German publication, Igor's LAB, has got ahold of some information regarding AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 6600 series graphics card. Based on the Navi 23 SKU, the GPU is supposed to satisfy all the entry-level needs one would expect from a GPU. That means light 1080p gaming and multimedia streaming. For starters, let's get into details of the die. Igor's LAB notes that the die size is 235.76mm2, with a 35x35 mm package. The die will be centered in a package with a 45-degree rotation, which you can see how it looks in the images below. Additionally, the Navi 23 GPU will have SKUs ranging from 65 Watts to 95 Watts of Total Graphics Power (TGP). As far as frequency goes, the card BIOS points to the maximum clock speed of 2350 MHz, which is lower than the rumored 2684 MHz.

When it comes to memory, the upcoming Navi 23 GPUs can be equipped with up to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, however, it is most likely that the regular gamer version will come with 8 GB of VRAM, while the Radeon Pro models will use the full 16 GB limit. As far as interface is concerned, the Radeon RX 6600 series will be limited to PCIe 4.0 x8 connection, as the low-end GPU doesn't require a full x16 slot. With the bandwidth of the PCIe 4.0, only eight lanes are enough for this GPU. These cards are expected to hit the market sometime in June, and we are waiting for the official announcement.

Gigabyte has listed a range of five graphics cards in the RTX 3060 family sporting a new revision. Rev 2.0 of previously-released Gigabyte graphics cards include the RTX 3060 Gaming OC 12G, RTX 3060 EAGLE 12G, RTX 3060 EAGLE OC 12G, RTX 360 VISION OC 12G, and RTX 3060 ELITE OC. The new graphics cards are part of NVIDIA's second-wave attempt at curbing cryptocurrency mining on their RTX graphics cards by integration of a driver check that enables these graphics cards to actually function (meaning that only drivers which incorporate the mining limiter will enable these graphics cards to work).

It seems that manufacturers will be differentiating their pre and post-limiter graphics cards with a suffix that isn't normalized (GALAX uses LHR for Lite/Low Hash Rate), and Gigabyte here is seen using a simple Rev 2.0. It remains to be seen whether or not any packaging differences will make clear exactly which revision of a graphics card we're getting, but NVIDIA themselves apparently would prefer for that particular distinction to not be clear, so as to discourage any would-be miners from purchasing any graphics cards from the channels that aren't specifically mining-oriented (read, NVIDIA's CMP [Cryptocurrency Mining Processor] accelerators).

Graphics cards have been developed over the years so that they feature multi-level cache hierarchies. These levels of cache have been engineered to fill in the gap between memory and compute, a growing problem that cripples the performance of GPUs in many applications. Different GPU vendors, like AMD and NVIDIA, have different sizes of register files, L1, and L2 caches, depending on the architecture. For example, the amount of L2 cache on NVIDIA's A100 GPU is 40 MB, which is seven times larger compared to the previous generation V100. That just shows how much new applications require bigger cache sizes, which is ever-increasing to satisfy the needs.

Today, we have an interesting report coming from Chips and Cheese. The website has decided to measure GPU memory latency of the latest generation of cards - AMD's RDNA 2 and NVIDIA's Ampere. By using simple pointer chasing tests in OpenCL, we get interesting results. RDNA 2 cache is fast and massive. Compared to Ampere, cache latency is much lower, while the VRAM latency is about the same. NVIDIA uses a two-level cache system consisting out of L1 and L2, which seems to be a rather slow solution. Data coming from Ampere's SM, which holds L1 cache, to the outside L2 is taking over 100 ns of latency.

PowerColor has begun teasing another entry to their graphics card brands: Hellhound is fated to meet the Red Dragon and Red Devil products branding in either physical or virtual store shelves. The tease comes a mere week before AMD is expected to launch their mainstream RX 6700 graphics cards (powered by the Navi 22 GPU with 2560 Stream Processors and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory), and thus, it seems legitimate to assume that the new series will debut with that particular AMD SKU. The color scheme for the new brand logo seems to tease a black, silver and teal design language.

