Graphics Cards - Page 246

We know it's coming, but AMD is beginning to acknowledge its forthcoming Radeon 300 series more and more. First, we had company CEO Lisa Su confirm the new GPUs for Q2 2015, but now the official AMD Facebook page has said they're coming.

In a response to someone asking about whether AMD would reveal its next-gen GPU shortly, they replaced with "We don't have an official date to share just yet but hte second we know, we will definitely announce it on Facebook". Another reply added "We're still putting the finishing touches on the 300 series to make sure they live up to expectation. Can't wait to reveal them though. We're pretty excited".

We should expect AMD to reveal the new GPUs in the near future, which should feature the exciting new High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) which should provide a huge memory bus. 4GB of RAM is expected, but I think we'll also see 8GB models coming thorugh, too.

NVIDIA caught headlines last week with its VRAM issues on the Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 970, but it's a new week, with new memory-related issues. This time, it's AMD and its Radeon GPUs and a very specific game, on a very specific OS.

Radeon users are seeing memory leak problems on Battlefield 4 with Windows 8.1, with WCCFTech confirming the issue with AMD's Head of Global Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock. Hallock acknowledged the issue in Battlefield 4, of which it only affects gamers running Windows 8.1. AMD is working directly with DICE on the issue, but with the game being over a year old and many DLC packs in, and the fact that AMD were and still are heavily partnered with DICE, this shouldn't be happening.

AMD will address the memory leak issues in a new beta driver that will arrive soon.

We know that AMD is currently preparing the launch of the Radeon R9 300 series, but between now and then what to add-in board (AIB) partners do? Do they continue ordering Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 and other 200 series GPUs from AMD? Well, that's where we are today.

DigiTimes is reporting from a source close tro them that some of AMD's AIB partners are reducing orders for current-gen Radeon GPUs as there is growing anticipation for the next-gen from AMD, as well as citing reduced demand for Radeon R9 200 series cards. DigiTimes has said: "Since AMD is already planning to unveil its next-generation GPUs in the second half, the sources believe the GPU vendor will have a chance to regain some of its lost market share in the second half of 2015".

The bigger tease is that AMD would reportedly launch its Radeon R9 380X as early as late this month, or early March according to VideoCardz. We might not see that happen, but with less Radeon R9 200 series cards on shelves around the world, AMD could surprise NVIDIA and the world by capitalizing on the GeForce GTX 970 VRAM issues.

We've been hearing the rumbles of an insane video card from EVGA for quite a while now, but here it is: the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0. From the name alone, you can see that this is the top tier Maxwell-powered GTX 980 from NVIDIA, but the entire package is going to blow you away.

First and foremost, we have a custom designed PCB which has been tailor made to push things right to their breaking points. Under LN2, the new EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0 was capable of an insane 2.2GHz GPU clock, and 8.9GHz on the memory. Comparing this to the stock speeds of 1291MHz for the GPU and 7GHz for the GDDR5 RAM, this is an impressive result for EVGA and KINGPIN. The custom designed PCB is showing its strength here, but it'll be more interesting to see what it does with its ACX 2.0+ cooler.

Speaking of the custom designed PCB, we have a 14+3 Fully Digital VRM which will increase the stability, efficiency and the overall power capacity of the board, all while it runs at low temperatures of an average of 28C. The custom designed PCB has been made from 12 layers of copper, with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors backed up by a third, 6-pin PCIe power connector. All of this power will ensure that the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0 has enough power when it is receiving a total thrashing in the overclocking department.

Just how is 4K gaming affecting AMD internally right now? According to Robert Hallock who is part of the Technical Communications division for AMD Radeon graphics, he said that gamers are adopting 4K gaming nicely, but the R&D department for AMD is already planning for the future.

For Hallock, the Radeon R9 290X was a major step in that direction, allowing for gamers to play at 4K with a single GPU. Lower-end parts of the market aren't quite there yet, so GamingBolt asked him some questions where he replied with the future of 4K gaming is an evolution of GPU horsepower, which is something AMD is working on. He said: "If you think back to the launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X, our video card marked arguably the first time anyone could reasonably expect to play games at 4K on a single GPU. Sure, there were some games that needed two for peak image quality, but one was and is pretty solid for the majority of titles. We were also the first company to offer full support for 4K SST displays in our driver".

