Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 302

Soon, I'm going to have to stop reporting on these teases of next-gen video cards, because I'm just getting too excited. We're at the point now where we're talking and reporting about the cooling shroud being removed like it's another bread crumb in the Pascal trail.

Today, we have the cooling shroud removed from the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1080/GTX 1070, with the new cooler made using die-sinking technology. Die-sinking technology is a method of shaping a form with sparks, or electric discharges. As I explained in my GTX 1080 post yesterday, these coolers provide me with the feeling of Transformers, and I don't know if I like that or not - yet.

The new pictures see the GTX 1080 cooler made from four parts, with one of the characters in the GTX 1080/1070 not placed yet, so that it can be placed as a '7' or '8' depending on the card.

After teasing a rough GPU roadmap at its Capsaicin event during the Game Developers Conference, AMD has just replaced it with an official roadmap that shows what to expect through to 2018.

This year, we know that it's all about Polaris, but in 2017 the real fun begins with the Vega architecture as AMD will be using HBM2 on their next-gen GPU architecture. In 2018, the company will succeed Vega with Navi, which teases a still unknown "NextGen Memory".

The new Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs will feature fourth-gen GCN cores, with HEVC encode/decode abilities, the it's-about-damn-time HDMI 2.0 capabilities as well as DP1.3, and is built on the exciting new 14nm FinFET process. Now, let's get into more detail.

AMD has an exciting piece of technology with its Polaris architecture, but its upcoming Radeon M400 mobility series will reportedly be filled with rebrands, except for the high-end designs, which will be based around Polaris.

VideoCardz is reporting that AMD will be launching the rebranded lineup, followed by Polaris-based mobility offerings later in the year. The new Radeon R9 M470X will be a rebranded Radeon R9 M385X, with both of these SKUs using the Bonaire XT GPU. It'll rock 896 stream processors, 56 TMUs and 16 ROPs.

Then we have the Topaz XT-based Radeon R7 M460, R7 M440, R5 M445 and R8 M445DX which will be rebranded Radeon R7 M270DX, R7 M260, R7 M265DX, and R7 M360, respectively. The Radeon R5 M430 will be based off of the R5 M330 and its Sun XT-powered GPU, while the Jet Pro will power the new Radeon R5 M430 which is jus the R7 M260DX.

With NVIDIA poised to unveil its next-gen Pascal-based GeForce cards next month, AMD can't miss out on all of the fun - with the company set to unveil its own next-gen Polaris-based video cards late next month, and early June - during Computex in Taiwan.

AMD will also reportedly be showing off their new Bristol Ridge-based APUs, which are set to hit notebooks with the latest Radeon M400 series video cards. Now, onto the Polaris news. It's pretty much fact that AMD's next-gen Polaris 10 (codenamed Ellesmere) will be unveiled, with a super-small TDP of around 100W, and will have no issues playing games at 2560x1440 at 60FPS.

The new Polaris 11 GPU is codenamed Baffin will consume even less power, with a TDP of under 50W. We heard yesterday that the Polaris 10 samples are hitting speeds of 800MHz, and right up to 1050MHz, with 2560 stream processors (but only 2304 SPs enabled on that particular sample).

AMD will be launching its first dual-GPU video card since the Radeon R9 295X2, with the new Radeon Pro Duo to be released on April 26 for $1499. Some lucky people have gotten their hands-on the Radeon Pro Duo, which is Radeon Technologies Group's first video card since it broke away from AMD last year.

The Radeon Pro Duo features 2 x Fiji XT GPUs on the 28nm process, with 4096 stream processors per GPU. We have a GPU clock speed of 1GHz, with 16 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, and 0.9 TFLOPs of FP64 compute power. Underneath, we have a 4096-bit memory bus courtesy of HBM1, with 4GB of HBM1 per GPU for 8GB HBM1 total. The 4GB HBM1 per GPU is clocked at 500MHz, with 512GB/sec of bandwidth. In total, the Radeon Pro Duo has a 350W TDP, and is liquid cooled.

But something that's quite cool, is that RTG's first video card includes a spare Fiji XT GPU. This can't be used for anything, but it's something you could use as an ornament - or you could throw it on your keychain and rock an awesome GPU around with you.

Some strange new screenshots of rather benign parts of the operating system might just show the verifiable, bona fide existence of AMD's Polaris 10 GPU. Someone decided to show off the device ID of an installed GPU and corresponding AMD Graphics Manager shots with that list the operating frequency of the elusive GPU.

VRWorld received a small tip from someone in the industry (supposedly) with some evidence of working engineering samples of the upcoming Polaris 10 GPU. We've recently learned the device ID's that are supposed to be associated to the new Radeon R9 4xxx series of cards, and this matches up perfectly. This happens to be one of them, if it's not doctored. Interestingly, the clock speed of the card is at only 1050MHz.

We know that Polaris is built on the 14nm FinFET process and should feature GDDR5X RAM. We've previously heard that HBM 1.0 might make an appearance, though it seems more likely that GDDR5 in some guise will also be included for higher VRAM capacities. Internal enhancements to GCN and the inclusion of enhanced geometry processors, a new command processor and a much better memory controller should allow for higher performance gains than we might be able to conclude otherwise.

NVIDIA blew us all away with its reveal of the Tesla P100 during GTC 2016, but there was no word on the consumer side of things. I heard whispers during the show, but nothing concrete - what we do know, however, is that both NVIDIA and AMD will reveal their new video cards before Computex (which kicks off in the last few days of May). We chatted with Hardware Canucks during GTC 2016 about all things GPUs, something you can watch below.

It was only a few days ago that we reported that the next-gen NVIDIA GeForce video cards would feature GDDR5, but it looks like NVIDIA could tap the faster GDDR5X on its upcoming GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 (but I'm still adamant that they won't be called that).

There will be two GP104-based video cards, with the GTX 1080 featuring 8GB of GDDR5X on a 384-bit memory bus with 320GB of bandwidth. The GTX 1070 will use the same GP104 GPU, but drop down to GDDR5 with a 256-bit memory bus and 256GB/sec bandwidth. We should note that the current GM200-based GTX 980 Ti has 6GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit memory bus with 334GB/sec - so the new GTX 1080 would have similar memory bandwidth, but with the new Pascal architecture, on the 16nm FinFET process.

Last month during the Game Developers Conference, AMD hosted its huge Capsaicin event, where it officially unveiled the new Radeon Pro Duo.

AMD's new Radeon Pro Duo is a dual-GPU video card with two Fiji GPUs, 8GB of HBM1 (4GB per GPU), four DisplayPort outputs, and 16 TFlops of performance. Well, it hits retail on April 26 with a not-so-bad price tag of $1500.

This isn't a video card for most people, as it'll be the glory card for all things VR - gaming, production and engineering with VR, as well as the insane enthusiasts (like myself) who just want the most powerful video cards they can get.

NVIDIA unveiled its impressive Tesla P100 video card at GTC 2016, powered by the new Pascal architecture. P100 is built from the impressive 16nm FinFET process, as well as the hugely transformative HBM2.

Well, what about the consumer side? Well, the GP104 will reportedly be unveiled later this month or early May, but new reports are pointing towards NVIDIA using GDDR5 on the next-gen GeForce video cards. We should expect 8GB of newer, denser, faster GDDR5 RAM. Both the GP104- and GP106-based solutions should feature GDDR5.

The newer GDDR5 should be clocked at 8Gbps, which will provide a decent upgrade over the 7Gbps on the current GDDR5 used in the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X. We will bring you up to date information on all next-gen video cards, so expect a bigger wave of GPU related news in the coming months.

Multiple sources around the world, as well as our own, are saying that NVIDIA will unveil their next-gen video cards in the coming weeks. With Computex right around the corner, this makes perfect sense.

We've already seen the company unveil its new Tesla P100 video card, powered by the new Pascal architecture, rocking HBM2 and the spiffy new 16nm FinFET process. The P100 features 15 billion transistors on the GPU itself, with another 135 billion transistors for the rest of the card - thanks to the incredible HBM2.

Most sites are still reporting that NVIDIA will call the new cards the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, but I don't think we'll see this happen. I think we'll see NVIDIA move towards something like GeForce 10K, which sounds much better.