Video Cards & GPUs - Page 317

Intel has just peeled back the veil of its future generation CPU architecture and plans for the next couple of years, but one of the areas the company touched on during its Architecture Day was its new scalable graphics architecture known as Xe.

Between now and then we've got Gen 9 graphics, Gen 11 is around the corner and then in 2020 we'll begin to see Xe. The new Xe scalable graphics architecture will be split into four markets: integrated/entry-level markets, mid-range, enthusiast and datacenter/AI. The one I'm most interested in here would have to be the mid-range and enthusiast Xe products, as they'll be the ones that will compete with NVIDIA and AMD in 2020 and beyond.

Kicking things off we have Gen 11 graphics detailed, with Intel teasing continued efficiency and improved performance. There's also advanced 3D, media, and display capabilities with Gen 11, as well as better gaming experiences. I need this in my hands before I sign off on better gaming experiences, but Intel has been continuing to make improvements in gaming performance over the years and things are really kicking into another gear now that most of RTG's best talents work for Intel now.

ZOTAC has done an accidental oops that was quickly removed, teasing for a moment a purported GeForce GTX 1070 that features GDDR5X memory like the bigger brother in the GTX 1080.

The leaked model continues to pack NVIDIA's GP104 GPU which features 1920 CUDA cores, but the big change here is the 8GB of GDDR5X memory. VideoCardz has noticed that the GDDR5X-based GTX 1070 from ZOTAC has a TDP of 250W, which means this is just a GTX 1080 with artificially disabled CUDA cores. This would be strange, but NVIDIA could have an excess of GTX 1080s that they want to get rid of, so they could disable CUDA cores and release a GeForce GTX 1070 with GDDR5X.

NVIDIA could also have a crap load of GDDR5X memory left that it can't use, since GDDR6 is the way forward with the GeForce RTX series graphics cards. Whatever is happening, we could expect a GDDR5X-based GeForce GTX 1070 to be unveiled in the very near future.

So, I've been in Hawaii for Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Summit and saw these rumors break while I was enjoying the lifestyle that Maui has to offer, but wanted to wait until I was home and in front of my workstation to get all of my thoughts ready for this rumor.

A few days ago various sources including AdoredTV and Chiphell reported that AMD's first Navi GPU will be the Navi 10 and that it will have the performance of NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 2080. This seems like a huge stretch, as I've had personal sources tell me earlier this year that Navi will be "just as bad" as Vega but weren't specific in how bad it would be. I took it as the performance will be similar to Radeon RX Vega 64, but now we're hearing about the price and performance that will be "surprising".

It was only back in April that rumors floated around that Navi would offer GeForce GTX 1080 performance for $250... and now the latest rumors are saying that it will offer GeForce RTX 2080 performance for $249. This rumor corroborates the previous rumors, but they're just that... rumors. The rumors state that the 7nm node will help AMD offer some out-of-this-world power efficiency, but even if we're looking at GTX/RTX 2080 performance... it won't be here until the second half of 2019, so we're at least 6-7 months a way from its release.

NVIDIA already has a slew of Turing-based graphics cards on the market in the form of GeForce RTX and Quadro RTX cards, but now it seems it's nearly time for the TITAN RTX to shine.

In an "accidental" leak Linus from LinusTechTips showed off the TITAN RTX box during the recent WAN show, as well as The Slow Mo Guys showing off the card itself with "TITAN" branding on it in place of the "GeForce RTX" branding we've seen on the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 graphics cards.

We don't know anything more than this, but this means that we can expect TITAN RTX graphics cards to be seeded out to reviewers in the coming weeks, especially if cards and boxes are in the hands of influencers now.

If you own one of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX graphics cards there's not much you can do with it with real-time ray tracing right now apart from Battlefield V (if you can even get it to work with RTX that is), but that'll soon change with 3DMark's new ray tracing benchmark.

The new 3DMark Real-Time Ray Tracing Benchmark Port Royal will be teased ahead of its January 2019 launch at the GALAX GOC Grand Final overcloccking event in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on December 8. What makes this special is that UL Benchmarks will be the first to market with a dedicated real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers, where they can (get this) test real-time ray tracing performance of any graphics card that supports Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing standard, DXR.

UL Benchmarks explains: "Real-time ray tracing promises to bring new levels of realism to in-game graphics. Port Royal uses DirectX Raytracing to enhance reflections, shadows, and other effects that are difficult to achieve with traditional rendering techniques. As well as benchmarking performance, 3DMark Port Royal is a realistic and practical example of what to expect from ray tracing in upcoming games-ray tracing effects running in real-time at reasonable frame rates at 2560 x 1440 resolution".