"4K adoption is very popular amongst the elite enthusiasts, but understandably slower being adopted in lower-end segments. I couldn't characterize the rates with hard numbers as that's not my area of expertise, but this is the sense I'm getting from interacting with the AMD community every day", he continued. Hallock added: "Ultimately, the evolution of GPU horsepower is the biggest factor in driving 4K forward. Graphics being such an important part of our business, of course, you can count on great progress on that front as the years wind on".

Colorful Technology has announced its latest GeForce GTX 960 video cards, with some truly great models being shown off by NVIDIA's biggest AIB partner in China.

We have four different models being unveiled, with the Colorful GTX960 CH which is a reference like card for entry users. Moving on, we have the Colorful GTX960 i-Cafe for System Integrators, the iGame GTX960Ymir-U for general users and for enthusiasts we have the iGame GTX960 Ymir-X. Starting with the GTX960 i-Cafe which features a longer PCB than the reference design, but features the same clocks as the GTX960 CH. The iCafe version provides consumers with better stability and a longer lifespan thanks to its more efficient cooler and higher quality electronic components.

Moving on to the iGame GTX960 Ymir-U which is targeting gamers and general users, which will have two clock models. The first is a power efficiency model which will have clock speeds of 1127/7010MHz while in performance mode it will crank up to 1203/7010MHz. The iGame GTX960 Ymir is the performance model of the Colorful GTX960 series, with triple fans, a steel back panel, breathing light and a longer PCB. We have two clock speeds on this card, with the default efficient mode coming in at 1127/7010MHz while the performance model cranks things up to an insane 1405MHz.

NVIDIA has been getting some flak for the VRAM issues on its GeForce GTX 970, quickly altering the official specifications of the Maxwell-powered card. Well now AMD is jumping on the chance to sell some of its Radeon R9 290X inventory, dropping the price to as low as $299 for the Hawaii-powered card.

AMD has hit back with a serious troll, statign "4GB means 4GB" somethign that blew up on our Facebook page yesterday. AMD emphasizes that its Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X video cards come with 4GB of VRAM, where all 4GB can be filled up to the very last megabyte. On top of this, they have a 512-bit memory bus which is spitting out 320GB/sec of memory bandwidth, something that the Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 900 series can't do.

We know that AMD will be announcing and then launching its Radeon R9 300 series, but the latest video could be a very big tease of an imminent announcement, we hope. Take a look at AMD's 'The Fixer 3' teaser below.

It really is just a teaser, as it shows off absolutely nothing. A man is walking away from the camera holding a Radeon video card of some sort, with the "The FIX3R" showing up on the screen. We have already seen Fixer 1 and Fixer 2, so the Fixer 3 could be totally unrelated to the Radeon R9 300 series, but there's still hope.

We know that AMD will be launching its Radeon R9 300 series in Q2 2015, so we should expect AMD to begin its marketing machine in the coming weeks and months, for sure.

During AMD's Q4 earnings call, CEO Lisa Su teased that the company will have "very good" graphics products that will ship in Q2 2015. Su confirmed that AMD has multiple product launches to spread out over "the next couple of quarters", with those quarters being Q2 and Q3. Most of which will be released between April and June.

Su did explain what is happening with the GPU side of the business, in that AMD had a large quantity of its Hawaii-based R9 290 series GPUs, most of which are rapidly declining. The company then increased its inventory in the anticipation of continued demand, but it fell off very quickly - mostly because the cryptocurrency market began to shrink rapidly. Thanks, Bitcoin miners. During Q4, Su said that company took the required actions to get the inventory levels back to normal, and moving into Q1 2015, AMD took even more drastic actions. I would dare say that NVIDIA's Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 video cards had something to do with that.

Su continued: "Think on the computing and graphics business, we can improve our execution and there is a lot of focus, at least from my standpoint, to ensure that our 2015 product launches are quite strong. So that's important for us to really stabilize that business, and that will certainly be key to our second half performance. I think from where I see it going forward, we are very focused on correcting the channel and normalizing that business. I think we have some good products that are coming out for it. So I do see opportunities for a return to a more healthy channel business going forward".

