Items tagged with graphics cards
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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Quick, someone remind us what it was like to buy a graphics card at or near MSRP, with ample stock! What, you don't remember either? Such memories are beginning to fade as GPUs continue to almost always be sold out, leaving buyers having to pay premium prices from marketplace sellers and at places like eBay. And unfortunately, pricing is once again trending in the wrong direction. Granted, buying a graphics card at MSRP requires a bit of luck and strategy—Best Buy restocks its shelves on occasion, as it did last week, giving gamers another chance to purchase a GPU without an insanely high markup. That said, in terms of the average price that cards have actually been selling for, the GeForce...
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For about a New York minute (not very long), it seemed as though graphics card prices would be trending back towards normal, or at least not obscenely above the various MSRPs for different models. Eventually that will happen. However, a price tracking analysis indicates it won't be occurring today, tomorrow, and probably not next week or next month. Maybe next year? Who really knows for sure. There are a variety of factors at play, none bigger than the global shortage of silicon that has companies struggling to keep up with demand. This is affecting desktop GPUs for PC gaming, as well as dedicated game consoles like the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, as well as other products. Cryptocurrency...
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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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We loathe to be the bearer of bad news, but MSI has apparently decided it is going to jack up the prices of graphics cards amid tight supply. The silver lining, we suppose, is that actually finding a graphics card in stock is tougher than winning a fight with an armed grizzly bear, using just your bare hands. In other words, it is not easy by any stretch. Here's the thing—NVIDIA's latest generation GeForce RTX 30 series is always out of stock at most places, and if you do happen to find one available for sale, it's typically from a marketplace seller who wants way more than the card is actually worth. And unfortunately, the same is true of AMD's newly minted Radeon RX 6000 series. AMD and...
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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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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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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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Even with all of the leaks and rumors, there is quite a bit of intrigue surrounding Navi, the next-generation GPU architecture that AMD is planning to launch later this year. We have heard it could be a mid-range solution, and there are rumblings that it will compete at the high-end of spectrum. Which is correct? Perhaps both, according to the latest chatter. Paul CrimsonRayne from RedGamingTech posted an interesting video on YouTube in which he outlines the scuttlebutt surrounding Navi. More than just loose gossip, though, Paul claims to have come across information about Navi from a source who has "proven to be extremely reliable in the past." According to what the source told Paul, AMD will...
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At CES MSI announced a bundle of new PCs and tech components targeted at gamers. Among these new products are two desktop PCs, a case, a mechanical keyboard, and a graphics card. "MSI is devoted to gaming and our lineup reaffirms our position as an industry leader endorsed by gamers and eSports teams worldwide," said Charles Chiang, MSI's new global CEO. "We are honored to be recognized by the CES awards panel and will continue to push boundaries to achieve extreme performance, superior design, and maximum reliability." Both of the new gaming desktops announced by MSI are described as using a compact form factor, though it's unclear if these will be micro-ATX or mini-ITX systems. One of the cases...
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Make no mistake folks, Intel is serious about competing in the discrete graphics space starting in 2020, which is when the company anticipates launching its first discrete GPU solution. Whether Intel kicks things off with a professional graphics card or a consumer oriented one remains to be seen. Either way, Intel wants to get this right, and it's been actively engaging with the online community to make sure it's headed in the direction users want it to go. More than a marketing stunt, Intel was seen taking the feedback it solicited from a recent AYA (Ask YOU Anything) session on Reddit and sharing it with the company's GPU engineers. These are exciting times we live in. If you've been out of...
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A new book titled "The Legacy of 3dfx" sheds some incite on 3dfx's experimental Rampage graphics card that never saw a public release. A few pictures released early from the book reveal the results of a few benchmark tests that show how pre-production models of the Rampage GPU performed. 3dfx Interactive closed it's doors eighteen years ago, but the company is still far from forgotten. For those of you that don't know, 3dfx was once the leading developer of graphics accelerators. The company was ultimately forced to close its doors due to a couple of bad business decisions and tough competition against ATI and NVIDIA, which was then just a fledgling company in the graphics card world that would...
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AMD announced that it will bundle a handful of games with select GPUs purchased between November 15 and February 9, 2019. This announcement comes immediately after the launch of the company's new Radeon RX 590, which succeeded the Radeon RX 580 as AMD's Polaris-based flagship GPU. The games being offered in the bundle are Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, and Tom Clancy's: The Division 2. All of these games are scheduled to launch early in 2019, so you may be waiting a bit before you can play, but at least all of the games are new, AAA titles. If you purchase an AMD Radeon RX 590 or an AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics card, you will receive all three of these games for free. If you purchase an AMD...
