GPU

The tentative Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti launch date has been pushed back once again. Nvidia is expected to unveil both SKUs on May 31. The RTX 3080 Ti is likely to remain under embargo until June 2, and the RTX 3070 Ti until June 9. There is no word about when either model will go on sale, though.

Modders have managed to tweak the Resident Evil Village demo on PC to run well past its nominal 1-hour time limit. While the demo doesn't feature all areas in the game, this gives gamers the opportunity to explore the game's Romanian environs at a more sedate pace.

An anonymous user submitted a GPU-Z validation report for what seems to be a Clevo laptop sporting the as-yet unannounced Ampere NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. The GPU report offers details about the mobile GPU, including that it'll have 2560 CUDA core count and a boost clock of over 1485 MHz.

With its up-to-Ryzen 9 5980HS processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics, Asus has designed the ROG Flow X13 to bring gaming to the 2-in-1 category. Now, a new report asserts the OEM is about to introduce this machine to India on May 12, 2021. Whether the PC's matching XG Mobile eGPU will be joining it in its putative new market is less clear at this point.

The prolific leaker Ice Universe has made new predictions concerning the Galaxy S22 series' Ultra variant. Not only does the tipster believe that it will introduce the mythical Samsung/AMD mobile GPU, it will also debut with a potential breakthrough in optical zoom for smartphones. The putative flagship may also drop the current central punch-hole selfie shooter for one that hides under the display.

The ~$900 Swift X model listed on the Acer Thailand site features a Ryzen 5 5500U APU coupled with 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and a 512 GB NVMe SSD, plus it features a 14-inch FHD IPS display connected to an Nvidia GTX 1650 dGPU. There should also be a Ryzen 7 5700U model with 16 GB of RAM for just under $1,000.

A South Korean Tech forum post claims that Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake processors are 40% slower than initially anticipated. It also says that Intel's Xe DG2 HPG graphics cards will come with at least 6GB of VRAM and cost less than Nvidia and AMD alternatives.

AMD expects an overall improvement for the Radeon RX 6000 supply going forward, as the company expects to gradually ramp up production throughout 2021. These plans were revealed by CEO Lisa Su herself during the latest earning call. Su also reported that the Q1 2021 revenues from consumer graphics saw double digit growth, despite all the supply constraints raised by crypto miners, scalpers and chip shortages.

The Lite Hash Rate limiters along with support for Resizable BAR will be included with revisions for the RTX 3060 / Ti, 3070 and 3080, plus the soon to be released 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti models. Sources claim that the RTX 3090 might not get the anti-mining measures, but there should be an updated version that at least features ReBAR.

Instruments of Destruction by Red Faction: Guerilla lead tech artist Luke Schneider's studio could fill the decade-long void left after Red Faction: Guerilla demonstrated its remarkable destruction tech in 2009.

The new Sky Z7 R2 from Eurocom is among the first laptops to feature PCIe 4.0 support thanks to the inclusion of a desktop-grade Intel Z590 motherboard. This allows one of the NVMe SSD slots and the GPU to benefit from increased bandwidth. Specs for the Sky Z7 R2 include an i9-11900K CPU, up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, up to 26 TB SSD storage, max TGP+boost mobile RTX 3000 GPUs, HFD 300 Hz or 4K 60 Hz 17.3-inch displays and 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors.

AMD has already released several Radeon RX 6000 desktop GPUs, but it has not forgotten about the laptop market. According to a new report, AMD still plans to deliver new laptop GPUs before the start of Q3 2021, presumably with a few SKUs ranging from the RX 6600M to the RX 6800M.

According to a new report, NVIDIA is expected to unveil the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti over a week before its May 26 release. The GA102-based card will supposedly launch for US$999, which would, theoretically, make it a much cheaper option than the GeForce RTX 3090.

Bitmain has launched a new ASIC tailor-made for Ethereum. It can hit peak hash rates of 3GH/s, roughly equivalent to 32 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. It consumes 2,665W of power and will be available for purchase later for an unspecified price.

Overall, the Radeon Pro W6900X is somewhere between an RX 6800 XT and an RX 6900 XT. Since it is noticeably faster than the RX 6900 XT in the Metal API tests, the professional card could be getting 32 GB of VRAM. The clocks will most likely be lower though, so it might only feature a more compact blower style cooler.

Yet more details about the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti have appeared online. Their revised launch dates have been published this time, although they have slipped to early June and late May, respectively. Apparently, the RTX 3080 Ti will go on sale on May 26, with reviews going live a day before.

An RX 6900 XTX prototype has leaked, in what would have been AMD's most powerful RDNA 2-based reference card. The RX 6900 XTX has a built-in AIO cooler and a slick design, albeit one that no gamer will ever be able to purchase.

