(Update, March 4th: Another NVIDIA graphics card has been discovered in the Geekbench database, this one featuring a total of 124 CUs. This could amount to some 7,936 CUDA cores, should NVIDIA keep the same 64 CUDA cores per CU - though this has changed in the past, as when NVIDIA halved the number of CUDA cores per CU from Pascal to Turing. The 124 CU graphics card is clocked at 1.1 GHz and features 32 GB of HBM2e, delivering a score of 222,377 points in the Geekbench benchmark. We again stress that these can be just engineering samples, with conservative clocks, and that final performance could be even higher).

NVIDIA is expected to launch its next-generation Ampere lineup of GPUs during the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event happening from March 22nd to March 26th. Just a few weeks before the release of these new GPUs, a Geekbench 5 compute score measuring OpenCL performance of the unknown GPUs, which we assume are a part of the Ampere lineup, has appeared. Thanks to the twitter user "_rogame" (@_rogame) who obtained a Geekbench database entry, we have some information about the CUDA core configuration, memory, and performance of the upcoming cards.

Expreview has caught the sighting of an apparently upcoming AMD graphics card based around the RX 590 SKU. The new revision, being named the RX 590 GME, apparently features lower clocks than the base Polaris 30 RX 590 ~around 1,385 MHz boost compared to the vanilla RX590's 1545 MHz. That clockspeed puts the RX 590 GME slightly above the RX 580 in terms of specs, but way below the RX 590, which should lead to a distinct performance variation between the two.

It's unclear as to what GPU die this new Polaris-based graphics card will be using. If I were a betting man, I'd say these are being harvested from 12 nm Polaris 30 dies that haven't been able to sustain the 1545 MHz clockspeeds rated for RX 590 chips - but still being put to use and very likely with a better power/performance ratio than the RX 590. For now, the model is only available for pre-order through a Chinese e-tailer, which could mean this is a China-only release.

NVIDIA today announced that their yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) will be held online, instead of locally at the San Jose Convention Center as previously planned. The company cites Covid-19 (colloquially called Coronavirus) concerns as the root cause - the health of both its professionals and attendees is paramount for the company, and as such, an online event seems more inline with the state of the world.

In the press note, NVIDIA also said that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote address, which will be available exclusively by livestream. All those who registered for a GTC pass will receive a full refund. This is yet another event that has been impacted by the recent virus outbreak that has the world's economies teetering, but for the more cynical among us, it could be the beginning of a new way of doing this sorts of events: online, rather than locally, thus reducing the required investment and logistics usually associated with such.

Jon Peddie Research have released their report on the overall market outlook for GPU shipments for Q4'2019, and the news are great for AMD. Due to the launch of more affordable Navi-based 7 nm graphics cards, the company managed to achieve a growth of 22.6% in shipment volume for the last quarter of 2019, compared to Q3 of the same year. This 22.6% volume increase is pretty significant (and is miles ahead of competitors NVIDIA (whose shipments decreased by -1.9%) and Intel (a 0.2% increase), having increased AMD's overall market share by 3%. This means that AMD now commands 19% of the overall GPU market share, surpassing NVIDIA (which counts with 18%) but both being dwarfed by Intel (with a commanding 63% share). It's important to note here that the numbers include integrated- and discrete-GPUs, and AMD's numbers could be assisted by its mobile processor and APU sales, just as iGPUs make up all of Intel's numbers.

Those numbers are skewed, of course, when we look solely at the discrete GPU market share, with NVIDIA commanding a huge, 73% chunk of the market against AMD's paltry (by comparison) 27%. All in all, Jon Peddie Research reports that the overall PC market increased by 1.99% quarter-to-quarter and increased by 3.54% year-to-year, thus resulting a good performance for these "little" chips.

The UK government has set aside a budget of 1.2 billion GBP, which is roughly around 1.56 billion US Dollars. With this budget, the UK government plans to install the world's most powerful supercomputer used for weather forecasting in the year 2022. Previously, the UK government used three Cray XC40 supercomputers that are capable of achieving a maximum of 14 PetaFLOPs at its peak performance. The future system plans to take that number and make it look tiny. With plans to make it 20 times more powerful than the current machine, we can estimate that the future supercomputer will have above 200 PetaFLOPs of computing performance.