As usual, we can't confirm this as it's a rumor, but it looks like the upcoming next-gen GPU release from AMD could arrive as the Radeon R9 380X, and not the R9 390X like most would have expected. Sweclockers are behind the rumor this time, giving it a little more credit.

The Radeon R9 380X would feature 4096 cores, 4GB of the new, next-gen HBM (high bandwidth memory) and a Q2 2015 release window. The new card is known as the Fiji XT and will directly replace most of AMD's current high-end R9 200 series lineup. We should expect this card to be around 40-50% faster than the R9 290X, mostly thanks to architectural changes and the new, super-fast HBM RAM.

NVIDIA will be fighting back with another rumored product, the Titan II or Titan X. They could also battle it out with a refreshed GM200-based GeForce card in the form of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, or if I had my way, the GeForce GTX 980 Ultra.

We know it's coming, but NVIDIA hasn't confirmed anything just yet - but here it is, the GM200. If you didn't know, this is the fully unleashed Maxwell GPU, which should materialize into the GeForce GTX Titan II.

The GM200 engineering board (180-1G600-1102-A04) will use a PG600 board according to VideoCardz, and features 24 of Hynix's H5GQ4H24MFR modules, clocked at 7GHz. We have a total of 12GB of VRAM, which indicates this will be a new Titan part, and not a normal GeForce GPU. We don't know if it will be the Titan Z II, Titan Ultra, Titan II, or something else entirely, but whatever it is... it's going to be awesome.

We can see the prototype board is missing the DVI port, but it features three DisplayPort outputs, and HDMI 2.0 just like the GTX 980 and GTX 970 cards. We should expect the full Maxwell card to feature 3072 CUDA cores, too. This card will be a monster, something I expect NVIDIA will unveil at GTC 2015 in March.

We heard that NVIDIA were preparing for the launch of its mid-range GeForce GTX 960 last month, and just recently the rumor of a buy-it-now price of $199 was teased. Now here we are, with actual box shots of various cards from NVIDIA's add-in-board (AIB) partners, such as GIGABYTE and Inno3D.

The first one, pictured above, is of the GIGABYTE G1 Gaming 'Super Overclock' GTX 960, which uses its impressive WindForce cooling setup and 2GB of RAM.

Next up, we have two cards from Inno3D; the iChill GeForce GTX 960 Ultra, and the GeForce GTX 960 OC. The Ultra variant rocks an insane cooling setup, featuring the HerculeZ X3 cooler. We have a clock speed of 1178MHz, while the memory is at 7010MHz effective. This provides memory bandwidth of 112GB/sec, on its 2GB of frame buffer.

If there anyone who likes GPU rumors, it's me. The latest reports are suggesting that AMD might make a huge leap with its new Radeon R9 300 series, which should make use of the new High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), but more interestingly, it is based on a 2.5D design, and will use up to 300W of power.

The news is coming from the LinkedIn profile of Linglan Zhang, who is currently employed by AMD as the System Architecture Manager. His profile lists that he is working on a new GPU SOC chip that uses the 2.5D design, and rocks a TDP of 300W. We should expect the new GPUs from AMD to be made on the 28nm architecture, since the 16nm and 20nm die shrinks are now at least six months or more away - from both AMD, and NVIDIA.

Comparing GDDR5 against HBM is something that people need to start really looking at, as the I/O per chip on GDDR5 is just 32-bit, while the 4-Hi HBM 'Stacked DRAM' pumps things up to a huge 1024-bit. Max bandwidth per min on GDDR5 is just 7Gbps, while HBM sits at 1GBps. The max bandwidth of GDDR5 sits at 28Gbps, while the HBM technology can scale between 64Gbps and 256Gbps.

EVGA have recently changed the way that their HydroCopper branding works. In the past HydroCopper refereed to models which included a factory-overclocked reference PCB and a factory-fitted, full-cover water blocks, allowing users to add this to their liquid-cooling loop as they saw fit. However EVGA's new direction for HydroCopper is to include its own closed-loop cooling system, seeing a similar design to AMD's reference Radeon R9 295X2.

This included cooler features a metal base-plate, drawing heat from the memory and VRM, connected to the central pump-block and an aluminum fin stack. Cooling these two parts is a common lateral-flow blower and all of this is ventilated by a single 120mm fan.

