Graphics Cards - Page 61

GeForce Game Ready Driver 561.09 is here, and it's another big one because we're entering the holiday season when publishers release the biggest games of the year. The latest driver adds day-one support for Final Fantasy 16, Frostpunk 2, and God of War Ragnarok, three games on the horizon and set to launch with DLSS 3 and NVIDIA Reflex support.

GeForce Game Ready Driver 561.09 also adds day one support for EA SPORTS FC 25, EA's latest non-FIFA licensed football game, while adding one-click game optimization for Black Myth: Wukong, F1 Manager 2024, and Star Wars Outlaws in the GeForce Experience and the NVIDIA App. NVIDIA notes that its optimal settings, which tweak in-game graphics settings to maximize fidelity and performance, cover over 1200 PC games.

This functionality for a game in the NVIDIA App is great because it's like accessing the graphics settings menu without loading the game. That said, this driver is all about Final Fantasy 16 and God of War Ragnarok, two former PlayStation 5 exclusives finally ready to make their PC debut.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080, the company's first consumer GPU to include dedicated AI hardware, launched in 2018. One of the flagship GPUs for the Turing generation (second to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at launch), it's still a powerful GPU in 2024. However, after six years, the mainstream GeForce RTX 4060 performs similarly in a much more efficient package.

Chinese chipmaker Loongson is rumored to be working on a next-gen 9A2000 graphics card for PC will perform similarly to the GeForce RTX 2080, making it roughly eight to ten times faster than the company's other rumored product - the 9A1000 GPU. This news arrives via ITHome (translated); however, there is one big caveat.

Like other Chinese GPUs from Moore Threads, DirectX 12 compatibility is a question mark, so performance might be able to reach the heights of the GeForce RTX 2080 - but in-game performance on a per-title basis will most likely fall very short of that target.

Back in 2020, AMD announced it was splitting its post-GCN architecture into RDNA for gaming, with CDNA for its data center GPUs, with CDNA later being the architecture of its Radeon Instinct AI accelerators... and now, they're merging into UDNA.

In a chat with Tom's Hardware, senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group of AMD, Jack Huynh, said: "So, part of a big change at AMD is today we have a CDNA architecture for our Instinct data center GPUs and RDNA for the consumer stuff. It's forked. Going forward, we will call it UDNA. There'll be one unified architecture, both Instinct and client (consumer). We'll unify it so that it will be so much easier for developers versus today, where they have to choose and value is not improving".

AMD simplifying into the UDNA architecture means we'll see a future where developers only need to focus on a single system, no matter if they're building next-gen AI GPU architectures, or next-gen GPU architectures for Radeon in the form of RDNA 5 in the future.

Intel has released new graphics drivers covering its discrete Arc lineup of desktop GPUs and Intel Core Ultra processors with integrated Arc graphics. Intel Graphics Driver 32.0.101.5989 is available now and is notable because it's the first driver we've seen that has added official support and optimizations for Valve's Deadlock.

Deadlock is currently in early testing, and even though Valve has yet to announce the game or provide official details formally, it's already one of the most-played games on Steam, with well over 100,000 peak concurrent players being recorded daily. The new driver offers a notable performance bump for PC gamers with access to the Deadlock playtest with an Intel Arc graphics card like the A750 or A770.

Per the release notes, Arc gamers can expect "Up to 17% average FPS uplift at 1080p" or "Up to 13% average FPS uplift at 1440p" when playing with maxed-out visual settings.

AMD's Fluid Motion Frames is the company's driver-based frame generation technology that works in every game. It is a one-click solution that boosts the perceived performance in thousands of games, and unlike DLSS 3 or FSR 3, it doesn't require per-game integration.

In July, AMD announced Fluid Motion Frames 2 was coming soon, improving the tech to bring it more in line with more advanced solutions like FSR 3. Alongside the announcement, AMD released a technical preview driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2, allowing Radeon gamers to play around with the latest version of AFMF as part of HYPR-RX.

