Items tagged with GPUs
You may have struck out trying to buy a graphics card over the past several weeks, months, or even year, but don't shed a tear over AMD or NVIDIA on the assumption either one is hurting for GPU revenue. They're not. Quite the opposite, discrete add-in board (AIB) sales in the last quarter alone reached a whopping $11.8 billion. Another name for a discrete AIB is simply graphics card. These are the cards that actually go into a PCI Express slot (we're assuming hardly anyone is buying AGP card these days), as opposed to integrated graphics that are packaged together with certain CPUs. Those integrated GPUs are why Intel technically owns the largest share of the graphics market. in a new report,...
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The dirty little secret in tech that is not really much of a secret at all is that the GPU shortage is partially a result of cryptocurrency mining. This depressing reality can be lost or overlooked when AMD and NVIDIA downplay how much crypto-mining plays into their bottom line, but there is a bigger picture to analyze beyond the attach rate (PCs that include graphics cards) and direct sales. Looking at the bigger picture, it's estimated that half a billion dollars worth of discrete graphics cards went to miners and speculators in the first quarter of 2021. Talk about a sobering figure. It's also one that could go up as the shortage looms, depending on how the crypto-market plays out. NVIDIA...
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The lingering GPU shortage is frustrating for people who play games on PC, because graphics cards are just so hard to come by—they're either always out of stock, or selling for grossly inflated prices set by marketplace sellers. In case you were wondering, however, NVIDIA is doing just fine. More than just fine, NVIDIA expects its first quarter revenue to exceed its previous guidance, with a big uptick in cryptocurrency mining GPUs contributing to the company's bottom line. Previously, NVIDIA estimated its first quarter revenue for its CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processors) would fetch $50 million from buyers. Higher than expected demand has now driven that estimate to $150 million, or...
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Is it too much to ask that we be allowed to buy the latest generation PC and console hardware at regular pricing, from first-party vendors? Under normal circumstances, paying full price is not a lofty expectation. But this past year has been anything but normal, and product shortages combined with determined scalpers have made purchasing certain hardware a nearly impossible task. Famed game designer John Carmack thinks he has the solution—manufacturer auctions. Carmack posted his thoughts on Twitter, where he proposes a "transparent auction system" led by manufacturers for hard-to-buy items. You know, things like the newest generation graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA, and the latest game...
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Have you looked at the price of Bitcoin lately? The volatile currency ballooned to nearly $40,000 in recent weeks and is now hovering at a little over $37,000. This has prompted renewed interest in cryptocurrency mining (not that it ever dissipated completely), and if demand is high enough (J.P. Morgan reckons it could eventually hit a $146,000 valuation to rival gold investments), NVIDIA said it would once again manufacture GPUs specifically aimed at miners. For the most part, mining Bitcoin is a tough gig for the casual user, in terms of making any meaningful money. Specialized ASIC hardware rules the day. However, there are some bigger operations that still employ scores of GPUs for mining....
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If you are a performance enthusiast, trying to squeeze every drop of juice out of GPUs through overclocking can be vital to the key to the best experience. ASUS’ GPU Tweak software allows these enthusiasts to control and monitor their graphics solution thoroughly. The software is now getting an update with new features and UI to make an “extremely intuitive and capable utility.” According to ASUS, over the past two years, they have been working with PC enthusiasts of all types to “define the next chapter in the GPU Tweak saga.” This time has been spent collecting feedback on the software to create the best possible experience throughout. They claim that at the forefront...
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Slowly but surely, it is becoming the absolute worst time to buy computer components as a new tariff that went into effect earlier this year is starting to trickle down to retailers. Customers in the market for PC components such as GPUs, motherboards and more, are beginning to see price hikes in stores and online, while these components were already in short supply. In 2018, President Donald Trump levied tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of Chinese products; however, these were put off until 2020. People expected that an extension would be granted for the tariffs, but that did not happen, so now PC component manufacturers face extra taxes anywhere from 7.5% to 25% at the high end. These...
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It is certainly a tough time to be a gamer in need or want of a PC hardware upgrade. Some of the newest and most desirable parts are in short supply, including the latest generation graphics from AMD (Radeon RX 6000 series) and NVIDIA (GeForce RTX 30 series). This has led to inflated pricing by marketplace sellers, but there are two other reasons why GPU prices are poised to shoot up—tariffs and cryptocurrency mining. Starting with the former, President Trump imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products in 2018, as outlined by a document at the Federal Register. As a result, thousands of companies asked for and were granted temporary exemptions. This helped...
