Graphics Cards - Page 91

When NVIDIA introduced the new ATX 3.0 ready 12VHPWR power connector with the new GeForce RTX 40 Series, we began to see reports of connectors melting on the GPU-side for the 450W power-rated GeForce RTX 4090. This sparked a wave of reporting, investigations, and even new products looking to minimize the odds of this happening.

The consensus, including NVIDIA's, was that the issue resulted from "user error" - specifically, cables (via adaptors) not being plugged in correctly or adequately seated. And so, products like CableMod's 90-degree 12VHPWR Degree Angled Adapter were seen as excellent alternatives to the pack-in adaptors, offering better stability and minimizing stress on the connection that could lead to it becoming loose. According to reports CableMod has sold upwards of 40,000 or more of these adaptors.

But, CableMod's custom 12VHPWR Degree Angled Adapter also melts, with one Reddit user noting it was correctly connected. The issue even caused the adaptor to fuse with the 12-pin connection on the GPU, so it's essentially stuck there, connected to the GeForce RTX 4090.

All-in-one water-cooled GPUs are relatively new, and we've seen several AIO releases in recent years. Mostly, these have been limited to the high-end flagship models, like the GeForce RTX 3090 or, more recently, the GeForce RTX 4090. Today we've got word that GIGABYTe is expanding its AORUS WATERFORCE graphics card line-up to include two new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti models.

The AORUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE 12G and AORUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE WB 12G have launched, with the latter designed for those with an open-loop water-cooled system. GIGABYTE promises "exceptional durability" and "leak resistance" for long-term efficiency and reliability.

Although a couple of steps down from the flagship RTX 4090, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a good candidate for an AIO solution as it offers up GeForce RTX 3090-like 4K performance to make it still extremely powerful for modern PC gaming.

We've caught a mention of a 'Radeon RX 7600 XT' on the German AMD website, but we're really not reading anything much into that at this point.

Mainly because it very much looks like a simple error (although granted, it's a rather baffling mistake to make).

The AMD site in question is for the existing (recently launched) RX 7600 graphics card, except the title page calls the GPU the RX 7600 XT (and this is still present at the time of writing - presumably it'll be corrected soon enough, though).

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 graphics card has already witnessed price drops, at least in Europe - so will we see them in the US next?

Wccftech spotted the price cuts in Germany and France, where the freshly launched GPU has dropped 6% below its MSRP.

MindFactory, a major German retailer, is now selling the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X Black OC for €310, and in France, over at Hardware.fr, the same graphics card has been dropped to €309.

If you thought real-time ray-tracing effects in games like shadows or reflections were taxing on GPU hardware, you probably haven't seen path-tracing in action. Path tracing essentially makes all lighting and light-related effects a real-time calculation, like RT on steroids, and the results are incredible but also incredibly taxing on GPU hardware.

Last year we saw the release of Portal with RTX from NVIDIA, which took Valve's iconic first-person puzzle game and turned it into a stunning path-traced showcase. This a glimpse at the future because even on a GeForce RTX 4090, you still need DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation to play it with a high frame rate.

The same goes for the recent Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive mode from CD Projekt Red, which takes the game's impressive RT effects to present a Technical Preview of a full path-traced Night City to explore. The results are stunning, but like with Portal, you'll need DLLS 3 to experience it properly without devolving into a stuttering slideshow. But what if you get real-time path tracing to run on a mainstream GPU like the Intel Arc A750?

It has only been a couple of weeks since we saw an LN2-cooled Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB hitting an impressive 3.93 GHz, but the race to hit a stabled 4 GHz clock speed continues with ASUS taking the OC crown. With its new flagship ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 and 'sub-zero liquid nitrogen overclocking,' the GPU has hit an impressive 3.94 GHz (or 3945MHz).

Like Olympic track and field events, sometimes a 0.01 GHz increase is enough to determine the gold from silver. Announced at Computex 2023, the new flagship liquid-cooled ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 all-in-one is ASUS's top-of-the-line RTX 4090 and will ship with the highest GPU boost clock for a custom card to date - though this will be considerably lower than 3.94 GHz.

ASUS sent the GPU to overclocker SPLAVE, who achieved this incredible result with the GPUPI v3.3 benchmark. Although it only represents a 15 MHz increase over the recent Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB result, we're reaching the theoretical endpoint for how far the RTX 4090 GPU can be pushed. So every MHz counts.

A new 16-pin power connector able to deliver up to 600W of power, what should have been an interesting footnote in the transition to a new standard, became one of the defining parts of the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 launch, with reports of melting cables and no one knowing why, the seemingly innocuous collection of numbers and digits '12VHPWR' is now tied to the idea of catastrophic failure.

According to a new in-depth report at Igor's Lab, PCI-SIG is set to replace the 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector with the new 12V-2x6 power connector as part of the new ATX 3.1 standard. We don't have to wait long for the new connector, as MSI's new MAG GL Series power supplies (recently revealed) features support the new '12V-2x6' connector.

