Connect with us

Graphics Cards

AMD Announces New Graphics Architecture Called Vega

Published

on

Today AMD unveiled preliminary details of its forthcoming GPU architecture, Vega. Conceived and executed over 5 years, Vega architecture enables new possibilities in PC gaming, professional design and machine intelligence that traditional GPU architectures have not been able to address effectively. Data-intensive workloads are becoming the new normal, and the parallel nature of the GPU lends itself ideally to tackling them.

However, processing these huge new datasets requires fast access to massive amounts of memory. The Vega architecture’s revolutionary memory subsystem enables GPUs to address very large data sets spread across a mix of memory types. The high-bandwidth cache controller in Vega-based GPUs can access on-package cache and off-package memories in a flexible, programmable fashion using fine-grained data movement.

“It is incredible to see GPUs being used to solve gigabyte-scale data problems in gaming to exabyte-scale data problems in machine intelligence. We designed the Vega architecture to build on this ability, with the flexibility to address the extraordinary breadth of problems GPUs will be solving not only today but also five years from now. Our high-bandwidth cache is a pivotal disruption that has the potential to impact the whole GPU market,” said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD.

Highlights of the Vega GPU architecture’s advancements include:

The world’s most advanced GPU memory architecture: The Vega architecture enables a new memory hierarchy for GPUs. This radical new approach comes in the form of a new high-bandwidth cache and its controller. The cache features leading-edge HBM2 technology which is capable of transferring terabytes of data every second, doubling the bandwidth-per-pin over the previous generation HBM technology. HBM2 also enables much greater capacity at less than half the footprint of GDDR5 memory. Vega architecture is optimized for streaming very large datasets and can work with a variety of memory types with up to 512TB of virtual address space.

Next-generation geometry pipeline: Today’s games and professional applications make use of incredibly complex geometry enabled by the extraordinary increase in the resolutions of data acquisition devices. The hundreds of millions of polygons in any given frame have meshes so dense that there are often many polygons being rendered per pixel. Vega’s next-generation geometry pipeline enables the programmer to extract incredible efficiency in processing this complex geometry, while also delivering more than 200% of the throughput-per-clock over previous Radeon architectures. It also features improved load-balancing with an intelligent workload distributor to deliver consistent performance.

Next-generation compute engine: At the core of the Vega architecture is a new, next-generation compute engine built on flexible compute units that can natively process 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit operations in each clock cycle. These compute units are optimized to attain significantly higher frequencies than previous generations and their support of variable datatypes makes the architecture highly versatile across workloads.

Advanced pixel engine: The new Vega pixel engine employs a Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer, designed to improve performance and power efficiency. It allows for “fetch once, shade once” of pixels through the use of a smart on-chip bin cache and early culling of pixels invisible in a final scene. Vega’s pixel engine is now a client of the onboard L2 cache, enabling considerable overhead reduction for graphics workloads which perform frequent read-after-write operations.

GPU products based on the Vega architecture are expected to ship in the first half of 2017.

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Components

Users Claim That Nvidia GPUs Are Melting Power Cables

Published

on

Early adopters of Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card are reporting issues with melting power cables, with at least one report on YouTube and another on Reddit. This situation mirrors an earlier problem with the RTX 4090, where power connectors melted or caught fire, damaging GPUs and power supplies.

Investigations revealed that the 4090’s connector issues were largely due to user error, with 12VHPWR connectors not being fully inserted or bent, creating stress and heat. The PCI-SIG, the standards body for the connector, stated the design was sound and blamed implementation issues. An updated connector, 12V-2×6, which ensures proper seating before delivering power, replaced the 12VHPWR connector in the RTX 50-series cards.

Both connectors aim to deliver significant power to high-end GPUs via a single cable, reducing the need for multiple 8-pin connectors and saving board space. While Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Arm, and others are PCI-SIG members, Nvidia is the primary user of these connectors in its GPUs. AMD and Intel continue using 8-pin connectors, with some Nvidia partners doing the same for lower-end cards like the RTX 4060 and 4070 series.

The two reported RTX 5090 incidents involved third-party cables, one from MODDIY and another from an FSP power supply, rather than Nvidia’s provided 8-pin adapter. It’s too early to determine if the problem lies with the cables, Nvidia, the connector design, or user error, or if it’s simply a coincidence.

Continue Reading

Components

NVIDIA Announces Blackwell GeForce RTX 50 Series

Published

on

NVIDIA today unveiled the most advanced consumer GPUs for gamers, creators and developers — the GeForce RTX 50 Series Desktop and Laptop GPUs. Powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, fifth-generation Tensor Cores and fourth-generation RT Cores, the GeForce RTX 50 Series delivers breakthroughs in AI-driven rendering, including neural shaders, digital human technologies, geometry and lighting.

