The new normal ushered in by the pandemic will not only become the driving force of digital transformation but will also continue to drive the server market in 2022, according to TrendForce's investigations. It is worth noting that potential unmet demand in 2021 and the risk of future server component shortages will become medium and long-term variables that influence the market. Analyzing the shipment volume of completed servers, a growth rate of approximately 4-5% in completed server shipments is expected next year with primary shipment dynamics remaining concentrated in North American data centers with an annual growth rate of approximately 13-14%. From the supply chain perspective, the ODM Direct business model has gradually replaced the business model of the traditional server market, giving cloud service providers the ability to respond quickly to market changes. However, based on the unpredictability of the market, TrendForce assumes two forecasts for server growth trends. One, the supply situation of key components is effectively improved. Two, the supply situation of key components is exacerbated.

Sapphire today entered the CPU cooling components market with the NITRO+ line of all-in-one, closed-loop, liquid CPU coolers. The series debuts with two variants based on radiator size, S360-A and S240-A (360 mm x 120 mm and 240 mm x 120 mm, respectively). The cooler uses 7th Gen Asetek pump-block technology, which integrates a thermal sensor within the pump-block, and onboard logic that accordingly adjusts pump speed. The block is studded with addressable RGB lighting, a 3D structure resembling a roll-cage, and a brushed aluminium accent.

The second Sapphire innovation with these coolers is the included set of fans for the aluminium radiator. Inspired from the fans found in Sapphire's NITRO+ series graphics cards, these double ball-bearing fans feature impellers with 13 densely packed blades that are webbed off at the edges, to guide all their airflow axially. ARGB LEDs are studded in the impeller hubs. The pump turns at speeds ranging between 800 to 2,800 RPM, while the fans turn between 450 to 2,500 RPM. Among the CPU socket types supported are LGA1700, AM4, and LGA1200. The company didn't reveal pricing.

SAPPHIRE Technology announces the new SAPPHIRE GearBox 500 Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Enclosure now available as a solution with the PULSE AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT 8 GB AMD RDNA 2 Graphics Card. The Gearbox 500 eGFX Enclosure features an updated chassis design that with improved airflow that when connected to the latest graphics cards drastically improves the performance of Thunderbolt 3 / 4 Mac or Windows 10 enabled devices.

Designed for users that need the performance boost to run bandwidth intensive applications such as professional software and the latest 1080P games, the GearBox 500 eGFX Enclosure's light weight and slim small form factor design is highly portable and as well as the PULSE RX 6600 XT, can host up to a 350 W PCI-Express x16 Graphics Cards from both AMD and Nvidia's consumer and professional GPU families.

Sapphire, along with various other AIB partners from AMD, has been making graphics cards exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. With the arrival of AMD's RDNA2 generation, this has continued as well. However, the company has been doing it more quietly to avoid backslash from its customers already furious about the poor availability of graphics cards in general. Fortunately, El Chapuzas Informatico managed to get ahold of two datasheets from Sapphire that highlight features and use cases of its GPRO X080 and GPRO X060 mining graphics cards, primarily targeting Ethereum coin mining.

According to the source, the company has readied two models based on RDNA2 chipsets. That is GPRO X080 SKU based on Navi 22 with 2304 Streaming Processors, running at 2132 MHz frequency. Paired with Navi 22 GPU, 10 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 16 Gbps speed on a 160-bit bus. This model has no display outputs, and the only connector is a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot that connects the GPU to the motherboard. Running at the default 165 Watt TGP, the card produces a 38.0 MH/s hash rate, while the optimized form of 41.6 MH/s reduces TGP to just 93 Watts.

