Video Cards News - Page 3

NVIDIA will be releasing its new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card next week, and with it there will be a significant new driver release that destroys crypto mining performance by up to 50% on some algorithms.

The upcoming release of the GeForce RTX 3060 would've been very popular for crypto miners, as it would offer a card that is the most power efficient Ampere offering yet -- and it won't cost as much as the higher-end GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards.

But it seems NVIDIA will be discouraging crypto miners in a big way with new GeForce drivers coming that will automatically detect mining-specific algorithms, and then limit the hash rate performance by 50%. NVIDIA seems to make this specific about the GeForce RTX 3060, but I wonder how long it'll be until all GeForce graphics cards are gimped from mining.

• Read more: This 78 x GeForce RTX 3080 crypto mining rig makes $128,000 per year

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 can get pretty hot, but how just how hot does the card get if it is passively cooled... with no fans at all? Not that hot, actually.

The folks at Turemetal which is a brand that specializes in fanless PC systems, posted some photos of their Turemetal UP10 case with a passively-cooled NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. This isn't the first totally fanless GeForce RTX 3080 but it is the first that has an entire PC passively cooled and running super stress tests like Furmark.

Inside of the Turemetal UP10 case is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor with a 65W TDP, and ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The entire system is using around 410W of power, with the CPU and GPU both using custom heat spreaders that are then connected to a huge heat sink with what feels like 100+ heat pipes.

We all know how impossible it is to buy a graphics card these days, fighting between a lack of supply, scalpers, the COVID pandemic, supply chain issues, and especially cryptocurrency miners.

Well, NVIDIA has just announced its new Crypto Mining Processor HX series, new cards that are made specifically for crypto mining and more specifically Ethereum mining. There are 4 new CMP HX cards announced: the 30HX, 40HX, 50HX, and 90HX with varying levels of mining performance, power consumption, power connectors, memory sizes, and availability.

Starting with the new NVIDIA CMP 30HX with its 26MH/s Ethereum mining power at 125W, this will require just a single 8-pin PCI power cable and have 6GB of VRAM. The higher-end 40HX ups the Ethereum hash rate to 36MH/s at 185W, uses the same single 8-pin PCIe power cable but ups the VRAM to 8GB. Both of these CMP mining cards will be available in Q1 2021.

Samsung has just announced its new adventure into HBM technology, with the introduction of HBM-PIM with the 'PIM' standing for processing-in-memory. But what the hell does that mean?

The new HBM-PIM technology allows for some programmability inside of the memory layer, thanks to an embedded "DRAM-optimized" AI engine inside of the memory banks. This new AI engine is called a PCU or Programmable Compute Unit, which will handle the data between your CPU and memory in a parallelized way.

This is because most computing systems of today are based on the von Neumann architecture, which separates processor and memory units to do millions of individual processing tasks. This can be congested as you can imagine, so HBM-PIM provides processing power directly stored on a DRAM-optimized AI engine inside of each memory bank.

ZOTAC stepped in a huge puddle of sh*t a few hours ago, happily posting and endorsing the huge of its GPUs with huge crypto mining farms and then tagging it with #PcGaming... yeah. It was removed, but the internet being the internet means it's forever:

In the picture you can see that ZOTAC is showing off a crypto mining rig that is powered by a bunch of their own GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge graphics cards and then ZOTAC used a bunch of hashtags that are for PC gamers. These hashtags include #PcGaming, #Gaming, #Gamers, #Tech, #PcHardware, #PcComponents, #PCMR, #PcMasterRace, and #RTX.

It seems ZOTAC has no issues with miners... and maybe that's why I can't get anymore samples out of them. I've tried, but they told me they don't have the stock... meanwhile other AIBs are sending more review samples than ever before. Maybe ZOTAC is happy to keep them all, because they're racking up those mining $$$.

If you thought graphics card availability was bad now we could be in for many more months of the same, if not worse -- with supply of GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards remaining tight until at least July 2021 according to the latest reports.

ExtremeTech reports from information at Alternate.NL which is a retailer that sells to Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. The site reports:

• RTX 3090: Very Small Deliveries (Few Open Customer Orders)
• RTX 3080: very little supply (Very many open customer orders)
• RTX 3070: Small Deliveries (Few Open Sales Orders)
• RTX 3060 Ti: very little supply (Fair amount of open customer orders)
• This means the chance of an RTX 3080, especially for new orders, is virtually nil.

Not only are the GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards impossible to find, but crypto miners are buying them up in gigantic batches, scalpers are getting in and making huge profits, and on top of that the prices are skyrocketing. It's a gigantic perfect storm that ultimately hurts gamers.

• Read more: NVIDIA says it'll be 'a few more months' before GeForce RTX 30 stock

Intel is currently playing around with it's next-gen Xe HPG gaming GPU in the labs, with GPU boss Raja Koduri tweeting out a picture of the Xe GPU mesh shading in action.

Raja teased an unreleased 3DMark Mesh Shader Feature test, something that was up and running on the Intel Xe HPG gaming graphics card. This is the first public test of the Intel Xe HPG graphics card, and while it's just a 3DMark Mesh Shading Feature test, at least it's something.

It would've been nice for Raja to tweet out the Intel Xe HPG gaming-focused graphics card playing Crysis, or at least Cyberpunk 2077 -- but a Mesh Shading Feature test will have to do for now.

• Read more: Intel Xe-HPG: gaming GPU with ray tracing tech and GDDR6 ships in 2021
• Read more: Intel Xe: One GPU Architecture To Rule Them All

GALAX is getting closer and closer to the official launch of its new GeForce RTX 3090 Hall of Fame (HOF) graphics cards, with 3 of the new cards listed on Australian retailer Mwave for up to $4500 AUD.

The new GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF, GeForce RTX 3090 HOF Premium and GeForce RTX 3090 HOF Limited Edition are all listed for $3899 AUD, $3999 AUD, and $4499 AUD respectively. Australia has a 10% GST which is added to their products (fact check: I'm an Aussie) so these prices would convert, very roughly, to:

• GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF: $3899 AUD ($2700 or so)
• GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF Premium: $3999 AUD ($2800 or so)
• GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF Limited Edition: $4499 AUD ($3100 or so)

This isn't good for Pakistan, its distributors and retailers -- or the general public, as NVIDIA's unreleased GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards are being sold in the country already.

ZAH Computers is an official dealer in Pakistan, selling the Palit GeForce RTX 3060 Dual OC graphics card for 120,000 PKR (Pakistani Rupees) which works out to around $750 or so... a huge premium, price gouging at its finest over the starting price of the GeForce RTX 3060 which is meant to be $329.

But don't worry, the company is saying that the $750 premium pricing is because of the high customs duties and import prices. Our friends at Wccftech report that "simply put are excuses that these distributors and dealers are known to hide behind and have been doing so for quite a while now".

• Read more: NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 launches on February 25 starting at $329

NVIDIA's new mainstream GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card wasn't a secret, with the company revealing the card during CES 2021 -- but now we have a firm release date: February 25, 2021.

Our friends at Wccftech report that the GeForce RTX 3060 will go live on February 25 @ 6AM PST, with global retail outlets kicking off sales starting at $329. We should expect various custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards to be released, with varying prices -- which will also come down to how many of them are available given the massive GPU shortages worldwide.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 rocks the Ampere GA106-300 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node, 3584 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6 @ 15Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus with up to 384GB/sec of memory bandwidth. We have a 170W TDP on the card (down from the 175W on the RTX 3060 Ti) and price that starts at $329.