Video Cards & GPUs - Page 413

When AMD released the Radeon R9 Nano, we fell in love with not only its performance (for being such a tiny, tiny card) but its ultra awesome aesthetics. Well, it looks like we can expect ASUS to release a new R9 Nano, but the shroud on the cooler will be white.

According to ComputerBase.de, ASUS has used its own custom PCB (which isn't white) while dipping the shroud in white paint. The fan is still black, but you can't deny that it doesn't look slick. I would've expected something different from ASUS, maybe doing a black and red theme (in line with AMD's reference card) and in line with their Republic of Gamers brand.

But, you can't deny this R9 Nano doesn't look cool. Now I want to build a new black and white themed system with this new R9 Nano from ASUS.

It looks like NVIDIA is testing out a new GPU, with a new 'JM601 graphics processor' spotted on Zauba. The most mysterious part of this is that it's called 'JM601', which is completely out of place, and totally unexpected.

So what do we think the new JM601 GPU is? Well, for one it could be a dual GPU card based on NVIDIA's current Maxwell architecture - think GTX 990 (dual GTX 980s, or heaven forbid, dual GTX 980 Ti/Titan X GPUs). Alternatively, it could be there to throw us off - but the most exciting part is that it could be a huge Pascal GPU and the name used here - 'JM601' - is to throw us off.

The new JM601 GPU is sitting on Zauba where it was sent on October 14, priced at 73,917 INR - which converts to around $1136. This isn't a cheap chip, so we should expect a monster dual-GPU, or this is the first Pascal-based card, possibly with GDDR5X as we reported not too long ago.

It's getting closer to the end of the year, where we're learning more about what the New Year will bring in terms of new GPU technology. AMD has reportedly taped out two of its next-gen GPUs, with "Ellesmere" and "Baffin" both taping out - and both part of the upcoming Radeon 400 series of video cards.

AMD has also reportedly secured itself a major OEM design win, according to a "source with knowledge" close to rumor site WCCFTech. The Ellesmere and Baffin GPUs aren't high-end parts, but they will fill the shoes of the most important part of AMD's graphics portfolio, the performance, and mainstream markets.

These aren't the successors to the Fury range at all, but more the Radeon 300 series that was rebranded earlier this year from the Radeon 200 series. We should expect more news on AMD's new cards in the coming months.

AMD will be in a much better position this time next year, as we should have a full top-to-bottom next-gen GPU release, powered by its Arctic Islands GPUs. During AMD's latest chat with analysts, the company teased its hand for 2016.

AMD CEO Lisa Su was asked about their GPU business being "down quite a lot year over year" from Joe Moore of Morgan Stanley, to which Su responded with: "Yes, so Joe, I think one quarter is good progress. Now you will have to watch us over a number of quarters regain that graphics momentum. And when I think about it, relative to the Fury launch we did have some supply constraints in the third quarter. They were - they are largely solved in the fourth quarter, so I don't think there will be any supply constraints".

She continued: "I think it's also fair to say that the graphics portfolio is quite broad, and so you will see us updating the entire portfolio over the coming quarters". Su added: "We are also focused on delivering our next-generation GPUs in 2016 designed to improve performance per watt by 2X compared to our current offerings, based on design architectural enhancements, as well as advanced FinFET process technology". The biggest tease, is where Su said: "And in the third quarter, we also taped out multiple products in FinFET technologies across both of our foundry partners that are on track to enter production next year".

Microsoft has been quiet about the GPU specifications for its 2-in-1 Surface Book, so enthusiastic Reddit users took to the Microsoft Store, sneakily installed GPU-Z on Surface Books, and found out for themselves what's inside.

The results may be familiar to you, as they're not unlike the 940M. The custom hardware is an upgrade though, including 1GB dedicated GDDR5 RAM, among other things. You can see the specs in the images here, as well as in the rundown below.

We don't know much about AMD's next-generation GPU, apart from the fact that it'll feature HBM2 with over 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth, and some delicious speed upgrades over the more-than-capable Fury X.