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Something big is afoot within Intel's graphics division. Sure, we already know Intel is hard at work on its first discrete GPU since Larrabee, which is now a footnote in the history of GPUs. But remember that massive GPU photo Intel shared yesterday? Intel's graphics boss Raja Koduri dropped another tweet in reference to the photo, and in doing so he potentially provided more clues about what exactly we're looking at, and what's to come. Let's start with a quick recap. The first tweet that caught our attention came from the verified "Intel Graphics" account and showed a GPU separated from its heatspreader, with a AA battery in between for as sense of scale. It actually looked like a large workstation...
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Fresh off the official unveiling of Intel's 10th generation 'Comet Lake-S' desktop processors culminating in the 10-core/20-thread Core i9-10900K, Raja Koduri, head of the company's graphics division, reminded the world that Intel is still heavily invested in launching a discrete GPU this year. And he used Twitter to get his message across. There are two interesting tweets of note. The first one [which has since been removed] came from the verified "Intel Graphics" account. It contained a series of pictures, including the one you see above. The two other photos shows engineers staying the course amid the Coronavirus outbreak, donning masks. Among them are Koduri and Jim Keller. "Silicon...
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If you are on the fence about pouncing on a graphics card upgrade, you may want to go ahead pull the trigger. For one, the GPU is the most important component when it comes to playing games, and trying to get by with an old and outdated card can mean having to constantly fiddle with in-game settings. However, there potentially is a more pressing reason to upgrade—higher prices on the horizon. We are not sounding the alarm by any means. However, market research firm TrendForce, a division of DRAMeXchange, is expecting a "sharp upturn" in graphics DRAM prices in the first quarter of 2020 (unlike PC DRAM). Analysts say server DRAM prices will lead the upwards trend in pricing due to supply...
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It is fair to say that AMD is firing on all cylinders these days, and companies are taking notice. Following the recent launch of its third-generation Ryzen processors based on Zen 2 and an unveiling of Navi, AMD has now partnered with Samsung to license its Radeon graphics IP, which will now find its way into mobile devices. That includes smartphones, as Samsung looks for "disruptive changes in technology," and "new opportunities." Partnering with AMD to license its Radeon graphics IP fits those agendas, and in a potentially big way. "Our partnership with AMD will allow us to bring groundbreaking graphics products and solutions to market for tomorrow’s mobile applications," said Inyup...
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NVIDIA is into a lot more these days than than just gaming video cards and GPUs for professionals. The company announced that it has a new DRIVE AGX DevKit that will be launching on October 1. The kit includes software and hardware needed for complete self-driving auto development. NVIDIA says that DRIVE AGX is designed to allow companies to develop and test customized autonomous driving technology with a streamlined production process. The kit includes the DRIVE AGX Xavier car computer, the vehicle harness to connect the platform to the car, international power supply, camera sensor, and other accessories needed. DRIVE AGX is part of NVIDIA's AGX platform meant to power autonomous robots, medical...
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Sit down for this, we have some shocking news. Are you ready for it? An independent testing firm hired by AMD to evaluate the stability of GPU drivers has determined that AMD builds the most stable graphics drivers in the industry. Through a series of tests, AMD's GPU drivers were shown to fail far less than frequently than NVIDIA's drivers. AMD commissioned QA Consultants, a software testing and quality assurance solutions company based in Toronto, Canada, to evaluate the graphics drivers of both companies in a sort of head-to-head match up. Obviously there is cause to raise an eyebrow when a company with vested interests in the results is the one paying for the analysis. That doesn't necessarily...
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Yesterday at IoT World 2015 in San Francisco Samsung debuted ARTIK, a set of new technologies centered on tiny circuit boards crammed with processing and communications components that they designed to juke developers to create and configure new Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as personal trackers, drones, robots, security systems, and the like. Of course, Samsung also intends to enhance their own product lines with ARTIK, including televisions, home appliances, and smartphones. In a blog post Samsung said of their new platform, "ARTIK provides a platform for developers who simply want to focus on building and testing new ideas for IoT. Rather than spend your time writing low-level...
