Graphics Cards - Page 248

Alienware announced its new Alienware 13 gaming notebook not too long ago, but has just taken the wraps off of its new "graphics amplifier". Alienware's new contraption is capable of taking a high-end desktop GPU, with anything that uses up to 375W, and plugging it into Alienware's proprietary PCI Express-based cable.

This proprietary cable only works on the Alienware 13 notebook, so you won't be using it with your normal gaming notebook. The graphics amplifier itself also includes four powered USB ports, so you can plug in any of your USB-based devices directly into it, as well as your desktop video card. Not only that, but the Alienware head on the front of it glows for a nice effect.

It won't sell like hotcakes, but for anyone who is in the market for a new gaming notebook, this might swing your decision toward Alienware. If you were in the market of buying a new Alienware 13 gaming notebook, this is a nice accessory if you wanted some serious grunt at your desk, and then rely on the built-in GPU when you're on the road, or at a LAN. Alienware will be selling the graphics amplifier for $300, and will be showing it off at PAX Australia later this week, where we will get a hands- and eyes-on with it.

Mini-ITX PCs are about to get much faster thanks to GIGABYTE's new card based on the GeForce GTX 970 GPU, but arrives in a dual-slot, single-fan design that is much shorter than the standard GTX 970, perfect for tiny, but very powerful gaming PCs.

The new mini-ITX based video card has an overclocked GTX 970 GPU, 4GB of RAM, a custom PCB from GIGABYTE, and a WindForce-like cooler. The custom design allows for a single 8-pin PCIe connector, versus the two 6-pin PCIe required on the normal GTX 970. GIGABYTE's custom designed cooler is quite compact, with a single, shrouded fan. We have a slight overclock on the Core and Boost speeds, from 1051MHz on the Core to 1076MHz on the GIGABYTE card, while we have Boost of 1178 on the reference GTX 970, but 1215MHz on the GIGABYTE slab.

Some other GTX 900 series cards actually ditch the multiple DisplayPort connectors, but not this card: we have three DisplayPorts, one HDMI, one DVI-D and a DVI-D port to finish it off. GIGABYTE says the custom cooler provides lower temperatures than the reference, with temperatures dropping from 76C to just 62C on the GIGABYTE card. Small form factor PCs have just received notice of their next GPU purchase.

When NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX Titan Z back at GTC 2014 in March, it was an expensive beast at $3999, but now Overclockers UK has dropped the price on some of its Titan Z's, radically.

Just last week, the site dropped it from its launch price of $3863, to $3219, which is a decent drop. But, the company has just taken a massive $900 off its price, dropping it down to 'just' $2415. For $2415, you're getting a triple-slot, dual GPU card with 12GB of RAM, two full GK110 GPUs with 2880 stream processors, 240 texture units, an 48 raster operations pipelines.

You'd still be better off with two GeForce GTX 980s in SLI, but for some people a single card is what they want, and no single card can compete with the Titan Z right now.

Back when we reported that AMD was dropping the price of its Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs in reaction to NVIDIA's new Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 GPUs, we thought it was AMD which was dropping the prices of its high-end Radeons, but it's actually their partners who are doing the price reductions.

In the meantime, AMD has a new CEO in Lisa Su, with the company laying off some 710 employees after a tough quarter, some big changes and news for the company. During AMD's recent earnings call, the fresh CEO said that NVIDIA has released some very competitive products with their second generation Maxwell GPUs, and that the company needed to adjust to "some competitive dynamics", or repositioning other products. Su said: "We have certainly adjusted to some of the competitive dynamics, and we have made some positioning changes as well as some new marketing activities that you will see from us in the fourth quarter".

During an interview between AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy and KitGuru, Huddy had the following to say about the Radeon price cuts: "We have not issued any price cuts, nor price protection and we have not announced any for the future. We are conducting some promotions with our AIB partners that enables them to reach such competitive pricing on the Radeon R9 290 and 290X". How long will the cheaper Radeons last? According to Huddy: "The best news is that we have very healthy stock levels for both the Radeon R9 290 and 290X in the channel and the time to buy is now, with channel promotions bringing such great deals. We've got phenomenal products in the market and there's plenty of it around".

