Video Cards & GPUs - Page 335

Just as I was laying down to hopefully fall asleep after a massive 18-hour work day, I read a story over at TechPowerUp sourced from German tech site Heise.de, that AMD Radeon graphics cards were limited in their HDR abilities... well, click bait can be bad sometimes, and we now know the truth.

The original story can be read here, which claimed that Radeon graphics cards were reducing the color depth to 8 bits per cell (16.7 million colors) or 32-bit, if the display was connected to HDMI 2.0, and not DisplayPort 1.2 - something that spiked my interest.

10 bits per cell (1.07 billion colors) is a much more desired height to reach for HDR TVs, but the original article made it out to seem like this was a limitation of AMD, and not that of HDMI 2.0 and its inherent limitations. Heise.de said that AMD GPUs reduce output sampling from the "desired Full YCrBr 4: 4: 4 color scanning to 4: 2: 2 or 4: 2: 0 (color-sub-sampling / chroma sub-sampling), when the display is connected over HDMI 2.0. The publication also suspects that the limitation is prevalent on all AMD 'Polaris' GPUs, including the ones that drive game consoles such as the PS4 Pro," reports TPU.

AMD has released their new Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.4 drivers, a new set of drivers that add support for Civilization VI, and fix some problems with graphical corruption on the R9 Fury graphics cards in Titanfall 2. Grab them here.

Here's a full list of what the RSCE 16.11.4 includes and fixes:

Support For:

NVIDIA released their new GeForce 375.86 drivers, and as usual millions of gamers will manually update or have GeForce Experience update for them - but this time around, NVIDIA is seeing some pretty serious issues in their new Game Ready drivers.

NVIDIA has posted to their own forums advising GeForce owners of Pascal-based GeForce graphics cards in the GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 having issues with the new GeForce 375.86 drivers, where the memory speed is capped at 810MHz. NeoGAF forum users have posted t hat Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare are also experiencing issues with the new drivers.

We'd recommend not updating your GeForce graphics card (at least if you've got a GTX 10 series card) to the latest drivers just yet, and if GeForce Experience has automatically downloaded the drivers, don't install them.

NVIDIA has launched a massive offensive onto gamers with their GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards, while AMD has been hitting the lower/mainstream markets with their Radeon RX 400 series cards - so how are the numbers for Q3 2016? Really good, actually.

Jon Peddie Research has broken down the numbers, reporting that NVIDIA's market share increased 2.2% from the previous quarter, while AMD's overall market share dropped 0.6%. JPR notes: "NVIDIA did particularly well in Q3'16, fueled by their Pascal-based product line and the rash of new AAA graphics-demanding titles". JPR also noticed a 0.3% increase in year-to-year total GPU shipments of GPUs, while GPU shipments increased 20% from the previous quarter.

They also had some highlights that are worth noting:

We know it's coming, but we don't know when or what the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will end up as - but now we have a report that teases the GTX 1080 Ti with 10GB of RAM.

10GB of RAM you ask? Weird, isn't it? Not when you consider the GTX 1080 has 8GB of RAM, and the Titan X features 12GB of RAM - the GTX 1080 Ti will sit in the middle with 10GB of RAM, so that it doesn't take many customers away from Titan X, and it doesn't lure gamers into spending more on the GTX 1080 Ti over the GTX 1080.

We should expect the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to use the GP102 GPU, the same used on the Titan X - but a 384-bit memory interface is interesting, and it's needed for multi-monitor and 4K gaming. We've done testing between the GTX 1080 and Titan X and that wider memory bus comes into play in a very, very big way.

AMD announced their new Radeon Pro range of workstation graphics cards during SIGGRAPH 2016 earlier this year, but now the Polaris-based cards have launched.

The new Radeon Pro WX 7100, WX 5100, and WX 4100 workstation graphics cards are now shipping. The higher-end WX 7100 and WX 5100 are powered by the Polaris 10 GPU on the 14nm LPP process, both with 8GB of RAM on a 256-bit memory bus. The WX 7100 has 2304 stream processors at 1.24GHz, while the WX 5100 has 1792 stream processors at 1.09GHz.

AMD's lower-end Radeon Pro WX 4100 uses the Polaris 11 GPU with 1024 stream processors at 1.17GHz, with 4GB of RAM on a 128-bit memory bus. The power consumption on these new Polaris-based workstation cards is also low, with the WX 7100 using up to 130W, the WX 5100 hits 75W and the WX 4100 with 50W.

AMD has released its 16.11.1 driver just in time for the launch of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered.

Apart from including optimizations for both titles, it grants a DirectX 11 CrossFire profile for Titanfall 2 and fixes numerous game and system issues. Most notably there are CrossFire fixes for Battlefield 1 and The Division, and a fix for OBS stuttering when capturing while accessing video content in your browser.

As always, hit the source for the full notes and download, or just grab the new set directly from Radeon Settings in your system tray.

MSI has countless GTX 10 series graphics cards, and aren't stopping with the announcement of their new GeForce GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G graphics card, rocking a new 'ice-cold' silver look. It looks great, with a tweaked Twin Frozr VI cooler, and overclocked GPU.

MSI has two models of its new Quick Silver graphics cards, with the GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G OC and the GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G graphics card. The overclocked model has higher GPU and RAM clocks, which we'll break down now.

The overclocked GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G OC cranks up to 1607/1797MHz (base/boost, respectively) under its OC profile, while the Gaming profile sits at 1582/1771MHz for base/boost, respectively. MSI overclocks the 8GB of GDDR5 up to 8108MHz on the Gaming/OC profiles, up from 8008MHz on the Silent profile.

EVGA has been in the headlines for a few days over issues surrounding its GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 graphics cards catching fire over voltage regulation modules inside of EVGA's dual fans on the cards that supposedly overheat.

There have been multiple posts on EVGA's own forums, Reddit, and more - and now we have a video of an EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW catching fire. But note: the card had no PCIe power connectors plugged in, so it could've been excessive power consumption through the motherboard, or it could be the card itself - it is hard to know right now.

Michael Duncan took the video, saying that his GTX 1080 FTW graphics card had been working for around a month without any issues before the card caught fire. He came home one day to find that his PC wouldn't boot up when it pressed the power button.

Apple unveiled its new 15-inch MacBook Pro today, something that includes AMD's new Polaris-based Radeon Pro 400 series graphics, available first inside of the new 15-inch MBP.

AMD's new Radeon Pro 400 series graphics is explained perfectly on the Radeon Pro website, which details the new Polaris GPU as the best choice for creators.

Radeon Technologies Group SVP and Chief Architect, Raja Koduri, explains: "We couldn't be more proud to have Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics launching in the new 15-inch MacBook Pro, a notebook designed for performance and creativity".