Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 347

Computex 2015 - One of the companies that I'm most excited about reviewing video cards for is Colorful, a Chinese video card manufacturer that builds some of the craziest cards you have seen. Colorful recently said it was aiming to become the second largest VGA vendor in the world.

We went and introduced ourselves here at Computex in Taipei, and had a close look at their GeForce GTX 980 Ti iGame card, which is a beautiful card with an insane cooling setup on it.

We hope to get some samples of Colorful video cards in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled to TweakTown.

Computex 2015 - PowerColor has one of the best video cards on the market with its Devil 13 card, but we actually spotted their new Radeon R9 390X Devil 13... yeah, the R9 390X - the next-gen Radeon. We did report exclusively yesterday that the Radeon R9 390X won't be the flagship video card, but the Fury X will. Fury X will rock HBM, and come watercooled directly from AMD.

The PowerColor Radeon R9 390X Devil 13 uses a hybrid cooler, with the GPU itself watercooled while the VRMs and the end of the card is cooled by a traditional fan. It's a new look Devil 13 card, but personally I'm not a fan of the silver styling at the end. PowerColor did say this might not be a final design, so we could expect some tweaks before it hits the market in a couple of months time.

The fan up close.

Computex 2015 - The hype of late has been solely based around the latest flagship offerings by AMD and NVIDIA with ASUS joining that charge, but how about the whole range and something a little different?

As part of its Computex 2015 display, ASUS has shown off its TURBO series gaming video cards, the MINI series form-factor models produced for Mini-ITX systems, the STRIX 4K gaming series for "core gamers," the ROG POSEIDON for premium-grade watercooled users, the ROG MATRIX models for air overclocking and also some neat water block offerings thanks to EK Water Blocks, Bitspower and Thermaltake.

If that isn't enough for you, ASUS also threw up a display explaining of its industry-first 100% automated production process and material design alongside how exactly the PCB design is carried out in the factory.

World exclusive: Up until this point, most people have presumed that AMD would be launching the Radeon R9 390X as its upcoming flagship video card, but we have just had an anonymous source tell us that this is wrong.

Instead, the Radeon R9 Fury X will be the flagship video card, a watercooled part based on the Fiji XT GPU. Under that, we'll have the Radeon R9 Fury, which should be based on the Fiji PRO architecture, with an entire restack of current cards. Under these two new High Bandwidth Memory-powered video cards we'll have the Radeon R9 390X, Radeon R9 390, Radeon R9 390, R9 380, R7 370 and R7 360.

The Radeon R9 Fury X will be a reference card with AIBs not able to change the cooler, but TweakTown can confirm that it will be the short card that has been spotted in the leaked images. The Radeon R9 Fury will see aftermarket coolers placed onto it, so we should see some very interesting cards released under the Radeon R9 Fury family.

ZOTAC wanted to push things to the limit and has created five different versions of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, introducing the following products: GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980 Ti AMP!, GTX 980 Ti AMP! Omega, GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme, GTX 980 Ti ArcticStorm. Four of the GPUs have 6GB GDDR5 memory.

The GTX 980 Ti has 1000 MHz/1076MHz core/boost speed and features a blower, with 6GB of GDDR4 RAM, 384-bit memory bus and blower to ensure the GPU stays cool.

The GeForce GTX 980Ti AMP! Model has a 1051MHz/1140MHz core/boost speed, pre-overclocked, and uses the IceStorm cooling system. Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme has a 1253MHz/1355MHz core/boost speed, with EKO fans, IceStorm cooling, POWER BOOST and LED illumination.

Computex 2015 - NVIDIA hosted a round table at the Grand Hyatt here in Taipei with a select handful of press from around the world, where company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was talking about various products from NVIDIA, such as the GeForce GTX 980 Ti that was just launched.

Not only that, but Jen-Hsun talked about the new Shield Android TV which is 4K capable, as well as Drive PX. When the press was asked if they had any questions, we asked if Pascal would be the first GPU architecture to be baked onto the 16nm process, or if we would see Maxwell made on 16nm. Jen-Hsun took a few seconds to answer, but he did say that Pascal will be the first architecture on 16nm.

