The GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series of gaming graphics cards has been getting most of the Ada Lovelace-related attention over the past week and half, so it is a little bit surprising to see ASUS sneak out another RTX 4060 (AD107-400-A1) model to little fanfare. As befits the recently published low profile ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 LP BRK 8 GB GDDR6 product page, VideoCardz seems to be the first publication to cover this diminutive 115 W TDP solution. Its narrow triple-fan design is not wholly original though—ASUS has certainly taken a little bit of inspiration from a similar GIGABYTE low profile RTX card. TPU's TheLostSwede published a hands-on report last summer, with coverage of the GIGABYTE RTX 4060 Low Profile OC model. According to VideoCardz, this card is available to purchase at a $325 price point (Amazon USA).

Low profile graphics cards are ideal components for compact HTPC builds, but not many mainstream manufacturers offer slim options in modern times. It is encouraging to see ASUS throwing their proverbial hat into the ring—many will welcome another efficient GeForce RTX 4060 GPU packaged inside a Low Profile shroud with more than adequate cooling (for a very gentle factory overclock). The ASUS website does not provide any pricing details, and official press material does not exist at the time of writing.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today launches a new graphics card powered by AMD RDNA 3 architecture. The GIGABYTE AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT GAMING OC 16G graphics card comes with the top-of-the-line WINDFORCE cooling system from GIGABYTE. It delivers unmatched performance, stunning visual effects, and exceptional efficiency, perfect for smooth 1080p gaming and streaming experience.

The GIGABYTE WINDFORCE cooling system is tailored for gamers, boasting three unique blade fans with alternate spinning, composite copper heat pipes in direct contact with the GPU, 3D active fans and screen cooling. The Alternate Spinning technology rotates the central fan in the opposite direction of the side fans, directing airflow in the same direction and doubling air pressure while reducing turbulence. This design effectively dissipates heat from both the top and the bottom of the graphics card, resulting in improved overall cooling performance.

TrendForce reports that the DRAM contract prices are estimated to increase by approximately 13-18% in 1Q24 with mobile DRAM leading the surge. It appears that due to the unclear demand outlook for the entire year of 2024, manufacturers believe that sustained production cuts are necessary to maintain the supply-demand balance in the memory industry.

PC DRAM: The market is buzzing with unfilled DDR5 orders, while savvy buyers brace for a continued surge in DDR4 prices, keeping procurement engines running. This trend, however, is shadowed by a gradual industry pivot toward DDR5, casting uncertainty over the expansion of DDR4 bit procurement volumes. Despite this, both DDR4 and DDR5 prices have yet to hit the target set by manufacturers, and buyers seem ready to ride the wave of price hikes into 1Q24. This sets the stage for an estimated 10-15% in PC DRAM contract prices, with DDR5 poised to take the lead over DDR4 in this pricing rally.

The lower mainstream graphics segment is considered to be the starting point for PC gaming, targeting 1080p gaming with medium-thru-high (though not extreme) settings, and popular e-sports titles at 1080p with high settings. This segment is preparing to see some action in the coming days, with the introduction of two new products, the Intel Arc A580, and a new 6 GB variant of the GeForce RTX 3050. We've seen the A580 "Alchemist" in development for a while now.

Based on the 6 nm ACM-G12 silicon, the Arc A580 comes with 24 Xe Cores, or 384 EU (execution units), which work out to 3,072 unified shaders, compared to the 3,584 of the A750, 4,096 of the A770, and the significantly lower 1,024 of the entry-level A380. The most interesting aspect of the A580 is its memory. Although 8 GB in size, it uses a wide 256-bit memory interface, and 16 Gbps memory speed, which works out to a generous 512 GB/s of bandwidth. The A580 also comes with a full PCI-Express 4.0 x16 host interface.

AMD, in a now-deleted tweet, revealed what it is probably going to announce later today—the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT desktop graphics cards. The company briefly tweeted the marketing flier for these cards, before deleting it, but not before VideoCardz saved a copy. This flier confirms the SKU names RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT up for launch; and gives us two images of the Made by AMD (reference design) graphics card. It appears like AMD is using a common board design for both SKUs.

The reference Radeon RX 7800 XT appears to be a slightly shrunk down version of the RX 7900 XT reference. The dual-slot card comes with two axial-flow fans instead of three on the RX 7900 XT. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Earlier this month, a leak by PowerColor spilled the beans on the RX 7800 XT being based on the "Navi 32" silicon. A chiplet-based GPU just like the "Navi 31" powering the RX 7900 series; the Navi 32 is maxed out by the RX 7800 XT, and packs 3,840 stream processors, 120 AI accelerators, 60 Ray accelerators, 64 MB of Infinity Cache memory, and a 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface, which holds 16 GB of memory on the RX 7800 XT. Specs of the RX 7700 XT remain under the wraps.

