Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 263

EK Water Blocks has just launched a new RGB version of its custom waterblock for EVGA's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 graphics card.

EKWB has put its usual high-class engineering into the RGB waterblock for the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 card, with the waterblock itself directly cooling the GPU, VRAM, and VRMs.

The company uses a central inlet split-flow cooling engine on the EK-FC1080 GTX Ti FTW3 RGB, something that offers best-in-class cooling performance when mixed with reversed water flow, that doesn't negatively impact cooling performance. The design allows the EK-FC1080 GTX Ti FTW3 RGB to be used in systems with not-so-great water pumps due to its impressive hydraulic performance.

I've been on holiday for the past week and didn't cover the purported specs on the GeForce GTX 1180 from WCCFTech, something I wanted to have the time to properly sit down and think about and then, write about... so here we go.

The site says "latest leaks, rumors and information provided" to them, without any names or proof, so this is all in the air. The site says the GeForce GTX 1180 will pack the unannounced Turing GPU architecture with the GT104 variant powering the GTX 1180, at up to 400mm2.

NVIDIA will pack an insane 3584 CUDA cores into the purported GeForce GTX 1180, with 8-16GB GDDR6 models on a 256-bit memory bus with the GDDR6 clocked at 16Gbps, blowing GDDR5X and HBM2 out of the water. This will provide the purported GTX 1180 with 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth up from the 320GB/sec offered on the GTX 1080 with its 8GB of GDDR5X at 10Gbps.

AMD is fighting the good fight with gamers with a new surprise bundle that is called Combat Crate. What is the new Combat Crate exactly? Well, there are two different Combat Crates so far, the first with a Ryzen 5 1600 and the other with a Ryzen 7 1700.

Both of the Combat Crates come with an MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard and MSI RX 580 Armor OC graphics card. This is a perfect combo for playing games at 1080p or even 1440p, and packing some hefty CPU power for a bundled price of just $599.

If you purchased these parts separately, it would cost $585 cheaper than the Combat Crate. But, the MSI RX 580 Armor OC graphics card is discounted from its original $379.99 price to $327.67, so if it was not discounted the bundle would be $35 cheaper or so.

Intel has announced new plans that would see the integrated GPUs on their processors used to scan for malware and viruses, something that will improve both performance and battery life on some PCs.

Rick Echevarria, Intel's platform security division VP explains: "With Accelerated Memory Scanning, the scanning is handled by Intel's integrated graphics processor, enabling more scanning, while reducing the impact on performance and power consumption. Early benchmarking on Intel test systems show CPU utilization dropped from 20 percent to as little as 2 percent".

Intel's new Threat Detection Technology is available on Intel's 6th/7th/8th gen processors, where it will move virus scanning abilities to the GPU, offloading it from the CPU. Right now virus scanners use the CPU to detect memory-based attacks, but entire system performance drops because of this. The company is hoping that offloading virus scanning to the integrated GPU that performance and power consumption will improve, as most PCs aren't using on-board GPUs to their full potential at all times. Might as well make use of that unused GPU power.

NVIDIA could most likely feel the voodoo doll that AMD has of them being poked and prodded overnight, with AMD coming out with a body slam against the GeForce Partner Program, or GPP.

For those who don't know the GPP is a new program that will see AMD add-in board partners who make both GeForce and Radeon graphics card need to have a very fine line between Radeon and GeForce. For the last few years we've seen AIB partners market GeForce and Radeon graphics cards in the same brands like ROG by ASUS, but now that the cat is out of the bag with AREZ, things are going to heat up.

Funnily enough, Scott Herkelman used to work for NVIDIA but is now the Corporate VP & GM of Radeon Gaming at AMD posted on the Radeon blog, where he said:

We all knew it was coming with a bunch of rumors flying through the internet, but now it has been 100% confirmed: ASUS has given up their ROG brand for Radeon graphics cards by introducing their new AREZ brand.

AREZ is derived by Ares, the Greek god of War, with ASUS explaining in their press release: "AREZ-branded graphics cards are built using industry-leading automated manufacturing to provide AMD gamers and enthusiasts with superior cooling technology and a robust software ecosystem".

This pretty much confirms that ASUS has dropped the Republic of Gamers brand from Radeon graphics cards, which will be reserved for NVIDIA's GeForce GTX line of products. ASUS is expected to sell multiple different cards in the AREZ brand that include Expedition, Phoenix, Strix (non-ROG), and Dual.

TweakTown has been the first with most of the next-gen Navi GPU architecture news, where a few months ago now I wrote that sources of mine had said that Vega was such a "disaster" that the RTG team "don't know where they're going forward" and that Navi will be "just as bad" as Vega.

Well, now Chris Hook has left the company along with Raja Koduri - both from the Radeon team in architecture and marketing, respectively. On top of that, we have fresh rumors from Fudzilla that AMD's next-gen Navi GPU will offer GTX 1080 / Radeon RX Vega 64 performance and that it will replace the RX 580 as a mainstream gaming card in 2019.

None of this is new, as I reported about this months ago but the rumors are fresh again and most tech media is picking it up so I thought I would cover it and give it a bit of an injection of reality.

AMD is losing key staff left, right and center, but one of the best guys in the industry is now gone from Team Red: Chris Hook. Hook joins major talent like Raja Koduri that have abandoned the what seems to be sinking ship that is Radeon.

Hook took to his Facebook page to announce the news, but had briefed some of the press before hand. I have been in contact with Chris for years now, he is a good friend of mine and it is sad to see him depart AMD, but I believe he will be landing on his feet very soon with some exciting news to share.

On his FB post, Hook said:

TweakTown was the world exclusive with news that AMD was preparing a rebranded Radeon RX 500X series, and here we are: a full confirmation that AMD has simply rebranded the RX 500 series, with the 'new' RX 500X series.

AMD is simply rebranding their entire lineup of Polaris-based RX 500 series cards, the same cards that they released last year that were tweaked RX 400 offerings. The RX 500X series the same RX 500 series cards that AMD will now be giving to system builders, OEMs, and mobile platforms. AMD is simply refreshing the brand for OEMs and notebooks.

The deal here with the rebranded Radeon RX 500X series is that AMD is ensuring that the RX 500X series cards are using the latest hardware and driver revisions for Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition for 2018. It might not be a big deal to gamers because this isn't a new card, but this means a lot to OEMs selling Radeon.

I had an interesting conversation with someone a couple of days ago regarding the future of Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and the future of GPU technology going into the 2020s.

What was confirmed on that phone call was that Intel is serious about entering the gaming graphics card market, something the company confirmed in February. More so since Raja Koduri left AMD to get inside Intel (pun intended), as well as a few other key staff and news coming in the next few months. We're in for a big ride.

My sources have said that Raja is "building a great team", that Intel wants to take big bold risks by thinking big and courageous. Raja and Intel want to drive these people hard and that they're 100% in it, with Raja wanting to bring people in to win with Intel now that he's outside of the downward spiral with AMD and their non-direction-no-action-at-all with Radeon.