GPU

AMD now holds the 3DMark Fire Strike world record, and with its second-fastest graphics card to boot. Impressively, the Radeon RX 6800 XT took the crown from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 with a reference cooler.

The RX 6800 GPU particularly efficient when it comes to undervolting, as its TGP can be reduced by 45 W down to 183 W. These figures are already laptop-friendly if we look at Nvidia's RTX 2080 Super mobility GPUs, so we can expect to see an RX 6800M GPU with 150-180W TGPs that matches the performance of a desktop-grade RTX 2080 Ti soon.

AMD is back in the game with the latest RX 6800 / XT cards. Does it steal the performance crown? Not quite, but we still haven't seen what the RX 6900 XT has to offer. Nevertheless, the new AMD cards appear to be priced correctly, and we reckon the RX 6800 could end up as the preferred solution for the majority of gamers.

Just as expected, the Red Devil video card takes it way above and beyond the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT design. PowerColor's custom card features a triple-fan design, dual-BIOS, a 14+2 phase VRM with DrMOS, high polymer capacitors, and two 8-pin PCI-E connectors. It should hit the market in a week or two.

AMD's been very tight-lipped about ray-tracing capabilities on its Big Navi cards. However, AMD announced it'll be releasing the Hangar 21 demo video on November 19th, showcasing a whole range of DX 12 Ultimate effects. While benchmarks have indicated relatively modest ray-tracing capabilities on Big Navi, the demo will be a good indicator of what we could expect from upcoming console releases.

Most of the previous rumors regarding the ray tracing performance of the Navi 21 GPUs are now confirmed directly via an official slide leaked ahead of the review NDAs. Yes, the RX 6800 XT appears to be slower than the RTX 3080 in select 1440p titles with DXR effects on Ultra, but it also appears to beat the RTX 2080 Ti. However, the situation should get better once AMD launches its own version of DLSS.

Gigabyte is readying to release new versions of its AORUS Gaming Box eGPU. The company plans to release GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 editions of the AORUS Gaming Box, which will both feature RGB lighting and plenty of connectivity. The RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 will only be capable of communicating with laptops at up to 40 Gbps, though.

The 16-core, 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 5950X has appeared in a couple of startling benchmark results involving the Vulkan graphics API. The Zen 3 Vermeer processor was teamed up with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 and an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT in two separate Geekbench tests, with both benchmarks producing impressive compute scores.

NVIDIA will be introducing the RTX 3060 Ti in a few weeks, and leaked benchmark results point towards the card offering excellent value for money. Believed to launch for around US$400, the RTX 3060 Ti will supposedly outperform the RTX 2080 SUPER. Inno3D has confirmed the existence of the RTX 3060 Ti ahead of its December 2 launch, too.

AMD has announced what it calls the world's fastest HPC GPU, the Instinct MI100 based on the CDNA architecture. The Instinct MI100 offers up to 11.5 TFLOPs of FP64 compute performance when paired with 2nd gen EPYC processors. The MI100 is slated to offer better performance per dollar compared to the NVIDIA A100 GPU along with support for the new ROCm 4.0 software platform.

A few days ahead of the official launch, several retailers in Australia stated that the stock for both the Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT is "pretty terrible" but at least it is also expected for the launch availability of these cards to differ depending on the region. Sadly, the overall situation does not look great.

Some Ashes of the Singularity benchmark comparison results for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 have been posted online. While both the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 performed capably, the results for the pricey RTX 3090 once again demonstrate that this card is not aimed at the mainstream market for gaming.

Three video cards that were unveiled by Sapphire Tech last week are now up for pre-order on Multitronic's website. The Finnish retailer has the Radeon RX 6800 listed for roughly US$870, while the two RX 6800 XT variants have price tags of US$990 and US$1,020. Sadly, there is no delivery date available yet.

Shortly after the RX 6800 XT surfaced in some leaked benchmarks, the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 6800 does the same. According to a Basemark listing (that seems to have been removed in the meantime), the RX 6800 will feature no less than 16 GB of memory and will be much faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070.

We can already imagine the overclocking potential of the upcoming custom RX 6900 XT cards planned for early 2021. If the RX 6800 XT can match the RTX 3090 that easily, Nvidia's rumored RTX 3080 Ti might still not be enough to secure the crown.

We have not even got a chance to explore the limits of the new RX 6000 GPUs based on the RDNA 2 architecture, and AMD is already planning some impressive performance gains for the upcoming RDNA 3 cards that should release in late 2021. The performance uplift should be facilitated through MCM structures and the jump to 5 nm.

NVIDIA has a plan to rival AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT, and it will come in the form of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Confirmed by HKEPC and Videocardz, the RTX 3080 Ti is thought to be based on a GA102 GPU with 10,496 CUDA cores. Apparently, the RTX 3080 Ti will apparently arrive in January 2021 for US$999, while it will also have 20 GB of GDDR6X VRAM.

Expected by many gamers to perform as good as the RTX 2060 with less power required — and less heat generated, of course — the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 is now rumored to use the GA107-300 graphics chip with 2,304 cores and a TGP value of just 90 Watt. Sadly, it is only expected to arrive in January 2021 and NVIDIA has not confirmed it yet.

MediaTek has launched a new addition to its Dimensity series of mobile processors. This 700 chipset is based on a 7 nanometer process and has 8 cores with a maximum speed of 2.2GHz. It supports LP-DDR4X RAM, UFS 2.2 storage and dual-sim 5G. Therefore, the OEM asserts it is an excellent choice for the "mainstream" phones of the near future.

A new set of purported NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti specifications suggest that it will come with 10,496 CUDA cores like the GeForce RTX 3090. However, its 20GB of GDDR6x VRAM has a memory speed of 19GB/s, putting it closer to the GeForce RTX 3080, along with its 320W TGP. Support for Nvlink appears to have been removed too.

Apparently, the previous rumors saying that the RTX 3060 Ti is expected to launch in mid-November are not true. Chinese site Expreview now claims that the actual launch date is set for December 2. This card is expected to cost US$400, and should be a bit faster than the RTX 2080 Super. A non-Ti version may also be launched later on, depending on what AMD brings to the table in the mid-range sector.

NVIDIA launched the RTX 3000 Founders Edition (FE) series starting at US$499 in the United States. Therefore, Indian flagship GPU fans may not have been impressed to find that the same prices in their market were far above these levels, even without GST. The OEM's division for that country has now fixed this issue, however.

A 3DMark Time Spy result of an alleged AMD Radeon RX 6800 has surfaced. Though not confirmed to be an RX 6800, the leaked Time Spy graphics score shows a healthy 23% lead over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition.

According to a Videocardz report, NVIDIA is planning to launch a cheaper GeForce RTX 3060 Ti on November 17th, featuring 4864 CUDA cores and a 180W TDP. The card will likely be competitive with the popular GeForce RTX 2070 Super, while launching at a relatively affordable price-point.

Leaked DXR benchmarks indicate that AMD's hardware ray-tracing solution could be better than expected. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Radeon RX 6800 at native-res trails the GeForce RTX 3070 by only a slight margin, even with the latter using DLSS upscaling.

Benchmarks compiled and aggregated by tipster @_rogame indicate that AMD's new Smart Access Cache technology might not offer a game-changing performance uplift in most cases. Nevertheless, the same benchmarks indicate that Big Navi's raw raster performance could make that a moot point.

Now that AMD officially announced the top-of-the-line Navi 21 GPUs, there is no reason to restrict AIBs from designing custom RX 6900 XT versions anymore. Industry insiders are hearing that AMD is already in talks with its partners to release such custom flagship cards, and availability could be set to early 2021.

NVIDIA apparently has an RTX 3080 Ti with 9,984 CUDA cores in development and is likely to position it between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. Details of the rumored RTX 3080 Ti are not fully available except for the fact that it uses a GA102-250 GPU with a 384-bit memory bus and possibly feature either 12 GB or 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM.

AMD introduced the RX 6800 as the most vanilla of its all-new RDNA 2-based line-up today (October 28, 2020). However, based on its specs, it may pack a punch of its own. It offers the same GDDR6 memory and Infinity Cache as its higher-end siblings, albeit with fewer compute units (CUs) and the series' lowest base clock thus far.

Seems like AMD is winning in so many markets now. Desktop CPUs, server CPUs, AI soon (with the Xilinx acquisition?) and now it finally reclaims the GPU crown with the announcement of the RX 6000 series. The RX 6800 XT model is beating the RTX 3080 in raster performance, gets 6 more GB VRAM, and costs $50 less, but we are hearing the ray tracing performance is not quite there yet.

PCWorld tested the Apple A13 Bionic SoC against a few popular laptop processors, and it turns out that the iPhone 11 chip appears to be faster than iGPUs like the Iris Plus and the Vega 8, but it is also significantly lagging behind the new Tiger Lake Iris Xe iGPUs. Are we even supposed to mix mobile GPUs with laptop iGPUs?

Info regarding the official Navi 21 presentation tomorrow has been leaked and things are not looking good for the RTX 3080 GPUs from Nvidia. Sources close to RedGamingTech claim that the RX 6800 XT cards will show better raster performance in significantly more 1440p and 4K titles. Once again, the ray tracing performance of the AMD cards is said to lag behind, still, at least it is on par with the RTX 2080 Ti in this regard. We could expect something similar to DLSS by early 2021.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's specs are all but confirmed, thanks to a new GPU-Z listing. It will feature a GA104-200 GPU, 4,864 CUDA cores, and 8GB of VRAM with a memory bandwidth of 448GB/s. NVIDIA is expected to launch the card sometime in November for around US$400.

