Graphics Cards - Page 249

It looks like NVIDIA is preparing the GeForce GTX 900 series, with the company to reportedly skip the 800 series, according to VideoCards.com. The site is reporting that NVIDIA will launch the new second-generation Maxwell-based GPUs on September 9-10 at a press event, with the NDA lifting on the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 on September 19.

There's not much known on the new GeForce GTX 980 (if that's what it arrives as) other than the fact that it should arrive with a 256-bit memory bus, and 4GB of RAM by default - up from the 3GB on the current GTX 780. With AMD only just announcing its Radeon R9 285 and R9 285X last week, the new GTX 970 could fight it in the mid-range, or NVIDIA could drop the price of its current GTX 770 and GTX 760 to better fight Red Team off.

Then we have the fact of AMD sitting on the unannounced Radeon R9 295X, something that the company should announce or unveil as soon as NVIDIA is done pulling the curtain off of its new Maxwell-based video cards.

We're starting to hear more information on AMD's upcoming next-gen GPU architecture, code named "Faraway Islands". AMD's next-gen architecture is shaping up quite nicely, but this is all just a rumor right now. CHW.com seemed to have gotten the information from SemiAccurate, but right now this is in heavy rumor territory.

While we've heard rumors of NVIDIA skipping the 20nm process and shifting right onto the 16nm process, AMD looks to be baking its Faraway Islands-based GPUs onto the 20nm process, something it'll reportedly do over at TSMC and GlobalFoundaries. This will allow AMD to be first to the market with a new GPU based on a new process node, pushing NVIDIA to the side for a few months enjoying the slew of salivating-at-the-mouths consumers who want a new GPU desperately.

AMD's new Faraway Islands GPU architecture will be baked into all of AMD's future GPUs and APU products, so we should expect some low-power ARM-based SoCs and some decently powerful APUs from this new architecture. When to expect it though? 2015. Pirate Islands is still to come, also based on the 20nm process, but AMD could skip that all together and push right on over to Faraway Islands, either way, new GPUs are on their way!

AMD has announced its latest GPU during its 30 Years of Graphics and Gaming Innovation event, the Tonga PRO-based Radeon R9 285. AMD's new Radeon R9 285 GPU features 1792 Stream Processors, either 2GB or 4GB of VRAM set at 5.5GHz, a Core Clock of 918MHz and a 256-bit memory interface.

The new Radeon R9 285 requires two 6-pin PCIe connectors, has 176GB/sec of memory bandwidth, a 190W TDP, and will be available on September 2 starting at around $249. The new Radeon R9 285 will be joined by another GPU in a few weeks time, the Tonga XT-based Radeon R9 285X. This new GPU will have more Stream Processors, kicking up the numbers from 1792 to 2048, increasing the TMU count from 112 on the R9 285 to 128 on the R9 285X.

AMD's latest GPU is positioned between the Radeon R9 270/270X and the R9 280X, and will compete against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 760. In AMD's testing on Battlefield 4 at 2560x1440, the Red Team reports that the new R9 285 is "up to 15% faster" than the GTX 760. At $249, is the new AMD Radeon R9 285 something that will have you upgrading your PC?

It looks like NVIDIA will unveil its GeForce GTX 880 sometime next month at a press event, but what to expect from NVIDIA for its next-gen GPU? We shouldn't expect too much in the performance department, but a decent price is something we can smile about.

VideoCardz.com is reporting that the GeForce GTX 880 will be announced mid next month, with retail availability of the GPU starting in late September. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of the GeForce GTX 880, we should expect NVIDIA to offer up 4GB and 8GB GDDR5 versions, both on a 256-bit bus. The best part about the GTX 880 will be its price, which is expected to fall somewhere around $400-$500 price range.

When it comes to performance, we should expect it to obviously beat the GK104-based GTX 780, and hopefully beat the GTX 780 Ti. By how much, we don't know. I think we can expect it to fall 10% either side of the GTX 780 Ti, and at $400-$450, this is going to push the prices of the GTX 780, and GTX 780 Ti down, too.

According to the latest rumors, NVIDIA could unveil its next-gen GeForce GTX 800 series sometime in the next couple of months. SweClockers is the site behind the tease, stating that NVIDIA will unveil its new GTX 870 and GTX 880 GPUs in October or November.