With improved image quality and latency reduction via AI-optimized enhancement, AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 works on all Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 Series graphics cards and AMD Ryzen Processors with integrated Radeon Graphics. AMD has updated the AFMF 2 technical preview driver this week with optimizations and stability fixes.

A week ago, AMD released its latest driver update for Radeon graphics users, with AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 adding support for support for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Concord, FINAL FANTASY XVI, and Star Wars Outlaws. This week, AMD released a non-WHQL update with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.10.37.10, which is available to install.

The non-essential driver update targets a few things: fixing performance issues with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - an action-packed new PC release that is getting rave reviews and positive feedback from gamers. If you're a Radeon gamer playing Space Marine 2 or looking to pick it up, this interim driver is a must, as it also fixes issues related to the game crashing on Radeon GPU hardware.

This sentiment also applies to Black Myth: Wukong, as this driver release fixes an issue for Radeon gamers playing the game with Global Illumination set to Medium or higher. This was flagged in Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1, so seeing a quick fix here is excellent.

AMD is giving up the high-end GPU market with RDNA 4, in its own words, where it will switch to a new business model for RDNA 4 that will focus on 'customer scalability' versus competing in the flagship GPU business.

We've been hearing rumors for months and months now, but AMD has officially confirmed the news with Tom's Hardware with Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, Jack Huynh, verifying the rumors of RDNA 4.

AMD wants to avoid customers looking at its flagship GPUs like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, against NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090, which the RTX 4090 destroys the RX 7900 XTX. AMD doesn't want a slower product (even if its flagship) against a better product... so not competing in the high-end with RDNA 4 at all, avoids that association against NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards.

I don't know why this exists, but it does: a desktop NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 graphics card, turned into a luxury purse worth $1000, and we're totally not joking. Check it out:

The new GPU Purse features an NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 graphics card from 2018, based on the GK208 GPU with 2GB of VRAM, it's a 1.5-slot card, with no external PCIe power connectors. As for the purse, the GT 730 is inside of a beautiful translucent handbag that would be perfect for those high-end girl gamers.

Between the two sides of the purse, we have the GPU on one side and a small GIGABYTE fan on the other side, meaning you can put things inside of the purse between those two sides of the GT 730. I don't see men using this, but women that want to put their phone, makeup, lipstick, keys, and more into the GPU Purse would look great while doing it.

Jon Peddie Research has just published its quarterly GPU shipment report, noting that 70 million GPUs were shipped in Q2 2024, and that PC CPU shipments increased by a "surprising" 11% year-over-year.

JPR notes that overall, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 4.2% through 2024 to 2026, and reach an installed base of close to 3.3 billion units by the end of 2026. Over the next 5 years, JPR predicts the penetration of discrete graphics cards inside of PCs will stand at 23%. The year-to-year total GPU shipments -- which include all platforms, and all types of GPUs -- increased by 16% reports JPR, with desktop GPUs increasing by 21% and notebooks by 13%.

Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, said: "The jump in shipments in Q2 was a welcomed surprise. The market has been bouncing around for a couple of years now, trying to find a rhythmic buoyancy. With all the turmoil of trade wars, pandemics, political elections, and interest rates, it's doubtful we'll see a so-called normalcy for some time".

The ONEXGPU 2 with Radeon RX 7800M graphics is an external GPU with AMD's latest discrete mobile graphics card that slots in underneath the Radeon RX 7900M. One-Netbook, a creator of mini-PCs and gaming handhelds, has posted benchmark results for the new GPU inside the ONEXGPU 2 paired with an AMD Ryzen 8840U system.

The benchmark run (shown in the video above) is the tried-and-true synthetic Time Spy test, part of the 3D Mark suite. The Radeon RX 7800M's result is an impressive score of 15,806, which is only 1,200 points lower than the Radeon RX 7900M. This makes it slightly faster or on par with the desktop Radeon RX 7700 XT, a GPU comparable to what's inside the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro.

