Video Cards & GPUs - Page 323

NVIDIA has just released a new set of Game Ready drivers, with the GeForce 397.93 WHQL drivers delivering optimizations for State of Decay 2 and The Crew 2 beta, and more.

The Crew 2 beta test will happen between May 31 and June 4, while the full game is released on June 29, so we get some time with our GeForce graphics cards before the full release in official driver support form. NVIDIA has also added or updated SLI profiles for both DRG Initiative and Star Wars: Battlefront II.

There are a bunch of fixes, which you can read in the full patch notes here. You can grab the new GeForce Game Ready 397.93 WHQL drivers here.

NVIDIA has just announced its new GeForce GTX 1050 3GB which will join the GTX 1050 2GB model and fall under the GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB.

The new GTX 1050 3GB has more CUDA cores than the GTX 1050 2GB with 768 CUDA cores on the new GTX 1050 3GB compared to 640 on the 2GB model. The 3GB of GDDR5 is clocked at the same 7Gbps of the 2GB model, but has had its memory bus cut down to 96-bit, while the GTX 1050 2GB flies higher with a 128-bit memory bus.

With its 96-bit memory bus, we should receive around 84GB/sec of memory bandwidth compared to the 112GB/sec of both the GTX 1050 2GB and GTX 1050 Ti 4GB cards. 1080p or lower gamers with eSports titles shouldn't have a problem with this card, but I think we'll need to do some testing with Fortnite and PUBG on it when it's released.

NVIDIA is preparing their GeForce GTX 1180 for June 15 in Founders Edition form according to the latest rumor from Tom's Hardware, a new card that would beat out their current flagship graphics card, the TITAN Xp.

I exclusively reported that NVIDIA will name the new cards the GeForce GTX 1180 and that it will be the Turing architecture (after all the kerfuffle over Ampere, but that GPU architecture comes after Turing). We can expect the June 15 release to be a hotly-talked about subject, especially as it's the week after Computex which is quite odd indeed.

NVIDIA will push out the GTX 1180 Founders Edition first, then AIB partners like ZOTAC, MSI, ASUS, GIGABYTE and others will have their custom cards to show off sometime in August-September.

NVIDIA's effects from the now-dead GPP are in full play here with MSI announcing their new MECH series of graphics cards, which won't be using the newer Vega GPU architecture but the older Polaris GPU architecture.

MSI's new MECH 2 series cards are split into two SKUs for now: Radeon RX 570 and RX 580. The MSI Radeon RX 580 MECH 2 8G OC is the flagship MECH 2 card in the RX 500 series range, with MSI's own TORX Fan 2.0 providing 22% more air pressure for improved cooling performance and lowered noise.

MSI expects its new RX 580/570 MECH 2 graphics cards to be in stores in July, and I'm sure a detailed unveiling at Computex 2018 which kicks off in a couple of weeks, and samples/reviews that will take place very shortly after.

NVIDIA has had yet another record-setting quarter, with the GPU giant posting their fiscal Q1 2019 results with the company pulling in record revenues of $3.21 billion, representing a huge 66% increase compared to last year.

The company made $1.3 billion in operating profit, which is an even larger increase of 134% over last year, with gross margins pumped by 64.5%. NVIDIA says that the margin growth comes down to "higher value platforms in the GPU segment", meaning more high-end graphics cards were sold, with more profit made on each of them.

NVIDIA saw a huge increase in their GPU sales with $2.77 billion, a 77% increase year-on-year with most of the money being made on the gaming side of things with GeForce GTX 10 series cards. GTX 10 series sales represented $1.7 billion of that $2.77 billion, a 68% increase over last year.

AMD might not be selling many (see none) Radeon RX Vega graphics cards to PC gamers and miners, but they are cutting Vega GPU cores into smaller amounts and sending them to Intel en masse to pump into their 8th-gen Core processors.

The latest product to feature Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics is the new Chuwi HiGame PC which the company is launching on Indiegogo with special pre-order pricing. Chuwi is offering two variants of its HiGame PC, one that rocks the Core i5-8305G processor, 8GB of DDR4 and 128GB of SSD storage for $1299 (or $999 for the special IndieGogo pricing).

The beefier Core i7-8709G model has the same 8GB of DDR4 but bumps the storage to 256GB for $1499 (or $1299 for the Indiegogo special).

Intel might be working on its first foray into GPUs in the last 20 years, but in the meantime they're continuing to dominate the market with their Xeon CPUs with some rather impressive results coming out of Stanford and the Dawn Benchmark and Competition.

The battle was between Intel's Xeon, Google's TPU v2 and NVIDIA's various GPUs including the Tesla V100. ImageNet used to take around 10 days to be trained, but now it can be done in just 31 minutes thanks to the super-powered Google TPU v2, representing an increase of a mind blowing 477x.

But it's not just brute speed as these companies and universties have to spend millions of dollars on hardware, so cost efficiency plays a big part, and that's where Intel kills it. Without using a GPU at all, Intel Xeon Scalable processors were able to process 10,000 images for just $0.02 and a latency of just 9.96ms.

Intel has been working hard on their new GPU with industry sources telling TweakTown that they've reached the end of this first step, and are now preparing for the big launch.

The company has spent the better part of two years on this, and in the last minute poached key talent from AMD with Raja Koduri and Chris Hook. Not only that, but Intel secured Athlon and Ryzen CPU architect Jim Keller who was working at Tesla until last week, and are now pushing full steam ahead with the next generation Intel graphics core.

My sources are telling me to expect something late this year with all attention to be placed on Intel at CES 2019 in January, where Intel could unveil their new GPU. A discrete graphics card launch from Intel would be a huge deal to gamers, as NVIDIA has no competition in the high-end graphics card market from AMD whatsoever.

ASRock only just entered the graphics card market for the first time ever, and now it seems that AMD is blocking them from selling Radeon graphics cards in Europe, because reasons.

Tom's Hardware has the story, with an ASRock sales manager explaining that "The problem is that AMD has not agreed to sell (ASRock graphics cards) in EU, that is really a pity". This isn't a surprise as regional blocks on specific products from certain countries isn't something new, as there truly are a plethora of brands to choose from in Europe.

ASRock recently launched their new Radeon RX 580 Phantom Gaming graphics card, but you won't be buying it in Europe, soz.

NVIDIA turned the entire graphics card and PC gaming community on its head with the push of the GeForce Partner Program, or GPP. But it hasn't even been a few months yet, nor have we seen the fruits of this evil labor, and it's done, dusted, over.

NVIDIA has officially canceled the GPP with a post on their own blog where they said: "The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program". NVIDIA continues, adding "GPP had a simple goal - ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice".

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