We already know that the upcoming GTX 800 series will be a powerhouse series of video cards, with the two GPUs being positioned for the high-end market. The GTX 870 and GTX 880 will replace the current GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti video cards, with the new GM204-based hardware. The last time we heard about the GTX 880, we heard that it sported 8GB of RAM and a 375W TDP.

The GeForce GTX 800 series should arrive on the 28nm process, and not the 20nm process like some thought it would. The biggest tease is that NVIDIA is rumored to launch its GeForce GTX 990 early next year, something that would truly break some speed records as it will be based on the 16nm process, skipping the 20nm process entirely.

We know it's coming, but we don't know what exactly to expect. AMD is preparing its mammoth new GPU, which will be a huge 500sq.mm+ GPU, something that will arrive into our hands as the Radeon R9 390X.

AMD's new Radeon R9 390X is being designed by Synapse Design, a company that recently announced new GPU tapeouts - including two 28HPM silicons. The first is the massive 500sq.mm+, which will be as powerful as 20nm SoC technology, which should end up being the new R9 390X. The R9 390X should have a core clock of over 1GHz, but will unfortunately not feature High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM.

We should begin to hear more on the new GPUs as time goes by - but if these rumors are correct, the Radeon R9 390X is shaping up to be a beast.

It looks like NVIDIA isn't going to sit on its hands when it comes to the GTX TITAN, with the GPU maker reportedly working on a GM200-based GTX TITAN II. This new GPU will arrive as soon as early 2015.

According to German tech site 3DCenter.org, specifications of some new GPUs are also here with us, above. We can see the GM200 and GM204 GPUs will reportedly be built on the 28nm process. We heard a couple of days ago that NVIDIA would skip the 20nm process, moving onto the 16nm process, but nothing is in concrete right now.

The GM200 however, will feature over 4,000 CUDA cores, and should come with a much wider, and much anticipated 512-bit memory bus. If we expect it to be baked onto the 28nm process, this is going to be one gigantic, titan of a GPU. NVIDIA is going to have to leverage the energy efficiency of its Maxwell architecture in order to keep the thermals under control. We should expect the GM200-based GTX TITAN II to launch early next year.

Now that we've passed into the second half of 2014, we should expect some new GPUs in the coming months. But what is more exciting, is what is coming in the first half of 2015 according to a new report from SemiAccurate.

We should expect NVIDIA to skip the 20nm process completely, moving directly from 28nm into 16nm. This is just a rumor right now, but if it ends up happening, 2015 is going to be one of the most exciting years for GPUs in a very long time. This would see NVIDIA release the GeForce GTX 990 under the Maxwell architecture, from the GM204B core.

If NVIDIA does skip the 20nm process, we should see some seriously fast GPUs appearing, with much lower than expected power consumption. The core count should also be lower when compared to the GeForce GTX 700 series, as Maxwell is a much more efficient architecture compared to Kepler. So before we have the GTX 800 series, we're already foaming at the mouth about the GTX 900 series. It won't stop there, as we should see NVIDIA unveil the GeForce 1000 series sometime in the next 18-24 months, too.

Chinese website GamerSky has posted up photos that they are calling a GeForce GTX 880 engineering sample, and boy do they paint quite the picture. The prototype that is in the photos below has some incredible specs behind it, with 8GB of RAM to start things off.

We should expect two variants to launch, with a GeForce GTX 880 with 4GB of RAM, and another with 8GB of RAM. From here, we have 3 PCIe power connectors, two 6-pin connectors and a single 8-pin connector for a total power draw of 375W. This is an insane number, but we are looking at a 28nm-based Maxwell GPU, and not the 20nm GPU that will pave the way for lower power draw and temperatures.

We should hopefully see the GeForce GTX 880 materialize before the end of the year, with a refreshed GTX 990 on the 20nm process expected for 2015 - this is me guessing here, but I think we'll see it happen.

It looks like AMD is preparing itself a new GPU, the Hawaii XTX. Right now we have the Hawaii PRO, which is the Radeon R9 290, and the Hawaii XT, which arrives to us in the form of the high-end Radeon R9 290X.

The new Hawaii XTX will arrive in retail form as the Radeon R9 295X, and will feature the full 48 Compute Units - compared to the 40 on the R9 290 and 44 on the R9 290X. Better yet, there will be 3072 cores, this is an increase from the 2816 cores found on the already fast R9 290X. When it comes to TMUs, this will be increased from the 176 on the 290X to 192 on the 295X. The ROP count will stay at 64.