This is what PowerColor had to say in describing their new series: "Hellhound is born, sharp of fang and razor-like claws, covered with fur that is tough like armour. Its eyes burn in the darkness, allowing it to precisely track and stalk its prey. It used to be a battle hound kept by a warrior brave, Yet, its bravery not unnoticed by the Red Devil, saw a chance to make this hound the keeper of his gates of hell… This Hellhound is silent, not a sound it makes as it guards the gates ready to strike in the darkness with a killer grace… Once prey is found, Hellhound will take it down, it strikes with stealth at one stroke!"

GALAX has today decided to take the lid off its upcoming premium GeForce RTX 3090 Hall Of Fame (HOF) edition graphics card and showcase to the world what the company has been working on. The HOF edition is usually GALAX's highest-end custom graphics card design with one simple goal - ultimate performance. Featuring all-white aesthetics, the card has a 12-layer white PCB with a white three fan air cooler. The air cooler features three fans with one in the middle being 92 mm and the other two being 102 mm. The card comes paired with HOF Panel III, representing a small 4.3 inch LCD screen that can stand on its own or stick to the GPU using magnets. It is used for some software diagnostics like temperature monitoring.

The GPU comes with a diamond-shaped aluminium backplate used for additional heat dissipation. When it comes to power delivery, there are three 8-pin connectors (also colored in white to match the aesthetics), that supply 26 VRM phases for the power delivery system. Such configuration is envisioned for extreme overclocking purposes like LN2. There are two BIOS versions, P and S variants, where they are used for maximum performance or quieter operation respectively. The boost frequency of this GPU is 1875 MHz (using one-click OCing), however, any buyer of such a card is not going to just use it like that and will probably prefer to push higher frequencies.More pictures follow:

AMD is always in development mode and just when they launch a new product, the company is always gearing up for the next-generation of devices. Just a few months ago, back in November, AMD has launched its Zen 3 core, and today we get to hear about the next steps that the company is taking to stay competitive and grow its product portfolio. In the AnandTech interview with Dr. Lisa Su, and The Street interview with Rick Bergman, the EVP of AMD's Computing and Graphics Business Group, we have gathered information about AMD's plans for Zen 4 core development and RDNA 3 performance target.

Starting with Zen 4, AMD plans to migrate to the AM5 platform, bringing the new DDR5 and USB 4.0 protocols. The current aim of Zen 4 is to be extremely competitive among competing products and to bring many IPC improvements. Just like Zen 3 used many small advances in cache structures, branch prediction, and pipelines, Zen 4 is aiming to achieve a similar thing with its debut. The state of x86 architecture offers little room for improvement, however, when the advancement is done in many places it adds up quite well, as we could see with 19% IPC improvement of Zen 3 over the previous generation Zen 2 core. As the new core will use TSMC's advanced 5 nm process, there is a possibility to have even more cores found inside CCX/CCD complexes. We are expecting to see Zen 4 sometime close to the end of 2021.

Jacob Freeman, Global Product Management Director at EVGA, has posted a teaser on his Twitter account for EVGA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hydro Copper graphics card. The KINGPIN lineup of graphics cards represent the highest-end design from EVGA, and it is built for extreme overclocking with the use of LN2 and with extreme voltages applied. The newly teased GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hydro Copper card is built for overclocking, however, this model is designed to be cooled by water as there is a water block mounted on the card itself. Called "hydro copper" the name is pretty self-explanatory as it implies that the water block is made out of copper for the best possible heat transfer.

The water block top is build using clear acrylic so the liquid inside the block can be seen. There are integrated RGB lights to customize your build and make the GPU fit in with your flashing lights using EVGA's software. The GPU is most likely going to feature a boost frequency of 1920 MHz, just like its brother GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hybrid card. Also, an XOC (Extreme Overclocking) BIOS is expected to be applied from the factory, which would bring the maximum power to 450 Watts. Pricing and availability are unknown at the moment.

