Graphics Cards - Page 95

MSI held a livestream that benchmarked the company's new MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X 16GB Slim, comparing its performance to the 8GB non-slim Gaming X model on the same system across a handful of popular games at 1080p. And the results were the same across Cyberpunk 2077, running with Ultra settings to CS:GO to Hogwarts Legacy with DLSS and Frame Generation. Actually, marginally slower in most cases.

The first title benchmarked, Cyberpunk 2077, delivered 91.4 fps on the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB versus 90.6 fps on the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB. Not that it's a title that demands 16GB of VRAM to play in 1080p but the only benchmark where the new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB outperformed the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB model in MSI's 1080p benchmarks was CS:GO. In the popular competitive shooter, the frame rate increased from an already fast 419 fps up to 445 fps.

Ahead of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB's launch, which sees the price increase from an MSRP of USD 399 to USD 499, NVIDIA's information on the card's relative performance was that, for the most part, it would be the same unless there's a very specific VRAM bottleneck. Or for those taking advantage of its creator-friendly capabilities, where more VRAM is always better.

The 16GB version of NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card is now on shelves, and the pricing of this new variant is pretty much as we feared - verging on the ridiculous, certainly in Europe at launch, and we don't imagine the US market will fare much better when more models emerge.

So, to Europe first, where VideoCardz spotted (via ComputerBase) that the initial asking price of the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is €659 at a German retailer (not MindFactory, but Nootebooksbillinger).

The interesting - and, well, rather ludicrous - reality is that you can purchase a baseline RTX 4070 model at the same retailer for less money. The asking price for the cheapest RTX 4070 is 10% less, in fact (well, almost - it's €599).

NVIDIA RTX IO was first revealed in 2020, during the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 Series era, with the new technology all about offloading texture decompression and other data tasks from the CPU onto the GPU by taking advantage of modern NVMe and PCIe Gen storage.

NVIDIA RTX IO uses the technology seen in Microsoft's DirectStorage, GDeflate, an open GPU compression standard that NVIDIA helped create. In most modern games, we see data sent from the disk drive to the CPU, which is then decompressed via system memory and sent to the GPU. With the massive gains we've seen in PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5 storage, it's a process that doesn't take advantage of their speed and capabilities when it comes to PC gaming.

The result is longer load times and things like texture pop-in, even though storage speeds have doubled or tripled. This is where NVIDIA RTX IO comes in. "NVIDIA RTX IO dramatically increases IO bandwidth by letting compressed data be delivered to GPU memory with minimal staging in the CPU system memory," writes NVIDIA.

NVIDIA has quietly launched the new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB variant, which features the same hardware seen in the 8GB model but with the memory capacity doubled to 16GB. It seems that GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB models have simply made their way to retail without being sent to media beforehand - so there are currently no reviews for the GPU online.

With the same underlying hardware and 128-bit memory interface, there won't be a massive difference in game performance outside of a few cases where the limitations are mainly due to running out of memory capacity. Titles like the Resident Evil 4 remake with max settings.

Interestingly, the 16GB model features the same TDP power rating, so doubling the VRAM capacity won't impact the card's impressive power efficiency. The big downside is that to get an extra 8GB of VRAM, the price for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti jumps up from USD 399 for the 8GB model to USD 499 for 16GB. This just about puts the GPU into a brand-new pricing tier, so comparisons between it and other GPUs must be adjusted accordingly.

NVIDIA has pushed out a firmware fix for some of its older graphics cards that had a problem with DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 connections, a glitch that caused some nasty issues.

Affected GPU owners could find their PC locking up while booting and failing to reach the desktop. Or a lesser problem, but still annoying, was the user getting a black screen through the whole boot-up process until the desktop appeared.

NVIDIA explains that the new firmware update enables the latest DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 features, and without it, the mentioned problems could be encountered (although not necessarily).

With rumors swirling that AMD is planning to launch its mid-range RDNA 3 graphics cards in September, we'll be hearing much more about the planned Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 GPUs in the coming months. Starting today, with some supposedly leaked benchmarks for these GPUs running the popular 3DMark synthetic benchmark Time Spy coming from @All_The_Watts over on Twitter.

With the flagship Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX out in the wild, which was recently joined by the mainstream Radeon RX 7600, a big gap in the line-up is ready to be filled. The consensus is that AMD has delayed the launch of its mid-range offerings for its latest generation of Radeon graphics due to existing RDNA 2 stock being available and sold at a discount.

But with stock levels dropping to the point where it's hard to find brand-new Radeon RX 6000 series cards in many regions, the time is right for AMD to launch new GPUs. And speaking of time, these Time Spy results showcase that the Radeon RX 7800 outperforms the GeForce RTX 4070 by around 5%, with the Radeon RX 7700 beating the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti by a more sizable 15%.

Want to know what's happening with AMD's RDNA 3 GPUs? If the rumor mill is right, the good news is that we should get an announcement of more than one addition to the RX 7000 range next month.

Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), a regular source of GPU leaks on YouTube, gave us the full details of where AMD is at with its remaining graphics cards for the RDNA 3 generation (add your own skepticism, though, as ever with rumors).

Gamescom 2023 in mid-August will supposedly see AMD announce the RX 7800 and 7700 - although the names of those GPUs could still change (even at this late stage).

A new report covering the DIY custom PC market in South Korea, with data gathered from Danawa Research (via @harukaze5719 on Twitter), shows the division of hardware covering GPUs and CPUs in the region for the first half of 2023. On the GPU front, it's a blowout, with GeForce GPUs taking 94% of the overall market share, followed by AMD Radeon at 5% and Intel Arc at 1%.

On the CPU side, it's a lot closer, with AMD gaining ground with a 43% share compared to Intel's 57% share. The numbers drill down from there, with the AM4 motherboard platform for AMD covering 71.3% of the Ryzen CPU market in South Korea, with the new AM5 platform and Ryzen 7000 Series covering 28.7% of the market.

With the Ryzen 7000 Series getting close to 30%, it's a strong showing for the new CPU series requiring a new motherboard and an upgrade to faster DDR5 memory. For Intel, the new 13th Gen series of CPUs (in particular, the 13th Gen Core i5) is the most popular, highlighting that PC gamers and DIY builders in South Korea like to keep their hardware up to date.

NVIDIA's Founders Edition models have always been highly sought after as collector's pieces. However, with the release of the GeForce RTX 30 Series, we saw the company debut a stunning new cooler design that has carried through to the GeForce RTX 40 Series. As we saw with the release of the GeForce RTX 3060, NVIDIA again opted out of launching a GeForce RTX 4060 Founders Edition. Leaving all cards released limited to partner models.

With the GeForce RTX 4060's impressive power efficiency and small design, Redditor Clashmains_2 made their own Founders Edition RTX 4060 using the components from a Gainward RTX 3060 Pegasus graphics card. The result is a Mini-ITX form factor design with a single fan, which looks awesome.

It's so good that it looks like the real thing, with Clashmains_2 noting that they recreated the heatsink and PCB in CAD software and modeled the rest around that. From the fins to the metallic finish, it nails the modern GeForce RTX Founders Edition aesthetic while presenting an all-new Mini-ITX version.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti launched in May, and with its MSRP of USD 399 (similar to the launch price of its predecessor, the RTX 3060 Ti), a lot of the feedback around the more mainstream Ada Lovelace GPUs release was that it should have been cheaper based on its performance relative to the competition at that price range.

Just the other day, we reported one of the best deals for graphics cards going around - with the flagship RDNA 3 GPU from AMD, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, dropping down to USD 799 as part of a promotion over at retailer Newegg - a 20% discount from the USD 999 MSRP. And that comes with a free copy of Starfield as part of AMD's new partnership with Bethesda.

Today, it's the RTX 4060 Ti's turn. No Starfield but a sizable discount from the MSRP, with the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G OC model seeing its already discounted USD 379.99 price dropping even lower - down to USD 334.39. As we saw with the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the discounted price is applied after using the "ZIPTECH" code during checkout.

The flagship RDNA 3-powered AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is currently available at its lowest price yet, USD 799 - and yes, it comes with a free copy of Starfield per AMD's new game bundle deal for Ryzen and Radeon products.

The model in question is the ASRock Phantom Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB, which features the company's Polychrome SYNC lighting, Phantom Gaming 3X Cooling System, and metal backplate. It also features an out-of-the-box factory overclock with max clocks up to 2615 MHz - so it should deliver better performance than AMD's reference model.

The discount represents an impressive USD 200 or 20% discount from the USD 999 MSRP. As a 4K gaming card, its direct competitor is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 - which only features 16GB of VRAM compared to the 24GB seen here.

The AMD FidelityFX Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available for developers to download. It gives them an easy one-stop solution for adding AMD FidelityFX tech into games like FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 1.1 and FSR 2.2.1) and AMD FidelityFX CACAO (AMD FidelityFX Ambient Occlusion).

"The AMD FidelityFX SDK is the result of our aim to bring simplicity, structure, and consistency into all our great AMD FidelityFX technologies," writes AMD in the announcement, which also introduces three brand new FidelityFX tech for developers (and gamers) to play with.

The first is AMD FidelityFX Blur 1.0, a hardware-based "gaussian blur technique" for creating more cinematic visuals. The second is AMD FidelityFX Depth of Field 1.0, which is about recreating the "bokeh depth of field effect produced by camera lenses." Finally, there's AMD FidelityFX Lens 1.0, which also adds access to cinematic tools like chromatic aberration, vignette, and film-grain effects to in-game visuals.

NVIDIA has slightly altered the power connector design on its flagship Lovelace graphics cards, according to a fresh report.

This comes from a Redditor (as spotted by VideoCardz) who posted to show the purported design change on a new RTX 4090 Founders Edition, which theoretically has been made to ensure that the well-publicized instances of cable meltdown no longer happen.