"Navi 4C" is a future high-end GPU from AMD that will likely not see the light of day, as the company is pivoting away from the high-end GPU segment with its next RDNA4 generation. For AMD to continue investing in the development of this GPU, the gaming graphics card segment should have posted better sales, especially in the high-end, which it didn't. Moore's Law is Dead scored details of what could have been a fascinating technological endeavor for AMD, in building a highly disaggregated GPU.

AMD's current "Navi 31" GPU sees a disaggregation of the main logic components of the GPU that benefit from the latest 5 nm foundry node to be located in a central Graphics Compute Die; surrounded by up to six little chiplets built on the older 6 nm foundry node, which contain segments of the GPU's Infinity Cache memory, and its memory interface—hence the name memory cache die. With "Navi 4C," AMD had intended to further disaggregate the GPU, identifying even more components on the GCD that can be spun out into chiplets; as well as breaking up the shader engines themselves into smaller self-contained chiplets (smaller dies == greater yields and lower foundry costs).

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT is confirmed to feature 12 GB as its standard memory size, and feature a 192-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, according to a leaked regulatory filing by ASRock for its upcoming graphics cards. We already know from last week's mega leak of the PowerColor RX 7800 XT Red Devil that the card maxes out the "Navi 32" silicon, enabling all 60 RDNA3 CU, and comes with 16 GB of memory across the chip's full 256-bit memory bus. This filing suggests how AMD will carve the RX 7700 XT out.

Probably designed to compete with the GeForce RTX 4070, the RX 7700 XT is based on the same "Navi 32" silicon as the RX 7800 XT, but cut down. AMD is expected to disable some of the 60 CU physically present on the 5 nm GCD, while one of the four 6 nm MCDs will be disabled, giving the chip a 192-bit memory bus to drive its 12 GB of memory. We know from the PowerColor leak that the RX 7800 XT gets 18 Gbps memory speed. It remains to be seen if AMD sticks with this speed for even the RX 7700 XT, in which case, it gets 432 GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal. AMD is expected to launch the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT within this quarter (before October).

PowerColor inadvertently released the first pictures of its AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Red Devil graphics card. These pictures confirm that the RX 7800 XT is based on a maxed out version of the "Navi 32" GPU, and not the compact "Navi 31" powering the limited edition RX 7900 GRE. The "Navi 32" is a chiplet-based GPU, just like the "Navi 31," albeit smaller. Its 5 nm GCD (graphics compute die) physically features 60 RDNA3 compute units, which work out to 3,840 stream processors, 120 AI accelerators, 60 Ray accelerators, 192 TMUs, and possibly 128 ROPs. This GCD is surrounded by four 6 nm MCDs (memory cache dies), which each has a 16 MB segment of the GPU's 64 MB Infinity Cache memory, and make up its 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface.

The specs sheet put out by PowerColor confirms that the RX 7800 XT maxes out the "Navi 32," enabling all 60 CUs, and the chip's full 256-bit memory interface, to drive 16 GB of memory. The RX 7800 XT uses 18 Gbps memory speed, and hence has 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal. The PowerColor RX 7800 XT Red Devil has dual-BIOS, and assuming the "standard/silent" BIOS runs the card at AMD reference clock speeds, we're looking at Game clocks of 2210 MHz, and 2565 MHz boost. The Red Devil draws power from a dual 8-pin PCIe power connector set up (375 W max); the cooler is visibly smaller than the one on the company's RX 7900 series Red Devil cards. A 16+2 phase VRM powers the card. With pictures of the card out, we expect a global product launch within the next 30 days.

AMD today announced the Radeon PRO W7600 and W7500 graphics cards for the professional-visualization (pro-vis) market segment. These cards target the mid-range of the pro-vis segment, with segment price-band ranging between $350-950. The two are hence positioned below the W7800 and W7900 that the company launched in April. The W7600 and W7500 are based on the same RDNA3 graphics architecture as those two, and the client-segment RX 7000 series. AMD is pricing the the two new cards aggressively compared to NVIDIA. Both the W7500 and W7600 are based on the 6 nm "Navi 33" silicon.

The Radeon PRO W7600 leads today's launch, maxing out the silicon it is based on—you get 32 RDNA3 compute units, or 2,048 stream processors; 64 AI Accelerators, 32 Ray Accelerators; 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The card comes with 8 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory bus. The memory does not feature ECC. The card comes with a 130 W typical power draw, with a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. It uses a slick single-slot lateral-airflow cooling solution. AMD claims 20 TFLOPs peak FP32 performance.

AMD's upcoming China-exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) graphics card is reportedly configured with 80 compute units (CU), and not the previously thought 84, according to a leaked TechPowerUp GPU-Z screenshot. While GPU-Z 2.54.0 isn't fully aware of the RX 7900 GRE, and can get some hard-coded details (such as release dates) wrong, since it has the ability to detect "Navi 31" and the RX 7900 series, it is able to count the compute units.

The screenshot describes the RX 7900 GRE as featuring 80 CU, or 5,120 stream processors—the same count as the previous-gen RX 6900 XT, but based on the newer RDNA3 graphics architecture. Also detected are a TMU count of 320, ROP count of 80 (a vast reduction from the 192 available on the silicon, if true). We've known from older reports that the RX 7900 GRE is configured with a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, holding 16 GB of video memory. What's new is that while the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX use 20 Gbps memory, the RX 7900 GRE is given slower 18 Gbps memory, as detected by GPU-Z. This results in a memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s, a significant reduction from the 960 GB/s enjoyed by the RX 7900 XTX.

Here are some of the first pictures of the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE, a unique China-specific product that isn't just its own Sapphire custom-design, but also a whole different SKU. We first learned about the existence of the RX 7900 GRE earlier this month, and this would be one of its first custom design implementations. The Golden Rabbit Edition (GRE), is a limited edition SKU of the Radeon RX 7900 series. It's neither the RX 7900 XTX nor the RX 7900 XT, but positioned a notch below the latter. Based on the same "Navi 31" silicon as the two, the RX 7900 GRE is equipped with 84 CU (5,376 stream processors), or the same GCD core-configuration as the RX 7900 XT. It however, gets just 16 GB of memory, across a narrower 256-bit wide memory bus.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is carved out of the "Navi 31" by disabling two of the six MCDs, which reduces the Infinity Cache size to 64 MB, and the GDDR6 memory bus width to 256-bit. The 5 nm GCD is carried over from the RX 7900 XT—you get 5,376 stream processors, 168 AI accelerators, 84 Ray accelerators, 336 TMUs, and 192 ROPs. It is possible that the Sapphire RX 7900 GRE uses a variation of the company's NITRO+ cooling solution that's similar to the NITRO+ Lite SKUs available in markets outside China. The key difference here is that the cooler lacks a vapor-chamber plate, and instead uses a solid copper base-plate to pull heat from the GPU and memory. AMD needs to fill the vast gap in its product stack between the $250 RX 7600 and the $700+ RX 7900 XT, and SKUs such as the RX 7900 GRE could help it compete better against the likes of the RTX 4070 Ti in competitive markets such as China.

Without a formal announcement, or even a product page on its website, ASRock has quietly released a 16 GB version of its Arc A770 Phantom Gaming graphics card. The company's A770 lineup has just the one model—the Phantom Gaming OC, with 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across the GPU's 256-bit memory interface. The new 16 GB model would be among very few of its kind being released by Intel's board partners, in an attempt to make the A770 an attractive option for those in the market for 1080p thru 1440p capable graphics cards.

Intel's reference designs for the Arc 7 series included the A770 Limited Edition, a card with 16 GB of 17.5 Gbps GDDR6 memory, while the plan originally was for 8 GB of 16 Gbps memory to be the standard memory configuration for the A770. It remains to be seen if the new ASRock Phantom Gaming OC is using 17.5 Gbps memory, or 16 Gbps. The only other 16 GB A770 custom design graphics card available in the West has to be the Acer Predator Arc A770 BiFrost 16 GB. The ASRock A770 16 GB PG was discovered on US retailer Newegg, where it was listed for $329.

A reference to an unreleased Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU specced with 16 GB of VRAM appeared on distributed computing platforms last month. The unusual GRE acronym was a little bit puzzling, but ITHome has recently discovered that this could be the successor to an older GME (Golden Mouse Edition) card. AMD's Radeon RX 590 GME design was released back in March of 2020 to celebrate the year of the Rat or Mouse.

The Chinese zodiac sign for 2023 is the rabbit, hence AMD preparing a Golden Rabbit Edition (GRE) for that territory. ITHome proposes that this Radeon RX 7900 non-XT model could field a cut-down version of Team Red's Navi 31 GPU—with its Compute Unit count possibly reduced slightly below the standard 84 CUs, while an allocation of 16 GB of GDDR6 video memory gets coupled to a 256-bit interface (down from the XT's 20 GB and 320-bit). The short report does not provide any release date information or detailed specifications/features, but we can assume that the GRE is highly likely to arrive within the year it is intended to commemorate.

Sparkle presented a pair of custom Intel Arc A380 and A310 cards[/url] at last month's Computex expo—reaffirming its commitment to presenting the full lineup of Arc GPUs. It is now reported that these "Industrial Low-Profile" cooled units will form the company's "GENIE" series. Sparkle's triple-fan TITAN series is comprised of Arc A770 and A750 GPUs, while the dual-fan ORC is formed solely of an A750. ELF is a single fan design A380 card.

The aforementioned GENIE models are both one slot designs with single fans and a low profile shrouds that only covers part of the PCB (comparable to the reference card). The A380 unit offers 8 Xe-Cores with 6 GB GDDR6 96-bit memory, while the lesser A310 gets 6 Xe-Cores and 4 GB of GDDR6 64-bit memory. The leaked presentation slide does not show any release date information, but reasonably final looking hardware making an appearance at Computex 2023 suggests that the GENIE series is not too far off from reaching retail.

With the launches of GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600, the Intel Arc 7-series finds itself being a tough sell, pushing Intel Arc board partners such as Acer to clear out their inventory at deep discounts. The Acer Predator Arc A770 BiFrost graphics card sees its price slashed to $281, down from its $399 launch price. The premium custom-design card features a unique lateral+axial air based cooling solution that's studded with RGB lighting. The Acer Predator BiFrost is also one of the very few custom-design A770 cards to feature 16 GB of 17 Gbps GDDR6 memory, much like the Intel Limited Edition reference-design, most other custom-design cards come with 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory.

NVIDIA is preparing the launch of its third and final RTX 4060-series graphics card SKU, the GeForce RTX 4060 16 GB, for July 18, 2023. Going by past convention, reviews of the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB graphics card priced at its steep $499 MSRP, will go live on June 17, and those priced above the MSRP on July 18, alongside market availability. The RTX 4060 Ti is essentially a memory variant of the RTX 4060 Ti. It offers 16 GB of video memory across the card's 128-bit wide memory interface.

According to the specs-sheet put out by NVIDIA on the May 18 launch date for the RTX 4060 series, besides memory size, there are no other differences between the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, and the current RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB. In particular, there is no change in the core-configuration or clock-speed, since the shader compute throughput of both models is listed at the same 22 TFLOPs. Even the memory speed is the same, at 18 Gbps (GDDR6-effective), at which the GPU has 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal. It will be interesting to see the performance impact of 16 GB memory.

ASRock has added another Arc model to its small selection of Intel graphics cards—this time in low profile form. The entry level A380 GPU is well suited for this narrow (zero dB/silent) dual fan cooling solution due to its diminutive 75 W TDP rating. ASRock has stayed in the safe zone by sticking with the default base clock of 2.0 GHz, as opposed to the sibling Challenger ITX 6 GB OC model's slightly more ambitious 2.25 GHz.

The specifications are typical A380—you get 6 GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a 96-bit memory bus, granting a bandwidth going up to 186 GB/s (memory is clocked at 15.5 Gbps), although the selection of ports has been reduced in number due to the card's small stature. Only single DisplayPort 2.0 and HDMI 2.0b connections here. ASRock's product page for their Arc A380 Low Profile model includes the usual yammering about the GPU's "next-gen gaming" capabilities thanks to Intel's Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology, but the card is better suited for compact budget builds and users who require a decent level of AV1 encoding (for the price—not announced at the time of writing).

TrendForce reports that continued production cuts by DRAM suppliers have led to a gradual quarterly decrease in overall DRAM supply. Seasonal demand, on the other hand, is helping to mitigate inventory pressure on suppliers. TrendForce projects that the third quarter will see the ASP for DRAM converging towards a 0~5% decline. Despite suppliers' concerted efforts, inventory levels persistently remain high, keeping prices low. While production cutbacks may help to curtail quarterly price declines, a tangible recovery in prices may not be seen until 2024.

PC DRAM: The benefits of consolidated production cuts on DDR4 by the top three suppliers are expected to become evident in the third quarter. Furthermore, inventory pressure on suppliers has been partially alleviated due to aggressive purchasing by several OEMs at low prices during 2Q23. Evaluating average price trends for PC DRAM products in 3Q23 reveals that DDR4 will continue to remain in a state of persistent oversupply, leading to an expected quarterly price drop of 3~8%. DDR5 prices—influenced by suppliers' efforts to maintain prices and unmet buyer demand—are projected to see a 0-5% quarterly decline. The overall ASP of PC DRAM is projected to experience a QoQ decline of 0~5% in the third quarter.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT will be a much-needed performance-segment addition to the company's Radeon RX 7000-series, which has a massive performance gap between the enthusiast-class RX 7900 series, and the mainstream RX 7600. A report by "Moore's Law is Dead" makes a sensational claim that it is based on a whole new ASIC that's neither the "Navi 31" powering the RX 7900 series, nor the "Navi 32" designed for lower performance tiers, but something in between. This GPU will be AMD's answer to the "AD103." Apparently, the GPU features the same exact 350 mm² graphics compute die (GCD) as the "Navi 31," but on a smaller package resembling that of the "Navi 32." This large GCD is surrounded by four MCDs (memory cache dies), which amount to a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, and 64 MB of 2nd Gen Infinity Cache memory.

The GCD physically features 96 RDNA3 compute units, but AMD's product managers now have the ability to give the RX 7800 XT a much higher CU count than that of the "Navi 32," while being lower than that of the RX 7900 XT (which is configured with 84). It's rumored that the smaller "Navi 32" GCD tops out at 60 CU (3,840 stream processors), so the new ASIC will enable the RX 7800 XT to have a CU count anywhere between 60 to 84. The resulting RX 7800 XT could have an ASIC with a lower manufacturing cost than that of a theoretical Navi 31 with two disabled MCDs (>60 mm² of wasted 6 nm dies), and even if it ends up performing within 10% of the RX 7900 XT (and matching the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti in the process), it would do so with better pricing headroom. The same ASIC could even power mobile RX 7900 series, where the smaller package and narrower memory bus will conserve precious PCB footprint.

Intel issued a product change notification (PCN), announcing the discontinuation of the reference-design Arc A770 16 GB Limited Edition graphics card. The product is now marked end-of-life (EOL) from Intel's end. What this means is that retailers cannot order more of it from Intel. The Arc A770 has 8 GB as its standard video memory size, and in its reference spec, uses 8 GB of 16 Gbps-rated GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus. The first-party A770 Limited Edition card comes with 16 GB of faster 17.5 Gbps memory. Memory aside, both the A770 Limited Edition, and custom-design A770 graphics cards have the same GPU core-configuration.

The Moore Threads MTT S80 gaming-oriented graphics card has been tested mostly by Chinese hardware publications, but Japan's PC Watch has managed to get hold of a sample unit configured with 16 GB GDDR6 (14 Gbps) for evaluation purposes and soon published their findings in a "HotHot REVIEW!" The MTT S80 GPU appears to be based on PowerVR architecture (developed by Imagination Technologies), but official Moore Threads literature boasts that their own Chunxaio design is behind all proceedings with 4096 "MUSA" cores. The GPU's clock speed is set at 1.8 GHz, and maximum compute performance has been measured at 14.2 TFLOPS. A 256-bit memory bus grants a bandwidth transfer rate of 448 GB/s. PC Watch notes that the card's support for PCIe Gen 5 x 16 (offering up to 128 GB/s bandwidth) is quite surprising, given the early nature of this connection standard.

Moore Threads has claimed in the past that their cards support Direct X, but PC Watch has discovered that the S80 does not work with DX12, and their tests also demonstrated significant compatibility issues under DX11—with plenty of system freezes and error messages logged. The reviewer(s) had to downshift in some cases to DX9 game environments, in order to gather reliable/stable data. TPU's GPU-Z utility is shown to have no registration information for the S80, and it cannot read the GPU's clock. PC Watch compared their sample unit to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card—the entry level 2016-era GPU managed to best the newer competition in terms of in-game performance and power efficiency.

NVIDIA could be advancing the launch of its GeForce RTX 4060 (non-Ti) graphics card from its July 2023 launch the company originally announced. Leaked documents shared by MEGAsizeGPU say that NVIDIA could make the RTX 4060 available on June 29, which means reviews of the card could go live on June 28 for the MSRP cards, and June 29 for the premium ones priced above MSRP. It was earlier expected to launch alongside the 16 GB variant of the RTX 4060 Ti, in July.