The Xiaoxin Pro 16 comes with quite a few configurations featuring 16:10 screens, Ryzen 5 5600H and Ryzen 7 5800H processors coupled with GTX 1650 dGPUs, an Intel Core i5-11300H coupled to the MX 450 dGPU and a Ryzen 5800H with no dGPU. The Air 15 features 16:9 1080p screens plus Lucienne Zen 2 APUs like the Ryzen 5 5500U and Ryzen 7 5700U with no dGPUs, while the Air 14 Plus models come with 16:10 2240 x 1400 screens plus a Ryzen 5 5600U Cezanne APU and an MX 450 dGPU.

The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's specifications and ETH mining performance have leaked, just a day after a report detailed the card's price and anti-mining measures yesterday. Apparently, NVIDIA has chosen the GA102-225 GPU, which can achieve up to 118.9 MH/s under the right conditions.

cannot really stop scalpers, especially if the initial RTX 3080 Ti stocks will be limited and remain so for some time due to the global chip shortages, but it can at least implement better anti-mining measures. The new cards are supposed to integrate GA102-202 / GA102-302 chips recognized only by new drivers that automatically half the hashing rate.

Game developers can now add image quality and graphics performance enhancing features like Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), Variable Shading, and ray-traced shadow Denoising for the Xbox Series X/S. AMD's plan to transform the entire FidelityFX suite into a cross-platform standard seems to be working well, although there is no word yet for any PS5 support.

AMD has updated its Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition to version 21.4.1 bringing a host of new features and enhancements. The new version offers an updated AMD Link service that can now stream to Windows 10 PCs in addition to mobile devices, ability to customize the install type, Ryzen CPU stats, color deficiency correction, Microsoft PlayReady AV1 decode, and Crash Defender.

The ASUS TUF Dash F15 has been listed on Amazon Italy with an Nvidia RTX 3050 mobile graphics card with 4GB of VRAM. It is coupled with an Intel Core i5-10300H processor, a 15.6-inch FHD 1080p 144Hz screen, 8GB RAM and 512GB storage.

A Basemark GPU Vulkan run of the Asus Xe DG1 GPU shows that it is within striking distance of an AMD Polaris Radeon RX 550. This is the first benchmark to be discovered after the card was officially announced earlier this year. The score is decent considering this is Intel's first attempt at a mainstream discrete GPU solution.

An eagle-eyed Facebook user has photographed what appears to be a mother lode of MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 3X OC graphics cards. An entire pallet of said hardware is en route to the U.S., where it is expected to hit shelves after its tentative launch sometime in mid-May.

Nvidia is reportedly working on a new GeForce RTX 3060 variant with enhanced anti-crypto protections. It will use a new GA106-302 GPU which will require completely new drivers. The new RTX 3060 variant is expected to hit shelves in May 2021.

The new JiangXing X15 budget gaming laptop from Colorful comes with i5-10300H and i7-10870H processor options, which can be coupled with 8 or 16 GB of RAM (upgradable to 32 GB) and 512 GB SSD storage, plus an Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti dGPU. Even though these are sub-$1,000 models, Colorful still included high-quality 15.6-inch 1080p IPS displays with 144 Hz refresh rate and 100% sRGB coverage.

The same 12-liter chassis from previous Corsair One mini ITX models can now be equipped with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or Intel Core i9-11900K, plus a desktop-grade RTX 3080 GPU. The systems also include 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, 1 TB NVMe + 2 TB HDD storage combo and quad video outputs. The Intel models come with a Thunderbolt 3 port.

Dell's fist 16-inch Inspiron laptop is designed for content creators and includes a stunning 3K 16:10 display, i7 Tiger Lake-H processors, RTX 3060 dGPU, up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, up to 2 TB NVMe SSD storage and a Thunderbolt 4 connector.

GPU virtualization or vGPU enables GPU resources to be shared by multiple VMs or remote machines and is traditionally restricted to certain datacenter and high-end Quadro cards. Now, a relatively simple mod has appeared on GitHub that enables vGPU functionality even on consumer NVIDIA GPUs on a Linux host as long as they are based on the same physical GPU as a vGPU-compatible Tesla card.

An AMD Ryzen 7 5700G desktop APU, which has appeared in a live image, has been put through both CPU and GPU benchmark tests. While the CPU part delivered a single-thread test score that places the Ryzen 5000 Cezanne chip way beyond its Renoir counterpart Ryzen 7 4700G, the Vega 8 GPU part is something of a letdown.

Even if Intel manages to deliver on these impressive leaked specs, does it really matter when the cards are scheduled to release a year after Nvidia's Ampere launch? Still seems like a good start, considering Intel has not tried its hand at a gaming discrete GPU in decades. However, Intel needs to make sure we are not seeing yet another paper launch.

Some AMD Radeon RX 6800M specs have been revealed to us via a new leak. The Navi 22-based mobile graphics card with 12GB of VRAM has been spotted on an Asus laptop alongside a high-end Cezanne processor. It is expected to feature up to 40 CUs and draw 145W of power.