You surely can't have missed the fracas around melting cables after the RTX 4090 was launched, with NVIDIA admitting that if the power cable isn't properly plugged into the graphics card, such a loose connection could cause overheating issues.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card with 16GB of VRAM is supposedly launching next week - if the rumors are correct - but word is that reviews will be thin on the ground.

Hardware Unboxed tweeted to let us know that there is no official review program for this 16GB spin on the RTX 4060 Ti, and even outside of NVIDIA - which isn't producing a Founders Edition - the company's graphics card making partners "really don't want to know about it [the 4060 Ti]."

Hardware Unboxed further notes that every NVIDIA partner says they won't be providing any review samples, and they aren't even certain of the launch date (rumored to be July 18).

Last week we saw American overclocker Allen "Splave" Golibersuch break the 4.0 GHz barrier using the flagship liquid-cooled ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 all-in-one from ASUS. An impressive milestone and a conclusion of sorts to a race that was heating up between Splave and German overclocker CENS that saw a back-and-forth over the course of days and weeks to see who could get to 4.0 GHz first.

For a brief moment, CENS held the crown by pushing a Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB to an incredible 3.975 GHz. And although the race to 4.0 GHz is over, this hasn't stopped CENS from grabbing some LN2 and going again with the overclocker posting "a fun one" with a 4095 MHz GPU clock speed, or basically 4090 MHz to match the naming of the GeForce RTX 4090.

CENS posted the results on Twitter with an accompanying picture showing his setup, and it's very cool to see what it looks like when a GPU is pushed beyond what we thought was possible.

NVIDIA is planning to launch the new 16GB variant of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti this month, but with an MSRP of USD 499, the consensus is that, sure, more VRAM is great to see, but the price is too high for a GPU with the same underlying specs as the 8GB variant.

For MSI and its premium GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Slim, we'll see the revised 2-slot cooling design that debuted at Computex 2023 in the stylish white color. Images of the GPU have appeared online via Twitter user hongxing2020, and it also looks like this GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB will use a 16-pin power connector even though it's a 165W graphics card.

It's hard to tell without full specifications, but the connector could also be the new 12V-2x6 power connector seen on the GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition model. Interestingly, due to low power requirements, most RTX 4060 Ti models feature the standard 8-pin power connection, so there shouldn't be an issue with the switch to 16-pin.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM has been a controversial graphics card since it was first announced, and just ahead of its launch, the divisive feelings around this model are very much still present.

This time we're hearing from NVIDIA's partners who manufacture graphics cards using Team Green's chips, via Andreas Schilling, editor of a German tech site.

Note that we must be cautious about rumors on Twitter, but we're told that Schilling spoke to some add-in board (AIB) makers and that it looks like "very few" are interested in promoting the graphics card in a "big way," as you can see in the tweet.

Here's a bit of a weird one, ASUS is launching a new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector that debuted with GeForce RTX 40 Series. The 'ATS-RTX3060TI-O8GD6X-GAMING-V2' or ASUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Atlas Shark initially made use of the 12-pin connector that we saw across many Ampere GPUs to minimize the need for multiple 8-pin plugs.

Pictures of the new connector on this GPU were posted by Extreme Player over at Bilibili, with confirmation that the new model was shipped to consumers and retailers in April 2023. The physical design looks unchanged outside the switch to the new 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.

Regarding the make-up of the GPU, the older 12-pin and newer 16-pin connectors share the same physical make-up. It's believed that no revisions were required to the rest of the GPU design outside of accommodating the new connector. With the controversy surrounding melting connectors and word of a revision to the existing 12VHPWR coming soon, you might wonder why ASUS has decided to ship a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.

Intel's Battlemage GPUs have a sizeable question mark hanging over their future, if one leaker is to be believed - and don't expect these graphics cards to debut any time soon (indeed, if the 2nd-gen products turn up at all - more on that later).

This is from Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), who has got a whole bunch of info from sources with their ears to the ground, and the overall - worrying - message here is that Battlemage has had a whole pile of issues.

Apparently things are so bad with the 2nd-gen range from Intel that its future is "very uncertain," we're told - hinting that it may not even come out. (That cancelation rumor is something Intel has strenuously denied in the past, it has to be noted).

AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 23.7.1 is here for Radeon graphics card owners. Although it doesn't feature anything brand-new in terms of game optimizations for upcoming releases, it does manage to resolve one big issue that has been around since the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX launched in December 2022.

And that is, it resolves the high-idle power issue that became an ongoing issue when pairing either one of these GPUs with a 4K FreeSync display or multimonitor display configuration. Another big fix comes to VR performance, with the release notes for the new Radeon drivers noting that "suboptimal performance or occasional stuttering" when playing VR games on the Radeon RX 7000 series has also been resolved.

It's great to see these fixes from AMD, as it showcases that even though some issues can linger for months, the Radeon team is paying close attention to the 'Known Issues.' Hopefully, we'll see the 'Factory Reset' installation issue resolved soon, too - as that one has been listed for a while after reports of the feature causing havoc with Windows.