Tipster @patrickschur_ reports that an AIB Radeon RX 6800 XT part boosts to 2.5 GHz and beyond when running 3DMark 11. The sample was listed as an engineering sample, indicating that retail clocks could go even higher.

According to a recent leak, NVIDIA is prepping multiple mobility-focused Ampere graphics cards. These include, among others, the GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q, GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q, and GeForce 3060 Max-Q. Questions remain, though, about performance and power consumption.

Four independent sources reveal that that the RX 6800 XT cards perform up to 19% better in the Firestrike tests, and up to 3% faster in the Time Spy tests, but still trail behind the RTX 3080 in the Port Royal tests that focus on ray tracing performance. One of the sources claims that the AMD cards can even beat the RTX 3090 in the Firestrike tests, but we are suspecting the source is actually confusing RX 6800 XT with the more potent RX 6900 XT in this case.

Lenovo is now introducing Ryzen 4000H APU options for the world's lightest gaming laptops featuring RTX 2000 GPUs. The new Legion Slim 7 models can be equipped with up to a Ryzen 4900H APU coupled with up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, up to 2 TB of NVMe SSD storage and up to an RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU. Users can also choose between 60 Hz / 144 Hz FHD displays and even a 60 Hz 4K HDR screen.

Apparently, AMD did not show off its flagship Navi 21 XTX version with the Ryzen 5000 CPUs earlier this month. Rumor has it that the performance metrics presented back then come from the Navi 21 SKU powering the RX 6800 XT cards and these can match the RTX 3080, but they also feature a lower price point closer to the RTX 3070.

The cancellation of these two Nvidia models that pack more than 10 GB of VRAM might allow AMD to increase its sales, since the Navi 21 SKUs are expected to get 16 GB of VRAM. Nvidia is currently stuck with terrible yields on the Samsung 8 nm nodes, and, once it switches to TSMC next year, maybe it could consider relaunching the 16 GB and 20 GB models.

New info coming from Moore's Law Is Dead sources detail Intel's DG2 production process, memory configuration and performance targets that should be between Nvidia's RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 models. Intel is also aiming to offer excellent driver support, a good media encoder, decent ray tracing capabilities and $399-$499 aggressive pricing.

Previously known as DG1, Intel's Xe discrete GPUs may first launch with select Tiger Lake laptops. One of these could be the Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TP470EZ convertible that is advertised to be featuring the first Xe dGPU named Iris Xe Max. No official specs for this model as of yet besides the 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM, but we are hearing that it may feature a 96 EU G7 chip with higher clocks.

Overclockers and enthusiasts looking to get a bit more out of their GeForce RTX 3080 cards have a solid option now in the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra. EVGA's new BIOS for the card pushes the TDP up to 450W, freeing the AIB card from power throttling to a certain extent.

Last year, AMD started its anti-NUC initiative, as many of its embedded and laptop-grade APUs can now easily be included in mini PCs. This initiative could soon culminate with gaming mini PCs that are based on AMD's Project Quantum presented 5 years ago at E3.

The inaugural RazerCon event has just wrapped up, leaving a host of new and updated products from its organizer in its wake. The headliner here is probably the refreshed Blade Stealth, although the only real difference from its predecessors here is its CPU. It now has an 11th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU rather than a 10th-gen as before.

Is Nvidia ditching Samsung for TSMC in 2021? It looks like Nvidia is not at all pleased with the supply problems created by Samsung's 8 nm nodes with reduced yields and is at least diversifying risk with a significant order of 7 nm chips from TSMC scheduled throughout 2021.

Dell’s Alienware division has just revealed its upgraded Aurora desktop gaming PCs. As you would expect, the new models feature Nvidia’s vaunted new RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 GPUs, although they have been customized by Alienware to fit more easily into the chassis of the PC.

Starlit Partner, a sales subsidiary of MSI, was caught scalping MSI's variant of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 for extremely high prices. MSI has claimed that an error is the root of the issue.

According to some AIB partners cited by Videocardz, Nvidia managed to troll AMD, as it switched the GA104 SKU with the GA102 model in the RTX 3080 GPU at the last minute, so now, apparently Big Navi (Navi 21) is only matching the RTX 3070. Other leakers believe that AMD is trolling the AIB partners misrepresenting Navi 21 as Navi 22, which has only half the CUs.

Nvidia plans to release the first DPUs named BlueField-2 in 2021. These cards will include a Mellanox NIC and an ARM processor with 8 Cortex-A72 cores. There will also be a BlueField-2X card that includes an Ampere GPU for AI-based tasks. DPUs are meant to relieve server CPUs of certain tasks, making them perform 30% faster.