Intel has more hype around its upcoming discrete GPU codenamed 'Arctic Sound' with fresh rumors hot off the press from DigiTimes saying that Intel will be hosting a conference in December to unveil its new GPU. Yeah, well, that's not happening.

I reached out to some industry sources to poke around and see what's going on, and it seems it will not be happening next month at all. Intel has previously said it will be launching its discrete GPU in 2020, so why would they be ready for a full detailing of the Arctic Sound architecture in late-2018? Previous rumors teased a reveal at CES 2019 but seemed to have fizzed out, as Intel is sticking to its 2020 release window.

Intel has secured most of the talent from AMD's own Radeon Technologies Group in the last year or so, with GPU architect Raja Koduri joining Intel as well as Radeon marketing legend Chris Hook just to name a few. These talented individuals have vast resources at their hands under Intel compared to the playing cards they had at AMD to fling around the room.

NVIDIA lost a gigantic $23 billion in market cap in a single 24-hour period on Friday, with NVIDIA stock peaking on October 1 at $289.36 and at the time of writing was down to a much weaker $144.70.

Why? Well, there are many reasons - with some claiming it was the cryptocurrency mining bubble popping, but it seems the various issues with the newly launched Turing-based GeForce RTX series being center focus for NVIDIA right now. NVIDIA stock dropped heavily after the company posted their Q3 2018 earnings report which saw the company missing revenue estimates.

NVIDIA shares reached a 52-week low a couple of days ago when they hit $161.61 but the continued spiral down to $144.70 is worrying, with this now being the worst 24-hour percentage drop in 10 years. The last time this happened was back in July 2008 when NVIDIA shares dropped 30% over disappointing sales forecasts. Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA told MarketWatch in an interview on Thursday afternoon that this was all over a "crypto hangover", where Huang explained: "The crypto hangover lasted longer than we expected and we were surprised by that, but it will pass".

Years ago the marketing slogan for Intel was 'Intel Inside' but Intel aren't inside of as many products as AMD these days, with Team Red inside of all variants of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and interesting devices like the upcoming SMACH Z.

SMACH Z is a new handheld PC device that is powered by AMD Ryzen Embedded and features Radeon Vega 8 graphics, with the SMACH Z team announcing that they will be launching their new product in Q1 2019. The SMACH Z team explained: "The SMACH Z team confirms that providers are already working on components production and delivery. Mass production of SMACH Z, the device that promises to revolutionize the world of PC gaming, is scheduled for Q1 of 2019. After two years of development, the device is ready to go to market with a 6-inch high-definition touchscreen and hardware based on AMD Ryzen Embedded and AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics".

What will the SMACH Z be powered with exactly? Well, there are there different variants to choose from: SMACH Z, SMACH Z PRO, and SMACH Z ULTRA. Each of these models feature varying specs, with the SMACH Z including 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and NO camera while the other models bump up the RAM and storage with each tier, and both include a camera.

NVIDIA has given MSI the great ability of making a bunch of awesome custom GeForce RTX graphics cards, but then MSI just upped the ante with its new GeForce RTX 2070 AERO ITX graphics card... the first ITX-based RTX 2070.

The new MSI GeForce RTX 2070 AERO ITX is the first small form factor ITX-based RTX series graphics card, packing everything Turing has to offer except for the inclusion of VirtualLink connectivity for next-gen VR headsets. Connectivity wise MSI still includes 3 x DP1.4 ports and 1 x HDMI 2.0, less than the other RTX series cards, but then this is the one and only ITX style RTX series card.

MSI doesn't overclock the GeForce RTX 2070 AERO ITX, with a single-fan cooler and 175W TDP. It should run quite warm with stock fan speeds, but I'd like to see the cooling on this card when it's under stressful gaming loads, and/or overclocked.

NVIDIA has released a new set of GeForce drivers with the GeForce Game Ready 416.94 WHQL release, which include optimizations for the latest games that have dropped with Battlefield V, Fallout 76, and Hitman 2. You can download the new GeForce Game Ready 416.94 WHQL drivers here.

The new driver should be of importance to GeForce RTX series owners with Microsoft resuming the rollout of its troubled Windows 10 1809 update that was broken from day one. This new update adds in DirectX ray tracing (DXR) abilities, which in turn enables RTX features for Battlefield V for GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070 graphics card owners.

NVIDIA notes on the official driver download site: "Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases, including Virtual Reality games. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1".