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AMD seems to be focusing on squeezing as much out of its Polaris architecture as possible while we wait for Navi to arrive. There have already been several generations of Polaris parts, including the Radeon RX 400 series, Radeon RX 500 series, and a refreshed release of the latter. Now there is chatter of a Radeon RX 590 model being around the bend. A Radeon RX 590 would be an interesting wrinkle to the Polaris lineup, given that it's recently been rumored AMD would launch 12nm Polaris 30 GPUs. As the rumor goes, Polaris 30 would be used in upcoming Radeon RX 680 and Radeon RX 670 models. None of this has been announced, of course, but we can certainly envision AMD stretching out its Polaris...
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Strap on your life preservers, folks, here comes the wet and wild liquid cooled variants of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 graphics cards. MSI has taken the plunge with four new models, two of which are designed for straight liquid cooling setups, and two others that are hybrid all-in-one solutions. Starting with the latter, MSI's new Sea Hawk X models combine a traditional blower-style air cooler with an AIO liquid cooler that is already attached to the graphics card. All users have to do is install the card as they normally would, and mount then mount the 120mm radiator with fan attached to the rear or top of their case. The GeForce RTX 2080 Sea Hawk X comes factory overclocked...
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It's been a tough year for gamers who needed to upgrade their GPU, but were stopped dead in their tracks by inflated price tags and a general shortage on most mid-range and high-end graphics cards. Thankfully, that is mostly in the rear view mirror. One of the reasons why is because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have become less profitable to mine, and subsequently plummeted in value. Consider that Bitcoin was trading for nearly $10,000 in parts of April and May. Before that, it had approached $20,000 and had investors talking about an eventual $50,000 or even $100,000 value on the horizon. Instead, it came crashing down and is fast approaching a less-than-$5000 trading price (it's currently...
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The million dollar question on every gamer's mind is when the heck will NVIDIA finally launch its next-generation GPU, presumably called Turing. There have been plenty of rumors and speculation, most of which point to this summer. However, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang may have thrown cold water on the chatter when he said at Computex that the next generation of GeForce will not arrive for a long while. If you listen closely, you can hear the collective groan of gamers who are anxious to see NVIDIA finally put its Pascal architecture in the rear view mirror as it hits the ground running with a new architecture. The good news in that regard is that Jensen's answer is not exactly clear, and could mean...
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Following the recent launch of AMD's second generation Ryzen processor family, the company is gathering up its first generation chips and packaging them into 'Combat Crates', which are like PC starter kits for enthusiasts. There will be at least two different versions, each one containing a first generation Ryzen processor bundled with a Radeon RX 500 series graphics card and a motherboard. What has been seen so far seems to suggest a partnership with MSI, at least for the first couple of Combat Crates. The folks at Videocardz posted a pair of press renders, one of which outlines the contents of that particular bundle—an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 processor, MSI Radeon RX 580 Armor 8GB OC graphics...
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We have been hearing rumors of ASUS introducing an AREZ sub-brand for its graphics cards, and specifically for its AMD Radeon Series, and sure enough a visit to the company's website reveals that AREZ is real. While there are no cards listed under the new sub-brand at the moment, it seems pretty clear that ASUS will relegate its AMD cards to AREZ so that it can align is Republic of Gamers with NVIDIA's GeForce Partner Program (GPP). In case you have not been following that whole situation, there is a bit of controversy surrounding GPP, which provides additional marketing and sales support to vendors who choose to join. As for consumers, NVIDIA last month explained that it designed GPP "to ensure...
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For the most part, graphics card pricing has been out of whack for the past several months, due to both a memory chip shortage and a boom in cryptocurrency mining. It's been depressing for gamers, but the good news is there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. While graphics cards are still selling for above MSRP, prices are trending downward, and in some cases are significantly lower than just a few months ago. This is true of both AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. Mid-range and high-end options from both sides are cheaper now than they have been, and hopefully the trend continues towards normalization in the marketplace. That will depend in part on supplies continuing to...
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Well, it's official folks—ASRock, the former ASUS subsidiary that grew to become a veritable rival in the motherboard market, has expanded its reach into the graphics card sector as previously teased with the launch of its Phantom Gaming series. At least initially, ASRock's focus is on "a strong line of AMD Radeon RX 500 series cards," among them the Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX 580 8G and Radeon RX 570 8G, and Phantom Gaming Radeon RX 560 4G/2G and Radeon RX 550 4G/2G. ASRock's entry comes at a time when there is controversy over NVIDIA's GeForce Partner Program, which provides additional marketing support and other perks in exchange for companies aligning their gaming brands exclusively...
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ASRock, the former spin-off of ASUS, is best known for its extensive line of motherboards, many of which come crammed with a boatload of features at attractive price points. The company also dabbles in a few other products categories, such as networking and mini PCs. Rumor has it that ASRock will add graphics cards to its products arsenal next month, with a focus mainly on AMD-based products. This is not a foregone conclusion by any means. The rumor originates at Digitimes, which itself is citing unnamed "market watchers," whatever that means. However, it does not take a giant leap of the imagination to envision ASRock getting into the graphics card game. Many companies that compete in the motherboard...
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