Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 260

AMD has released new Radeon drivers that are optimized for new games like Monster Hunter World, We Happy View, Madden NFL 19, and World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. You can download them right here.

The new Radeon Adrenalin 18.8.1 drivers offer up to 5% more performance on the Radeon RX Vega 64 for Monster Hunter World, and for Radeon RX 580 owners you can expect up to 6% additional performance. There are some bug fixes included with Fortnite crashing upon launch in Windows 7 solved, as well as some issues with multi-GPU systems crashing when changing resolutions in-game fixed.

Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.8.1 Release Notes

TweakTown was one of the first in the world to host an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 giveaway, before it launched back in May 2016, and here we are doing it again. It might not be called the GeForce GTX 1180, but we are giving away TWO of whatever next-gen flagship graphics card NVIDIA releases, whenever they comes out. We're celebrating the fact it has been so long between exciting GPU releases that we're not giving away one, but TWO of their next-gen cards! SLI giveaway, baby!

All of the rumors are pointing towards a release sometime this month so we're starting ours now building up to its release, and then hosting livestreams and giveaways on top of this GTX 1180 giveaway once the card has been made official by NVIDIA. We don't know if the flagship new card will be a Turing-based GeForce GTX 1180 or something else such as a GTX 1185/1190/1195 or something, but whatever it is unveiled as TweakTown will give away the best card NVIDIA announces in this world-first competition.

How To Win:

NVIDIA hasn't made anything official about its next-gen graphics cards yet, with our own sources saying it will arrive as the GeForce GTX 11 series but there are Chinese AIB partners that are already unveiling next-gen GeForce graphics cards.

Now we have Maxsun unveiling their new GeForce GTX 1180 iCraft at the recent ChinaJoy event, with the new card being part of Maxsun's high-end product line. The card is a thin dual-slot card with RGB strips along the front of the card and in the GeForce GTX branding on the top of the card.

Maxsun's GeForce GTX 1180 iCraft doesn't have a DVI port with one slot of the bracket dedicated to exhausting heat, while there's a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. I'm expecting the new cards to use a single 8-pin PCIe power connector thanks to the new 12nm node and what I'm sure NVIDIA will unveil as massive power efficiency through the refreshed Turing GPU architecture.

TSMC is one of the world's largest chip manufacturers, handling wafers of chips for the likes of NVIDIA and Apple has been hit with viruses on Friday night that forced multiple factories to be shut down in Taiwan.

We don't know which specific factories were hit with the viruses and shut down, and whether they were factories that are important to NVIDIA and its next-gen GeForce GTX 1180 and other graphics cards expected to be released imminently, or Apple's upcoming next-gen iPhone. August is a big month for manufacturing as we're leading into the holiday season and consumer devices are being made now, but you can't make those new expensive products without chips made by TSMC if you're one of their customers.

TSMC is now the world's largest independent semiconducer in the industry, with the company making NVIDIA's new 12nm GPUs for their upcoming GTX 11 series graphics cards, and the new 7nm chips for Apple's new iPhones. Other TMSC customers having chips made in Taiwan include AMD and Qualcomm. A small disruption like this in production can have very hefty snowball effects depending on which companies chips were being made that day.

We already know that AMD is heavily committed to the semi-custom market with Sony working hand-in-hand with RTG on the development of Navi for their next-gen PlayStation 5 console, but now it's China's time in the spotlight with a Ryzen/Vega SoC in development.

A new semi-custom system-on-chip (SoC) was announced today that packs a quad-core Ryzen CPU and Vega GPU with 24 stream processors, all packed with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. AMD is working with Zhongshan Subor on the new chip, something that will be powering a "new gaming PC and upcoming console" in China.

Inside, teh new SoC packs a 4C/8T Ryzen CPU at 3GHz, and 24 Vega CUs at 1.3GHz joined by the 8GB of GDDR5. We should expect Radeon RX 580 level performance, which is fine for 1080p and 1440p gaming at 60FPS depending on the game and detail levels used. The more interesting side here is that the Vega GPU technology is using GDDR5 memory and not HBM2 like AMD originally said when they announced the Vega GPU architecture.

NVIDIA seems to be launching its new GeForce GTX 1180 during its GeForce Gaming Celebration at Gamescom 2018, with the purported PCB of the new GTX 1180 with either 8GB or 16GB of GDDR6 leaking.