Cue the good news, the new 12V-2x6 power connector is backward compatible with the 12VHPWR connector - so it's more of a revision than a complete redesign. With most melted cables chalked up to user error or not being fully seated during installation, one has to wonder if this revision rectifies a specific design flaw.

Last week we reported on an interesting four-slot Founders Edition cooler, which we assumed was a prototype for a potential GeForce RTX 4090 Ti or TITAN-class Ada GPU. With its unique vertical orientation for the I/O ports and truly massive cooling potential, whatever its intended use was - undoubtedly, it would have been for a monster.

And we say 'was' because what you're looking at is essentially just the cooler, no PCB, no GPU, and no actual hardware to make it a functional graphics card. Still, that hasn't stopped this mysterious Founders Edition oddity from appearing on Taobao's Goofish platform, where someone under the name "Hayaka" is asking for a cool USD 120,000 (or RMB 888,000) for this admittedly rare piece of GeForce hardware.

NVIDIA's flagship GPU for the Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 Series is the GeForce RTX 4090, an already massive GPU that sits in a class all its own with a price point to match its impressive performance. There are enough leaks and info out there to suggest that NVIDIA has considered releasing a more powerful GeForce RTX 4090 Ti with beefier specs, but it looks like these plans have been put on hold.

In a move that's very much against the overall grain of the GPU market as a whole, Lovelace graphics cards are set for modest price increases in one region.

That would be China, or at least this is what we're told from the Board Channels forums over in the country, a source of many leaks and rumors - but one that should be treated with more than the usual dose of skepticism.

The theory is that everything from the newly launched RTX 4060 to the flagship RTX 4090 graphics cards will be subject to price hikes of 2% to 4% starting this month, and indeed, the RTX 4060 has already had an increase.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey results for June 2023 are here, so let's look at the latest snapshot of GPUs out there powering everyone's PC gaming action. Per the headline, the most popular GPU looks to be the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, with a 5.5% share. The USD 150 entry-level card from 2019 was designed for 1080p performance but has since been superseded with entries like the GeForce RTX 3050.

NVIDIA once again dominates the list, with 76.05% of all Steam users rocking an NVIDIA GPU, followed by 15.04% from AMD and 8.66% from Intel. That said, the only GPUs released last year that appear on the list are from NVIDIA.

The GeForce GTX 1650 is the first of many entry-level, mainstream, and mid-range GeForce graphics cards from the last couple of generations that make up the top ten GPUs, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results. Plus, old faithful - the GeForce GTX 1060 - is sitting at number three. Not far behind the GTX 1650 sits the GeForce RTX 3060 with a 4.6% share, though it's interesting to see the GeForce RTX 3070 in the top ten too.

A stealthy GPU release from MSI, with a brand-new GeForce RTX 4090 GPU from the popular brand, is not getting anything in the way of an official announcement or reveal. However, it's not hard to see why, as the new MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S looks to be exclusive to the Chinese market and features a traditional blower-fan cooling design.

It's not something we expected to see, but there looks to be some interest in GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs using this cooler design to keep the overall thickness down to a more manageable two-slot size. We reported on the new AFOX RTX 4090, another GPU with a blower-fan design, a week ago.

Without recognizable branding on the MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S, odds are this GPU is positioned as a workstation RTX GPU for the Chinese market. Although less capable than high-end Ada-powered workstation GPUs, it could present a more affordable alternative for intensive workloads. Especially when crowded workstation PCs are designed for GPUs not to be at most two slots thick.

ASUS has showcased an interesting concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, adding a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD slot onto the back of the GPU to use unused PCIe lanes. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti uses x8 lanes, so the full PCIe x16 slot has extra room for a Gen4 M.2 SSD to utilize a PCIe x4 interface. Although strange, the M.2 SSD-equipped GeForce RTX 4060 Ti that features storage on the same PCB begins to make sense.

Tony Yu, ASUS's General Manager,gave a close look at the concept showcasing that the placement of a Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD on the back of the GPU means that the heatsink and cooling for the efficient GeForce RTX 4060 Ti eliminate any concerns around the SSD overheating. We saw temperatures remain low during a benchmark, so the excessive cooling on the GPU helps keep the SSD storage cooler than the traditional install-it-on-the-motherboard route.

Due to the small size of M.2 drives, the cutout on the concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti blends in with the backplate of what looks to be a customized version of the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti - and it looks very cool.

AMD's new HYPR-RX technology was announced before the launch of the new Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX late last year, created as a means to boost performance in games with no tweaking required on the user's side. HYPR-RX isn't a new technology per se, but a one-click solution within AMD's Adrenaline software that enables AMD Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) in supported titles.

The combination of technologies is designed to deliver fast frame rates and lower latency instead of separating these options. This would be an excellent tool for competitive games where smooth and reliable performance is the goal.

