Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 340

AMD released its Catalyst 15.9 beta drivers earlier today. While beta drivers are usually smooth sailing, this was not the case with this release, which contained a memory leak bug. According to the aptly named Reddit user "MemoryLeakBug", it triggers when resizing any window, at which point RAM usage skyrockets to about 1GB per few seconds of resizing.

"AMDJoe" confirmed the issue and says a fix is in the works. In the meantime, roll back to an earlier set of drivers while you wait on a new release. That or just don't resize any windows...

According to the latest rumors, NVIDIA is working on a new dual-GPU video card that would use two of the company's GM200 GPUs, the same GPUs that power the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Titan X, on a single card.

WCCFTech is reporting that NVIDIA held "secret" meetings in NYC last week, but they failed to report that there were meetings in LA, too. We were in LA and NVIDIA said nothing to us about a dual GPU card coming soon, as the event was all about the GTX 980 going into laptops. We might have been left out of the loop of course, but we are throwing a lot of salt across our shoulders on this one folks.

But, that doesn't mean it's not credible. NVIDIA is more than capable of releasing a new dual GPU card thanks to its super-efficient Maxwell architecture. Better yet, the "secret" meetings that were held did concentrate on how the company had shrunken down the board that the new GTX 980 goes onto, so what I will add to these rumors is that with two of these boards, a dual GTX 980 could be easily possible and not break through a 300W TDP.

TSMC has confirmed that it has made the first samples of NVIDIA's next generation GP100 GPU, with NVIDIA now testing the new Pascal architecture internally. When should we expect the consumer release? Sometime mid next year.

NVIDIA has been sent the first GP100 samples to its subsidiary in India, but we don't know anything other than this. The company taped out its GP100 GPU in June, which is going to be made on the 16nm FinFET+ process, and we should see it utilizing HBM2, providing 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth. This will be quite the increase on the 334GB/sec that the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X are capable of, and is double the 512GB/sec that AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X can muster with its HBM1.

The new Pascal architecture should also deliver its own upgrades over the Maxwell architecture that has been so good to NVIDIA across 2015. The GP100 rocks 17 billion transistors, and should see NVIDIA pack in some 6000 or so CUDA cores, up from the 2816 CUDA cores found in the GM200-powered GTX 980 Ti. Personally, I think we might see NVIDIA release multiple Pascal products - where I would love to see a GDDR5-based offering for the cheaper mainstream side, and a HBM2-powered GeForce 1000 series card for the enthusiasts.

The GeForce GTX 980M is already quite the mobile GPU, but as usual, NVIDIA isn't just sitting around doing nothing on the mobile GPU front. The company is reportedly preparing a new, very powerful mobile GPU that would pack the full GM204 GPU.

What's the 'full GM204' GPU you ask? Well, it's the identical GPU that is found on the GeForce GTX 980, the desktop video card from NVIDIA that was released last year. This means we can expect the full 2048 CUDA cores, 256-bit memory bus, and 4GB of GDDR5. We did expect a GTX 990M according to the rumors that we last reported on, but it looks like this new GPU is going to be the GM204-based GTX 980, this time inside of a gaming laptop.

The mobile GTX 980 would feature 2048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPS - just like its desktop counterpart. If we compare this to the GTX 980M, found inside of gaming laptops like the ASUS ROG G751 that we reviewed here, it has 1536 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and 64 ROPs. Moving over to clock speeds, the desktop GTX 980 has a GPU clock of 1126MHz and a Boost clock of 1218MHz while the GTX 980M comes in at 1038MHz, while the new GM204-based mobile GTX 980 will reportedly clock in at 1190MHz.

We have had one of AMD's new Radeon R9 Nano cards for around a week now, and we've only just gotten into testing it after testing out 4-way Fury X cards in a bunch of different games and resolutions.

Well, we just so happened to throw our R9 Nano into our system and straight away went to GPU-z, which said it was an 'AMD Radeon R9 Fury series' video card. But what happens when you throw in the full-blown Radeon R9 Fury X in? It works in Crossfire with the R9 Nano, that's what. The same goes for the normal R9 Fury, which also works in Crossfire with the super-small R9 Nano.

We can't share performance numbers on the R9 Nano until later this week, but we think that our review is going to be something worth reading, that's for sure.