CES 2015 - We were invited up to MSI's suite to take a closer look at some of their new products. When we entered, we were welcomed by the X99A Gaming 9 ACK, one of MSI's new boards sporting the latest USB 3.1 technology. It won the CES 2015 Innovation award and rightfully so with USB 3.1, which we saw reach 650MB/s read and write speeds. The board isn't using the new type-c USB 3.1 connector, but instead relies on the traditional USB connector.

However, MSI did have a board with the new c-type connector in the works, the Z97X Gaming 6. We were able to catch a glimpse of this new technology. It felt very sturdy and yes, we were able to flip it upside down and insert it into the port.

On display in the next room was MSI's lineup of newer X99 and Z97 boards. To my surprise there were a good number of white themed motherboards under the Krait name.

CES 2015 - SAPPHIRE didn't have anything new to show off at CES 2015, so instead it was just showing off a handful of their most popular products.

We went in and talked to a few of the executives at the company, teeing up some new projects going into the New Year that you will have to check back with TweakTown in the near future to check out. All we can say is: it'll kick ass. Until then, here are some images of video cards that you can check out, starting with the Radeon R9 290X 4GB and R9 280X 4GB.

Here's the SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon R9 4GB.

CES 2015 - Over the last year or two ZOTAC has been making strides when it comes to the GPU market, with some truly great cards that not only look great, are featured packed, but they perform like champions. We knew the company was going to be showing off its new GeForce GTX cards at CES 2015, so here we are!

Let's start off with the GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition, with its dual fan system, and much more. We have a base clock of 1202MHz, and boost clock of 1304MHz. The usual 4GB of RAM is found on a 256-bit memory bus, while the memory clock is at 7046MHz. We have three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI 2.0 and one DVI-I.

The GTX 980 AMP! Edition is also another great card from ZOTAC. We have 1165MHz base clock, 1266MHz boost, and 7010MHz memory. 4GB of RAM once again, and the same three DisplayPort, one HDMI 2.0 and one DVI-I output.

CES 2015 - If you're still searching for a GeForce GTX 970 card, Zotac will be showing their new AMP! Extreme and AMP! Edition models in Las Vegas very soon at CES 2015.

Quoted as "designed for enthusiast gamers" in their recent press release, these two new graphics additions to the Zotac family will be focused around extended features and performance capabilities.

ZOTAC will be displaying these cards in an SLI configuration, showcasing their stellar 4K gaming capabilities to the public. One system each will be displaying their AMP! Edition and AMP! Extreme Edition cards.

We only reported a couple of weeks ago that NVIDIA was rumored to launch its GeForce GTX 960 in January, but now some more information is coming through, including a price. At the time, I said that if the company launched the GTX 960 with a $199 price, it could be a hit. Well, this price could end up being true.

Various sources have confirmed that the GTX 960 will rock the GM206 core, but we could end up seeing NVIDIA use a cut down GM204 core, too. We have heard previously that the GTX 960 would feature 4GB of RAM spread across a 256-bit memory bus, but now we're hearing that the GTX 960 could feature a 128-bit bus.

Speculation is starting, where we could also see a GTX 965 or GTX 960 Ti arrive, where we could see the GTX 960 feature a 128-bit bus while the GTX 960 Ti version could throw things up to a 256-bit memory bus. We are still expecting one 6-pin PCIe connector and a total of 150W TDP, which will have mid-range systems enjoying a low-power, but high performing GPU.

Prepare for sadness: AMD and NVIDIA's upcoming next-gen GPUs could be delayed, at least the 16nm or 20nm based versions of them, according to a new report from WCCFTech.

The site is reporting that TSMC may be rolling out its 20nm technology, but TSMC is busy filling orders for Qualcomm and Apple. Flagship GPU dies are much, much larger than the likes of system-on-chips (SoCs) that Qualcomm and Apple require, so that leaves Apple and NVIDIA with a very limited supply of 20nm dies.

What does this mean for AMD and NVIDIA's future GPUs? NVIDIA is already sailing quite well with its efficient Maxwell architecture, where even on the now ageing 28nm it is pulling some seriously good numbers in both camps: performance and power efficiency. AMD is most likely the next up for a GPU refresh, but it looks like the company is going to have to side on the 28nm fence, which should mean its upcoming next-gen architecture should be quite impressive.