Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 3

There's been a lot of discussion around the PC version of Starfield since the game officially launched last week, and a lot of it has centered on whether or not optimization looks to have been primarily focused on AMD GPUs compared to those from NVIDIA and Intel. And with that, the latter looks to be suffering the most, but Intel is hard at work releasing multiple driver updates for Starfiled on PC for its Intel Arc line of desktop GPUs.

Bethesda support says the Intel Arc A770 doesn't meet the minimum specs for Starfield.

The latest driver update from Intel fixes a few more Starfield issues, from improving performance and stability to fixing some visual bugs and glitches like missing character eyebrows. Per the release notes for the new Intel Arc 31.0.101.4676 Non-WHQL driver release, several outstanding issues remain to iron out.

Some are related to performance, while others are still associated with glitches like low-res textures loading instead of high-quality assets and flickering objects with certain light sources. So Starfield on Arc isn't a great experience (yet), and kudos to the Arc driver team for working hard to improve things. However, Bethesda's comments on Arc graphics are a little surprising.

The latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.9.1 driver release for Radeon graphics is big, as it adds Radeon Anti-Lag+ and AMD HYPR-RX for RDNA 3 GPUs. Coinciding with the launch of the new Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT GPUs, HYPR-RX is a new driver-based feature for the RDNA 3 generation that offers a significant boost to performance while lowering latency for all games at the driver level.

Anti-Lag+ is AMD's latest version of its Reflex-like latency reduction tool, optimized per game and exclusive to RDNA 3-based Radeon graphics cards. With the first wave of 12 Anti-Lag+ supported titles, including Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, Fortnite, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, AMD showcases the difference it brings compared to its existing Anti-Lag tech.

HYPR-RX combines Anti-Lag+, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Super Resolution into a single-click option to make access to these technologies easier. It will be expanded next year with the long-awaited introduction of FSR 3 and AMD Fluid Motion Frames - the company's answer to DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Starfield is out this week, even though it seems like the whole PC gaming world has been playing the Early Access version over the past week, and with Intel Arc support reportedly spotty (at best), the driver team at Intel has pushed out a driver update specific to Starfield. And according to the Intel Graphics team, there's another one on the way later this week.

Starfield's performance on Intel Arc graphics cards still needs improvement.

"The driver engineering team is still hard at work on further stability and performance improvements," writes Intel on Twitter/X. "We want to offer fixes for this title as quickly as possible." Stability issues specific to a single vendor are not great, though kudos to the Intel team for working hard to release a new driver and continue to improve the game's performance.

The Starfield driver for Intel Arc graphics cards that just dropped is a big one, as it significantly reduces loading times and resolves several "game instability and visual artifacts." However, as more work needs to be done, Intel advises playing the game using the 'High' preset or lower - so no Ultra then.

Ahead of the launch of AMD's new Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT, it looks like official benchmark results have leaked - via HDTechnologia and Videocardz. According to the publications, these detailed performance numbers (in that they cover a wide range of titles) come from AMD's official reviewer's guide for the new graphics cards.

Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT performance leaks from AMD's reviewer's guide, image credit: HDTechnologia.

With the launch so close, it's safe to assume that what we're seeing here is correct, though it's worth highlighting that the results allegedly come from AMD itself and not independent reviewers. Also, the exact system configuration isn't specified. Still, each game entry does note what settings are used - like 'Ultra High' for Assassin's Creed Valhalla and 'Epic' for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. And there's a separate section for ray-tracing.

Without RT enabled, according to these figures, the Radeon RX 7800 XT outperforms the GeForce RTX 4070 by around 7% on average, with that number dropping to a slight performance lead with RT effects turned on.

Real-time ray-tracing in PC games is associated with NVIDIA because it spearheads the technology with the GeForce RTX series and the creation of dedicated RT and AI hardware to assist with the intense hardware power required to go 'RTX On.'

Cyberpunk 2077 in RT Overdrive or RT Ultra mode is 'exclusive' to NVIDIA GeForce RTX on account of it being the only GPUs that can run it.

With its RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 Series, AMD entered the RT space with hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, but the results were - at best - a generation behind NVIDIA. With the arrival of the RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7000 Series, AMD has made some welcome improvements to its hardware-accelerated ray-tracing performance - which makes the upcoming launch of the Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT super interesting.