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It was a mixed set of announcements from AMD last night, with some positive news for the chip manufacturer, but some long-term projections that sent investors skittering. This was Lisa Su's first quarterly announcement after taking over the CEO position barely a week ago, and she opened with good news -- not only did AMD turn a small profit on the quarter -- $17M net income ($63M operating income) on revenue of $1.43B -- it's secured two new semi-custom deals expected to provide roughly $1B in revenue over the next three years. That works out to around $84M per quarter -- not an enormous amount, no, but a nice feather in AMD's overall business cap. AMD expects to ship this hardware for revenue...
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Normally, the question of whether a game runs better on the PC or a console is a no-brainer -- at least, for PC users. Watch Dogs, however, with its problematic PC play, challenges that concept. And since the gap between consoles and PCs is typically smallest at the beginning of the console generation, we decided to take the Xbox One out for a head-to-head comparison against the PC with this long-awaited title. What we've found may surprise you. Based on our results, and depending on just how much horsepower your PC has, the Xbox One (and possibly the PS4 option, though we didn't compare against it) might be the better option. Here, we'll step through the game's pre-rendered...
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The transistor is one of the most profound innovations in all of human existence. First discovered in 1947, it has scaled like no advance in human history; we can pack billions of transistors into complicated processors smaller than your thumbnail. After decades of innovation, however, the transistor has faltered. Clock speeds stalled in 2005 and the 20nm process node is set to be more expensive than the 28nm node was for the first time ever. Now, researchers at NASA believe they may have discovered a way to kickstart transistors again -- by using technology from the earliest days of computing: The vacuum tube. No, really. Stop laughing. Once upon a time, vacuum tubes were the fundamental...
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Over the past few weeks, I've spent a significant amount of time with Watch Dogs. The game is infamous for not running very well on PCs -- and after some legwork, I've figured out a hefty chunk of the reason why: Ubisoft royally screwed up its suggested VRAM (graphics card frame buffer) settings. Watch Dogs sucks down far more memory than any other modern PC game I'm aware of; this game's VRAM demands are far, far outside the norm for a modern 1080p title. In the past, I've compared VRAM usage in games like Guild Wars, Battlefield 4, and Total War: Shogun 2. In these games, the average VRAM use with all detail levels maxed out was about 1.5GB -- BF4 will break 2GB if you use the supersampling...
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Toshiba Introduces The World’s First Laptops With Three NVIDIA GPUs GeForce 9400M GPU + Two GeForce 9800 GTS GPUs = No Compromises SANTA CLARA, CA—NOVEMBER 6, 2008—When Toshiba set out to reset the bar for high performance gaming laptops and revamp its flagship gaming line, the company turned to NVIDIA for its expertise in visual computing. The combined efforts of both companies resulted in Toshiba's most powerful gaming laptop to date featuring the new highly integrated GeForce® 9400M graphics processing unit (GPU) along with a pair of NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS enthusiast-class GPUs. The Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708 and X305-Q706, the first pair of laptops to incorporate three powerful NVIDIA...
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NEW NVIDIA MOTHERBOARD GPUS PACK BIG PUNCH IN A SMALL PACKAGE With 5x More Performance in One-half the Size, New GeForce 9-Series mGPUs Tap Parallel Processors for More Than Just Graphics SANTA CLARA, CA—OCTOBER 20, 2008— NVIDIA’s engineering team was given a challenge: deliver a desktop GPU which integrates full system I/O and discrete-level performance in half the size of previous integrated graphics solutions. The result: a 16-core CUDA™-capable graphics architecture that enables mainstream PC users to play the latest top-selling PC games and enjoy silky-smooth, high-definition Blu-ray video playback—all without breaking the bank. NVIDIA® Introduces the GeForce®...
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With all of the recent hoopla surrounding Intel and NVIDIA as of late, today's announcement may come as a bit of a surprise to many of you. To say that there has been some tension between Intel and NVIDIA lately would certainly be putting it mildly. But the fact of the matter is, for now at least, the two companies share a somewhat symbiotic relationship. The products we'll be showing you here are proof of this fact.What we have on tap for you today is a new NVIDIA chipset with an mGPU (or IGP) designed for the Intel Socket 775 platform, the GeForce 9300. We should note, however, that NVIDIA is also announcing the GeForce 9400 today as well, the same chipset that powers Apple's new MacBook...
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