It was reported earlier that AMD Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs are now available with a reduced price of $299 and #369 respectively. But as its turned out, the price cuts are made by AMD's AIB partners who manufacture these cards.

It was also pointed out that these price cuts are not permanent. The GPU manufacturers have introduced these price cuts to promote the sales of these cards, while the stocks last.

Though the timing of providing price cuts is considered to be a response to NVIDIA's Maxwell-based GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs that was launched not too long ago. Its unclear if AMD would be tempted to make these price cuts from their side irrespective of cards. AMD may even throw in a new Never Settle bundle along with it to sweeten the deal as they did before. As of now, GTX 970 can be purchased with a price tag as low as $329 to as high as $409 (for the Zotac GTX 970 AMP! Edition 4GB). R9 290X could be found for $369 to $399, and some AIB partners have bundled Star Citizen and Alien: Isolation as a limited offer.

It feels like we're very close to the Radeon R9 300 series of GPUs, with AMD dropping the price of its Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs in the last week, but now news is floating around of the Pirate Islands-based architecture, AMD's next-generation GPU.

The news is coming courtesy of AMD's just-released "AMDGPU" Kernel Driver, which is something that will form the base of Closed Source (Catalyst) and Open Source (Gallium3D) drivers for Linux. Within all the deep-dive on the technical side of things, AMD mentions that the AMDGPU kernel driver is being tested on Sea Islands, as well as unreleased hardware.

The current DRM driver for Linux is known as 'Radeon' which won't be supported by the upcoming AMD GPUs, with the driver not supporting current, or older generation cards. This means that AMD must be in the testing phase of its Pirate Islands GPUs, which will arrive to us as the Radeon R9 300 series, with the flagship card being the R9 390X. We could hear AMD announce these new cards before the end of the year, with a roll out in early 2015, we hope.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - Last month I was in Monterey Bay for NVIDIA's unveiling of their Maxwell architecture, where we saw the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 unveiled. I was blown away at what Maxwell was able to do with the GTX 980, but even more impressed with what NVIDIA is now doing to notebooks with the mobile version of the Maxwell GPU, in the GTX 970M and GTX 980M.

Notebook gamers have been asking for "desktop class performance" from NVIDIA, and now they have it. This is where the new second-generation Maxwell architecture steps in.

NVIDIA's Fermi architecture was introduced in 2010, with the GeForce GTX 480M providing around 40% of the performance that the desktop version, the GTX 480, provided. Moving onto the Kepler architecture, where the GTX 680M provided around 60% of the performance of the full-blown GTX 680 on desktop, but now the Maxwell-powered GTX 980M is delivering around 80% of the performance of the insanely-efficient GTX 980 GPU on the desktop.

EVGA will soon launch two new GeForce GTX 980 cards, with their two forthcoming GPUs to be two of the most-remembered Maxwell-based GPUs thanks to their power. EVGA's new GeForce GTX 980 Classified and GTX 980 Hydro Copper are fastly different, but are supremely powerful.

First, we have the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Classified, which features the latest ACX 2.0 cooler, and a custom-designed PCB that is built for overclocking enthusiasts. The GPU features the same high-density heat sink array that was laid out across the GTX 780 Ti, but offers up a new duo of fans with the ACX 2.0 that should see even quieter operation. Better yet, EVGA's GeForce GTX 980 Classified is a dual-slot card, so SLI setups will be even better than some of the competition. The new Classified GPU features a nice black/grey scheme with a hint of red. But what are we talking about when it comes to clock speeds? EVGA will be providing users with a massive 1400MHz+ Boost clock out of the box, making it one of the fastest GTX 980s available.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Classified will feature the same 2048 CUDA cores found on the rest of the GTX 980s, a Base Clock of 1291MHz, Boost Clock of 1405MHz, and is capable of 2-, 3-, and 4-way SLI. 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7GHz will also be baked onto the Classified.

NVIDIA has had huge success with its new second-generation Maxwell architecture, forming the new power-efficient, but super-fast GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs. AMD were rumored to fight back at GAME24, but nothing materialized, until now. WCCF Tech is reporting from a leak from overclockers.ru, that teases AMD's next generation GPUs.