The supercomputer deployment will follow a series of cycles, where one is happening in 2022 and that supercomputer will be six times more powerful than the current solution. To get to that 20 times improvement, the supercomputer will get an upgrade over the next five years' time. While we do not know what will power the new machine, it will almost definitely be a CPU plus multi-GPU node configuration, as GPUs have gained a lot of traction in weather prediction models lately.

AMD has just recently launched its 3rd generation of Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs, and it is already achieving some impressive stuff. In the world of PC gaming, there used to be a question whenever a new GPU arrives - "But can it run Crysis?". This question became meme over the years as GPU outgrew requirements for the Crysis game, and any GPU nowadays is capable of running the game. However, have you ever wondered if your CPU can run Crysis, alone without a GPU? Me neither, but Linus from LinusTechTips taught of that.

The CPU, of course, can not run any game, as it lacks the hardware for graphics output, but being that AMD's ThreadRipper 3990X, a 64 core/128 thread monster has raw compute power capable of running Crysis, it can process the game. Running in software mode, Linus got the CPU to process the game and run it without any help from a GPU. This alone is a massive achievement for AMD ThreadRipper, as it shows that CPUs reached a point where their raw computing power is on pair with some older GPU and that we can achieve a lot of interesting things. You can watch the video down below.

According to VideoCardz, who found the latest EEC listing, MSI has prepared a new variant of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. In the listing, there are a total of eight new GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards. Unlike the regular GTX 1650 GPU, these are a bit different. They feature improved GDDR6 memory and make up for the confusing stacking of these products.

The GTX 1650 SUPER model features GDDR6 memory, while the regular GTX 1650 had GDDR5 memory until now. With such a product that is between regular GTX 1650 and the SUPER model, MSI is creating a hybrid card. Having the same specifications as the GTX 1650, the only differentiator will be the memory and memory speed, where GDDR6 equipped card will be faster.

Xperi Corporation today announced that it entered into a new patent and technology license agreement with SK hynix, one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers. The agreement includes access to Xperi's broad portfolio of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and a technology transfer of Invensas DBI Ultra 3D interconnect technology focused on next-generation memory.

"We are delighted to announce the extension of our long-standing relationship with SK hynix, a world-renowned technology leader and manufacturer of memory solutions," said Craig Mitchell, President of Invensas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi Corporation. "As the industry increasingly looks beyond conventional node scaling and turns toward hybrid bonding, Invensas stands as a pioneering leader that continues to deliver improved performance, power, and functionality, while also reducing the cost of semiconductors. We are proud to partner with SK hynix to further develop and commercialize our DBI Ultra technology and look forward to a wide range of memory solutions that leverage the benefits of this revolutionary technology platform."

Palit has today released the latest addition to its KalmX passive series of graphics cards - the GTX 1650 KalmX. This graphics card is an ITX-sized, 178 mm long GPU that is designed for zero noise, passively cooled builds, where noise is the primary factor. With a heatsink consisting out of two heat-pipes and many fins, the cooling solution should be capable of cooling the 75 W TDP of the GTX 1650 GPU. The cold plate of the heatsink covers the GPU and VRMs to provide safe GPU operation. Being based on the reference design, this card features default speeds of 1485 MHz base, and 1665 MHz boost clocks. For IO, Palit opted to include three ports, where one is HDMI 2.0b and the other two are DisplayPort 1.4a. All the power needed is provided by the PCIe slot, so there are no external power connectors.

NVIDIA will soon launch its next-generation lineup of graphics cards based on a new and improved "Ampere" architecture. With the first Tesla server cards that are a part of the Ampere lineup going inside Indiana University Big Red 200 supercomputer, we now have some potential specifications and information about its compute performance. Thanks to the Twitter user dylan552p(@dylan522p), who did some math about the potential compute performance of the Ampere GPUs based on NextPlatform's report, we discovered that Ampere is potentially going to feature up to 18 TeraFLOPs of FP64 compute performance.

