Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 322

It looks like the Polaris 10 will be hitting Radeon R9 390X levels of performance at half the TDP and under $299, but we don't know much about the Polaris architecture itself... for now.

AAMD will be hosting its Meet the Experts webinar on May 18th with David Nalasco, and during the webcast we're promised that AMD will give "an inside look at Polaris". Nalasco is the Senior Technology Manager at Radeon Technologies Group, so we should expect some seriously good stuff on May 18. The NDA runs up on the GeForce GTX 1080 on May 17 reports VideoCardz, so AMD is really sticking itself into a good position with the Polaris reveal 24 hours after.

When NVIDIA revealed the GeForce GTX 1080, they used the Founders Edition card which sells for $699 and overclocked its GP104 GPU to 2.1GHz on the vapor chamber-cooled video card. We all suspected the AIB partners would have some insane models, and we were right.

There will reportedly be four versions of the GeForce GTX 1080: the Founder's Edition (reference edition), the normal AIB card (air cooled), the custom AIB card (air cooled) and then the custom AIB cards (watercooled). ZOTAC, Colorful, ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE and countless others will have some super-powered GTX 1080 video cards to show off, with the rumor that GIGABYTE's upcoming Xtreme Gaming GTX 1080 should reach 2.4GHz on the GPU, all in air - and if that's true, get ready to have your mind blown.

The tease of a liquid cooled GeForce GTX 1080 with its GPU clocked at 2.5GHz should be enough for anyone to be impressed, as it'll allow for 4K 60FPS gaming without a problem. We should expect a few AIB partners to have some insane designs, shown off at Computex 2016 in two weeks time.

We heard whispers just before the GeForce GTX 1080 unveiling that AMD would be pricing its Polaris 10-based Radeon video card at around $299, while providing 390X performance - and thanks to the spiffy 14nm FinFET process, it'll do so at half the TDP.

Considering that the Radeon R9 290X is a 290W card, we should expect the Polaris 10-based Radeon cards to do the same performance but at just 150W. We should expect the cards to fall somewhere between 110-135W depending on the GPU itself, and how many stream processors are enabled. It's similar to what we saw during the RTG event last December, but the bigger surprise is that it'll rock 'up to 8GB GDDR5(X)'. Will AMD use GDDR5X? We'll find out soon enough.

We should also expect the Polaris 10 cards to have 256-bit wide memory buses, which should see Polaris 10-based Radeon video cards competing directly against the GeForce GTX 1070 - and that's great. I was talking with AMD's Roy Taylor at their Capsaicin event during the Game Developers Conference, and he asked what I think they should do - and I said do exactly this. Hit the mainstream, and hit it hard. AMD can't compete against the discrete GPU market share with NVIDIA as they only have 20% of the market - but the mainstream market is more elusive, there are more units sold and more profits to be made. It's the bread and butter of video cards, and it looks like AMD is hitting that exact sweet spot.

Colorful has just announced one of the first GeForce GTX 1080 video cards, based on the reference (or is that now Founder's Edition) model.

Colorful's first GeForce GTX 1080 is based on the GP104 GPU with the usual 2560 CUDA cores, 1607MHz GPU clock (Boost of 1733MHz). We have 8GB of GDDR5X memory clocked at 10GHz on the 256-bit memory bus. We should expect some serious speed from it, with some great overclocking headroom. But, Colorful has teased its custom design GeForce GTX 1080 for Computex, which has me beyond excited.

Colorful's GeForce GTX 980 Ti iGame video card - beautiful!

While my GeForce GTX 1080 sits on my shelf about to be installed into my Core i7-5960X system for my review (now that I'm about to download the drivers) there are now some leaked benchmark numbers, courtesy of VideoCardz. Remember these are leaked benchmarks, we're just reporting on them. But, this is about what we expect to see from our results, too.

The GTX 1080 destroys everything else, including the Titan X, GTX 980 Ti and everything AMD has to throw at it - the Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Fury and R9 390X. The GeForce GTX 1080 had its GP104-powered GPU sitting between 1860-1886MHz, thanks to GPU Boost 3.0. That chart though, wow - AMD must be looking at every single number now.

Not too long now, guys!

NVIDIA revealed its next-gen GeForce GTX 1080 video card last week, but if there's an AIB partner I'm excited to see release a custom version, it's ZOTAC. The latest leak on ZOTAC is of their GeForce GTX 1080 PGF, with PGF standing for Prime Gamer Force, and will be ZOTAC's most powerful series.

The first renders of ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 1080 PGF are here, with a huge illuminated backplate, which can be controlled through the new app. A custom PCB looks to be featured, with it being much wider than the reference design, and you can even see the OC+ module at the end of the card like the company's awesome Extreme video cards. But what can all of this additional cooling do? Well, that's where the next image comes into play.

ZOTAC is refreshing its FireStorm overclocking utility, where you can control both cards in SLI, apply 'Z-Elves' presets, and change the animations of the GTX 1080 LEDs. But, look at the overclock on the 8GB of GDDR5X - it's hitting 5650MHz (11.3GHz) with bandwidth of 361GB/sec over its 256-bit memory bus.

With the reveal of the GeForce GTX 1080 behind us, VideoCardz is reporting that they have images of the new GeForce GTX SLI HB bridge that was unveiled last week.

You might remember NVIDIA unveiled a new High-Bandwidth SLI bridge that has much more going on inside of it than previous SLI bridges. The new bridge "doubles the available transfer bandwidth compared to the NVIDIA Maxwell architecture. Delivering silky-smooth gameplay, it's the best way to experience surround gaming - and it's only compatible with the GeForce GTX 1080".

The tallest connector has just 4 fingers, which means it'll work with only two GTX 1080s in SLI. While an EVGA employee has confirmed that the new GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 video cards only work in 2-way SLI.

Inno3D has unveiled their GeForce GTX 1080, which comes in a nice custom box and will include 3DMark, VRMark and even a mouse mat in the box.

We should expect Inno3D to show off its new GeForce GTX 1080 video card at Computex 2016, teasing its new GP104 core and 8GB of new GDDR5X RAM which is clocked at a huge 10GHz.

As for technical specifications:

During the recent NVIDIA Editor's Day, we were introduced to the new GeForce GTX 1080 video card, but after the event (which was under NDA) I sat down with some of the biggest tech YouTuber's to talk about the new GTX 1080.

In the video above, JayzTwoCents used Luke from Linus Tech Tips' video as Luke cut it down to a few minutes of our discussion. This chat between us (which was shot at like 3am) was over an hour long, and so many people asked for the full discussion and here it is. It was a glorious thing to sit with these awesome guys, so check out the discussion between us - the video goes for 31 minutes, so go get a snack and a drink!

JayzTwoCents

The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is already a ridiculously beautiful card, but when it's naked and has its PCB exposed, I can't help but twitch with awe.

The NVIDIA PG413 board has 5+1 power phase, which is more than the 4+1 system on the GTX 980, but less than the GTX 980 Ti with its 6+2 phase power. The PCB on the GTX 1080 is very similar to the GTX 980 rather than the GTX 980 Ti, as both cards share 8 memory module layout per side. There's a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, but NVIDIA has left room for another so that AIB partners can go crazy.

There are two SLI fingers on the GeForce GTX 1080 that will handle the new SLI HB (High-Bandwidth) bridge, too.