AMD reportedly talked with 4gamer.net journalists in a round table discussion, teasing details on its upcoming products to compete against NVIDIA's new GTX 900 series of GPUs. The new product that AMD will fight back with is the Radeon R9 380X, and not the 390X that most would've presumed. The new R9 380X will be based on the Pirate Islands architecture, powered by the Fiji GPU. Overclockers.ru is reporting that AMD have three new cards in the pipeline, with the Fiji-based R9 380X which will replace the R9 290X, the Treasure Island-based R9 370X, and another.

The most exciting news is that AMD will not only reportedly fight back with new architecture, but it'll shift onto a smaller process, moving over to TSMC's new 20nm manufacturing process, as well as using 3D stacked HBM memory. The third card we mentioned above is what we're all here for today, with the new R9 390X reference GPU to feature AMD's hybrid "hydra' liquid cooling, which the company used on its dual-GPU R9 295X2 earlier in the year.

AMD is starting to ramp up its rumor machine, with talk of the new Radeon R9 390X, it's next generation flagship GPU. AMD's new R9 390X is expected to be available in the first half of 2015, according to DigiTimes.

The new Radeon R9 390X is based on AMD's Bermuda GPU core, which should kick some serious ass, bringing a slew of new things to AMD's silicon. First off, we should see the R9 390X being the first GPU to be built on TSMC's new 20nm manufacturing process, but the card is rumored to arrive with High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. HBM is 3D stacked memory technology that will offer an incredible amount of bandwidth on the already-fast GDDR5 tech that is used, with around 100% more bandwidth, all while using less power.

AMD is also rumored to be using hybrid liquid cooling on the new reference R9 390X, similar to what the company used on its dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2 earlier this year. The problem here is, without a next-gen GPU coming out until at least Q2 2015 or so, what will AMD do to fight off what is an incredible new set of GPUs from NVIDIA? Aggressive price cuts on its R9 290 series, that's what. The only thing AMD can do until its launches its new R9 300 series is drop the prices of what it has now, considerably, to fight off Maxwell from NVIDIA.

If you're rocking an NVIDIA GeForce GTX SLI setup, what better way to make it stand out from the crowd than with the new SLI LED bridges that the company unveiled during its GAME24 event.

The new SLI bridges come in three flavors: 2-way SLI, 2-way spaced SLI, and 3-way SLI. The 2-way SLI LED bridges are priced at $29.99, while the 3-way SLI bridge will set you back $39.99. The SLI bridges are designed to work with all modern GeForce GTX cards that support SLI. NVIDIA specifically mentions the following cards: GeForce GTX 770, GTX 780, GTX 780 Ti, GTX TITAN, GTX TITAN Black, GTX 970 and GTX 980.

There's one big caveat though, NVIDIA has built these beautiful SLI bridges for reference GPUs, so they might not work on the crazy third-party cards. You'll need to make sure that your custom-cooled GeForce GTX card will work with these new bridges before jumping on-board.

NVIDIA has impressed the world with the launch of its second generation Maxwell-based GPUs, the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980. The cards sip power compared to their already power conservative predecessors, but introduce a slew of new technologies, features and best of all: a great price point. Where to from here? GM200, that's where.

GM200 is now being teased, which is going to be the big new GPU from NVIDIA. NVIDIA's GM200 will feature a die size of 551mm^2, 20-22 SMMs, 2560-2816 CUDA cores, a 384-bit memory bus, a performance boost of around 50% over the GTX Titan Black Edition, with it launching sometime before the end of the year. What it'll arrive as, in terms of naming, is a mystery. With the power efficiency of the GM204 core, which powers the GTX 970 and GTX 980, we should expect a dual-GPU card offered as the GeForce GTX 990, so that's one name it won't use.

Moving on, we could expect it to be the GTX 980 Ti, but if it's offering a huge performance increase over the GTX Titan Black Edition, we might see something like the GTX 985 Ti, or GTX Titan X, something I like the sound of better. Then we have the shift to 20nm, which is expected next year, so if the new GM200 is built on the current 28nm node, the shift to 20nm is going to be an entire new world for NVIDIA. The company has positioned themselves incredibly well after the mess that was Fermi, so much so, that AMD really has no firepower right now - so it'll be interesting to see if NVIDIA holds back, waiting for AMD to release something, to quickly smack it down to reality with its new GM200-based card.