With Big Red 200 supercomputer being based on Cray's Shasta supercomputer building block, it is being deployed in two phases. The first phase is the deployment of 672 dual-socket nodes powered by AMD's EPYC 7742 "Rome" processors. These CPUs provide 3.15 PetaFLOPs of combined FP64 performance. With a total of 8 PetaFLOPs planned to be achieved by the Big Red 200, that leaves just a bit under 5 PetaFLOPs to be had using GPU+CPU enabled system. Considering the configuration of a node that contains one next-generation AMD "Milan" 64 core CPU, and four of NVIDIA's "Ampere" GPUs alongside it. If we take for a fact that Milan boosts FP64 performance by 25% compared to Rome, then the math shows that the 256 GPUs that will be delivered in the second phase of Big Red 200 deployment will feature up to 18 TeraFLOPs of FP64 compute performance. Even if "Milan" doubles the FP64 compute power of "Rome", there will be around 17.6 TeraFLOPs of FP64 performance for the GPU.

This year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) that will take place in March is forming to become a very interesting one. According to the GDC schedule platform, Intel is having a presentation about its upcoming Xe graphics card architecture. Saying that "Intel's brand new Xe Architecture, has been teased for a while, and is scheduled for release later this year! This update brings a significant compute, geometry and throughput improvements over today's widely used Gen9 and Gen11 graphics.", Intel is giving us a slight hint of what is to come.

Presented by Intel's senior developer relations engineer, Antonie Cohade, the talk will include an in-depth look of the Xe hardware architecture and its implementations. Said to introduce "powerful new features", the talk about Xe graphics should include a mention of the latest trend in the world of 3D graphics, ray tracing, and show us what are the capabilities of the new GPU architecture.

At CES 2020, Dell's gaming-inspired division, Alienware, had a handful of new products to showcase. Among these, we found a new product that is still in development called the Concept UFO. The UFO is a concept product that hints a new development strategy for gaming PCs, and that is a portability first approach. Inspired by Nintendo's Switch console, this computer puts gaming PCs on the go. Designed to be a handheld based solution, this PC is based on Windows 10 operating system so you can be sure that all of your existing game libraries are also playable on it as well.

Having an Intel processor as its base, the Concept UFO uses Intel's iGPU to power an 8-inch display of unknown resolution. While we don't know which architecture is powering the UFO, we speculate that Ice Lake is behind it. Our speculation is based on an assumption that, if the concept is capable of playing games, Alienware would put as high-performance iGPU as possible, and such performance is currently only found inside Intel's Ice Lake processors, in form of Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics. Frank Azor of AMD tweeted a question if anyone would like to see this product come with new AMD 4000 series of Ryzen mobile processors, so we could be in for a surprise, given that final specifications are not determined. Ryzen 4000 series would represent a perfect choice as it offers a lot of CPU and GPU power in a mere 15 W TDP package, however, we don't know what solution will be present in the end.

As we approach the release of NVIDIA's Ampere GPUs, which are rumored to launch in the second half of this year, more rumors and information about the upcoming graphics cards are appearing. Today, according to the latest report made by Taipei Times, NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards based on "Ampere" architecture is rumored to have as much as 50% performance uplift compared to the previous generations of Turing GPUs, while using having half the power consumption.

Built using Samsung's 7 nm manufacturing node, Ampere is poised to be the new king among all future GPUs. The rumored 50% performance increase is not impossible, due to features and improvements that the new 7 nm manufacturing node brings. If utilizing the density alone, NVIDIA can extract at least 50% extra performance that is due to the use of a smaller node. However, performance should increase even further because Ampere will bring new architecture as well. Combining a new manufacturing node and new microarchitecture, Ampere will reduce power consumption in half, making for a very efficient GPU solution. We still don't know if the performance will increase mostly for ray tracing applications, or will NVIDIA put the focus on general graphics performance.

As we are approaching the year 2020, when Intel is rumored to launch its discrete graphics cards to the hand of consumers around the world, we are gearing up on the number of leaks about the upcoming products. Thanks to Twitter user @KOMACHI_ENSAKA, who found the latest EEC listing, we have new information regarding Intel's upcoming DG1 discrete graphics solution.

In the leaked EEC listing, the DG1 GPU is being presented as a GPU with 96 execution units, meaning that Intel is planning to take on entry-level graphics cards with this GPU. If the graphics unit is following the same design principle of the previous-generation GPUs, then there should be around 8 shading units per one execution unit, totaling 768 shading units for the whole DG1 GPU. If the 12th Gen Xe design inside the DG1 follows a different approach, then we can expect to see a double amount of shading units, meaning 1536 in total.