According to Tom's Hardware, this score is notably higher than what is achievable with the GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, sitting between that and the higher-end GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU. However, there is one caveat.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards continue to get closer and closer, but designs of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 expected to be finalized this month.

In a new report, Benchlife chimes in on what is going on with NVIDIA's new Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards, with the RTX 5090 pegged at 550W power and the RTX 5080 at 350W power according to Benchlife, compared to the 600W and 400W power numbers from leaker kopite7kimi.

Benchlife reports: "This news is indeed a bit confusing. According to information from the module manufacturer, there was indeed a 400W NVIDIA cooling module case earlier, but it is currently in the cancellation or suspension stage. As for the 600W cooling module case, it has never stopped from the beginning until now".

Intel's new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors ship with next-gen Xe2 "Battlemage" integrated GPUs that offer some gigantic improvements in performance, right after AMD launches its Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs with upgraded RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M GPUs.

The new Xe2 "Battlemage" GPU has a 50% performance increase over Xe "Alchemist" inside of Meteor Lake, with more improvements in ray tracing through improved ray tracing units, better utilization of the CPU cores versus Alchemist Xe-LPG GPUs.;

Intel compares its Xe GPUs on the Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU against the new flagship Core Ultra 9 288V "Lunar Lake" CPU in a bunch of games, delivering a 31% uplift in performance, and in some games, over 60-70% more performance over Alchemist. Very nice to see.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 5090 reportedly has a 600W TDP, while the RTX 5080 is pegged at 400W and will have 10% more performance than the current-gen flagship RTX 4090.

In a new post on X by leaker "kopite7kimi" we're learning that there are some new GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPU details regarding TDPs on the higher-end RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards. The leaker says that the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 will have a 600W TDP, while the RTX 5080 will have a 400W TDP.

VideoCardz confirmed with kopite7kimi that the RTX 5080 is "projected" to show a 1.1x increase in performance over the RTX 4090, but the leaker "did not specify whether this improvement pertains to overall, raster, or ray tracing performance". We've previously heard rumors of the RTX 5090 having a base GPU clock of 2.9GHz+ which would result in around 30% more performance from GPU clocks alone, while Micron itself said its next-gen GDDR7 will have 30% performance gains.

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for August 2024 are now online, and when it comes to GPUs, the GeForce RTX 3060 is still the most popular option among PC gamers. The story hasn't changed much in the desktop space compared to last month, with the GeForce RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, and RTX 4070 proving to be the undisputed go-to cards for this generation.

NVIDIA is dominating, with AMD and Intel barely making an impression outside integrated graphics. However, this month, the Steam hardware chart for GPUs sees a new arrival in the form of AMD Radeon 780M Graphics, the integrated graphics found in popular portable gaming hardware like the ROG Ally, Legion Go, and several other portable devices from companies like Ayaneo, Zotac, and more.

Found in the popular Ryzen 7000 Series of mobile processors, Radeon 780M Graphics has been a game changer (alongside the Radeon hardware inside the Steam Deck) for pushing portable PC gaming handhelds into the mainstream.

NVIDIA's marketing department has made an interesting move by introducing a new case badge for its GeForce RTX range of GPUs which specifically mentions AI usage.

Tech Powerup noticed the new official badge - that'll be slapped on laptops packing GeForce graphics cards, and maybe even some prebuilt desktop PCs - which has a new tagline of 'powering advanced AI.'

As the site notes, this is fair enough, as AI is a major piece of the GeForce puzzle these days, and RTX products have built-in AI acceleration (sporting tensor cores).

AMD is reportedly going to position its Radeon RX 8000 series "RDNA 4" family of graphics cards like it did with the first-gen Radeon RX 5000 series "RDNA" graphics cards.