The RTX 4060 is a significantly different product from the RTX 4060 Ti the company launched in May, it is based on the smaller AD107 silicon. The card is expected to feature 3,072 CUDA cores, 24 RT cores, 96 Tensor cores, 96 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, compared to the 4,352 CUDA cores, 34 RT cores, 136 Tensor cores, 136 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, of the RTX 4060 Ti. The memory configuration is similar, with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory bus, however, the memory speed is slightly lower, at 17 Gbps vs. 18 Gbps of the Ti. The RTX 4060 has a TGP of just 115 W. The company hasn't finalized its price, yet.Update Jun 14th: NVIDIA confirmed the launch date on Twitter:

NVIDIAThe GeForce RTX 4060 will now be available to order starting June 29, at 6AM Pacific.

Zephyr has produced an NVIDIA GeForce custom graphics card that sports a very unique pink printed circuit board—bright and pastel colors have featured on cooling solutions in the past, but this new-ish product presents the first example of a PCB with a tinge of blush. Renowned hardware tipster harukaze5719 broke from his normal delivery of very cold and macho tech on social media, and shared his discovery of Zephyr's GeForce RTX 3060 Ti compact ITX card.

International buyers will be disappointed to learn that the pink Ampere card is a China market exclusive, with the company only offering a limited number of products on JD.com. VideoCardz notes that the card's specifications are not at all special, despite its interesting compact form factor and brightly toned cooling solution design. It is a non-overclocked model based on the older RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6 GPU variant with a standard 1750 MHz boost clock, 8 GB VRAM configuration, and a single 8-pin power connector.

The price of GDDR6 memory has continued to fall sharply - over recent financial quarters - due to an apparent decrease in demand for graphics cards. Supply shortages are also a thing of the past—industry experts think that manufacturers have been having an easier time acquiring components since late 2021, but that also means that the likes of NVIDIA and AMD have been paying less for VRAM packages. Graphics card enthusiasts will be questioning why these savings have not been passed on swiftly to the customer, as technology news outlets (this week) have been picking up on interesting data—it demonstrates that spot prices of GDDR6 have decreased to less than a quarter of their value from a year and a half ago. 3DCenter.org has presented a case example of 8 GB GDDR6 now costing $27 via the spot market (through DRAMeXchange's tracking system), although manufacturers will be paying less than that due to direct contract agreements with their favored memory chip maker/supplier.

A 3DCenter.org staffer had difficulty sourcing the price of 16 Gb GDDR6 VRAM ICs on the spot market, so it is tricky to paint a comparative picture of how much more expensive it is to equip a "budget friendly" graphics card with a larger allocation of video memory, when the bill-of-materials (BoM) and limits presented by narrow bus widths are taken into account. NVIDIA is releasing a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variant in July, but the latest batch of low to mid-range models (GeForce RTX 4060-series and Radeon RX 7600) are still 8 GB affairs. Tom's Hardware points to GPU makers sticking with traditional specification hierarchy for the most part going forward: "(models) with double the VRAM (two 16 Gb chips per channel on both sides of the PCB) are usually reserved for the more lucrative professional GPU market."

Chips and Cheese published their very in-depth review of AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU last weekend - a team member (Jiray) took it upon themselves to actually buy the card, since a sample unit was not supplied for evaluation. The site's exploration of this graphics processing unit on an architectural level revealed a couple of positive aspects - which comes as a minor surprise since the Radeon RX 7600 received a generally lukewarm reception upon launch at the end of last month. Thanks to the Radeon RX 7600's Navi 33 XL GPU being a monolithic chip it seems to outpace—in terms of cache and memory latency performance—chiplet-based designs as featured in the vastly more powerful (and expensive) Radeon RX 7900-series cards.

Factoring in the smaller space that the RDNA 3 Navi 33 die occupies - it seems that it gains an advantage over the flagship card. Chips and Cheese reports that AMD's RX 7900 XTX takes up to 58% longer to access and pull data from its pool of Infinity Cache, when contrasted with the recently released sibling. The RX 7600 GPU exhibits 15% lower VRAM latencies compared to the RX 7900 XTX when retrieving data from the onboard GDDR6 VRAM chiplets. The review points to a greater disparity between current high-end and mid-range cards when looking back at equivalent models from the preceding generation: "The difference is especially large with RDNA 3. With RDNA 2, the RX 6900 XT had 151.57 ns of Infinity Cache latency compared to 130 ns on the RX 6600 XT, or a 16.5% latency penalty for the larger GPU." Chips and Cheese reckons that AMD's Navi 31's "chiplet configuration may be causing higher latency."