graphics cards

Nvidia's May Launch GeForce 700 Series GPUs at Computex 2013

Paul Lilly — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:52:25 +0000

New graphics cards from Nvidia could be set for a summer debut.

Summer is just around the corner, and with it is the Computex computer expo in Taipei, Taiwan. Are you wondering what the event will introduce to the computing world? So are we, and word on the web is that Nvidia is planning to launch its next generation desktop GeForce 700 Series graphics cards at Computex. In addition to pushing the performance envelope, the GeForce 700 Series is said to be in response to AMD's aggressive game bundles.

We all know that the main reason to buy a graphics card is to improve game performance (or for design work), but for those on the fence in which direction to go, AMD has been tempting upgraders with its Never Settle software bundles consisting of triple AAA titles.

According to Fudzilla, Nvidia has seen enough and isn't about to let AMD wrestle a larger share of the desktop GPU market than it already has. As such, the GeForce 700 Series might even launch ahead of Computex, the news and rumor site reports, though we're skeptical Nvidia will be quite that ambitious. We're also reluctant to get our hopes up of a summer release, as previous rumors pegged the launch to take place in 2014 sometime after the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but we'll cross our fingers nonetheless.

As for the actual hardware, most assume the GeForce 700 Series will be based on a refreshed version of Nvidia's 28nm Kepler architecture.

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AMD, Nvidia Push Out New Graphics Drivers Primed for Far Cry 3

Paul Lilly — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:49:51 +0000

The wait is over, Far Cry 3 is here and available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and of course our favorite gaming platform, the PC. To kick things off on a high note, both AMD and Nvidia have released new GPU drivers -- AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta and Nvidia GeForce 310.70 -- that promise to deliver big performance gains in Far Cry 3 (by as much as 38 percent in some cases), as well as a few other titles.

Let's start with AMD. The chip designer's latest beta drivers improve performance by up 25 percent with 8xMSAA and SSAO enabled at 1600p, and up to 15 percent with 8xMSAA and HDAO enabled. A few other games receive a performance boost as a result of the 12.11 beta series, but AMD also focused on resolving a bunch of issues, including system hangs and a missing font issue in XBMC, to name just two.

Nvidia's driver offers an even higher performance boost in Far Cry 3, at least for GeForce GTX 680 graphics card owners, who can expect up to a 38 percent boost. Double digit percentage gains are also found in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (up to 26 percent), Battlefield 3 (up to 16 percent), and Assassin's Creed III (up to 18 percent).

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Driver
NVidia GeForce 310.70 Driver

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AMD May Launch Radeon HD 8000 Series Graphics Cards Within 6 Months

Paul Lilly — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:58:16 +0000

Things are a bit uncertain at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) these days, what with all the layoffs, a tumbling share price, and even the decision to put its Texas camp up for sale to raise funds. But don't count AMD out. The company is still releasing products, like Vishera, and as the second quarter of 2013 rolls into view, you may finally see a new batch of Radeon graphics cards on store shelves.

News of an impending Radeon HD 8000 Series graphics card launch comes courtesy of un-named sources in the upstream supply chain, DigiTimes reports. As DigiTimes tells it, AMD was originally planning to launch the new cards by the end of this year, but the release has been pushed back by up to six months as the company deals with the challenges of reorganization.

The timing isn't terrible, however. AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series are competitive with Nvidia's current video card solutions, and there doesn't appear to be a new Kepler series coming out this year. Like AMD, Nvidia is waiting until 2013 to launch its next generation GPUs.

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Nvidia the Big Winner in Q3 GPU Shipments; AMD, Intel Both Losers

Paul Lilly — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:10:07 +0000

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) released GPU shipment statistics for the third quarter of 2012, and while the numbers were all over the map, it was mostly good news for Nvidia (more on that in a moment). Discrete GPU shipments held steady at 34.3 million units, up 4.5 percent sequentially but down 5.2 percent compared to the same quarter one year ago. There was also a 4.5 percent dip in overall graphics shipments in Q3 compared to last year, JPR says.