AMD today announced several senior leadership promotions in support of the company's long-term growth goals. "Our high-performance products and long-term roadmaps have placed AMD on a significant growth trajectory," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "Aligning and expanding our senior leadership team around our highest-priority growth opportunities will continue the momentum we have built across our business in 2021 and beyond."AMD announced two executive vice president promotions:

• Darren Grasby to executive vice president and Chief Sales Officer, responsible for driving adoption of AMD products and delivering a world-class customer experience.
• Devinder Kumar to executive vice president and Chief Financial Officer, responsible for continued strengthening of the company's financial profile.

According to kopite7kimi, a famous leaker of information about NVIDIA graphics cards, we have some pieces of data about NVIDIA's plans to bring back its SUPER series of graphics cards. The SUPER graphics cards have first appeared in the GeForce RTX 2000 series "Turing" GPUs with GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER designs, after which RTX 2060 followed. Thanks to the source, we have information that NVIDIA plans to give its newest "Ampere" 3000 series of GeForce RTX GPUs a SUPER overhaul. Specifically, the company allegedly plans to introduce GeForce RTX 3070 SUPER and RTX 3080 SUPER SKUs to its offerings.

While there is no concrete information about the possible specifications of these cards, we can speculate that just like the previous SUPER upgrade, new cards would receive an upgrade in CUDA core count, and possibly a memory improvement. The last time a SUPER upgrade happened, NVIDIA just added more cores to the GPU and overclocked the GDDR6 memory and thus increased the memory bandwidth. We have to wait and see how the company plans to position these alleged cards and if we get them at all, so take this information with a grain of salt.This is only a mock-up image and is not representing a real product.

In the past, we heard rumors about NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. Being scheduled for January release, we were just a few weeks away from it. The new graphics card is designed to fill the gap between the RTX 3080 and higher-end RTX 3090, by offering the same GA102 die with the only difference being that the 3080 Ti is GA102-250 instead of GA102-300 die found RTX 3090. It allegedly has the same CUDA core count of 10496 cores, same 82 RT cores, 328 Tensor Cores, 328 Texture Units, and 112 ROPs. However, the RTX 3080 Ti is supposed to bring the GDDR6X memory capacity down to 20 GBs, instead of the 24 GB found on RTX 3090.

However, all of that is going to wait a little bit longer. Thanks to the information obtained by Igor Wallosek from Igor's Lab, we have data that NVIDIA's upcoming high-end GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is going to be postponed to February for release. Previous rumors suggested that we are going to get the card in January with the price tag of $999. That, however, has changed and NVIDIA allegedly postponed the launch to February. It is not yet clear what the cause behind it is, however, we speculate that the company can not meet the high demand that the new wave of GPUs is producing.

The DRAM market exhibits a healthier and more balanced supply/demand relationship compared with the NAND Flash market because of its oligopolistic structure, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The percentage distribution of DRAM supply bits by application currently shows that PC DRAM accounts for 13%, server DRAM 34%, mobile DRAM 40%, graphics DRAM 5%, and consumer DRAM (or specialty DRAM) 8%. Looking ahead to 1Q21, the DRAM market by then will have gone through an inventory adjustment period of slightly more than two quarters. Memory buyers will also be more willing to stock up because they want to reduce the risk of future price hikes. Therefore, DRAM prices on the whole will be constrained from falling further. The overall ASP of DRAM products is now forecasted to stay generally flat or slightly up for 1Q21.

Raja Koduri senior vice president, chief architect, and general manager of Architecture, Graphics, and Software at Intel Corporation has recently teased Intel's upcoming Xe-HP accelerator alongside its in production HC3 XG310 server card. The HC3 solution was Intel's first Xe-based product utilizing the Xe-LP architecture. The Intel Xe-LP products are Intel's lowest power efficiency optimized Xe processors while the Xe-HP products should offer improved performance and scaling. The upcoming Xe-HP accelerator appears to be a single-slot passively card with a single 8-pin power connector. Raja Koduri expects developers will begin receiving Xe-HP, Xe-HPG, and Xe-HPC products in 2021. He also declared that we are in the GPU golden age with new launches from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Apple.

