X with 7781, but it's the CrossFire performance that we should be looking at. Two of the HBM-powered Fury X cards in CrossFire push out an incredible 13,925 - but still ultimately lose out to Titan X in SLI with 13,964.

The Radeon Fury X will feature 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory on a 4096-bit memory bus, the first video card to ever be released with HBM. The CrossFire scaling on Fury is is pretty damn good, sitting at around 176% - but most dual GPU setups in synthetic benchmarks always push 150-180% scaling. It'll be interesting to see the CrossFire scaling on more mature drivers, in actual games.

It feels like I'm reporting on the next-gen AMD hardware everyday now, which we pretty much are, but the latest we have on the Radeon Fury X is in the form of some new photos. We have previously reported that Fury X is around 50% faster than the R9 290X, and it beats the Titan X in a single OpenCL benchmark.

The new shots show off the liquid cooling on Fury X, the backplate, and the red LED Radeon logo on the card. In the above shots, we can see the Radeon logo lit up beautifully, and in the second shot, we can see it in more detail. Above the glowing Radeon logo is a dual BIOS switch, so you can overclock until your card fails, and then switch over to the good BIOS.

AMD will reportedly have a 300W TDP on the Radeon Fury X, with the card powered by two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. All of this will arrive in a much smaller card than we've ever received for a flagship GPU. Around the back of the Fury X, we have some tubing coming out of it for its watercooling, as well as a matte black PCB and backplate.

A trailer for the PC Gaming Show being held at E3 2015 has been unleashed, showing off a bunch of the oldeer, but huge fan favorite games from the last two decades.

The YouTube teaser also shows off some AMD hardware being installed, with some Radeon video cards and AMD CPUs being installed into a PC. AMD is sponsoring the show alongside PC Gamer, with special guests including Twitch, Digital Storm, Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski, Cloud Imperium Games (the developer behind Star Citizen), Tripwire Interactive, and many more.

The PC Gaming Show kicks off on June 16, 2015 with a livestream being made available on AMD's Twitch channel on the day.

The leaks of AMD's upcoming GPUs continues, with a full line up of SAPPHIRE products leaked. VideoCardz.com has picked it up, where SAPPHIRE is expected to have many cards to offer consumers.

Starting with the Hawaii XT-based Radeon R9 390X Tri-X OC 8GB, followed by the Hawaii PRO-based Radeon R9 390 Nitro 8GB. The R9 390X is expected to feature a new Tri-X cooler, with a factory overclock that is sure to impress. The R9 390 Nitro is a new brand for SAPPHIRE, which will also feature 8GB of VRAM and the Tri-X cooler, but the Hawaii PRO core.

Under these two flagship cards we have the Radeon R9 380 Nitro, Radeon R9 380 ITX, Radeon R7 Nitro, Radeon R7 370 and Radeon R7 360. SAPPHIRE will use a mix of its Dual-X and stock cooling on these cards. We should expect to see SAPPHIRE unveil these cards in the coming weeks.

We are getting closer and closer to the launch of the next generation video cards from AMD with each passing day, where today some leaked specifications on the Radeon Fury X, of which we had a world exclusive on last week. It was only hours ago that we posted some OpenCL benchmarks of the Fury X, where it managed to keep up with and beat the Titan X.

The Radeon Fury X will reportedly feature 4096 stream processors, 64 GCN Compute Units, 128 ROPs, 256 TMUs, 4GB of HBM on a 4096-bit memory bus, a GPU clock speed of 1050MHz or more, and an effective memory bus of 1GHz, providing around 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth. All of these specs of the purported Fury X have it being around 54% faster than the Hawaii XT-based Radeon R9 290X, and around 48% more power efficient.

Speaking of power efficiency, the Fury X has a TDP of 300W with around 28.7 GFLOPS/watt of performance versus the 19.4 GFLOPS/watt that the Radeon R9 290X has on its 290W TDP. Overall performance has the Fury X capable of over 8.6 TFLOPS of performance, blasting out the 5.6 TFLOPS that the Radeon R9 290X managed.

With Star Wars: Battlefront shaping up to be one of the biggest releases of the year, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to hear the rumor that AMD will be bundling the game with its Fury branded video cards.

AMD will reportedly be releasing the HBM-powered Radeon Fury X and Radeon Fury cards at E3 2015 next week, but what better way of selling their flagship cards than by bundling one of the biggest games coming out this year. As for the Radeon 300 series, which are rebrands of the Radeon 200 series, they will reportedly include a copy of the new Dirt game coming out later this year.

With the leaked benchmarks from quite a while ago most likely out of date now, and with our world exclusive reveal on the Fury X branding from AMD, we're seeing some leaked OpenGL performance numbers from CompuBench.

The leak shows that the Fiji XT-based, HBM-powered Radeon Fury X beats NVIDIA's GM200-based, Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX Titan X from NVIDIA by a decent amount. But then, the R9 280X seems to not be that far behind the Titan X.

The Fury X loses quite horribly to the Titan X in the 'face detection' test on CompuBench, while it beats the Titan X once again in the 'TV-L1 Optical Flow' test.

With the new Radeon video cards launching in the next couple of weeks, most have been wondering what pricing AMD would stick to. Well, it looks like the MSRP on the Radeon R9 390X could be just $389.

There are two enthusiast cards in the Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 390, with the 'enhanced Hawaii XT' in the R9 390X with an MSRP of $389 and the 'enhanced Hawaii PRO' under the Radeon R9 390 with a price of $329. This should compete directly with the GeForce GTX 980 from NVIDIA which dropped to $499 thanks to the release of the GTX 980 Ti at $649. These two cards will better compete with the GTX 900 series, while the Fury range of cards will compete with the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X.

Will you be buying the Radeon R9 390X, or will you be waiting for the higher-end, HBM-based Fury cards?

We've had to pull our ASUS Radeon R9 390X post, as well as our PowerColor Radeon R9 390X post, so here's hoping that news and images on the XFX Radeon R9 390X Double Dissipation 8GB doesn't need to be pulled.

The XFX branded card is the latest in a slew of Radeon R9 390X video cards that has popped up, a rebranded R9 290X with 8GB of VRAM. It sports a slick looking cooler with unlocked voltage, and a diamond-shaped texture which looks great. There's 7 extended heat pipes which should keep the XFX Radeon R9 390X Double Dissipation 8GB nice and cool.

The XFX Radeon R9 390X Double Dissipation 8GB output configuration is as follows: DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort.