Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 305

Adding to the myriad of AMD Radeon Radeon R7 300 and R9 300 releases is that of PowerColor and its PCS+ series announcement, marking a long stint of AMD graphics manufacturing ranging back to 1997.

The PCS+ R9 390X/390 models come complete with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 2816 stream processors adding to a 1060MHz and 1010MHz core clock respectively. As for cooling, PowerColor claimed in its latest press release that "the anodized back plate is attached to the back of the card to protect the components as well as helping to lower the temperature" in addition to a fan controller which ensures minimal RPM is upheld in low-use environments.

Supporting Virtual Super Resolution, FreeSync, Liquid VR and 4K resolution applications, the whole range of cards is expected to be released soon with no pricing currently listed.

If silent is what you're seeking, ASUS has now shown off its Radeon R9 390 and Radeon R9 390X cards featuring an all-new triple-fan STRIX DirectCU 3 cooling setup - this technology ensures that all the fans are switched off when the card is at idle, quoted by TechPowerUp as "common desktop / light-3D loads."

With this air cooler said to be identical to that seen in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, ASUS has developed a giant aluminum fin-stack heat sink, attached to the GPU by four 10mm nickel plated copper pipes and cooled by three 100mm fans.

Complete with a 50MHz core overclock when compared to the 1000 MHz reference, the R9 390 STRIX is slightly edged out by the 390X which sits at 1070 MHz compared to 1050 MHz reference.

Adding to the range of video cards on offer is GIGABYTE with its AMD Radeon R9 300 and R7 300 Series, running off its very own WindForce air cooling technology.

With the whole G1.Gaming range being factory overclocked, its GV-R736OC-2GD brandishes core speeds of 1200 MHz out of the box cooled by a single 90mm fan. This sits alongside the GV-R737WF2OC-2GD/4GD (2GB and 4GB models) which sits at a factory overclocked core speed of 1015 MHz and is cooled by a WindForce 2X setup.

The top of the range is pictured through the R9 390 and 390X, featuring 2-slot designs complete with 2 fan WindForce 2X cooling and running at core speeds of 1025MHz and 1060MHz respectively.

Our friends over at Legit Reviews were at the AMD event where the Radeon R9 Fury X was officially unveiled, taking in the beauty that is a triple 4K setup with a resolution of 11,520x2160.

The 11,520x2160 was powered by a single AMD Radeon R9 Fury X running Dirt Rally, with Legit Reviews adding that it "was pushing 60FPS" with AMD telling the site that two Radeon R9 290X cards, or a single R9 295X2 gets around 45-50FPS with the same resolution.

If you haven't heard about Fury X, it's powered by AMD's new Fiji architecture and uses High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). There's a 4096-bit memory bus with 4GB of HBM1 on it, with 512GB/sec of available bandwidth. We will have our Fury X sample arriving next week, so prepare for some very interesting tests to take place.

AMD released its Radeon R9 390X, and the entire Radeon 300 series this week, with our reviews on the SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X 8GB and MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G already up and running.

But what we really wanted to see was the super enthusiast side of things, so we've tested out two of our 390X cards in CrossFire at 4K to see what the scaling is like on them. Well, we were more than blown away with the performance, with 4K 60FPS and above in every single one of our tests. But it was the power consumption that blew us away the most, with up to 805W of power being consumed by our setup.

Yes, 805W. Comparing this to the single Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti in our test system, with the entire rig using 360W, this is a big difference. We found during our normal testing (Battlefield 4 at 1440p with the Ultra preset minus AA) the AMD Radeon R9 390X cards in CrossFire were consuming 760W, but during some of our testing (Shadow of Mordor) the cards were pushing up to 805W.

With the launch of the new Radeon 300 series from AMD, SAPPHIRE has just unveiled its new Nitro series of products. The new Nitro series from AMD is an "evolution of our market-leading, award-winning, high-end video card technology developed with features designed to be attractive to the majority of PC gamers" says SAPPHIRE. At the same time, the video card maker is also launching SAPPHIRE NATION, which is a new community website for gaming enthusiasts.

The new SAPPHIRE Nitro series is a new high-end range of products, where SAPPHIRE has used long-life capacitors and award-winning SAPPHIRE Black Diamond Chokes, on top of SAPPHIRE's usual top-class cooling solutions. The company has unveiled the Nitro series with a Radeon R9 390, R9 380, and R7 370.

SAPPHIRE's new Nitro series video cards are available right now.

We knew it was coming before it was announced, and this was one of the cards I was most excited about. AMD has finally detailed the Radeon R9 Nano, based on its new Fiji architecture and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

The AMD Radeon R9 Nano features the Fiji GPU, 4GB of HBM on a 4096-bit wide memory bus with 512GB/sec of bandwidth. We're looking at 200% the performance per watt of the Radeon R9 290X, with the Radeon R9 Nano only featuring one 8-pin PCIe power connector and a TDP of just 175W.

AMD is expected to launch the Radeon R9 Nano later this summer.

NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 980 Ti at Computex 2015, blowing us away initially, but we were more excited over what the AIB partners were going to provide with custom cards. Well, here we are with GAINWARD teasing its new GeForce GTX 980 Ti PHOENIX "Golden Sample" card.

The GAINWARD GeForce GTX 980 Ti PHOENIX "Golden Sample" card features a Base Clock of 1152MHz (1241MHz Boost) and 6GB of VRAM at 7GHz. This represents an 11% overclock on the reference design from NVIDIA. Better yet, GAINWARD has used a triple-fan design to keep it cool, with a "Zero RPM fan design" that sees the fans stay stationary until the GPU itself reaches 60C.

We have reached out to GAINWARD to secure a sample, so with my fingers crossed we should have a review of this beast sometime in July.

E3 2015 - Now that AMD has made its Radeon R9 Fury X official, we're finding out the official specifications behind the HBM-based, Fiji XT-powered video card.

The Radeon R9 Fury X is built on the 28nm process with 4096 stream processors, 64 Compute Units, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 4GB of HBM on a 4096-bit memory bus resulting in up to 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth. You'll need two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to get it running, with the Radeon R9 Fury X having a TDP of 275W.

The total compute performance of the card sits at 8.6 TFLOPS with the GPU clocked at 1050MHz and the RAM at 500MHz/1Gbps. The texture fill rate on the Fury X is at 268.8 GT/s, with FreeSync, DirectX 12, Mantle, Vulkan support and much more.

E3 2015 - Our friends over at Hardware Canucks were able to snap a photo of the PCBs of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and Radeon R9 290X, where we get to see what's making them tick.

As you can see, the top card being the Radeon R9 Fury X is much smaller than the R9 290X thanks to its use of High Bandwidth Memory. You can see the 4GB of HBM sitting next to the die itself, which when compared to the 16 chips of GDDR5 on the R9 290X which surround the entire GPU, it saves some considerable physical space on the PCB.

This space saving and use of HBM also saves space to the right of the GPU, where memory VRMs aren't needed. VRMs require more power, and pump out a great amount of heat, but the omission of these on the R9 Fury X means we should get a card with a ton of power, without making huge amounts of noise or running overly hot. Even if it does require watercooling by default.