The latest news comes from AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, where she teased: "We are also focused on delivering our next generation GPUs in 2016 which is going to improve performance per watt by two times compared to our current offerings, based on design and architectural enhancements as well as advanced FinFET products process technology".

Now, if that's not enough to get you excited, I don't know what is. If we're talking about a 100% jump, we can expect 4K 60FPS in every single game out right now without a problem. It'll also be the perfect GPU for VR headsets, as you'll be needing to pump 90FPS minimum to get the best experience on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. NVIDIA isn't far behind the GPU game, with its next-gen Pascal card also using HBM2 and expected to pack an insane 17 billion transistors.

We heard rumors not too long ago that NVIDIA was internally testing its new Pascal architecture, but this news is even more exciting. Rumor has it NVIDIA has been testing not only the high-end GP100 card, but the GP104.

Some of you might know the nomenclature NVIDIA uses for its GPUs, with the current GM204 GPU powering the GTX 980 and GTX 970 while the GM200 powers the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti. The GP100 GPU will be the monster GPU that will power a new super-enthusiast and professional-orientated card, such as a new Titan X and Tesla/Quadro range, while the GP104 will most likely find its way into a new consumer GeForce product. We don't want to say the GTX 1080, as we really think NVIDIA will change gears with a next-gen product and shift around the product naming.

The latest rumor is that there will be a successor to GDDR5 called GDDR5X, and it will debut with NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce product. GDDR5X will reportedly keep the same 256-bit memory interface we have on the current GTX 980 while ramping up the memory bandwidth to 448GB/sec - higher than the best AMD cards, save the Fiji-based HBM-powered cards. HBM2 is still obviously on the cards, and will include a 4096-bit memory bus at 1GHz with memory bandwidth hovering at 1TB/sec.

AMD teased that its dual-GPU beast was coming earlier this year, but now we're beginning to hear talk of a "Radeon R9 Gemini' shipping from AMD's HQ in Canada.

The Radeon R9 Gemini will most likely arrive to us as the Radeon R9 Fury X2, as it can't succeed the Radeon R9 295X2 because of its name - where if it was the R9 395X2, people would think it features two R9 390X GPUs, versus the Fiji GPU found on the Fury X. The dual-GPU card should feature two fully-enabled Fiji XT cores, the same found on the Fury X, with 4GB of HBM each.

AMD would have the most powerful single video card solution on the market with this card, where it would easy beat the pants off of a GTX 980 Ti or Titan X from NVIDIA. As for pricing, we should expct somewhere over $1000, and most likely headed into the $1199 or so price point. As for availability, we should hopefully hear about this card in the very near future.

We know it's coming, and we can't wait - NVIDIA begins showing off more and more of its new Pascal architecture, teasing the HBM-powered Pascal GPU at GTC Japan 2015 recently.

The last time we saw Pascal was when NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed off a prototype board at GTC 2015 in March, but now we're seeing a slightly different Pascal GPU board than we saw earlier this year. The board features an actual Pascal GPU now that it has taped out, with the consumer GeForce card to feature a huge 16GB of HBM2 while the professional side of things will bump things up to 32GB of HBM2.

The design of the board is very similar to the Fiji-powered cards from AMD, as NVIDIA's Pascal chip is on a similar interposer to AMD. It looks slightly bigger, but we should expect the Pascal-powered cards to blow the doors off of the Fiji-powered cards from AMD. We will see DirectX 12 support, around 17 billion transistors, a 4096-bit memory interface, and so much more. Expect more news on this as we get closer to the New Year.

AMD has released its Catalyst 15.9.1 beta driver, a slight update over the recently released 15.9 beta driver.

The latter improved performance in the Fable: Legends benchmark and The Star Wars: Battlefront beta, but also gave rise to a severe memory leak bug that triggered when resizing windows. That bug is fixed in 15.9.1, so download and install via the source link to your heart's content.

Driver notes are below.