Alphacool today presents the Eiswolf 2 "All-in-One" solution for Geforce RTX 3080/3090 Gigabyte Aorus Master/Xtreme and Radeon RX 6800XT/6900XT Sapphire Nitro+graphics cards. The Eiswolf 2 uses the Alphacool 360 mm NexXxoS ST30 full copper radiator. For the fans, we use the 120 mm Alphacool Aurora Rise. This impressive fan with a max. static pressure of 3.17 mm/H2O, offers a max. air flow of 119.8m³/h. The speed range of the fan, from 0-2500rpm, is adjustable via PWM. The AIO is completed by the Eisblock Aurora water cooler. This not only cools the GPU chip, but actively cools all relevant components such as the memory and VRAM. It also has brilliant aRGB lighting.

All components used (radiator, fan, cooler, DC-LT 2 pump) including fittings and tubing are part of the Alphacool DIY range and are therefore available separately. The combination of all components results in a solution that is as easy to install as an AIO, but offers the performance of a pre-assembled and pre-filled custom loop. Only the pump housing for the DC-LT 2 pump is a custom-made item that is only part of the scope of delivery of the AIO solution and is therefore not available separately.

Intel's Aurora supercomputer is a $500 million contract with the US Department of Energy to deliver an exascale supercomputer for Argonne National Laboratory. The project aims to build a machine capable of cranking over one ExaFLOP of computing at sustained workloads. The supercomputer aims to reach two ExaFLOPs of computing power once the installation system is completed and powered. The contract bound Intel to create accelerators that are powerful enough to achieve this magical number. However, they left Intel with room to do a little bit extra. With Ponte Vecchio GPU behind the project, it seems like the GPU is performing better than expected.

According to Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, the system will reach over 2 ExaFLOPs at peak and a bit below in sustained workloads. As per preliminary calculations done by The Next Platform, the system's estimations point towards 2.43 ExaFLOPs peak and around 1.7 ExaFLOPs in sustained workloads at Double-precision floating-point format math, aka FP64. The system will utilize Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors with HBM memory and the powerful Ponte Vecchio GPU with 47 tiles and over 100 billion transistors.

Got €600 to spare? Great, as that means that you can afford an AMD Radeon 6600 graphics card when they launch sometime next month. Courtesy of both a Dutch and a Portuguese computer shop, we now have an idea of what the cards will cost ahead of the retail launch which is said to be on the 13th of October.

The Portuguese shop also kindly posted pictures of the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600, which comes as expected with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, which it lists for €589.90. The Dutch shop was less forthcoming with their MSI Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8 GB, but to be honest, it might not matter what these cards look like at these kinds of price points. The MSI card is listed at €600,41, so make sure you bring some coins as well.

Sapphire appears to be preparing a custom mining product consisting of two RX 570 GPUs onboard a single card. The board features two Polaris 20XL GPUs each with 2048 Stream Processes paired with 8 GB of ram for a total of 16 GB. The mining card reported a total power draw of 156 W with each GPU drawing 78 W however this number may refer only to ASIC power and the total card draw could be higher. The card achieved a mining hashrate of 59.69 MH/s which while not particularly impressive by today's standards still offers an efficiency level similar to that of the RX 6600 XT. The board features a single HDMI port and no clear branding as Sapphire has attempted to hide their connection to the card by hiding their logo underneath the heatsink.

Sapphire introduced a nifty lineup of new AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics cards, with the value-ended RX 6600 XT Pulse, and the premium RX 6600 XT NITRO+. Both are strictly two slots-thick designs that are compact, and use dual-fan cooling solutions. The NITRO+ features a higher factory OC, a heavier heatsink, and premium bits that include wave-edged aluminium fins in the cooler, fans with webbed impellers, dual-BIOS, a silvery metal backplate, an addressable-RGB LED illuminated Sapphire logo, and a 3-pin ARGB header so you can sync your lighting to the card's.