In a new post from leaker Golden Pig Upgrade, who explained: "the positioning of RDNA 4 is similar to that of RDNA 1, so don't expect flagship-level performance. The focus is on reducing costs. If Navi 44 can improve the performance of mid-range GPUs, that would be a good thing. Otherwise, it could become common for NVIDIA to sell the AD107 as the RTX 4060 in the future".

AMD launched its Navi 10 XT GPU inside of the Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card at the time, its highest-end RDNA card (that didn't compete with NVIDIA flagship GPUs at the time). We've been hearing for months now that RDNA 4 could NOT be competing in the high-end, with AMD taking the mid-range route with its upcoming Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards.

NVIDIA launched the 'world's first GPU' with the release of the GeForce 256 back on October 11, 1999 after announcing the card on August 31, 1999. It's now 25 years old. Wow.

NVIDIA changed the entire industry -- technology and gaming -- with the release of the GeForce 256, fast-forwarding to today and the "little-known brand" reached a milestone $3.3 trillion market cap and has been leading the charge in gaming and AI for years.

The GeForce 256 at the time introduced hardware transform and lighting (T&L) features directly into the GPU, previously these calculations were run on the CPU or required dedicated hardware (like everything did back in the 90s: sound cards, networking cards, graphic cards, MPEG2 decoder cards, and more). NVIDIA introduced the 'world's first GPU' with the GeForce 256, and the rest is history.

AMD is expected to unveil its new RDNA 4 GPU architecture later this year, with a smaller, mid-range focused range of Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs. One of those will be the Navi 44 XL GPU-powered card that should materialize into the Radeon RX 8600.

In a new shipping manifest, the Navi 44 XL GPU has been spotted, the second most powerful RDNA 4 GPU other than the Navi 48 that should power the Radeon RX 8700 or Radeon RX 8800 series graphics cards. Data miner "Orlak29" spotted the new Navi 44 XL entries in a new shipping manifest that you can see above.

The purported Navi 44 XL GPU would power the mid-range Radeon RX 8600 if AMD doesn't go through any name changes in the meantime, while Navi 48 will take the slightly higher-end, but no RDNA 4 cards will be competing in the high-end against NVIDIA. Hell, AMD's new RDNA 4 cards won't even be competing against AMD's previous-gen RDNA 3-based high-end Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.

AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 is available now for all Radeon owners and supports a range of new games. The highly anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Open Beta kicks off this weekend for gamers who have pre-ordered the latest Call of Duty or are subscribed to Xbox or PC Game Pass, and support is included here.

There's also support for the dead-on-arrival Concord, the new Sony and PlayStation multiplayer title struggling to find an audience. Plus, popular new single-player games Star Wars Outlaws from Ubisoft and the long-awaited PC debut of Final Fantasy XVI from Square Enix.

AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 also adds new HYPR-Tune profiles for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which will automatically configure settings and enable AMD FSR 3. Also, AMD Radeon Anti-Lag 2 support for Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT has been added, and the company's low-latency tech is similar to NVIDIA Reflex.

AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 GPU architecture has been in the headlines a couple of times this week, now we're hearing that Radeon RX 8000 series cards will feature 48MB to 64MB of next-gen Infinity Cache.

In a new post on X, leaker "Kepler_L2" was asked about IC (Infinity Cache) sizes on AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 GPUs, to which he simply replied "64, 64, 48". The decode on that is that we will see the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000 series (unless they stupidly insert AI-something into the name) in 3 different configurations.

AMD's first RNDA 4-based card rumored would be the Radeon RX 8800 XT and should have a 256-bit memory bus with 20Gbps GDDR6 memory and 64MB of next-gen Infinity Cache, the second (RX 8700 XT) should have a 256-bit memory bus with 18Gbps GQDDR6 memory and 64MB of Infinity Cache, while the last RDNA 4 card (RX 8600 XT) should have a 192-bit memory bus with 19Gbps GDDR6 memory.