The Big Island GPGPU developed by Tianshu Zhixin is produced by TSMC on the 7 nm nodes with 2.5D CoWoS packaging. It integrates 24 billion transistors, is rated for 300 W TGP and the board includes 32 GB of HBM2 VRAM plus a single 8-pin connector. Its performance is comparable to AMD's Instinct MI100.

Intel is yet to publish GPU drivers for the UHD Graphics 750, the iGPU that it has included in its new Rocket Lake-S processors. According to a company Vice President, the drivers will not be ready for a few weeks, despite processors like the Core i5-11600K and Core i9-11900K being available to purchase.

The inclusion of the RTX 3070 Max-Q mobile dGPU seems to be suggesting that Razer's thin and light chassis on the upcoming AMD-powered 14-inch models only allow for lower-TGP dGPU options. Can Razer also add an RTX 3080 Max-Q and are these options really making sense for such price premiums when Lenovo is offering the Max-P versions on the Legion 5 Pro and Legion 7 with superior price/performance ratios?

TSMC is ready to implement a solution for the ongoing global semiconductor shortages that will require $100 billion in investments. The plan is to build new production facilities in the U.S., Europe and Taiwan and have these ready by 2023. In order to implement the plan, however, TSMC is asking all of its customers to accept full production costs with no wafer price discounts throughout the entire 2022.

According to a new report, Foxconn believes that the current chip shortage will continue until at least the middle of next year. Foxconn, which supplies parts to Apple, Dell, Nintendo, and Sony, expects the situation to worsen between now and then.

We can confirm that NVIDIA plans to release the GeForce RTX 3050 and GeForce RTX 3050 Ti in multiple configurations. The GeForce RTX 3050 series will replace NVIDIA's GTX 16 series, but early benchmarks show the RTX 3050 Ti outperforming even the RTX 2060 in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The ubiquitous chip-design IP-holder Arm perceives the future as one in which processing demands will trend strongly towards AI and data-security needs while moving away from general computing. The company aims to meet it with its latest v9 architecture, packed with advanced support for pursuits such as machine learning (ML) and digital-signal processing (DSP).

Besides storing more high-res textures and boosting the ray tracing performance, the 16 GB mod can also help improve framerate stability. Some games like Watch Dogs Legion can be less stuttery on the 16 GB mod, as the 0.1% Low and 1% Low framerates see considerable improvements, but other games like Godfall do not seem to take advantage of the increased RAM capacity and even perform slightly slower.

AMD APU driver updates for Linux may have revealed details about the company's upcoming Van Gogh architecture. Additionally, the updates seemingly confirm the Infinity Cache of Navi 23-based desktop GPUs, including the RX 6600 series.

The 2021 Ultra 17 models from XMG pack up to an i9-11900K 8-core / 16-thread CPU, which can be coupled with up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and 32 TB NVMe SSD storage. Users can choose among max TGP versions for the RTX 3060 / 3070 / 3080 mobile dGPUs that take full advantage of 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Screen options include 300 Hz FHD and 60 Hz 4K IPS panels and among the ports we find 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors plus an HDMI 2.1 video output.

Major GPU OEM Colorful seems to have entirely omitted download links for Resize BAR BIOS updates on its technical support page. This leaves Colorful graphics card owners with no way to enable the feature, at least until the OEM fixes those broken links.

Resizable BAR is now available for NVIDIA's full RTX 30 desktop product stack, as the company promised earlier this month. Resizable BAR is available for most modern AMD and Intel chipsets and processors, including Zen 3 and Comet Lake-S CPUs. NVIDIA has expandable Resizable BAR support to 17 games, too.

Asus touts its new ROG Flow X13 as a Swiss army knife for consumers who are into content-creation as well as gaming, thanks to Ryzen 5000-series processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics. Initial European pricing and availability for this interesting 2-in-1 has now been announced; however, the OEM has yet to mention a release for its optional, RTX 3080-toting ROG XG Mobile eGPU in this market.

AMD has released the latest version of its Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver for Radeon cards. It is hardly essential, yet may be useful for those wishing for the best experience in ray-tracing-heavy titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. It also adds support for some other games, including Outriders and Evil Genius 2: World Domination.

Gigabyte has registered new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SKUs with the EEC, following NVIDIA's GPU and VRAM changes. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is expected to arrive in May with 12 GB of GDDR6X VRAM, but it seems that Gigabyte has its eyes set on releasing a CMP 30HX crypto mining card, too.

A TechTuber has offered up some staggering guesses for the potential performance of future M1 Apple Silicon SoCs. With an M1Z chip defeating a Ryzen Threadripper 3990X in Geekbench multi-core and an M1P part surpassing a GeForce RTX 3080 in OpenCL, it seems AMD and Nvidia will also be joining Intel in facing the Apple SoC threat.