The RX 6600 XT Pulse, on the other hand, features a simpler design without the shiny dual-tone finish of the NITRO+. There are no illuminated logos, additional RGB headers, or dual-BIOS to be had. You still get a similar combination of wave-edge fin-stack, and webbed impellers, as well as a metal back-plate. The card has a lower state of factory OC than the NITRO+, and is expected to be priced closer to the baseline price. The company didn't reveal engine game/boost frequencies of either cards, but both feature 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory, and take in power from single 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Sapphire seems to be preparing an air-cooled version of its top-of-the-line RX 6900 XT Toxic graphics card, eschewing the hybrid cooling philosophy from its original release in favour of a more traditional full air cooling solution. In fact, Sapphire seems to be re-purposing the triple-fan cooling solution from its Nitro + graphics cards whist changing the color scheme to the yellow of the Toxic series.

That should me more than sufficient to keep the card cool, however, while other improvements present in the Toxic RX 6900 XT (such as the usage of the Navi 21 XTX chip and improvements to the circuit board and power delivery enabling much higher clocks and overclocking) are still present, justifying the top-tier Toxic naming on this graphics card. Sapphire has announced the RX 6900 XT Toxic reaches a Boost Clock of 2425 MHz and a Game Clock of 2235 MHz - lower than the hybrid-cooled version's 2525 MHz and 2375 MHz, respectively. No word on pricing or availability was available at time of writing.

Intel is slowly preparing to launch its 4th generation of Xeon Scalable processors, with it being the first arrival of the 10 nm designs to the server market. Codenamed Sapphire Rapids, these processors are expected to bring much-needed IPC and platform improvements so Intel can keep up with AMD's EPYC processors. Today, we are getting some first performance results as well as some information about a specific 20 core, 40 threaded Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids SKU. In a leaked Geekbench 4 submission, the latest Xeon processor was tested and we get to see even more details about the processor.

Featuring 20 cores and 40 threads, the CPU has a base clock speed of 1.5 GHz. It features as much as 40 MB of L2 cache and 75 MB of L3 cache spread across the die. The system was tested on an Intel reference platform called VulcanCity, with this configuration carrying 32 GB of DDR5 memory. The reported results of the benchmarks that this processor went through are not very impressive. These numbers are easily beaten by AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, however, this is only an engineering sample with low clock speed and it could be possible that Geekbench is not optimized to run on this processor. You can check out some of the performance numbers below, and see the submitted results here.

EK, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is launching the new EK-Quantum Vector Nitro+ water block made for the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ version of the AMD Radeon RX 6800XT and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. This 2nd-generation EK-Quantum Vector water block implements an Open Split-Flow cooling engine design, which proved to be a superior solution for GPU water blocks. It is characterized by low hydraulic flow restriction, meaning it can be used with weaker water pumps or pumps running on low-speed settings and still achieve top performance. The jet plate and the fin structure geometry have been optimized to provide even flow distribution with minimal losses and optimal performance when used in any given coolant flow orientation, unlike some currently available products on the market.

The base of the block is CNC-machined out of nickel-plated electrolytic copper, while its top is CNC-machined either out of glass-like cast Acrylic or durable black POM acetal. The watertight sealing is ensured by high-quality EPDM O-rings, while brass standoffs are already pre-installed and allow for a safe and easy installation procedure.

To preempt NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti launch, AMD had worked with its partners to release a refreshed Radeon RX 6900 XT based on a swanky new ASIC internally dubbed "XTXH." This is essentially the highest bin of the "Navi 21" silicon that allows 10% higher clock speeds over the standard RX 6900 XT. Our testing of one such card, the ASRock RX 6900 XT OC Formula, showed that the XTXH is able to trade blows with the RTX 3090, making it competitive with the RTX 3080 Ti. Interestingly, there seemed to lack a reference design "made by AMD" card based on this silicon. Turns out, AMD had other plans. This card was earlier believed to be the "Radeon RX 6900 XTX," when it was first leaked in April, but turns out, that AMD is allowing partners to simply call this the RX 6900 XT.

