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      Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review: All you need to know is that it’s cheaper than a 4080

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 31 January - 14:00 · 1 minute

    Nvidia's new RTX 4080 Super is technically faster than the regular 4080 , but, by an order of magnitude, the most interesting thing about it is that, at its launch price of $999, it's $200 cheaper than the original 4080. I am going to write more after this sentence, but that's basically the review. You're welcome to keep reading, and I would appreciate it if you would, but truly there is only one number you need to know, and it is "$200."

    All three of these Super cards—the 4070 Super , the 4070 Ti Super , and now the 4080 Super—are mild correctives for a GPU generation that has been more expensive than its predecessors and also, in relative terms, less of a performance boost. The difference is that where the 4070 Super and 4070 Ti Super try to earn their existing price tags by boosting performance, the 4080 Super focuses on lowering its price to be more in line with where its competition is.

    Yes, it's marginally faster than the original 4080, but its best feature is a price drop from $1,199 to a still high, but more reasonable, $999. What it doesn't do is attempt to close the gap between the 4080 series and the 4090, a card that still significantly outruns any other consumer GPU that AMD or Nvidia offers. But if you have a big budget, want something that's still head-and-shoulders above the entire RTX 30-series, and don't want to deal with the 4090's currently inflated pricing, the 4080 Super is much more appealing than the regular 4080, even if it is basically the same GPU with a new name.

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      Review: Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti Super is better, but I still don’t know who it’s for

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 25 January - 12:30

    Of all of Nvidia's current-generation GPU launches, there hasn't been one that's been quite as weird as the case of the "GeForce RTX 4080 12GB."

    It was the third and slowest of the graphics cards Nvidia announced at the onset of the RTX 40-series, and at first blush it just sounded like a version of the second-fastest RTX 4080 but with less RAM. But spec sheets and Nvidia's own performance estimates showed that there was a deceptively huge performance gap between the two 4080 cards, enough that calling them both "4080" could have lead to confusion and upset among buyers.

    Taking the hint, Nvidia reversed course, " unlaunching " the 4080 12GB because it was "not named right." This decision came late enough in the launch process that a whole bunch of existing packaging had to be trashed and that new BIOSes with new GPU named needed to be flashed to the cards before they could be sold.

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      Review: Radeon 7600 XT offers peace of mind via lots of RAM, remains a midrange GPU

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 24 January - 14:00 · 1 minute

    We don't need a long intro for this one: AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 XT is almost exactly the same as last year's RX 7600 , but with a mild bump to the GPU's clock speed and 16GB of memory instead of 8GB. It also costs $329 instead of $269, the current MSRP (and current street price) for the regular RX 7600.

    It's a card with a pretty narrow target audience: people who are worried about buying a GPU with 8GB of memory, but who aren't worried enough about future-proofing or RAM requirements to buy a more powerful GPU. It's priced reasonably well, at least—$60 is a lot to pay for extra memory, but $329 was the MSRP for the Radeon RX 6600 back in 2021. If you want more memory in a current-generation card, you otherwise generally need to jump up into the $450 range (for the 12GB RX 7700 XT or the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti) or beyond.

    RX 7700 XT RX 7600 RX 7600 XT RX 6600 RX 6600 XT RX 6650 XT RX 6750 XT
    Compute units (Stream processors) 54 (3,456) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 28 (1,792) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 40 (2,560)
    Boost Clock 2,544 MHz 2,600 MHz 2,760 MHz 2,490 MHz 2,589 MHz 2,635 MHz 2,600 MHz
    Memory Bus Width 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit
    Memory Clock 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 1,750 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,190 MHz 2,250 MHz
    Memory size 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6
    Total board power (TBP) 245 W 165 W 190 W 132 W 160 W 180 W 250 W

    The fact of the matter is that this is the same silicon we've already seen. The clock speed bumps do provide a small across-the-board performance uplift, and the impact of the extra RAM does become apparent in a few of our tests. But the card doesn't fundamentally alter the AMD-vs-Nvidia-vs-Intel dynamic in the $300-ish graphics card market, though it addresses a couple of the regular RX 7600's most glaring weaknesses.