With the GeForce GTX 980 Ti only just launching, we like to know when the next-gen of everything will be out, so we should see the GeForce GTX 1080, or something completely new in terms of branding, to be unveiled in Q3 2016 (or so).

NVIDIA looks to be all set to launch the GeForce GTX 980 Ti tomorrow, so we're getting a very good look at all of the cards from their AIB partners like ASUS, EVGA, ZOTAC, MSI, and everyone else.

It looks like each company will have a few different models, with a reference model as a minimum followed by a few other models with varying overclocks and cooling setups. EVGA will have 10 cards, which is just insanity, but it will provide such a great line up to consumers, all the way up to the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified KingPin Edition.

Some of the Inno3D editions look great, with their iGame line up offering triple-fan models and the use of their HerculeZ and Accellero coolers. We will see ZOTAC make great use of their AMP! Edition card, as well as something new in the Arctic Storm edition.

Up until this point, everyone expected AMD to unveil its Radeon R9 390X either at Computex, but our sources tell us E3 2015. Well, it might not even be called the Radeon R9 390X, with AMD rumored to be pulling the Fury name out of storage and calling it Radeon Fury. But is the Radeon Fury enough to pull back some of that GPU market share loss from NVIDIA?

At first, I was a little shocked, then it sunk in. This isn't 'just another' release from AMD, this is their most important release, possibly ever (in my opinion). AMD would position the Radeon Fury with its own branding to compete directly against the GeForce GTX Titan X, with the Radeon Fury rocking the Fiji XT architecture, while the Radeon R9 390X would be released using a juiced up Hawaii GPU.

This move would be something AMD can be proud of, as the Radeon Fury (we'll call it that for this article until we have proof, or the official announcement from AMD) rocks High Bandwidth Memory. That alone is enough to justify it being different to the normal Radeon GPUs, and if it really does have Titan X levels of performance, the VRAM difference is a big enough leap to justify that branding difference.

We've been hearing whispers of NVIDIA launching its GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but according to WCCFTech, the company will be launching their new video card on June 2 at Computex 2015.

The event itself will be livestreamed over Twitch, as you can see from the image above. But what should we expect from the GTX 980 Ti itself? Well, it's based off of the GM200 core, the same core that powered the GeForce GTX Titan X, but we'll see 6GB of VRAM instead of the 12GB that the Titan X featured. But, this will include a drop in price from the $999 pricing of the Titan X.

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti will feature a 384-bit memory bus, up from the 256-bit bus offered on the GTX 980 which will provide the new GM200-based card with 336GB/sec memory bandwidth. The Core Clock will be at 1GHz, while the Boost Clock will reportedly be set at 1076MHz. We should expect to see an 8-pin + 6-pin PCIe configuration, with three DisplayPort, one HDMI 2.0 and one DVI port on the back.

Most people would think that ASUS or MSI would lead the pack as the largest GPU vendor, but it's actually Palit Microsystems (who also owns Gainward). Well, Colorful wants to compete at a much higher level, so the company is set to increase its shipments to over 500,000 per month this year, reports DigiTimes.

Colorful is also amping up its motherboard business, so it won't just be the GPU business that will scale going into the future. DigiTimes reports that the overall demand for video card sales has dropped, but the demand in China is still quite strong. GPU shipments for China are sitting at a very healthy 16-17 million units for 2015, with China accounting for a huge 50% of the total global GPU shipments.

The Chinese market is dominated by Colorful, Galaxy and ZOTAC with Colorful set to ship 500,000 units per month for 2015. Galaxy is hoping to ship somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 units per month, with projected sales of 5 million for Colorful and Galaxy. ZOTAC is expected to ship 3 million units this year, with ASUS shipping around 5 million across the year. GIGABYTE will be shipping around 3.6 million units while MSI will be pushing out around 2.9 million units for 2015.