The question now sits with pricing - will AMD be competitive, because these specs will allow the company to compete directly with the GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK Edition, as well as the GTX 780 Ti. Because of the increased specs, we should expect the Radeon R9 295X to arrive with custom cooling from AMD's various partners in SAPPHIRE, MSI, and more.

It looks like we can expect NVIDIA to unleash next-gen GPUs this year, with the GeForce GTX 800 series to be revealed this year. Sweoverclockers is reporting that NVIDIA will launch both the GeForce GTX 880 and GTX 870 sometime in Q4 2014 - so between October and December.

While the GeForce GTX 880 and GTX 870 will be based off of NVIDIA's second generation Maxwell architecture, it will be on the 28nm process - not the 20nm process that we expected. TSMC has started volume production of the 20nm node for everyone, but this should start being spun on new GPUs in 2015 - something that will provide a large jump in performance, thermals, noise and much more for both NVIDIA and AMD.

Another interesting part of this news, is that NVIDIA has reportedly canceled the production of GM100 chips, in favor of the GM200 chips. These new GPUs are still based on the 28nm process, so it will be 2015 before things really ramp up for next-gen GPUs. This means that the new GeForce GTX 800 series are cards 'for now,' and intermediary product before NVIDIA can ramp up 20nm-based products next year.

It is pretty obvious that the new GeForce GTX 880 will be faster than the GeForce GTX 780, but what is interesting, is that it will be both cheaper, and more power efficient - something nobody can complain about.

The news is slowly floating out that the 20nm-based Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 880 will be faster, cheaper, and more power efficient - but that is only one GPU in a massive lineup of cards. We should expect the new high-end Maxwell-based 20nm GPU late this year, or early 2015. NVIDIA could be forced to reveal 28nm-based Maxwell GPUs, but right now there's no threat to force their hand.

If NVIDIA do release the Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 880 on the cheap, faster than what we have with the GTX 780, or even the GTX 780 Ti, at around 200W power consumption, it would really put the pressure on AMD. This only ends up being great for consumers, though.

Computex 2014 - The Lightning Series from MSI has been one of our favorites for as long as we can remember. When we saw the GTX 780 Ti Lightning at the corner of our eye when walking around the MSI booth, we found ourselves instantly excited with just what was being shown off.

Carrying the massive triple fan Twin Frozr cooler and sporting Lightning features like GPU Reactor, Military Class 4 Components, Enhanced Power Design and Triple Force Architecture we knew that this was a card we must have. To then be told that the card wouldn't hit the market, though, was quite upsetting. Due to NVIDIA not allowing MSI to increase the voltage specification, MSI have decided to not release the model as it wouldn't give users the Lightning experience that they have come to known.

A small amount of the cards have been made which will be used by overclockers. With a modified BIOS they can increase the voltage to levels that continue to be safe while using LN2 cooling. It's really disappointing we'll never get a chance to test this model.

As previously reported, NVIDIA was supposed to release its GeForce Titan Z flagship video card on April 29th, but the company delayed its plans, moving it to May 8th.

However since NVIDIA didn't launch that card on May 8th, speculations were on a rise about why it wasn't launched until a leaked benchmarks from a review site indicated that the video card with dual GK110 GPU is slower than AMD Radeon R9 295X2. It was also assumed that NVIDIA was bumping the card's clock speed to boost its performance.

NVIDIA was all set to unleash its GeForce GTX Titan Z on April 29, but missed the launch. It was then meant to launch on May 8, but missed that launch date, too. Now we're seeing a leaked review of the dual GK110 beast, which seems to be slower than the much cheaper Radeon R9 295X2 from AMD.

The leaked goodness comes from Videocardz, which reports that the Titan Z is a triple-slot card - but air-cooled. This is compared to the liquid cooler on the Radeon R9 295X2, which requires mounting in your case. There's dual 8-pin PCIe power, so we're looking at a total TDP of 375W on NVIDIA's dual GK110 product. But what about performance? The Titan Z doesn't beat the R9 295X2 in everything, but it comes close. When compared to GTX 780s in SLI, the Titan Z loses, with a much bigger gap.

The problem here is, even if it comes close to the R9 295X2, but doesn't beat it - the Titan Z is at least $3000 (without taxes). You can go and buy a SAPPHIRE R9 295X2 on Amazon for $1536 - half the cost of the Titan Z.