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      They’re not cheap, but Nvidia’s new Super GPUs are a step in the right direction

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 8 January - 16:30

    Nvidia's latest GPUs, apparently dropping out of hyperspace.

    Enlarge / Nvidia's latest GPUs, apparently dropping out of hyperspace. (credit: Nvidia)

    If there’s been one consistent criticism of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series graphics cards, it’s been pricing. All of Nvidia’s product tiers have seen their prices creep up over the last few years, but cards like the 4090 raised prices to new heights, while lower-end models like the 4060 and 4060 Ti kept pricing the same but didn’t improve performance much.

    Today, Nvidia is sprucing up its 4070 and 4080 tiers with a mid-generation “Super” refresh that at least partially addresses some of these pricing problems. Like older Super GPUs, the 4070 Super, 4070 Ti Super, and 4080 Super use the same architecture and support all the same features as their non-Super versions, but with bumped specs and tweaked prices that might make them more appealing to people who skipped the originals.

    The 4070 Super will launch first, on January 17th, for $599. The $799 RTX 4070 Ti Super launches on January 24th, and the $999 4080 Super follows on January 31st.

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      Review: AMD’s Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT are almost great

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 6 September, 2023 - 13:00

    AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT.

    Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Nearly a year ago, Nvidia kicked off this GPU generation with its GeForce RTX 4090 . The 4090 offers unparalleled performance but at an unparalleled price of $1,600 (prices have not fallen). It's not for everybody, but it's a nice halo card that shows what the Ada Lovelace architecture is capable of. Fine, I guess.

    The RTX 4080 soon followed, along with AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT . These cards also generally offered better performance than anything you could get from a previous-generation GPU, but at still-too-high-for-most-people prices that ranged from between $900 and $1,200 (though all of those prices have fallen by a bit). Fine, I guess.

    By the time we got the 4070 Ti launch in May, we were getting down to the level of performance that had been available from previous-generation cards. These GPUs offered a decent generational jump over their predecessors (the 4070 Ti performs kind of like a 3090, and the 4070 performs kind of like a 3080). But those cards also got big price bumps that took them closer to the pricing levels of the last-gen cards they performed like. Fine, I guess.

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      Nvidia quietly cuts price of poorly reviewed 16GB 4060 Ti ahead of AMD launch

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 1 September, 2023 - 17:43

    The RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition.

    Enlarge / The RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Last week, AMD announced what are probably the last major GPU launches of this generation of graphics cards: the $449 Radeon RX 7700 XT and $499 Radeon RX 7800 XT . AMD's pricing and performance numbers pit the cards against Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (specifically the $499 16GB version) and the $599 RTX 4070 .

    AMD's pricing is aggressive enough that Nvidia is quietly cutting the prices of some 16GB RTX 4060 Ti cards to $449, to match the RX 7700 XT. The announcement about the $50 reduction was buried toward the bottom of an email that Nvidia sent to GPU reviewers ahead of AMD's launch next week; it also drew attention to Nvidia-specific features like DLSS upscaling and frame generation, which compete with AMD's GPU-agnostic FSR , plus recent DLSS improvements that improve ray-tracing performance.

    "Finally, as a reminder, market prices can vary from the original launch MSRPs," Nvidia's Brian Burke wrote. "Today, GeForce RTX 4070 is widely available at $599, and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is now available at $449. Both of these GPUs are great upgrade choices for gamers seeking their next GPU for the upcoming 2 to 3 years."

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      AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT will go up against Nvidia’s 4070 and 4060 Ti

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 25 August, 2023 - 15:30 · 1 minute

    The specs of AMD's Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT.

    Enlarge / The specs of AMD's Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT. (credit: AMD)

    AMD has been slower than Nvidia to fill out its next-generation GPU lineup, and for months there has been a huge gap between the Radeon RX 7900 XT (currently retailing between $750 and $850) and the Radeon RX 7600 (holding steady at $270ish). Today, the company is finally filling in that gap with the new Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, both advertised as 1440p graphics cards and available starting at $449 and $499, respectively. Both cards will be available on September 6. And most Radeon RX 6000 and RX 7000 GPUs sold between now and September 30 will come with a free copy of Bethesda's upcoming " Skyrim in space " title, Starfield.

