Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 331

Just in time for the launch of Far Cry Primal and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the PC, which launched just earlier today, NVIDIA has a Game Ready Driver ready and available to help optimize the experience.

Driver 362.00 is was released earlier this morning as well and provides some nice stability and performance enhancements that make Gears of War: Ultimate Edition especially. Gears, unfortunately, is only playable on NVIDIA hardware at the moment due to some strange occurrences and performance issues happening on AMD hardware.

Optimizations have been made for Far cry Primal, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and for the newest Dying Light update. That update adds a few new graphics options that you can toy with.

One of the more impressive things we saw at CES earlier this year was the external GPU docking solution for the new Razer Blade Stealth, which has the ability of taking an external GPU. The technology used is impressive, with it being powered by Thunderbolt 3.

Well, external graphics are all the rage right now with Alienware's Graphics Amplifier, and MSI's Gaming Dock resulting in great external GPU power solutions, for your not-so-great gaming laptop. Jason Evangelho from Forbes is reporting that AMD's Robert Hallock teased on Facebook that an external video card solution could be on the way, with Hallock reiterating that ultra-thin notebooks are becoming more and more popular, especially when compared to the huge gaming notebooks on the market with seriously powerful mobile GPU solutions.

Hallock said: "I also bet there's a bunch of gamers out there who, as they get into their 30s and 40s, wouldn't mind condensing their entire computing life down into one device that does it all. I ALSO bet that some people wouldn't mind giving up an mITX LAN rig if their notebook had the potential to serve that role with gusto". External GPU solutions aren't a possible future, they are the future for laptops. Hallock added: "External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc. More info very soon".

Discrete GPU shipments increased in Q4 2015, but were down 9% from 2014 - so how were notebook discrete GPU shipments? Well, NVIDIA saw an increase of notebook discrete GPU shipments - an increase of 34.2% - a considerable number.

Why the increase? Thanks to the industry's fastest mobility GPU - the GeForce GTX 980. NVIDIA's notebook-based GeForce GTX 980 was launched in September 2015 and has been powering the fastest gaming notebooks since. The GTX 980 is capable of 1080p 60FPS without a problem, and even 1440p and 4K gaming. The Maxwell-powered GPU is the same technology found on the desktop GTX 980, but NVIDIA did considerable work to shrink the PCB and VRMs down to fit it into a notebook - and obviously, it has been met with great success.

We haven't seen a new GPU release in over 6 months, but GPU shipments are quite healthy. According to the latest data from Jon Peddie Research, overall GPU shipments increased 2.4% in Q4 2015 compared to the previous quarter. Why the increase? Well, new games were released in the last three months of 2015, but with next-gen GPUs only months away, consumers are holding back their wallets.

AMD noticed a 5.16% increase quarter-to-quarter while competitor NVIDIA had an 8.41% increase, leaving Intel with a smaller 0.73% increase. The attach rate of GPUs for Q4 2015 was 139%, which was up 0.59% from the previous quarter while discrete GPUs were in 31.28% of all PCs - a number that's up 1.34%. The entire PC market increased 2.01% quarter-to-quarter, but decreased 10.27% year-to-year.

We've been waiting for AMD to show off its Radeon R9 Fury X2 in the flesh, and now we seem to have seen the first real photo of AMD's dual-GPU based on the Fiji architecture, powered by HBM.

AMD's Roy Taylor posted a picture of the Tiki PC, built by Falcon Northwest, to his Facebook page. Taylor teased "another peak at the world's best developer box for VR and DX12". We can see the R9 Fury X2 (if that's what AMD names it, Gemini has also been teased) is a much longer card than the R9 Fury X, with the cooler built-in like the R9 Nano.

It looks like the R9 Fury X2 is just a super-long R9 Nano - but with twice the horsepower. We should expect the R9 Fury X2 to have a 300W TDP, but with Fiji's thermal throttling, we shouldn't expect the card to be running too hot - hence why we're seeing AMD not use a watercooler like they did on the R9 Fury X.

I've already reported that NVIDIA would unveil its new Pascal-based Titan X successor at its GPU Technology Conference in early April, but we should expect a "surprise" Pascal demo at GTC according to the new rumors.

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will be kicking off his usual opening keynote on April 5 at 9AM PST, where we should be greeted by the next-gen GeForce GTX Titan X, based on the Pascal architecture. Now, NVIDIA is set to hit the 16nm process with Pascal, as well as using HBM2 - so we might see the Titan X successor unveiled, but not launched at GTC. When will NVIDIA launch the Pascal-based Titan X successor? According to the rumors, sometime around June - just like it did with the GTX 980 Ti last year.

We all know that AMD will be showing something Polaris-related at the Game Developers Conference next month, teasing they wanted to "spice things up", even more so that an AMD board with a "C91101" codename receiving the RRA's proof of certification.

What does the RRA certification mean? Well, all ASIC boards need to go through South Korea, just like the US - but, the RRA publishes its certifications in the public domain. A new board has been certified, and it belongs to AMD - with this board not popping up on the Zauba database, but it looks like a Polaris-based board. We already know that AMD will be launching its new Polaris-based products in mid-2016.

Lenovo unveiled their new Yoga convertibles at Mobile World Congress in the last 24 hours, with the new Yoga 510 and 710 models that can be configured with up to a Radeon R5 M430 and Radeon R7 M460.

It might not sound like much, but this is the first time we've seen AMD's not-yet-announced Radeon 400 series parts inside of a product, and this is just the beginning. There are no details other than the model 'R5 M430' and 'R7 M460' - but we do know each of them will include 2GB of VRAM.

We should expect the Radeon 400 series GPUs inside of Lenovo's latest Yoga 510 and 710 convertibles to be based on the Polaris architecture that AMD's Radeon Technologies Group unveiled late last year, but we'll confirm that 100% when we know.

AMD has been teasing its dual Fiji GPU for a while, but now we're seeing things become much more real as we get closer to the Game Developers Conference next month.

Well, Corporate Vice President of AMD and VR fan Roy Taylor posted a picture to his Facebook and Twitter accounts, teasing the new Tiki PCs built by Falcon Northwest. Inside, we have AMD's super-secret dual-GPU, the Radeon R9 Fury X2. Taylor teased: "Developers, we have something coming for you... :)". A picture, speaks a thousand words - of course.

Falcon Northwest collaborated with AMD on the new Tiki PCs, as they were the system builder of choice for the console-sized PC that sports an insanely powerful dual GPU. When should we see the Falcon Northwest Tiki PC powered by the Radeon R9 Fury X2? Well, we should see it next month at GDC.

NVIDIA said it teased its Pascal-based Drive PX 2 system at CES 2016 earlier this year, but we found out quickly after that it was just their Maxwell-based GPUs standing up for attention in the space of the Pascal GPUs. Well, now we're hearing that Volvo will be using NVIDIA's Drive PX 2 system in their self-driving cars, which will hit the road in 2017.

Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA said: "Volvo, well-known for its safety and reliability, will be the first to develop DRIVE PX 2, using it as the brain for its fleet of 100 self-driving cars to be publicly available next year in its hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden". Volvo will be using the Pascal-based Drive PX 2 for its self-driving capabilities, with NVIDIA providing both the hardware and software that will culminate in an array of cameras, lidar (light ray shooting radar), radar, and ultrasonic sensors.

All of this will create a 360-degree picture of everything going on around the vehicle. This will obviously require considerable horsepower, which is where the Pascal-based Drive PX 2 comes into play.