This is the front of the new GTX 1180 PCB where we can see an interesting new SLI finger that is much bigger, some tighter VRAM placements which should be a new home for GDDR6. We also have a 6+8-pin PCIe power connector setup, which is an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector on top of the single 8-pin PCIe power connector that was required on the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition.

Keen-eyed readers will notice that we probably won't have a DVI output on the new GeForce GTX 1180, but we should expect the new VirtualLink connector through USB Type-C. The SLI finger upgrade could be awesome, paving the way for NVLink for gamers compared to the aging (and virtually dead) SLI technology that has sh*t multi-GPU scaling. Could we expect 90-100% scaling with multiple GTX 1180s in NVLink/next-gen SLI? We're going to need it for those 4K 144Hz HDR G-Sync monitors and 65-inch 4K 120Hz HDR G-Sync BFGD TVs.

NVIDIA has just released their latest Game Ready 398.82 drivers, which are Game Ready for GeForce graphics card owners for World of Warcraft: Battle of Azeroth which launches on August 14, and Monster World Hunter on August 9.

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is right around the corner, with NVIDIA recommending the GeForce GTX 1060 for 1080p 60FPS, the GTX 1070 for 1440p 60FPS and the GTX 1080 for 4K 60FPS. NVIDIA has benchmarks the game, where they've said: "If you like World of Warcraft, you like stats, so here's some: at 1920×1080, our benchmarking concluded with an average framerate of 65.4 on the GeForce GTX 1060, when paired with an i5-6600K. A minimum framerate of 53 was the lowest we saw, and the frametime plot was near-perfect, indicating performance was smooth and stable".

NVIDIA continues: "At 2560×1440, the GeForce GTX 1070 gave us a 65.6 FPS average, with a minimum of 52, and equally-smooth frametimes And at 4K, it's recommended that players step up to an i7 for a perfect 60 frames per second on a GeForce GTX 1080, with the occasional dip to 51 FPS".

NVIDIA's various AIB partners will have their GeForce GTX 11 series graphics cards in consumers hands in the August/September timeframe, with Inno3D ahead of the pack when it comes to subtle viral marketing of their new cooling technology.

Inno3D held an event in China recently where they teased their next-gen iChill AIO liquid cooling technology which should be used on their next-gen GTX 11 series graphics cards. Inno3D's next-gen iChill AIO liquid cooler will be used on the company's flagship overclocked GTX 1180 and GTX 1170 graphics cards (or whatever they end up as, GTX 1185 or GTX 1195).

The new coolers will have the iChill logo on both the front and the back of the card, illuminated by beautiful LEDs. It will be a dual-slot cooler with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors while the watercooling tubes feeding out the back above the power connectors.

NVIDIA has just announced its new GeForce Gaming Celebration event for August 20, which will take place at Gamescom 2018 in Cologne, Germany.

NVIDIA will be showcasing its latest graphics cards and 4K 144Hz HDR G-Sync gaming monitors and 65-inch 4K 120Hz HDR BFGD TVs, alongside a slew of games and other gaming-related goodies during Gamescom 2018. Until now, rumors suggested July 30 as the release date for the GeForce GTX 1180 graphics card with an August/September release window that AIB partners told me during Computex 2018... and now that seems the case.

The company has officially announced teh event on their website, saying that it will be "loaded with new, exclusive, hands-on demos of the hottest upcoming games, stage presentations from the world's biggest game developers, and some spectacular surprises". I wonder what those "spectacular surprises" could be, eh?

NVIDIA delayed its GeForce GTX 11 series launch earlier this year which is why we're in such a sad state of affairs with rumors and leaks, and then the mining boom happened right in the middle of all of this, as well as AMD completely failing with its Radeon business... all of which have created the perfect storm for NVIDIA.

Now we have new information that VideoCardz is reporting from YouTuber 'Gamer Meld' who reportedly received an email from an NVIDIA AIB partner that provided some release dates for the GTX 11 series. The email said the GeForce GTX 1180 would be released on August 30, the GTX 1170 and GTX 1180+ on September 30, and the mid-range GTX 1160 on October 30.

So with this new information in-hand, let's break it down.