PowerColor has just unveiled its new Devil 13 R9 390 video card, which features two R9 390 GPUs for some serious horsepower. The card is absolutely huge, with a triple-slot design and triple-fan cooler.

The new Devil 13 R9 390 requires an insane 4 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors so that it can draw between 1000W and 1275W of power. But all of that power won't be wasted, as it packs dual Grenada PRO GPUs, each with 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 8GB of GDDR5. Each GPU has 345GB/sec available memory bandwidth, so the card has 691GB/sec memory bandwidth in total.

PowerColor adds that the Devil 13 R9 390 has been "built with carefully-designed Platinum Power Kit and ultra-efficient thermal design. It consists of massive 15-phase power delivery, PowerIRstage, Super Cap and Ferrite Core Choke that provides the stability and reliability for such high-end graphics solution. To support maximum performance and to qualify for the Devil 13 cooling system, 3 Double Blades Fans are attached on top of the enormous surface of aluminum fins heat sink connected with total of 10 pieces of heat pipes and 2 pieces of large die-cast panels. This superb cooling solution achieves a perfect balance between thermal solution and noise reduction. The PowerColor Devil 13 Dual Core R9 390 has the LED backlighting that glows a bright red color, pulsating slowly on the Devil 13 logo".

It looks like NVIDIA is really ramping things up for GRID 2.0, so that it can power an insane amount of virtual desktops thanks to its Maxwell GPU architecture.

GRID 2.0 was announced at the VMworld conference yesterday, where NVIDIA unveiled two new video cards based on their Maxwell architecture. The first is a dual-GPU, high-end card in the form of the Tesla M60 while the other is a single-GPU, high-end offering in the Tesla M6. Starting with the Tesla M60, we have 4096 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR5 and 7.4 TFLOPS of single precision performance. The Tesla M60 is capable of handling 36 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once and uses up to 300W of power.

The Tesla M6 features just 1536 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR5 and it can handle 18 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once. It arrives on a bare board on its own, using up to 100W of power. NVIDIA is coy on pricing at the moment, with both of the new Maxwell-based Tesla offerings being made available on September 15.

According to the latest data from JPR, NVIDIA has pushed into owning 81.9% of the GPU AIB market. AMD on the other hand, dropped from 22% to just 18% this quarter, and when looking at the year-over-year data, AMD has dropped down from 38%.

JPR's report finds that total AIB shipments decreased this quarter, down to 9.4 million units. AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased by a sharp 33.3%, while NVIDIA's dropped 12%. JPR also noted that the "demand for high-end PCs and associated hardware from the enthusiast and overclocking segments has bucked the downward trend and given AIB vendors a needed prospect to offset declining sales in the mainstream consumer space".

With MSI enjoying the fruits of its labor with the just-released MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning, we should all turn our attention to ASUS which just teased that they've got their ROG MATRIX GeForce GTX 980 Ti and ROG MATRIX Radeon R9 Fury on their way.

The company will reportedly unveil the two new enthusiast video cards during IFA 2015 on September 2. The new ROG MATRIX cards look like they'll feature the same cooler shroud as previous cards, but the color theme has changed a little - and we think it looks great. It looks like both ROG MATRIX cards could be dual-slot cards, boasting improved PCBs, much higher clock speeds, and much more.

We should definitely expect a new ROG MATRIX card based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but it shouldn't be too far out of our expectations to see a new ROG MATRIX card based around the AMD Radeon R9 Fury as well as the Radeon R9 390X. We will be reporting on any new video card launches from ASUS as they happen.

It looks like we're just weeks away from the official release of AMD's Radeon R9 Nano, with DGLee from IYD.kr posting up some of the best shots of the Radeon R9 Nano yet.

Thanks to the tear down on the card, we get a better look at the small PCB that the Radeon R9 Nano features, with its single 8-pin PCIe power connector powering the card. We have a full Fiji GPU inside, the same chip that powers the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X. The entire card measures in at just 15cm, sitting just over the PCIe connector itself.

As for the price, we are expecting it to fall under $499. AMD's Radeon R9 Nano has a TDP of 175W, and should offer performance similar to that of the Radeon R9 290X (so around 5-10% less than the rebadged R9 390X and less than the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X, obviously. But for its size, this is one of the more exciting cards in AMD's Fiji-powered line up.