NVIDIA has officially launched its Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 900 series, with ZOTAC out of the gate with a bunch of new GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs. First off, we have three versions of each: Standard, AMP! Omega, and AMP! Extreme.

Starting with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Standard, we have the stock Core and Boost Clocks of 1126MHz and 1216MHz, respectively. The 4GB of GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 7010MHz, with the reference cooler, and the usual three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI 2.0 and dual-link DVI port. Moving onto the AMP! Omega edition, which cranks the Core Clock to 1202MHz, and Boost to 1304MHz.

We have the Memory clock up to 7046MHz, the same 4GB of GDDR5, identical display outputs, but the "Dual-fan IceStorm" cooler. Finally, the AMP! Extreme which doesn't have Core, Boost or Memory Clock speeds revealed yet, but we do know it comes with a sexy-sounding "Triple-fan IceStorm" cooler, so expect the clocks on this GPU to be much higher. All three cards have the same number of CUDA cores, sitting at 2048.

Manli has announced its new Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs, both rocking a reference cooler, with a third offering a cooling design by Manli for its GTX 970.

Starting with the Manli GeForce GTX 980 which is powered by NVIDIA's GM204 Maxwell-based GPU, which has a TDP of 178W, up from the stock 165W on NVIDIA's reference GTX 980. We have a 2048 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit memory bus, a Core Clock of 1126MHz, Base Boost Clock of up to 1216MHz, and 7010MHz Memory Clock. For display connectivity, the Manli GTX 980 has three DisplayPort outputs, a single HDMI 2.0 out, and two DVI outputs.

Moving onto the GTX 970, we have two models: the reference GTX 970 and then the aftermarket design. The reference card features 1164 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit memory bus, a Core Clock of 1050MHz, Boost Clock of 1178MHz, and 7010MHz on the memory, the same as the GTX 980. When it comes to the display connectivity, we have the same ports as the GTX 980: three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI 2.0 and two DVI ports.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - One of the more interesting things shown off by NVIDIA at its Editors Day was DSR, or Dynamic Super Resolution. DSR is capable of rendering a 4K image, and then downsampling it to 1080p, which has multiple use cases.

First, you can render at 4K, and then display this higher resolution image on your not-so-high resolution display, such as a 1080p panel. This provides a sharper image, without you needing to upgrade your display.

Above, we have the normal image on the left, with DSR on the right.

For the past week or so, we have been sitting on the information of NVIDIA's new GeForce 900 series GPUs, with the two latest cards now official: the GeForce GTX 980 (our review is right here), and GeForce GTX 970. NVIDIA is pricing the GTX 900 series very competitively, with the GeForce GTX 980 priced at $549, and the GTX 970 at only $329. These are some incredible price points considering the feature set, improved performance, additional features and reduced TDP. NVIDIA will be discontinuing the GTX 780 and GTX 770, shifting the price of the GTX 760 to just $219.

For starters, we have the new Maxwell architecture, which is where NVIDIA is pulling this rabbit from a hat from. NVIDIA has some serious magic from Maxwell, with the star of the show, the GTX 980, really pushing the boundaries of what is possible from a GPU, without requiring a nuclear reactor to power it. For starters, the "GM204" has 5.2 billion transistors, 2048 CUDA cores, 128 Texture Units, 64 ROPS, and a 256-bit wide memory bus with 4GB of GDDR5.

NVIDIA has achieved this huge jump over the GK104 thanks to twice the performance of the GK104 with the GM204, and two times the performance-per-watt over GK104, too. There's an improved schedular, new datapath organization, and over 40% delivered performance per CUDA core on GM204. The memory architecture behind Maxwell has also received an injection of improvement, with enhanced compression algorithms, and enhancing caching effectiveness, and when compared against the GTX 680, we have some big improvements.