"The news was terrific for Nvidia and disappointing for the other major players," JPR said. "From Q2 to Q3 Intel slipped in both desktop (7 percent) and notebook (8.6 percent). AMD dropped (2 percent) in the desktop, and (17 percent) in notebooks. Nvidia gained 28.3 percent in desktop from quarter to quarter and jumped almost 12 percent in the notebook segment."

Nvidia did very well for itself in what was otherwise "not a very good quarter." GPU shipments overall declined 1.45 percent sequentially and 10.8 year-over-year. It is interesting to note, however, that GPUs shipped more than PCs. The reason is because of "double attach," meaning some PCs shipped with both discrete and integrated graphics solutions.

"The turmoil in the PC market has caused us to modify our forecast since the last report; it is less aggressive on both desktops and notebooks," JPR said. "The popularity of tablets and the persistent recession are the contributing factors that have altered the nature of the PC market. Nonetheless, the CAGR for PC graphics from 2011 to 2016 is 3.6 percent, and we expect the total shipments of graphics chips in 2016 to be 608 million units."

Though Nvidia was the biggest winner in Q3, it's 18.5 percent share of the GPU market still trails both Intel (59.8 percent) and AMD (21.2 percent).

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Possible Radeon HD 8870 and 8850 Specs Leaked to the Web

Paul Lilly — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:39:59 +0000

The never ending GPU wars between Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia means there's always something newer, better, and faster right around the corner. Neither player likes to tip their hand ahead of schedule, but the Internet is the ultimate tattletale, and right now it's telling us what to expect from AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 8870 and 8850 parts. If the source is to believed, that is.

According to Videocardz.com's source, which is the same one that leaked Tahiti specs a few months before launch, AMD's Radeon HD 8870 will be as fast as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 680. Based on AMD's Oland XT GPU, the 8870 boasts 3.4 billion transistors (up from 2.8 billion found in the 7870), a 1050MHz base clockspeed, 1100MHz boost clockspeed, and 25 percent better memory bandwidth (192GB/s) compared to the 7870. The card will carry an MSRP of $279.

AMD's Radeon HD 8850 is based on Oland Pro and has the same number of transistors and memory bandwidth as the 8870, but slower clockspeeds (925MHz base and 975MHz boost). It will sell for $199 (MSRP). It will be comparable to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 670 part.

Regarding a launch date, early info points to around January 2013.

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AMD Issues Another Round of Radeon HD Price Cuts

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:09:09 +0000

Summer might be coming to an end in the coming weeks, but the GPU price wars between AMD and Nvidia are just starting to heat up. To wit, AMD rolled out a series of price reductions in July for its Radeon HD 7970, 7950, and 7870 graphics cards, and now that Nvidia has made Kepler affordable with its GeForce GTX 660 Ti part, AMD is once again responding in kind with another round of cuts.

First, lets take a look at what happened in July:

Radeon HD 7970: $480 down to $430
Radeon HD 7950: $400 down to $350
Radeon HD 7870: $350 down to $300

On top of those $50 price cuts, AMD shaved another $20 off certain models. A quick glance online shows the Radeon HD 7970 going for $410 street and the Radeon HD 7950 for $320 street (the Radeon HD 7970 is unaffected by the latest round of cuts).

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which competes with AMD's Radeon 7950 GPU, sells for about $300 street (and up, depending on model). You can see how it fares in our recent roundup of three GTX 660 Ti cards.

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AMD Announces New FirePro GPUs, Lays Claim to Planet's Most Power Workstation Cards

Paul Lilly — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:25:38 +0000

The spunky chip designers at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) just launched the company's latest line of GPU work horses, claiming the new FirePro parts are the fastest workstation graphics cards the world has ever seen. Leading the pack is AMD's FirePro W9000, a $3,999 graphics solution that offers 4 TFLOPS of single precision floating point performance, 1 TFLOP double precision, and a GPU that's capable of pumping out 1.95 billion triangles per second.

AMD's FirePro W9000 is equipped with 6GB of GDDR5 memory with ECC support on a 384-bit bus. It has six mini DisplayPort connectors and can drive resolutions up to 4096x2160, AMD says. Target markets for this one include high performance CAD engineers, media designers, and digital signage professionals.