The reference design card uses a liquid-cooled design. The card itself is two slots thick, and about the size of the reference Radeon RX 6800, but two coolant tubes emerge from its top, which head to a 120 mm x 120 mm radiator. This is a purely liquid-cooled card, with no secondary air-based cooling, like the ASUS ROG Strix LC RX 6900 XT. The only sources of noise are the AIO pump-block, and the single included 120 mm fan. Besides 10% higher GPU clocks, the reference design card has an ace in the hole that custom-design XTXH cards lack—faster memory.

SAPPHIRE Technology announces the newest addition to the RDNA 2 family with the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Special Edition. With increased performance and an innovative spin on the award winning Tri-X Cooling Technology, this model is a powerhouse product for the ultra-aficionado 4K gamer. Designed with the classic NITRO+ minimalist aesthetic, additional fresh customizable RGB on the peripherals, and striking ARGB fans, the NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Special Edition is sure to be a photogenic part to complete the theme of any PC.

Overclocked straight out of the box to hit every frame, the NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Special Edition leads with 5120 stream processors and boasts a maximized Boost Clock of up to 2365 MHz and a Game Clock of up to 2135 MHz. It comes decked with 80 ray accelerators and 80 compute units to facilitate raytracing. The latest 16 GB of GDDR6 high-speed memory is clocked at 16 Gbps Effective with 128 MB of Infinity Cache, which dramatically reduces latency and power consumption, delivering higher overall gaming performance than traditional architectural designs.

AMD is in constant progress with its Radeon graphics card lineup and the company is always working on new models that will better suit the market. Today, we have interesting discovery. On Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website, a user has posted pictures of what appears to be an engineering sample of AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XTX graphics card variant. Having an all-in-one (AIO) water-cooled design with a 120 mm radiator, the card resembles a power-hungry design as we have seen with Radeon R9 Fury X and RX Vega 64 Liquid Edition, which were both graphics cards equipped with AIO water cooling. This engineering sample is no different.

Under the waterblock, there is a Navi 21 XTXH GPU SKU hidden. As we found out, this is a new Navi 21 XTX SKU that just features better binning compared to Navi 21 XTX, and thus it offers better overclocking potential. It is already present in three new models from various AIBs, like the PowerColor RX 6900 XT Liquid Devil Ultimate, ASRock RX 6900 XT OC Formula, and Sapphire RX 6900 XT Toxic Extreme graphics cards. It seems like AMD has prepared itself to launch this specific SKU in a reference design form, however, so far only AIBs have used the Navi 21 XTXH SKU. It is not yet clear if the Radeon RX 6900 XTX is ever going to hit the retail market, or it shall remain as it is - just an engineering sample.

Intel has just launched its Ice Lake-SP lineup of Xeon Scalable processors, featuring the new Sunny Cove CPU core design. Built on the 10 nm node, these processors represent Intel's first 10 nm shipping product designed for enterprise. However, there is another 10 nm product going to be released for enterprise users. Intel is already preparing the Sapphire Rapids generation of Xeon processors and today we get to see more details about it. Thanks to the anonymous tip that VideoCardz received, we have a bit more details like core count, memory configurations, and connectivity options. And Sapphire Rapids is shaping up to be a very competitive platform. Do note that the slide is a bit older, however, it contains useful information.

The lineup will top at 56 cores with 112 threads, where this processor will carry a TDP of 350 Watts, notably higher than its predecessors. Perhaps one of the most interesting notes from the slide is the department of memory. The new platform will make a debut of DDR5 standard and bring higher capacities with higher speeds. Along with the new protocol, the chiplet design of Sapphire Rapids will bring HBM2E memory to CPUs, with up to 64 GBs of it per socket/processor. The PCIe 5.0 standard will also be present with 80 lanes, accompanying four Intel UPI 2.0 links. Intel is also supposed to extend the x86_64 configuration here with AMX/TMUL extensions for better INT8 and BFloat16 processing.

