Video Cards & GPUs - Page 416

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.

Something we talked about a few weeks ago now looks to be true: AMD will release two versions of its Radeon R9 390X. One of them will rock the next-gen HBM, while another will use the standard GDDR5 VRAM. WCCFTech is reporting that they noticed some juicy news on the ASUS forums, with the following units:

What we do think this means, is that AMD will release a Radeon R9 390X with 4GB of HBM, while the 8GB version will rock GDDR5. We've heard through our industry sources that HBM is experiencing seriously low yields, which will stop AMD from slapping 8GB of HBM onto the cards. This move will allow AMD to sell more R9 390X cards as they'll only be using 4GB of HBM, versus 8GB of High Bandwidth Memory.

The bigger question is: will the Radeon R9 390X be enough to compete against the GM200-powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti? What time of performance leap are we to expect from the HBM-powered R9 390X, over the nearly two-year-old R9 290X?

As we get closer to the official announcement and launch of the Radeon R9 390X from AMD, all we have to enjoy for now are leaked benchmarks that show the "Fiji XT" card beating out the GeForce GTX Titan X, barely.

With its super-fast HBM, the AMD Radeon R9 390X beats out the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X, the unreleased and expected GTX 980 Ti, and every other single GPU solution from NVIDIA in the average scores from 19 benchmarks according to a leaked look at the next-gen card from AMD.

When it comes to power consumption, it looks like AMD's next-gen Fiji architecture and High Bandwidth Memory aren't enough to save it from the perils of high power consumption. The leaked benchmarks show that the R9 390X uses 289W of power, which is just 3W away from the R9 290X which is quite the consumer of power. Comparing this to the Titan X which uses 256W, and the GTX 980 Ti which uses 235W, AMD is once again consuming a large amount of power in order to beat NVIDIA.

With AMD on the verge of unveiling its new Fiji XT-based Radeon R9 390X powered by HBM, NVIDIA isn't just waiting around sitting on its hands. NVIDIA is reporting preparing to roll out its new GM200-based GeForce GTX 980 Ti, with 6GB of GDDR5.

NVIDIA's rumored GeForce GTX 980 Ti will be made from feature the GM200 GPU, the same one that was found in the Titan X, except that the 980 Ti will feature 6GB of framebuffer, versus the 12GB found on Titan X. As for pricing, WCCFTech's source had it listed at around $954 USD, but we should expect NVIDIA to release it much cheaper than that, especially to compete against AMD.

After the price, the second big question is: when will the GeForce GTX 980 Ti arrive? Rumors have pegged NVIDIA at releasing a new product before Computex, but then there's some that say during Computex, and even into July. NVIDIA has the power of waiting right now, especially with NVIDIA owning 76% of the discrete GPU market.

According to the latest rumors, we should expect the Radeon R9 390X to launch with 4GB of HBM, while a dual-GPU version of the Fiji XT-based card will arrive with 8GB of HBM. For those who have been keeping up, this is a very, very interesting move, if the rumors are true. If you want to catch up on how revolutionary HBM will be, we wrote a detailed piece on High Bandwidth Memory yesterday.

Fudzilla is reporting from "insider sources" that AMD will launch the Radeon R9 390X with 4GB of HBM for an MSRP of around $849, while the dual-GPU version of the card, which should arrive as the Radeon R9 395X2, will include 8GB of HBM. The Radeon R9 395X2 (that's what we're calling it for now, this could change at any moment) should arrive sometime later in the year, or 2016 - depending on HBM yields, I'd say.

The sources stated that AMD had plans to launch the Radeon R9 390X with a price of $799, but this is no longer the case. The sources also added that the R9 390X will be competing directly against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X, which launched at $999 and is still around the $999 mark on Amazon still. According to Fudzilla's sources, the HBM-powered Radeon R9 390X will win in some benchmarks, and lose in others against the GDDR5-based Titan X.

According to VideoCardz.com, we should expect rebranded AMD Radeon R9 200 series cards based on the Hawaii architecture to arrive next month with a disguise, as the Radeon R9 300 series.

While the HBM-based Radeon R9 390X will arrive in two flavors: 4GB and 8GB (and maybe one model with GDDR5 and another with HBM), there will be other Radeon R9 300 series cards based on the Hawaii architecture. These should arrive as the Radeon R9 385, and R9 380 - but those specifics could change. But these new cards will feature slightly higher Core Clocks, and a nice jump on Memory speeds.

The Radeon R9 290X has a Core Clock of 1GHz, but the new R9 300 series rebrand will have 2816 stream processors, while its Core set at 1050MHz, a 50MHz jump. The Memory Clock on the other hand, jumps from the 1250MHz found on the R9 290X, to 1500MHz on the new cards, according to VideoCardz.com. This will give that particular card based on the Hawaii XT GPU around 384GB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 320GB on the R9 290X.

TSMC has come out swinging lately, teasing that the shift into 16nm FinFET is going to be quite big for GPUs. The Taiwanese manufacturer said that the move from 28nm to 16nm, and in particular, the 16nm FinFET+ process, will deliver around 40% more performance.

This 40% improvement in performance will not consume any additional power, which should have both NVIDIA and AMD smiling from ear to ear. This means if they were to spin up an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X on 16nm FinFET+ and have the same performance, it would consume 50% less power. Alternatively, for the same power, they would be able to cram in a huge 40% performance gain. Impressive stuff, shrinking down to 16nm.

TSMC will begin volume production of its 16nm FinFET in Q3 2015, which means we could expect the first GPUs based on the smaller node towards the end of the year, or early 2016. We are predicting that flagship GPUs released from this new 16nm process will be, at an absolute minimum 30-40% faster, all while using the same power draw of around 200-250W. Along with HBM, we could see some serious improvements of 80-100% over the flagship cards we see today. HBM2 (something we saw at NVIDIA's GTC 2015) is due next year, with 1.2TB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 640GB/sec that we should see on the AMD Radeon R9 390X, and a big gain from the $999 Titan X and its 336GB/sec.