NVIDIA was supposed to officially launch its dual GK110 based GTX Titan Z video card on 8th May, but it turned out to be a no-show. The graphic chip maker neither made any official launch announcement, nor any retails stores are selling the video card.

It is now rumoured that NVIDIA may have delayed the launch of the card 'indefinitely'.

The GeForce Titan Z will have two GK110 GPU core, followed by 12GB GDDR5 memory, 5760 Cuda Cores with base clock of 705MHz and a price tag of a jaw dropping $3,000 without taxes. Originally, the card was supposed to be launched on 29th April, 2014, but it was then delayed to 8th of May. It was rumoured that the card will be the highest-performing video card with 8TFLOPS of computing power that may justify the price.

OverclockersUK has a great new exclusive from SAPPHIRE, with its new SAPPHIRE R9 290X Vapor-X 8GB GPU. This is something we posted about a while ago, but now the GPU with a bunch of VRAM is on sale, but it's quite expensive at £600 inc. VAT (or £500/$848 ex. VAT).

The SAPPHIRE R9 290X Vapor-X 8GB has 2816 SPs, 1060MHz Core Clock, 5.6GHz on the memory, two dual-link DVI ports, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort output. There are two 8-pin power connections for power, with SAPPHIRE recommending you own a 600W PSU to get it working. SAPPHIRE's amazingly efficient Vapor-X cooling steals the show here, teaming up with the 8GB of RAM for a high-five of GPU goodness.

SAPPHIRE has made its entire stock of Vapor-X 8GB GPUs for OverclockersUK, which means that there needs to be some serious interest outside of the country for the company to make more GPUs. I'm sure there will be though, as I'm one of them. Give me four of them please, SAPPHIRE.

The last time we heard about the GeForce GTX 880, we heard it would have 4GB of RAM - well, how does 8GB of RAM sound on NVIDIA's next generation flagship GPU? Beautiful, just as I thought.

Well, an engineering sample (ES) card has been intercepted on its way from NVIDIA's development center in India, on its way to China. The shipping manifest was found by Chinese press, with "GM204" and "8 GB GDDR5" plastered all over it. We know that GM204 is the successor to the GK104, which should pack 3200 CUDA cores, a 256-bit memory bus and a massive 8GB of RAM.

If NVIDIA is about to launch the GTX 880 with 8GB of RAM over a 256-bit bus, it must be using some very high density memory chips. Better yet, the price should be under $800. I would've liked to have seen a 512-bit bus with 8GB of RAM, but I would just be greedy there, wouldn't I?

According to a report, NVIDIA has launched its plans to launch its flagship GPU GeForce GTX Titan-Z GPU that was expected to go on sale today. It was pointed out that the chipmaker is making last minute design changes for the GPU cooler.

There's also another report which indicates that it cannot be put against AMD Radeon R9 295X2. It was pointed out that the reported clock speeds would not make the NVIDIA's flagship compete with Radeon R9 295X2.

According to few retail websites that leaked the information, the flagship card with 2x GK110 GPUs has the base clock of 695MHz with Boost Clock of up to 730MHz with 7000MHz memory clock, 2x 6GB memory, 2x 384-bit memory bus which will take power via 8+8 PCIe pin and priced for a jaw dropping $3,000.

SAPPHIRE has just announced it has released the new SAPPHIRE R9 290X Vapor-X OC GPU, which is an overclocked version of the already-fast Radeon R9 290X. We have GPU clocks at 1080MHz, while the 4GB of GDDR5 coasts along at 1410MHz.

But the star of the show here is definitely SAPPHIRE's impressive Vapor-X cooling system, which sports vapor chamber technology, which is mounted between the GPU itself, and the base of the heat sink and cooler - this way, it draws as much heat as possible away from the GPU, and onto the cooler. SAPPHIRE has used a new Vapor-X cooler, which leverages its amazing Tri-X structure.

The Tri-X structure features five heat pipes, and three very efficient fans. This should keep the new SAPPHIRE R9 290X Vapor-X OC GPU cool, even when overclocked past its already overclocked speeds. There's also the Digital Power control on the new Vapor-X OC card, as well as a new Aero10 VRM section which pumps 10-phase power with high-power Direct-FET technology into the GPU, memory and circuitry.