Sapphire today launched its two custom-design AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards, the premium RX 6700 XT NITRO+ (which we reviewed here), and the cost-effective RX 6700 XT Pulse. The NITRO+ comes with a high-end looking triple-slot cooling solution with three fans, a compound aluminium fin-stack heatsink, an independent heatsink for the memory area, and a trio of fans. It also comes with all the RGB illumination you want, and also puts out a 3-pin ARGB header. The card comes with Sapphire's highest factory overclock, running the RX 6700 XT at up to 2.65 GHz max boost (compared to 2.57 GHz reference).

The Sapphire RX 6700 XT Pulse appears to be using a slightly cut-down version of the NITRO+ PCB, with a smaller cooler dubbed Dual-X. The card is strictly 2 slots thick, and 26 cm in length. It features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink in which the main heatsink handles the GPU, as well as the memory and VRM, and is ventilated by a pair of 100 mm fans with webbed-edge impellers. The Pulse has a mild factory overclocked speed of 2.58 GHz. You still get the handy dual-BIOS feature that's also available in the NITRO+. The RX 6700 XT Pulse is expected to be priced around $529, and the RX 6700 XT NITRO+ goes for $579, both rather steep premiums over the $479 baseline price for the RX 6700 XT.

AMD has pulled what could be another sucker punch on NVIDIA with the announcement of its upcoming Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card set at the $479 price point. Considering, of course, that there's availability; in case there's not, our very own btarunr defined AMD's claims quite well on the news post covering AMD's announcement. If there is actual availability, however, AMD has showcased eight different designs coming from its more high-profile partners: AsRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, XFX, and Yeston.

All the showcased graphics cards will feature the Navi 22 GPU and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory, but all of them should differ from AMD's reference design in the power delivery: dual 8-pin configurations are the expected changes to the design, so as to allow for higher performance, higher power limit ceilings, and better potential overclocks. Expect all of them - all of them - to be priced higher than AMD's suggested (and we know how that suggestion goes nowadays) MSRP of $479. All of these cards should be available in some quantity come March 18th.

Sapphire on Thursday (Feb 18) formally launched its flagship graphics card, the TOXIC Radeon RX 6900 XT Limited Edition. This liquid-cooled graphics card features an all-in-one, closed-loop cooling solution that pulls heat from the GPU and memory, while a fan-heatsink cools the VRM and provides some additional air-cooling to the card. The liquid cooler uses a large 360 mm x 120 mm radiator. ARGB illumination covers everything from the radiator fans, to the on-card fan, and the cooler shroud.

The TOXIC Radeon RX 6900 XT Limited Edition features Sapphire's highest factory-overclock for the RX 6900 XT, with engine boost clocks stated to be "beyond" 2365 MHz (vs. 2250 MHz reference). The memory is untouched at 16 Gbps (GDDR6-effective). The card pulls power from a combination of two 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.1. Sapphire is officially pricing the TOXIC Radeon RX 6900 XT Limited Edition at USD $1,499, a 50% premium over the reference design, but you can bet that the real-world pricing could be north of $2,000.

Here are some of the first pictures of the Sapphire Radeon RX 6900 XT TOXIC, the company's [hopefully] flagship RX 6900 XT product, until it decides to revive even the "Atomic" brand. This features a hybrid liquid+air cooling solution not unlike the ASUS ROG STRIX RX 6900 XT LC. An all-in-one, closed-loop, liquid cooler pulls heat from the GPU and memory, while a fan-heatsink with a noise-optimized fan handles ancillaries such as the VRM.

The AIO CLC part of the card is characterized by a large 360 mm x 120 mm radiator, with a trio of ARGB illuminated 120 mm fans included. Nylon-sleeved tubing connects it to the card. On the card's side, we see ARGB embellishments along the 100 mm fan, and the cooler shroud. The card draws power from a trio of power connectors, and VideoCardz reports that this could be a combination of two 8-pin and one 6-pin. We can also spot a dual-BIOS switch. The clock speeds of the card are still unknown, we expect it to be higher than the air-cooled NITRO+ cards.