Three other FirePro cards round out the latest additions, including the W8000 ($1,599), W7000 ($899), and the W5000 ($599). The least expensive of the bunch has 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus (but without ECC support) and can deliver 1.3 TFLOPS of single precision and 79.2 GFLOPS of double precision floating point performance.

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 and 550 Graphics Cards Nearing End of Life (EOL) Status

Paul Lilly — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:19:44 +0000

Technology and Lindsay Lohan don't seem to have a lot in common, but like the oft troubled celebrity, technology seems to always age faster than anyone thought possible. In a sense, there's no such thing as future proofing. We bring this up because a pair of popular mid-range graphics cards from yesterday -- Nvidia' GeForce GTX 560 and 550 parts -- are on the verge of becoming obsolete tomorrow.

By obsolete, we don't mean they'll suddenly stop pumping out playable framerates in whatever games you're currently playing. Instead, we're referring to Donanimhaber.com's report that Nvidia is getting ready to tag both cards with an EOL (End of Life) label.

Nvidia's hardware partners have reportedly already received their final order notices as the GPU maker looks to offload existing stock and make way for its upcoming GeForce GTX 660 and 650 series. One of the first of these is rumored to be a GK104-based GeForce GTX 660 Ti slated for an August 16th launch.

If you're a bargain hunter who doesn't mind investing in last generation hardware, keep your eyes peeled for price drops on GTX 550 and 560 parts.

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Oh No He Didn't! Nvidia Responds to Linus Torvalds' F-Bomb-Laden Rant

Brad Chacos — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:05:44 +0000

Linus Torvalds opened a can of worms when he took verbal, caught-on-video issue with what he perceives as a continued indifference towards Linux by Nvidia. Actually, scratch that -- maybe it wasn't what he said, but how he said it, calling Nvidia "the worst company we've ever dealt with" and extending middle fingers and f-bombs in the company's honor. Yesterday, Nvidia's PR team took time to respond to the allegations.

Unfortunately -- at least for casual observers like yours truly -- Nvidia's comeback isn't on video, doesn't include obscenities or irate rants and generally takes the high road about the whole situation. Still, in the interests of fairness, we thought we'd slap a copy of the retort below. (Sorry for the straight-up cut-and-paste, but hey, we posted all of Linus' rant, so it's only fair to include all of Nvidia's response.)

In it, Nvidia argues that the proprietary path the company currently takes on Linux leads to same-day GPU release support and frequent driver updates. The company also points out that it's very active in the ARM Linux kernel. What do you think? Does Nvidia support Linux enough, or can they step things up?

---

Supporting Linux is important to NVIDIA, and we understand that there are people who are as passionate about Linux as an open source platform as we are passionate about delivering an awesome GPU experience.

Recently, there have been some questions raised about our lack of support for our Optimus notebook technology. When we launched our Optimus notebook technology, it was with support for Windows 7 only. The open source community rallied to work around this with support from the Bumblebee Open Source Project http://bumblebee-project.org/. And as a result, we've recently made Installer and readme changes in our R295 drivers that were designed to make interaction with Bumblebee easier.

While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging NVIDIA common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure. While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers, regardless of platform or operating system.

As a result:

Linux end users benefit from same-day support for new GPUs , OpenGL version and extension parity between NVIDIA Windows and NVIDIA Linux support, and OpenGL performance parity between NVIDIA Windows and NVIDIA Linux.
We support a wide variety of GPUs on Linux, including our latest GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla-class GPUs, for both desktop and notebook platforms. Our drivers for these platforms are updated regularly, with seven updates released so far this year for Linux alone. The latest Linux drivers can be downloaded from www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html.
We are a very active participant in the ARM Linux kernel. For the latest 3.4 ARM kernel – the next-gen kernel to be used on future Linux, Android, and Chrome distributions – NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations.

At the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.

