Video Cards & GPUs - Page 309

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards are now here with my reviews (so far, plenty more coming) of the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER cards:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER review

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER review

AMD has just launched its new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 graphics cards (my review here) and then I happened to stumble upon news that the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for June 2019 with some interesting numbers.

In terms of graphics cards used by gamers on Steam, we have a dominating 75.53% owned to NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards while its main competitor in AMD has 14.75% and the integrated GPU competitor (and soon to be discrete GPU competitor) in Intel has 9.58%. When it comes to the most popular graphics card used by Steam gamers we have the GeForce GTX 1060 as #1 with 16% of gamers using the GTX 1060 while the GTX 1050 Ti is owned by 10.6% and GTX 1050 with 6.22%.

AMD's first card on the most-used graphics cards by gamers on Steam is the Radeon RX 580 which comes in at #11 with 1.32% sitting in between the GTX 960M with 1.41% and the GTX 1070 Ti with 1.28%. We won't see these numbers change with Navi in the coming months, but it'll be interesting to see where these numbers will be in 18-24 months from now.

It started off as a rumor and now it has been officially confirmed online, and by my own sources at AMD -- they have indeed reduced the price of the Radeon RX 5700 series cards. NVIDIA increased the competition right before luanch with its new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER, forcing AMD to drop its prices.

AMD says it dropped the prices because it "embraces competition, which drives innovation to the benefit of gamers. In that spirit, we are updating the pricing of our Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics cards, launching July 7". The new prices on the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series are as follows:

AMD continues: "We know that gamers will be thrilled once they have the opportunity to experience the amazing performance, stunning visual fidelity and highly responsive gameplay these new graphics cards provide. Making history on 7/7 as the first company to launch gaming CPUs and GPUs together - the first in 7nm and PCIe 4.0 - is all about pushing the ultimate gaming experience forward for as many gamers as possible".

AMD looks to have reduced the price of its next-gen Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 in the last hours before its launch on 7/7, with VideoCardz reporting that AMD has reportedly dropped the Radeon RX 5700 to $399 down from $449 and the RX 5700 to $349 down from $379.

This move makes sense as it's something I was genuinely concerned about at the AMD Next Horizon Gaming event and expressed my dismay to other tech journalists and AMD themselves, saying that at over $399 the new RX 5700 XT would be dead in the water to whatever SUPER would end up being. Days later NVIDIA unveiled SUPER to a very limited number of press in LA at E3 2019 which I attended, and it was then that it was absolutely confirmed without a doubt that Navi was in trouble at $449.

If AMD is genuinely pricing the new Radeon RX 5700 XT at $399 then it is in a much better position to compete against the new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER from NVIDIA, we just have to wait until our NDA expires on 7/7. Until then, back to benchmarking my Navi GPU samples -- and if you didn't see it, I just tested NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards in NVLink mode!

Now that NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards are on the market, new details have emerged on the TU106 GPU inside of the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. TechPowerUp noticed that the TU106 GPU has markings on it for 'Korea', which is strange as NVIDIA gets its Turing GPUs fabbed at TSMC which does NOT have a facility in South Korea.

NVIDIA reportedly signed a contract manufacturing order with Samsung back in 2016, which I'm sure is still in play today and now being tested with the new SUPER-infused Turing GPUs. The most interesting part of this news is that Samsung doesn't have a 12nm FinFET process, but instead offers both 14nm and 11LPP. 11LPP is an 11nm nodelet which Samsung uses to compete against the 12nm node from TSMC.

TechPowerUp reached out to NVIDIA, which responded with: "The answer is really simple and these markings are not new. Other Turing GPUs have had these markings in the past. The chip is made at TSMC, but packaged in various locations. This one was done in Korea, hence why his says "Korea". On an unrelated note: We already use both TSMC and Samsung, and qualify each of them for every process node. We can't comment in any further detail on future plans, but both remain terrific partners".

MSI has just unveiled its new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards with all three in tow: the RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and RTX 2080 SUPER. MSI will offer a higher-end triple-fan cooled RTX 2070/2080 SUPER, which will act as their flagship GAMING cards.