Update 21:26 UTC: The card is now listed at Newegg for $1640, with an availability date of Feb 17th.

Sapphire via Weibo teased a new, impending product launch to occur within the next few days. Details are all but absent - the only thing we have to go on is the company's teaser image, which features a TA branding in prominent gold. It's been speculated that this teaser may refer to a Sapphire return to some of its most well-known sub-brands for their graphics cards products - the TOXIC and ATOMIC series.

The TOXIC branding hasn't graced Sapphire's cards ever since the RX 390X days; it's historically been the company's highest-tier, enthusiast-focused graphics cards on air cooling. the ATOMIC series, on the other hand, is Sapphire's AIO-integrated lineup of graphics cards, which the company has kept dormant since way back in 2013, with the AMD Radeon HD 7990 - a beautiful piece of engineering featuring a pair of AMD's Tahiti XT2 cores - and featured 3 GB of GDDR5 memory mirrored for each of the GPU cores. The TA branding might also represent a new design from Sapphire, rather than a return to old lineups, but we'll have to wait for Sapphire's announcement proper to dispel any lingering doubts.

Applications such as data analytics, autonomous-driving and medical diagnostics are driving extraordinary demands for machine learning and hyperscale compute infrastructure. To meet these demands, Microchip Technology Inc. today announced the world's first PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 switch solutions—the Switchtec PFX PCIe 5.0 family—doubling the interconnect performance for dense compute, high speed networking and NVM Express (NVMe ) storage. Together with the XpressConnect retimers, Microchip is the industry's only supplier of both PCIe Gen 5 switches and PCIe Gen 5 retimer products, delivering a complete portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with proven interoperability.

"Accelerators, graphic processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs) and high-speed network adapters continue to drive the need for higher performance PCIe infrastructure. Microchip's introduction of the world's first PCIe 5.0 switch doubles the PCIe Gen 4 interconnect link rates to 32 GT/s to support the most demanding next-generation machine learning platforms," said Andrew Dieckmann, associate vice president of marketing and applications engineering for Microchip's data center solutions business unit. "Coupled with our XpressConnect family of PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link (CXL ) 1.1/2.0 retimers, Microchip offers the industry's broadest portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with the lowest latency and end-to-end interoperability."

Sapphire released the GPRO X070 compute graphics card. This is very much a graphics card, in that it has display outputs, and is based on the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, but there's a twist—it's completely fanless. The card has a large triple-slot heatsink cooling the GPU, which is designed to rely on external airflow in rackmount cases, and probably won't work on its own in a tower case. Sapphire says its applications include render farms, or V-GPUs. The card features an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT that runs at reference clock speeds—1905 MHz max boost, 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory. There's also an "Efficiency Mode" enabled through a secondary BIOS, which runs the GPU at 1750 MHz boost, possibly making the card best suited for crypto-currency mining operations.

SAPPHIRE Technology continues to excel in embedded platform design by announcing a new series of embedded motherboards powered by the latest high-performance AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor family built on 7 nm process technology, Zen 2 cores and high-performance AMD Radeon graphics. The SAPPHIRE V2000 BP-FP6 and FS-FP6 embedded motherboards support multiple independent displays in 4K resolution with a stable balance of low power consumption and exceptional performance for the embedded markets.

Alphacool presents the Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-A block for the Radeon MSI RX 6800/6800 XT Gaming X Trio and the Radeon Sapphire RX 6800XT Nitro+ graphics cards. The blocks offer outstanding cooling performance thanks to the full cover design. The new backplate, which is included with the coolers, also contributes to this. This stabilizes the graphics card and ensures an even contact pressure of the cooler. The cold plates are made of solid nickel-plated copper. The coolers cover all relevant components such as voltage converters and the graphics memory.