Statement via Phoronix

AMD Shows Off Monstrous Professional Graphics Card... And Maybe The Radeon 7990

Brad Chacos — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:53:22 +0000

Graphics professionals need big-league processing power, and AMD aims to scratch that itch with its FirePro line of GPUs. Earlier this week, the company announced the launch of the FirePro W600, the first of the line to incorporate AMD's 28nm and GCN technology. Hopefully you didn't run out and buy one immediately, because today AMD showed off that card's big brother, the FirePro W9000, and it's a memory-filled beast. And hey, did we just see the first Radeon 7990, too?

First, the FirePro W9000; in addition to the 28nm Tahiti-based GPU, the card packs in 6GB of GDDR5 memory and six DisplayPorts. It's capable of pushing out 264.8 million pixels per second, with 4 TFLOPS of single-precision math and 1 TFLOPS double-precision.

Now for the interesting part: the slide for the FirePro W9000 showed a card that looked a lot like a typical Radeon 7000 series entry, but the card that AMD CTO Mark Papermaster held during the talk was a much different sight to behold, with three fans clearly visible. Was this the long-rumored dual-GPU Radeon 7990 rather than the FirePro W9000?

TechReport's Cyril Kowaliski grabbed a senior AMD rep's shoulder on the way out and asked him just what, exactly, Papermaster showed off to the crowd. The response: "A dual-GPU product that will be released later this year."

Update 6/16/12: we've edited the article to clarify that the FirePro W9000 is not a dual-GPU card, although the card Papermaster was holding is. The original version stated that the FirePro card sported dual GPUs.

Image credit: TechReport.com

Nvidia Says GTX 680 Shipments Outpace The GTX 580's Launch Availability By 60 Percent

Brad Chacos — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:13:53 +0000

For many would-be early adopters, trying to find a GTX 680 has been like trying to find a four-leaf clover; it can be done, but it takes some digging. (Hey, there's some EVGAs on Newegg right now!) Curious minds have wondered what the hold-up is. Manufacturing woes? Overbearing demand? We now have an idea. In a slide shown at an annual investors meeting, Nvidia claims that in the six weeks following the GTX 680's launch, it shipped and sold 60 percent more units than the GTX 580 did during its debut.

The keen-eyed folks at PC Perspective first noticed the error-filled and incredibly vague slide, which doesn't mention any actual numbers whatsoever. Nvidia confirmed with the publication that despite the odd "sold out" wording, the slide references total global shipments to distributors, including e-tailers like Newegg and boutique builders like Maingear and AVADirect, rather than actual sales to customers.

Basically, there are a lot more GTX 680s floating around than there were GTX 580s last generation. Then again, it's hard to make a definitive statement without definitive shipment numbers on the slide. Give us hard facts, dammit!

Image credit: Nvidia via PC Perspective

Graphics Shipments on the Decline, Jon Peddie Says

Paul Lilly — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:24:17 +0000

You can't hardly buy a processor any more without also purchasing a graphics chip. That's because many of today's CPUs sport integrated graphics, a relatively new development as both AMD and Intel push their respective CPU+GPU solutions onto the masses. But despite each company's efforts, along with a constant flow of discrete GPU solutions from AMD and Nvidia, graphics shipments are down overall.

According to data from Jon Peddie Research, combined graphics shipments declined 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2012 when compared to the previous quarter, and slipped 3.38 percent from one year ago. No need to hit the panic button, JPR says.

"Although this did not shape up to be a great quarter for the suppliers, it actually wasn't as bad as it could have been. We found that shipments during the first quarter of 2012 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, declining from the previous quarter; however, this quarter's decline (of 0.8 percent) was less than the ten-year average of 3.1 percent," JPR points out. "If we use graphics as an indicator, the industry seems to be recovering from the floods in Thailand."

AMD actually grew its graphics shipments in Q1, by 0.3 percent, while Intel slipped 1.3 percent and Nvidia tumbled by 4.5 percent sequentially. How did AMD do it? According to JPR, "AMD had a gigantic increase of its desktop APUs of 84 percent," which more than made up for a "modest 2.6 percent decline in notebook APUs."