Though, based on AMD's Radeon chief Scott Herkelman, there's still a lot of room for improvement. To the point where AMD factors in its second-class ray-tracing performance when pricing new GPUs like the 7700 XT and 7800 XT.

When AMD launched the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX last year, it made a special note to state that it didn't require a special adapter for power - a nod to NVIDIA using the new 12VHPWR connector for its GeForce RTX 40 Series and the subsequent controversy surrounding cases of melting cables.

The new Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT GPUs are coming September 6, image credit: AMD.

In a new interview over at Club 386 covering the release of the new AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT, AMD's Radeon chief Scott Herkelman reveals that the company originally planned for these mid-rance and enthusiast models to use the new 12VHPWR connectors but ultimately decided against the idea due to the issues surrounding potential failure.

In fact, Scott Herkelman throws quite a bit of shade NVIDIA's way with his response, comparing it to his and AMD's response to the vapor-chamber cooling issue with Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards last year.

In a new wide-ranging interview with Club 386, AMD Radeon chief Scott Herkelman opened up about all things Radeon - from the new Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT GPUs dropping next week through to the company's plans for the future and the recent announcement of FSR 3 and its new Fluid Motion Frames technology.

AMD's new FSR 3 introduces Fluid Motion Frames technology similar to NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Frame Generation, image credit: AMD.

Regarding FSR, the AMD chief noted that it always planned to make the technology as broad as possible (i.e., support multiple generations of Radeon GPUs in addition to those from competing brands like NVIDIA and Intel), which is why it took so long to see the light of day. "FSR 3 will be good for the industry," Scott Herkelman says.

Undoubtedly, a big part of FSR 3 and AMD's Fluid Motion Frames technology directly responds to NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Frame Generation exclusive to the GeForce RTX 40 Series. And by that same token, FSR and FSR 2 directly responded to NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution upscaling. The interview gets interesting when Scott Herkelman becomes candid about the state of upscaling technologies.

UPDATE: Original post noted that NVIDIA dropped the MSRP of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB down to USD 449; this is not the case. The market price for multiple SKUs of the 16GB variant is currently sitting at USD 449 - with some models as low as USD 430.

MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB and PNY GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Verto have seen their prices drop to $449.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti range comes in two flavors: the 8GB models launched in May for USD 399 and 16GB models from select partners arriving a month later for USD 499. As seen in some deep dives on the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, having that extra chunk of VRAM can significantly improve performance in some titles when in-game settings depend on memory.

As great as it was to see NVIDIA offer two SKUs for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, having an additional 8GB of VRAM for future-proofing sit behind a $100 premium didn't feel worth it for many. However, with the release of AMD's mid-range and enthusiast GPU combo next week - the Radeon RX 7700 XT 12GB (USD 449) and Radeon RX 7800 XT (USD 499) - several SKUs for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB GPU are available for USD 449.

It's another day in the world of desktop GPUs, and we have another leak, this time a 3DMark run for AMD's soon to be released RX 7700 XT graphics card.

This comes from well-known leaker HXL on X (formerly Twitter), and as ever with spilled benchmarks, take it with a good old heap of skepticism.

In this case, we don't have a screenshot of the benchmark, but we are told that the RX 7700 XT hits around 17,000 in Time Spy. (Note that a grab is provided, but it's from CPU-Z showing the graphics card's spec).

COLORFUL is best known for creating graphics cards and motherboards from the popular iGame series and several other models. The company's latest hardware announcement is about the new COLORFUL MEOW Series, which includes custom graphics cards (a GeForce RTX 4060 and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB), a motherboard, and chassis.

The new COLORFUL MEOW Series.

Per the "MEOW' naming, you can probably guess that it's cat-themed, but it's not as over the top as you might expect, with the new GPUs, in particular, looking very stylish in orange. Both the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 MEOW-ORG 8GB and COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Ti MEOW-ORG 8GB combine a white shell with orange colored fans and brass caps sporting the company's 'Bobi the orange tabby cat' creation.

All things considered, it's fairly subtle and has a bit of a Noctua look, thanks to the colored fans. The new COLORFIRE B760M-MEOW WIFI D5 ORANGE motherboard for Intel 13th and 12th Gen CPUs is a lot busier in its design, but the use of white and orange blends quite well with the tech-style art flourishes and the cat-friendly MEOW icons and text.