The higher-end RTX 2070/2080 SUPER GAMING TRIO graphics cards use improved TWIN FROZR/TWIN FROZR 7 designs to keep them cooler than ever, with temps on the RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING TRIO maxing out at 65C. The RGB lighting comes courtesy of MSI's own Mystic Light RGB technology and it looks awesome, it's not too hardcore and adds to the overall style of what MSI is using on their RTX 2070/2080 SUPER GAMING TRIO.

MSI's flagship GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series family are the GAMING series cards, which offer TWIN FROZR/TWIN FROZR 7 cooling technology which not only performs great, but it looks awesome with its Mystic Light RGB coursing through the card. Great performance, overclocking headroom, and style with the GAMING series from MSI.

GIGABYTE has just unleashed its range of GeForce RTX 20 SUPER graphics cards led by the new flagship AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8G graphics card and boy... does it look good. All of the new AORUS GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series cards look awesome, but the flagship AORUS RTX 2080 SUPER 8G takes the cake.

The new AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8G features a huge triple-fan WINDFORCE STACK cooler with 3 x 100mm fans keeping the graphics card nice and cool, and a metal backplate on the back. GIGABYTE is keeping the entire card cool with VRAM and MOSFET cooling, especially the high-speed GDDR6 at 15.5Gbps on the new RTX 2080 SUPER cards.

As you can see the cooling system is pretty elaborate. GIGABYTE has infused the AORUS card with a "multi-layered design" that features wing shaped contours and resembles, in their words "the falcon's high velocity ascension and dive through the skies".

Now that NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards are here, with my review on the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER available right here, ZOTAC has officially unveiled its new range of GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series graphics cards.

ZOTAC have 3 of each card in the RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2080 SUPER. First off we have the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER AMP Extreme, followed by the RTX 2080 SUPER AMP and RTX 2080 SUPER TWIN FAN. The custom RTX 2070 SUPER cards are the same from ZOTAC in that there'll be a SUPER AMP Extreme, SUPER AMP, and SUPER TWIN FAN version while the RTX 2060 SUPER cards change things up offering a SUPER MINI variant for tiny-but-powerful gaming PCs.

The ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER AMP Extreme will have its GPU boost clocks at 1875MHz and I'm sure with much more OC headroom, as well as its 8GB of GDDR6 clocked at 15.5Gbps (a normal thing for the new RTX 2080 SUPER cards). It features ZOTAC's beautiful use of RGB lighting, with a triple-fan cooler keeping the Turing GPU and GDDR6 nice and cool. This will be the one to look for when it comes to brute performance from SUPER and ZOTAC.

NVIDIA has had ray tracing capable hardware in the form of the kick ass GeForce RTX graphics cards for close to a year now, and even AMD's next-gen-and-finally-nearly-here Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series cards launch on 7/7, they still won't pack ray tracing abilities.

This doesn't mean RTG engineers haven't been working on ray tracing in Navi, as the GPU architecture finds a new home inside of both the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles which will both have ray tracing abilities, meaning AMD has been working on ray tracing for years. According to a new report by Tom's Hardware, AMD filed for a patent in 2017 which described a "hybrid" ray tracing solution that wouldn't solely rely on hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

NVIDIA has dedicated hardware on every GeForce RTX card for its real-time ray tracing, but AMD is looking to simplify things for next-gen Radeon cards. According to the recently discovered patent AMD will be using both existing shading units and "fixed function" hardware while saying "flexibility is preserved" for developers. This method, according to AMD's latest, would see performance and processing issues for hardware and software-based ray tracing be solved.

ASUS is about to launch 33 different SKUs of GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards, but GIGABYTE has its Taiwanese competitor beat with an insane 69 different SKUs coming in the next few months.

GIGABYTE's more extensive list of GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards is a little more interesting as the company is going to be launching a Mini-ITX range of GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2060 SUPER cards. These Mini-ITX cards will be small but hella powerful as the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER are great upgrades on what the current models are, and will fit into small form factor (SFF) gaming rigs.

The flagship AORUS RTX SUPER range will include RTX 2080/2070/2060 models, while the GAMING RTX SUPER brand will also host all three SUPER models, the TURBO range will only pack RTX 2080 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER versions. GIGABYTE's popular WINDFORCE range will have RTX 2080/2070/2060 SUPER models, the Mini-ITX range only has RTX 2070/2060 SUPER, while the 'other models' include two additional RTX 2060 SUPER SKUs.