It looks like we are just days away from meeting the new GeForce GTX 900 series from NVIDIA, with a very detailed look at MSI's offering of the GTX 970 GAMING card, which features the company's TwinFrozr V cooler.

MSI's GTX 970 GAMING features TwinFrozr V, which includes two 100mm propeller-blade fans, with a beautiful black-and-red design. The GeForce GTX 970 itself features 1664 CUDA cores, with MSI's factory-overclocked 1140MHz and Boost clock of 1279MHz. 4GB of RAM is on the card with a 256-bit memory bus, with a TDP of just 148W. MSI requires one 8-pin and one 6-pin, which is up from the two 6-pin PCIe power connector requirements of the reference GeForce GTX 970.

One of the weird things that MSI has done to its GTX 970 GAMING card, is remove some of the DisplayPort outputs that the reference GTX 970 sports. The reference GTX 970 and GTX 980 GPUs include three DisplayPort outputs, but the MSI GTX 970 GAMING has just one DisplayPort, one HDMI and two DVI ports.

Right on the back of our news on the sighting of ASUS and GIGABYTE branded GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 cards, WCCFTech is reporting that the GeForce GTX 980 will offer 10% more performance on the GTX 780 Ti, all with a 170W TDP - an incredible feat, if the rumors are true.

The rumor is coming from a post on the Chilhell forums, with some impressive 3DMark scores posted. The post mentions that the GTX 980 has 32 RPS and 128 TMUs, with its 256-bit bus and 4GB of RAM, with an model featuring 8GB of RAM to probably show up, too. The biggest thing here is that at stock clocks, the GTX 980 is 10% faster than the GTX 780 Ti, but with a TDP of just 170W compared to the TDP on the GTX 780 Ti which is still a modest 250W.

If this is true, under the same 28nm process NVIDIA have pulled off something quite incredible here, which might justify the skip over the GTX 800 series. With a TDP of 170W on the GTX 980, we have a 60% performance-per-watt increase on the same 28nm process over the GTX 780 Ti, which is something worth talking about. With a $499 price tag, this could be one heck of a GPU, something we should hear about very soon. With a reported press event this week, we could even hear about it in the coming days.

It looks like NVIDIA is all set to launch its next-gen GPU, which should be skipping the GeForce GTX 800 series and moving onto the GTX 900 series with two GPUs to be launched at first.

According to Synnex, an international distrbutor of PC hardware, ASUS is preparing two GeForce GTX 900 series cards. First, we have the reference GeForce GTX 980 with what should arrive as the reference cooler for the GTX 980, then a second model: the STRIX GTX 970. This model should feature ASUS' custom cooling setup, the DirectCU II. We will see a quieter, cooler card with factory overclocking applied.

Then we have two entries for the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 900 series, also from Synnex. The first model is the GeForce GTX 980, another reference card, backed up by a custom GTX 970. GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming card should also feature a custom-designed cooling solution, and overclocked. Both the GTX 980 and GTX 970 cards are listed with 4GB of RAM across a 256-bit bus, so we're not going to see massive changes in the skipped-a-generation GPUs at the GPU-hungry 4K resolutions, and above.

Most will remember Matrox, a company that dealt in mainly professional video cards that were great for multi-monitor setups before the likes of AMD's Eyefinity and NVIDIA's Surround Vision technology hit the market. Well, Matrox is coming back, and is releasing GPUs that are powered with AMD technology.

Matrox's next-gen video cards will be powered by Radeon GPUs, with the announcement stating that "key features of the selected AMD GPU include 28nm technology with 1.5 billion transistors; DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.2 compatibility; shader model 5.0; PCI Express 3.0 and 128-bit memory interface." We should expect Matrox to be using a lower performance GraphicsCore Next (GCN) part, something from the Cape Verde GCN family. We could also see Matrox lean toward AMD's FirePro W600 cards, with Matrox sprinkling its custom-developed software applications such as Matrox PowerDesk on top.

This is an interesting move, as it frees up R&D that Matrox would spend on hardware costs, leveraging AMD's technology and putting more of its time into the software side of things. It helps AMD, as AMD can sell countless GPUs at higher "professional" prices, increasing their share of the professional market with AMD-powered Matrox cards.