JPR's findings include both discrete and integrate graphics for desktops, notebooks, netbooks, and industrial systems. Handhelds, x86 servers ,and ARM-based tablets, smartbooks, and servers are excluded.

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EVGA Recalls Some GTX 670 Superclock Cards

Brad Chacos — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:04:40 +0000

Ruh-roh! Being an early adopter of technology often means putting up with headaches while a product's kinks get worked out, and it seems that's holding true for at least some early GTX 670 buyers. EVGA apparently forgot to quality test a small batch of GTX 670 Superclock cards and is recalling them as a result.

HardOCP's Kyle Bennett heard the first whispers and asked EVGA what was going on. Here's what the company told him:

EVGA has isolated this problem to an early batch of GTX 670 Superclock cards (P/N: 02G-P3-2672-KR) that were not properly screened during QA/QC procedure. We have already been working with our partners to retest this particular batch. In the meantime, our R&D has also done numerous tests, burn in and component quality verification to confirm that the EVGA GTX 670 Superclock is a well designed product.

The rep didn't mention whether there were specific defect concerns or a way to identify potentially untested cards. Several threads in EVGA's GTX 600-series subforum mention GTX 670s crashing shortly after installation; maybe the cause is related? In any case, those forum users report that the RMA process is painless, and EVGA told Bennett that they'd be replacing customers' recalled GTX 670 Superclocks with GTX 670 FTW cards to help make up for the headache.

Is your EVGA GTX 670 Superclock acting up? The company told HardOCP that customers should contact Jacob Freeman at jacobf@evga.com to get the RMA ball rolling.

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Kepler Keeps on Coming as Nvidia Officially Introduces GeForce GTX 670

Paul Lilly — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:34:02 +0000

Nvidia today rolled out the welcome mat for the newest addition to its Kepler family, the GeForce GTX 670. The new 670 is "engineered from the same DNA as the recently announced GTX 680," but is a more affordable part with prices starting at $399 for cards built around Nvidia's reference design. And according to Nvidia, the 670 is a full 45 percent faster in gaming performance than the closest competitive product (i.e., AMD's Radeon HD 7950).

"Plus, the GeForce GTX 670 ties the competition's much higher-priced flagship product on 25 of the world's most popular games and benchmarks, a testament to the overall performance efficiency of the Kepler architecture," Nvidia claims.

In other words, the GTX 670 is all that a bag of chips, in Nvidia's eyes. Performance claims aside, the GTX 670 sports 1,344 CUDA cores, 112 texture units, and 32 ROP units. It has 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6,008MHz on a 256-bit bus resulting in 192.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GPU has a base clockspeed of 915MHz and a boost clockspeed of 980MHz.

For comparison, the GTX 680 features a few more CUDA cores (1,536), more texture units (138), and a faster GPU (1,006MHz base, 1,058MHz boost). The GTX 680 is also a longer graphics card; the GTX 670 measures 9.5 inches long.

Technically, the GTX 670 is available to purchase now, but like all Kepler cards, that's contingent on being to find the darn thing in stock.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Nvidia Plays Hardball with TSMC, Wins Priority Status for 28nm Chips

Paul Lilly — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:40:01 +0000

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) may have underestimated the challenges involved with churning out 28nm parts, or perhaps the company is simply inundated with orders. In the end, it doesn't really matter what the problem is, as far as clients go, and when Nvidia reportedly threatened to place orders with TSMC's competitors, suddenly the GPU maker was bumped to the front of the line.

It's been rumored that Nvidia considered giving 28nm orders to Samsung and/or Globalfoundries, and in attempt to stop that from happening, TSMC "has given priority to Nvidia for 28nm capacity," DigiTimes reports. Nvidia's recently launched Kepler series is built on a 28nm manufacturing process, and as any gamer will attest, finding a Kepler card in stock is an exercise in frustration.

By being bumped up to priority status, the GPU shortage should begin to ease in the coming weeks. This is especially important for Nvidia as it begins to flesh out its Kepler line with an upcoming GeForce GTX 670 graphics card. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has also been given priority status after it, too, threatened to outsource production to competing wafer fabs.

Image Credit: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.