ASUS has today surprised everyone and decided to launch the first custom design of AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Previously, the word was that AMD was debating with AIBs whatever to open the GPU to custom designs or keep it AMD PCB exclusive. However, thanks to today's launch, we now know that AMD will allow its partners to design their PCBs and push the Big Navi silicon to its maximum. So when it comes to pushing to maximum, enter the world of ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards, designed to fit in the line of ASUSes TUF principals.

Featuring a triple fan, triple-slot (2.9 slots more precisely )body, the graphics card is built around Navi 21 XTX GPU. This means that only the best needs to be brought to the card as it is a premium product. That is why the company says that "The TUF GAMING Radeon RX 6900 XT is a tenacious beast with a tough metal exterior, super-efficient cooling, and components that offer enhanced endurance." The built-in cooler offers 0dB cooler technology, meaning that fans will not spin unless the GPU reaches 55 degrees C temperature. The card is powered by two eight-pin connectors, so it seems that power supply requirements are not changed compared to the reference card. While the exact specifications are not known, you can expect the card to boost over the standard 2250 MHz frequency, as it is factory overclocked. Pricing is also not yet confirmed but a slight premium is expected as well.

AMD has launched its RDNA 2 based graphics cards, codenamed Navi 21. These GPUs are set to compete with NVIDIA's Ampere offerings, with the lineup covering the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. Until now, we have had reviews of the former two, but not the Radeon RX 6900 XT. That is because the card is coming at a later date, specifically on December 8th, in just a few days. As a reminder, the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU is a Navi 21 XTX model with 80 Compute Units that give a total of 5120 Stream Processors. The graphics card uses a 256-bit bus that connects the GPU with 128 MB of its Infinity Cache to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. When it comes to frequencies, it has a base clock of 1825 MHz, with a boost speed of 2250 MHz.

Today, in a GeekBench 5 submission, we get to see the first benchmarks of AMD's top-end Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Running an OpenCL test suite, the card was paired with AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T CPU. The card managed to pass the OpenCL test benchmarks with a score of 169779 points. That makes the card 12% faster than RX 6800 XT GPU, but still slower than the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, which scores 177724 points. However, we need to wait for a few more benchmarks to appear to jump to any conclusions, including the TechPowerUp review, which is expected to arrive once NDA lifts. Below, you can compare the score to other GPUs in the GeekBench 5 OpenCL database.

Minisforum, the leading innovator of mini PC products, has just released their another new product: the EliteMini UM700 which comes with the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU up to 4.0 GHz, 4 cores 8 threads, total cache 4 MB, equipped with Radeon RX Vega 10 10 cores Graphics with frequency up to 1400 MHz. A few months ago, MINISFORUM had launched DeskMini DMAF5 with an AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor on INDIEGOGO, now DMAF has completed the shipment. UM700 is an upgraded version of DMAF5, with higher performance and more powerful.

With a one-click design you can easily make upgrades, EliteMini UM700 supports different types of storage expansions—2.5 inch SATA HDD Slot (SATA 3.0 6.0 Gb/s) and M.2 2280 NVMe SSD Slot (support up to 2 TB), you can mix and match between HDD and SSD to better meet your needs. With windows 10 pro pre-installed, intel Wi-Fi6, BT5.1 and triple output. which allows you to freely enjoy quick response speed.

ASRock has today published a new product on the company website. The new ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card is the latest addition to the company's offerings. Featuring regular, reference-designed PCB found in the Made-by-AMD (MBA) cards, the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT even features all of the same specifications as the reference model: base clock 1825 MHz, game clock 2015 MHz, boost clock 2250 MHz, memory clock 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The card itself isn't changed one bit. Even the stickers found on it (which are usually AIB's logos) are still AMD's. The only thing that differs this card from AMD's offerings is the box that the graphics card comes in. That is the only part that features ASRock's branding. When it comes to the pricing and availability, we do not know when this card will arrive, however, assuming the reference PCB design, it will feature a reference price of $999.

