Video Cards & GPUs - Page 329

AMD launched its new Ryzen CPUs with a brief tease of Radeon Vega, in the form of the new Radeon Vega logo being shown on the year to come for AMD.

The company had some of its new Radeon Vega graphics cards on show at its Ryzen Tech Day event, with some great photos taken by ComputerBase.

The company had a Radeon Vega graphics card in plain sight, rocking an 8+6-pin PCIe power setup.

Anyone who loves GPU technology, graphics cards, or gaming will mark February 28 on their calendars as the day everything changes. AMD is hosting their second annual Capsaicin event during GDC 2017 where we're going to see "exciting new details" on Radeon Vega, with NVIDIA choosing the same day to host their own Editor's Day to unveil the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

NVIDIA is now teasing the GTX 1080 Ti on their official GeForce.com website, teasing a video that runs in the background saying "It's Almost Time #UltimateGeForce" with the 'Ti' in 'Time' being highlighted. Ti = GTX 1080 Ti for the uninitiated.

VideoCardz.com checked out the HTML code of the website, and noticed that it was actually called "GTX 1080 Ti Countdown"... so, there you have it. GTX 1080 Ti will be unveiled in a few days time, as well as more details on Radeon Vega. I seriously, can barely contain my excitement.

AMD held their Ryzen Tech Day in San Francisco a few days ago, unveiling 3 new Ryzen CPUs in the form of the Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 7 1700X, and the Ryzen 7 1700. It looks like we'll be introduced to more details on Radeon Vega, AMD's next-gen GPU architecture that uses HBM2 and the exciting HBC (High Bandwidth Cache) - as well as the Vega GPU architecture itself.

The company has now confirmed the second annual "Capsaicin Live" event in San Francisco during GDC 2017, which kicks off on February 28 at 10:30AM PT. In the press release, AMD teases: "Hosted by Radeon Technologies Group's Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Raja Koduri, the show will be a celebration of PC gaming, the technology steering its future, and the developers who work tirelessly to transform their imaginations into tomorrow's blockbuster games".

AMD continues: "The one-hour live event will offer PC gaming enthusiasts and developers around the world a preview of AMD's latest graphics and processor technologies, reveal exciting new details surrounding Vega, and showcase the summer's most anticipated PC and VR games from visionary game developers. Named after the legendary component in chili peppers that adds an addictive kick to spicy foods, "Capsaicin Live" explores the essence and creative power of the graphics processing unit (GPU), evoking the magic that game and VR developers create every day when they turn raw code into exciting, memorable, and addicting experiences".

It looks like NVIDIA is finally, after months and months of rumors, preparing its GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for launch - with new rumors stating the card would launch between March 20-23.

NVIDIA is hosting its own event during GDC 2017, where we should hopefully see the GTX 1080 Ti unveiled - but what should we expect in terms of raw horsepower and specs? Well, it should be a Titan X at the end of the day, with some reduction in SMs, with 52 SMs, compared to 60 SMs found on the Titan X.

This means we are to expect around 10.8 TFLOPs of performance, barely down from the 11 TFLOPs on Titan X. We should see AIB partners with tweaked and overclocked GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards, with Titan X beating performance - which is going to be a very, very big deal.

AMD has teased that it is hosting its hopefully yearly tradition of Capsaicin at GDC 2017 in just two weeks time, but now the rumor mill is churning with WCCFTech reporting that the Radeon RX 500 series will feature both Vega and Polaris GPUs.

We still don't know much about Vega, where we should hopefully see the high-end Vega 10 GPU featuring 4096 stream processors, and up to 12.5 TFLOPs of performance with 8GB of HBM2. This part will be the enthusiast card that we've all been dreaming of from AMD, but the company will also fill out the Radeon RX 500 series with Polaris GPUs, according to the site.

This makes sense, but I'd rather see Vega pushed on its own - similar to how they pushed Fiji on its own brand with Radeon R9 Fury X. AMD could name the Vega cards Radeon RX Vega 10, Radeon RX Vega 11 - and then the Polaris-powered parts Radeon RX 580, RX 570, and so on.

This is an event I've been dying to tell you all about: AMD will be hosting their new Capsaicin event during the Game Developers Conference on February 28.

During GDC 2016, AMD hosted their first Capsaicin event where we got to see the Radeon Pro Duo and a bigger tease of Polaris 10 before its release a few months later. But what should we expect from Capsaicin this year? Well, I expect a larger tease of Vega - in fact, I'd really enjoy a massive unveiling of Vega at Capsaicin.

You'll be able to tune into the Capsaicin livestream, which will begin at 10:30AM on February 28, which AMD teases as a "feature-packed show highlighting the hottest new graphics and VR technologies propelling the games industry forward".

EVGA had some issues with its original GTX 1080 graphics card, but the company is looking to announce new ICX-based GTX 1080 graphics cards in both the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 parts.

EVGA is expected to refresh its GTX 10 series cards with improved thermals, with the "optional" thermal pads now the norm, with a new and improved PCB on the upcoming SuperClocked 2 and FTW2 models.

Jacob Freeman took to Twitter to tease: "I C something eXciting announcing this week", and I don't think he could've been any more clear.

AMD is gearing up for the betas of both Conan Exiles and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, with the release of the new Crimson ReLive Edition 17.1.2 WHQL drivers. Get the new Crimson ReLive Edition 17.1.2 drivers right here.

The new drivers also have some fixes included, where "Changing memory clocks with Radeon WattMan with more than one display connected may cause memory clocks to intermittently become stuck at their minimum setting or switch between min and max ranges intermittently causing display flickering" is fixed.

Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.1.2 WHQL Highlights

NVIDIA has released its new GP100-based Quadro product, joining the Tesla P100 in the full-fat Pascal goodness for professional graphics. The new Quadro GP100 features 16GB of super-fast HBM2, and some huge performance numbers to match.

We're looking at FP64 calculations of 5.3TFLOPs, while FP32 performance hits 10.6TFLOPs, and FP16 with 20.7TFLOPs. The GP100 itself features 16GB of HBM2, 4 x DP 1.4 and a single DVI-D. NVLink makes an appearance, with the flashy new interconnect powering two of NVIDIA's new Quadro GP100 graphics cards.

Throwing two Quadro GP100s together over NVLink offers 32GB of HBM2 pooled, for serious workstation power. NVIDIA will be pushing out their Quadro GP100 graphics cards to HP and Dell customers for workstation configurations next month.

I've just written about SK Hynix's new dates for HBM2 deployment, which will affect AMD's Vega GPU roll out a little, but we're still getting Vega graphics cards in Q2 2017.

AMD confirmed the news during their latest financial report, where they said: "AMD introduced preliminary details of its forthcoming Vega GPU architecture designed to address the most data- and visually-intensive next-generation workloads. Key architecture advancements include a differentiated memory subsystem, next-generation geometry pipeline, new compute engine, and a new pixel engine. GPU products based on the Vega architecture are expected to ship in the second quarter of 2017".

As for the new Vega graphics cards with HBM2, we should expect 8GB of HBM2 with just under 410GB/sec bandwidth - and a release later in the year with the faster 512GB/sec HBM2.