According to AMD's roadmap, HYPR-RX was on track for the first half of the 2023 release, but that window has now come and gone, with no word from the company on when we can expect to see the technology.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X3D has been one of the more interesting nuggets from the CPU rumor mill of late, but this processor is no longer a purported piece of hardware - it's really happening, although there's a weighty caveat attached here.

The Ryzen 5 5600X3D will be available from Micro Center only (in the US, and no other regions), and as the tweet carrying the revelation notes, you'll be able to buy it at your 'local' store, which rules out purchasing the chip online. And not everyone lives that near to a Micro Center, of course.

The 5600X3D will carry a price tag of $229, but there will also be a bundle deal. This consists of the 5600X3D and ASUS B550-Plus TUF motherboard along with 16GB of G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 memory, all of which you'll be able to snag for an asking price of $329.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 graphics card is reportedly struggling for sales right out of the gate, or so we hear from sources in Japan and Europe.

For starters, take a look at the above tweet. It shows a shop in the Japanese Akihabara shopping hub that didn't even bother to open for the launch, and a second store that was open for business.

The latter had a launch day queue of... wait for it... one keen gamer. No, technically a single person isn't a queue, but you get the point. The interest level in Japan was pretty low, then, we can guess.

Graphics card sales are very much flagging for current-gen products, if the latest gossip from the GPU grapevine is to be believed.

Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) provided the inside scoop from various sources in the retail industry - add your own seasoning as ever - as part of the YouTuber's latest video (which focuses primarily on analyzing performance levels of the RTX 4060, though that's not what we're interested in here).

One source at a major retailer outside of the US (presumably in Europe) that MLID spoke to said that NVIDIA's RTX 3060 and RTX 3050 were still selling well at under the $300 (US) mark (the RTX 3050 especially, for those models under $250). And that on AMD's side, the RX 6700 XT and 6600 XT are selling decently.

Intel has released a new beta driver for its Arc family of graphics card, and it boosts the frame rates of Assassin's Creed Unity (an admittedly very old game) by a colossal amount.

According to Intel's release notes for driver version 31.0.101.4514, Assassin's Creed Unity (which was out in 2014) runs a rather staggering 271% faster at 1080p (on very high graphics settings), and 313% faster at 1440p (on high settings). That's four times as fast - or rather, 'up to' four times, as Intel observes.

Why is there such a huge jump here? Well, Intel has made no secret that it's (obviously) a mammoth task to optimize Arc drivers from scratch for all PC games out there, so it has concentrated on modern titles naturally (and DX12 or Vulkan).

According to a new report at Seeking Alpha, the per-wafer cost of TSMC's upcoming 2nm process technology will be USD 24,570 when production begins in 2025. This represents a 25% increase over 3nm wafer costs, the current cutting-edge node at TSMC. Wafer costs for 3nm already increased by up to 40% over 5nm, so we're getting a clear picture that more advanced chipsets will also advance in cost.

With the price of consumer-focused enthusiast CPUs and GPUs for gaming and other tasks increasing in recent times, not to mention the unprecedented price increases for consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, we could see the next few generations of gaming hardware cost more than we're used to.

When it comes to GPUs for PC gaming, which feature TSMC process technology, if AMD or NVIDIA choose to use 3nm or 2nm process nodes - then it could see the price of flagship GPUs from both companies dramatically increase. This is wild to think about when the GeForce RTX 4090's MSRP is already an eye-watering USD 1,599.

As part of an AI training demonstration showcasing the prowess of NVIDIA's H100 hardware, which saw a whopping 3,584 Hopper GPUs train a GPT-3 AI model in 11 minutes, the company also revealed a roadmap for its upcoming products - including what will eventually become the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

The roadmap refers to the technology as "Ada Lovelace Next" alongside "Hopper Next" and "Grace Next," so there are no clues as to what architecture will be called. It highlights a 2025 release, so we might have to wait longer than usual before seeing the GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090.

Traditionally new GeForce hardware and architecture arrived every two years, give or take a few months. The Pascal-based GeForce GTX 10 Series arrived in 2016, the Turing-based GeForce RTX 20 Series in 2018, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 Series in 2020, and the Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 Series in 2022.

Last week MSI announced its line-up of GeForce RTX 4060 graphics cards, with models set to launch this week in the company's well-known Ventux and Gaming product lines. Today, over at Newegg, we've got pricing for three models with retail pages live ahead of launch. These are currently listed as "Out of Stock," though that will change on June 29.

And with three models listed, we have confirmation that pricing for the GeForce RTX 4060 starts at USD 299, with the more premium variants costing USD 329. At least for MSI, we expect other brands to release higher-end variants to target the USD 329 price point.

For MSI, its MSRP model is the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G for USD 299, and the specs listed detail that it features 3072 CUDA Cores and a Boost Clock of 2490 MHz. VENTUS cards from MSI represent the entry-level GPUs from the company and, as we've seen from previous releases, deliver great results with adequate cooling and silent performance. These cards are also smaller than more premium models, and the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G's length of 199 mm is compact.