    AMD kept the prices of both cards under wraps while pre-briefing members of the press about the announcement, which is unusual but not hard to explain. AMD's RX 7600 launch was spoiled a bit by Nvidia, which preempted the 7600's announcement by offering a more powerful GeForce RTX 4060 at the same $299 price that AMD had planned for the 7600. This prompted AMD to cut the 7600's price to $269 before it was even announced; we'll have to wait and see if Nvidia chooses to change its prices in response to the new Radeon cards' launch.

    The full lineup of RX 7000-series graphics cards. AMD pictures a reference version of the 7700 XT, though it won't be selling one.

    The full lineup of RX 7000-series graphics cards. AMD pictures a reference version of the 7700 XT, though it won't be selling one. (credit: AMD)

    The RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT are based on the same RDNA 3 graphics architecture as the other 7000-series GPUs, which means a more efficient manufacturing process than the RX 6000 series, DisplayPort 2.1 support, and hardware acceleration for encoding with the AV1 video codec, which promises game streamers either higher-quality video at the same bitrate as older codecs or the same quality with a lower bitrate. AMD compared the 7800 XT and 7700 XT favorably to Nvidia's $600 upper-midrange RTX 4070 and the $500 16GB version of the RTX 4060 Ti .

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      AMD’s FPS-doubling FSR 3 is coming soon, and not just to Radeon graphics cards

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 25 August, 2023 - 15:30 · 1 minute

    AMD's FSR 3 will compete with Nvidia's proprietary DLSS Frame Generation feature starting in September.

    Enlarge / AMD's FSR 3 will compete with Nvidia's proprietary DLSS Frame Generation feature starting in September. (credit: AMD)

    Even if you're not interested in buying one of the new Radeon graphics cards AMD announced today , the company still has some software-related announcements of interest to anyone who plays games on their PC. And that includes not just owners of older AMD GPUs but people who use Nvidia GeForce or Intel Arc cards, too.

    First, AMD is finally ready to reveal more details about FidelityFX Super Resolution version 3, the latest major update to the company's open source upsampling technology. A competitor to Nvidia's proprietary Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Intel's GPU-agnostic but nascent XeSS, all of these technologies attempt to generate a high-resolution image by rendering a lower-resolution image, blowing it up and filling in the gaps algorithmically to approximate what a natively rendered image would have looked like.

    What GPUs support FSR 3?

    Last year, FSR 2.0 went a long way toward making the technology more competitive with DLSS while also working on a wider range of graphics hardware from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Contrary to some prior speculation, FSR 3 will continue to support a wide range of old and new GPUs from all three major GPU companies. AMD has confirmed to us that the following graphics hardware should all support FSR 3:

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      GeForce RTX 4060 review: Not thrilling, but a super-efficient $299 workhorse

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 28 June, 2023 - 13:00

    PNY's take on the basic $299 version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060.

    Enlarge / PNY's take on the basic $299 version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Nvidia's GeForce 1060, 2060, and 3060 graphics cards are some of the most widely used GPUs in all of PC gaming. Four of Steam's top five GPUs are 60-series cards, and the only one that isn't is an even lower-end GTX 1650.

    All of this is to say that, despite all the fanfare for high-end products like the RTX 4090, the new GeForce RTX 4060 is Nvidia's most important Ada Lovelace-based GPU. History suggests that it will become a baseline for game developers to aim for and the go-to recommendation for most entry-level-to-mainstream PC gaming builds.

    The RTX 4060, which launches this week starting at $299, is mostly up to the task. It's faster and considerably more power efficient than the 3060 it replaces, and it doesn't come with the same generation-over-generation price hike as the higher-end Lovelace GPUs. It's also a solid value compared to the 4060 Ti, typically delivering between 80 and 90 percent of the 4060 Ti's performance for 75 percent of the money.

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