PowerColor, the creator of the iconic "Red Devil" flagship designs of AMD Radeon graphics cards, has today posted a teaser for the upcoming Radeon RX 6800 XT GPUs. With their custom PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 XT Red Devil graphics card, the company is bringing consumers their best engineering and design. Today, we are getting the first glimpse of what is to come. Pictured below is a backside of the GPU, with a dark metallic backplate, illuminated by the Red Devil logo. The teased picture shows a bit more of the card as well, where we can see the printed Red Devil logo. This custom design is expected to be a triple-slot and triple-fan design. With AMD reference designs being priced at an MSRP of $649, this custom card is possibly going to be pricier. Below you can see that the Red Devil has awoken amid the wait for custom cards to arrive:

Intel is preparing to flood the market with its Xe GPU lineup, covering the entire vector from low-end to high-end consumer graphics cards. Just a few days ago, the company has announced its Iris Xe MAX GPU, the first discrete GPU from Intel, aimed at 1080p gamer and content creators. However, that seems to be only the beginning of Intel's GPU plan and just a small piece of the entire lineup. Next year, the company is expected to launch two GPU families - Xe-HP and Xe-HPG. With the former being a data-centric GPU codenamed Arctic Sound, and the latter being a gaming-oriented GPU called DG2. Today, thanks to the GeekBench listing, we have some information on the Xe-HP GPU.

Being listed with 512 EUs (Execution Units), translating into 4096 shading units, the GPU is reportedly a Xe-HP variant codenamed "NEO Graphics". This is not the first time that the NEO graphics has been mentioned. Intel has called a processor Neo graphics before, on its Architecture day when the company was demonstrating the FP32 performance. The new GeekBench leak shows the GPU running at 1.15 GHz clock speed, where at the Architecture day the same GPU ran at 1.3 GHz frequency, indicating that this is only an engineering sample. The GPU ran the GeekBench'es OpenCL test and scored very low 25,475 points. Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 GPU that scored 140,484, the Intel GPU is at least four times slower. That is possibly due to the non-optimization of the benchmark, which could greatly improve in the future. In the first picture below, this Xe-HP GPU would represent the single-tile design.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today announced the latest GeForce RTX 30 Series WATERFORCE graphics cards powered by NVIDIA Ampere architecture—AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 XTREME WATERFORCE WB 24G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 XTREME WATERFORCE WB 10G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 XTREME WATERFORCE 24G, and AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 XTREME WATERFORCE 10G. AORUS is the world's first manufacturer to include the patent-pending "Leak detection" in the WATERFORCE WB open-loop graphics cards. The built-in leak detection circuit covers the entire fitting and water block and can promptly alert users by flashing light at the first sign of leak, so users can deal with the leakage early and prevent any further damage to the system.

AORUS WATERFORCE WB is ideal for those who wish to build open-loop liquid cooling systems. GIGABYTE specializes in thermal cooling solutions, providing optimal channel spacing between the micro fins for enhanced heat transfer from the GPU via stable water flows. The sunk-designed copper micro fins also shorten the heat conduction path from the GPU, so that the heat can be transferred to the water channel area quickly. Moreover, the cover and backplate of the new-gen WATERFORCE WB feature customizable RGB lighting as users can create their own PC styles and bring creativity into the liquid cooling systems.

EVGA has today published the "XOC" BIOS version for its GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics cards. The XOC BIOS version is designed for "extreme overclocking" purposes, as it boosts the power limit of the card by very a few additional Watts. This allows the overclockers to use the card to its full potential so the GPU core is not limited by power. To run XOC BIOS on your GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 GPU card, you need to have an adequate cooling solution and sufficient power supply. For power, EVGA recommends that you use at least 850w+ Gold PSU, at minimum. This is a sign that shows that XOC bios will boost the system power consumption by quite a bit. The XOC BIOS is enabling the GPU to have a power limit of 500 Watts. It is important to note that EVGA does not guarantee any performance increase or overclock while using this BIOS update.