NVIDIA today introduced NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin, a highly advanced software-defined platform for autonomous vehicles and robots. The platform is powered by a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Orin, which consists of 17 billion transistors and is the result of four years of R&D investment. The Orin SoC integrates NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture and Arm Hercules CPU cores, as well as new deep learning and computer vision accelerators that, in aggregate, deliver 200 trillion operations per second—nearly 7x the performance of NVIDIA's previous generation Xavier SoC.

Orin is designed to handle the large number of applications and deep neural networks that run simultaneously in autonomous vehicles and robots, while achieving systematic safety standards such as ISO 26262 ASIL-D. Built as a software-defined platform, DRIVE AGX Orin is developed to enable architecturally compatible platforms that scale from a Level 2 to full self-driving Level 5 vehicle, enabling OEMs to develop large-scale and complex families of software products. Since both Orin and Xavier are programmable through open CUDA and TensorRT APIs and libraries, developers can leverage their investments across multiple product generations.

AMD today announced that it has joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) and forged partnerships with leading technology providers to help promote the development and proliferation of new blockchain-powered gaming platforms.

The Blockchain Game Alliance is committed to driving awareness and adoption of blockchain technologies within the game industry, providing an open forum for individuals and companies to share knowledge and collaborate, create common standards, establish best practices, and network. As the first major hardware manufacturer to join the BGA, AMD plans to enable alliance members with efficient and high-performance computing technologies for next-generation blockchain-based gaming platforms that could potentially transform the way games are created, published, purchased and played.

BitFenix today announced an accessory for your graphics cards' safety, whilst adding some bling to your build. The Alchemy 3.0 ARGB GPU Bracket is little more than a support for your graphics card which installs in your PC case and provides physical support to prevent sagging and other problems that may arise from deploying a graphics card with a high-performance, heavyweight custom cooling solution (it literally supports graphics cards with weights going up to 7.5 Kg and 80-120 cm long).

The Alchemy 3.0 ARGB GPU Bracket features ARGB lighting which users can control and customize to their liking, and the 18 available mounting holes ensure maximum compatibility regardless of your graphics card. It also comes with three different extension holders, sizing up at 45 mm, 80 mm and 120 mm. The GPU bracket will take up three free PCI slots on your build, though, so keep that in mind if you're planning on using this.

As the world's most popular GAMING graphics card vendor, MSI is proud to introduce its full line up of graphics cards based on the new AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT series with remarkable performance. Furnished with the new AMD RDNA gaming architecture - Efficiently energetic, RDNA architecture was designed to deliver incredible performance, scalability and power efficiency. Built on the 7 nm FinFET process and delivering higher performance-per-watt compared to the previous architecture, the Radeon RX 5500 XT Series will be available as GAMING and MECH.

Sapphire's upcoming take on AMD's RX 5500 XT graphics card has been spotted up for preorder on Amazon (availability set for December 12th), and it's a special one. Besides the usual Nitro+ edition, Sapphire will also be launching a fully customized RX 5500 XT Nitro+ Special Edition. Besides addressable ARGB fans, the card features what can be called a very interesting, reduced PCB design, with the shroud and backplate artificially adding length to the graphics cards so as to increase space for the dual fan cooling solution.

AMD is wading into even deeper waters across Intel's markets with the announcement of new Mini-PCs powered by the company's AMD Ryzen embedded V1000 and R1000 processors. Mini PCs, powered by AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 and R1000 processors. Multiple partners such as ASRock Industrial, EEPD, OnLogic and Simply NUC have already designed their own takes on Mini-PCs (comparable to Intel's NUC, Next unit of Computing) as a way to give businesses a way to have a small form factor box for different computing needs. These aim to offer a high-performance CPU/GPU processor with expansive peripheral support, in-depth security features and a planned 10-year processor availability.

Until now, AMD's Ryzen Embedded product line had mostly scored one design win here and there, powering handheld consoles such as the Smach Z and such other low power, relatively high-performance environments. When AMD announced the R1000 SoC back in April, it already announced that partners would be bringing their own takes on the underlying silicon, and today is the announcement of that effort.