You can download the EVGA XOC BIOS for GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics card here. To install it, unzip the file, run Update.exe, and after updating restart your PC. That is the complete update process for the BIOS update. EVGA uploads both the normal BIOS (so you can revert) and XOC BIOS there so be careful when choosing the right files. You can use TechPowerUp GPU-Z tool to verify the BIOS install.

Discovering vulnerabilities in software is not an easy thing to do. There are many use cases and states that need to be tested to see a possible vulnerability. Still, security researchers know how to find those and they usually report it to the company that made the software. Today, AMD has disclosed that there is a vulnerability present in the company graphics driver powering the GPUs and making them work on systems. Called CreateAllocation (CVE-2020-12911), the vulnerability is marked with a score of 7.1 in the CVSSv3 test results, meaning that it is not a top priority, however, it still represents a big problem.

"A denial-of-service vulnerability exists in the D3DKMTCreateAllocation handler functionality of AMD ATIKMDAG.SYS 26.20.15029.27017. A specially crafted D3DKMTCreateAllocation API request can cause an out-of-bounds read and denial of service (BSOD). This vulnerability can be triggered from a guest account, " says the report about the vulnerability. AMD states that a temporary fix is implemented by simply restarting your computer if a BSOD happens. The company also declares that "confidential information and long-term system functionality are not impacted". AMD plans to release a fix for this software problem sometime in 2021 with the new driver release. You can read more about it here.

NVIDIA just announced its new generation GeForce "Ampere" graphics card series. The company is taking a top-to-down approach with this generation, much like "Turing," by launching its two top-end products, the GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB graphics cards. Both cards are based on the 8 nm "GA102" silicon. Join us as we live blog the pre-recorded stream by NVIDIA, hosted by CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

Today, AMD released their Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.2 Beta drivers. This latest driver release brings with it support and improvements for numerous titles. A Total War Saga: Troy sees the most significant boost to performance with up to 12% better FPS on the High preset when using a Radeon RX 5700 XT. Other titles with improved support include Microsoft Flight Simulator, Mortal Shell, and the Marvel's Avengers Open Beta. Meanwhile, AMD's list of fixes while short is no less important. They managed to solve the issue with intermittent system hangs when exiting sleep on some AMD Ryzen 3000 mobile processors with Radeon Graphics, which will likely make life easier for numerous users. They also fixed the system freeze or failure to recognize input from the user when pressing a key with Radeon Overlay open or when exiting it while playing Hyper Scape. The full list of features and improvements can be found in the list below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.8.2 Beta

Microsoft's future update to Windows 10 will add a GPU-aware selector that allows both the OS and the user to adaptively select the best GPU for each usage scenario. The preview release of Windows 10 build 20190 features this in two ways. First is an OS-level layer that automagically selects the best GPU for the task at hand between installed options (let's assume, an Intel iGPU and your discrete GPU). For web browsing or productivity it's expected the OS will switch to the less power-hungry option, whilst for gaming and its all-cylinders philosophy, it would launch the discrete option.

However, if you're not much into ceding that kind of control to the OS itself, you can override which specific GPU is activated for a specific application. This change is made via the Settings panel with a drop down menu in Graphics Settings. This feature should be a particular boon for laptops that don't feature a power-saving technology that enables this kind of behavior, but there are some other usages for power users that might come in handy with this OS-level integration.

AMD has today released the latest update to its Radeon graphics drivers in the form of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.1, which brings a list of improvements and bug fixes. Starting off, the new driver brings support for Horizon Zero Dawn PC port, which is coming out this Friday. Next, the driver brings some improvements to the performance of the Radeon 5700XT graphics card, which scored 9% higher FPS in the game Grounded, when using Epic preset. Another important supporting feature is for game Hyper Scape, which this new driver enables. For a full list of improvements and bug fixes, please check out the list below:DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.8.1