The add-in board market increased in Q3'19 by 42% from last quarter, with over $2.8 billion dollars of AIBs shipped. Nvidia increased its market share to 73% in Q3. The last fiscal quarter was transitional for Nvidia as older products made their way through the channel allowing the company to ramp up production and ship more new products at the end of the quarter. Nvidia not only boosted their market share but they raised the overall AIB market. Their channel inventory is now reported as healthy says the company. Nvidia's RTX line is doing well and represents 66% of its gaming revenue.

Quarter-to-quarter graphics add-in board shipments increased by 42.2% and increased by 6.2% year-to-year. The market shares for the desktop discrete GPU suppliers shifted in the quarter, Nvidia significantly increased market share from last quarter, while AMD increased share year-over-year.

According to a source cited by China's Ithome, AMD has contacted AIB with regards to launch plans for the company's RX 5500, the mainstream graphics cards based on Navi 14. For now, there are still no news on any RX 5500 XT graphics cards from the company - whether or not there is such as SKU being prepared for later launch is still unclear. The launch date of December 12th is in line with previous release expectations, and should be a full launch with multiple AIB partners releasing their solutions.

The RX 5500 has been tested to be acompetitor to NVIDIA's GTX 1660 graphics card, replacing AMD's RX 570, RX 580 and RX 590 graphics cards from the product stack. The Navi 14 chip that the RX 5500 is based on TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing technology, is configured with 22 RDNA compute units (1,408 stream processors), and features a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus. VRAM-wise it will be available in either 4 GB or 8 GB of memory running at 14 Gbps data-rate, yielding 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth. GPU clocks are listed as 1670 MHz "Boost," and 1845 MHz "Gaming". Typical board power is rated at 110 W, with a single 8-pin PCIe power input being enough to deliver required power save for some more exotic AIB designs.

NVIDIA updated its compute accelerator product stack with the new Tesla V100s. Available only in the PCIe add-in card (AIC) form-factor for now, the V100s is positioned above the V100 PCIe, and is equipped with faster memory, besides a few silicon-level changes (possibly higher clock-speeds), to facilitate significant increases in throughput. To begin with, the V100s is equipped with 32 GB of HBM2 memory across a 4096-bit memory interface, with higher 553 MHz (1106 MHz effective) memory clock, compared to the 876 MHz memory clock of the V100. This yields a memory bandwidth of roughly 1,134 GB/s compared to 900 GB/s of the V100 PCIe.

NVIDIA did not detail changes to the GPU's core clock-speed, but mentioned the performance throughput numbers on offer: 8.2 TFLOP/s double-precision floating-point performance versus 7 TFLOP/s on the original V100 PCIe; 16.4 TFLOP/s single-precision compared to 14 TFLOP/s on the V100 PCIe; and 130 TFLOP/s deep-learning ops versus 112 TFLOP/s on the V100 PCIe. Company-rated power figures remain unchanged at 250 W typical board power. The company didn't reveal pricing.

NVIDIA today introduced a reference design platform that enables companies to quickly build GPU-accelerated Arm -based servers, driving a new era of high performance computing for a growing range of applications in science and industry.

Announced by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at the SC19 supercomputing conference, the reference design platform — consisting of hardware and software building blocks — responds to growing demand in the HPC community to harness a broader range of CPU architectures. It allows supercomputing centers, hyperscale-cloud operators and enterprises to combine the advantage of NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform with the latest Arm-based server platforms.

According to the findings of a Chiphell user called "wjm47196", AMD is supposedly going to host an event at CES 2020 to showcase its next generation of Radeon graphics cards. Having seen huge success with its first-generation "RDNA" GPUs, AMD is expected to showcase improved lineup utilizing new and improved RDNA 2 graphics card architecture.

Judging by the previous information, second generation of RDNA graphics cards will get much-needed features like ray tracing, to remain competitive with existing offers from NVIDIA and soon Intel. Supposed to be built using the 7 nm+ manufacturing process, the new GPU architecture will get around 10-15% performance improvement due to the new manufacturing process alone, with possibly higher numbers if there are changes to the GPU core.