“Blackwell, the engine of AI, has arrived for PC gamers, developers and creatives,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Fusing AI-driven neural rendering and ray tracing, Blackwell is the most significant computer graphics innovation since we introduced programmable shading 25 years ago.”

The GeForce RTX 5090 GPU — the fastest GeForce RTX GPU to date — features 92 billion transistors, providing over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS) of computing power. The Blackwell architecture’s innovations and DLSS 4 mean the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU outperforms the GeForce RTX 4090 GPU up to 2x.

GeForce Blackwell comes to laptops with all the features of desktop models, bringing a considerable upgrade to portable computing, including extraordinary graphics capabilities and remarkable efficiency. The Blackwell generation of NVIDIA Max-Q technology extends battery life by up to 40% and allows for thin and light laptops that maintain their sleek design without sacrificing power or performance.

DLSS 4 debuts Multi Frame Generation to boost frame rates by using AI to generate up to three frames per rendered frame. It works in unison with the suite of DLSS technologies to increase performance by up to 8x over traditional rendering, while maintaining responsiveness with NVIDIA Reflex technology.

DLSS 4 also introduces the graphics industry’s first real-time application of the transformer model architecture. Transformer-based DLSS Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution models use 2x more parameters and 4x more compute to provide greater stability, reduced ghosting, higher details and enhanced anti-aliasing in-game scenes. DLSS 4 will be supported on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs in over 75 games and applications on the day of launch.

NVIDIA Reflex 2 introduces Frame Warp, an innovative technique to reduce latency in games by updating a rendered frame based on the latest mouse input just before it is sent to the display. Reflex 2 can reduce latency by up to 75%. This gives gamers a competitive edge in multiplayer games and makes single-player titles more responsive.

Twenty-five years ago, NVIDIA introduced GeForce 3 and programmable shaders, which set the stage for two decades of graphics innovation, from pixel shading to compute shading to real-time ray tracing. Alongside GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, NVIDIA is introducing RTX Neural Shaders, which bring small AI networks into programmable shaders, unlocking film-quality materials, lighting and more in real-time games.

Rendering game characters is one of the most challenging tasks in real-time graphics, as people are prone to notice the smallest errors or artefacts in digital humans. RTX Neural Faces takes a simple rasterized face and 3D pose data as input and uses generative AI to render a temporally stable, high-quality digital face in real-time.

RTX Neural Faces is complemented by new RTX technologies for ray-traced hair and skin. Along with the new RTX Mega Geometry, which enables up to 100x more ray-traced triangles in a scene, these advancements are poised to deliver a massive leap in realism for game characters and environments. The power of neural rendering, DLSS 4 and the new DLSS transformer model is showcased on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs with Zorah, a groundbreaking new technology demo from NVIDIA.

GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs bring industry-leading AI TOPS to power autonomous game characters in parallel with game rendering. NVIDIA is introducing a suite of new NVIDIA ACE technologies that enable game characters to perceive, plan and act like human players. ACE-powered autonomous characters are being integrated into KRAFTON’s PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and InZOI, the publisher’s upcoming life simulation game, as well as Wemade Next’s MIR5.

In PUBG, companions powered by NVIDIA ACE plan and execute strategic actions, dynamically working with human players to ensure survival. InZOI features Smart Zoi characters that autonomously adjust behaviours based on life goals and in-game events. In MIR5, large language model (LLM)-driven raid bosses adapt tactics based on player behaviour, creating more dynamic, challenging encounters.

Use cases span LLMs, vision language models, image generation, speech, embedding models for retrieval-augmented generation, PDF extraction and computer vision. NIM microservices include all the necessary components for running AI on PCs and are optimized for deployment across all NVIDIA GPUs.

Showcasing how RTX enthusiasts and developers can use NIM microservices to build AI agents and assistants, NVIDIA will release a pipeline of NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints for RTX AI PCs from top model developers such as Black Forest Labs, Meta, Mistral and Stability.AI. To demonstrate how enthusiasts and developers can use NIM to build AI agents and assistants, NVIDIA today previewed Project R2X, a vision-enabled PC avatar that can put information at a user’s fingertips, assist with desktop apps and video conference calls, read and summarize documents, and more.

The GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs supercharge creative workflows. RTX 50 Series GPUs are the first consumer GPUs to support FP4 precision, boosting AI image generation performance for models such as FLUX by 2x and enabling generative AI models to run locally in a smaller memory footprint, compared with previous-generation hardware.

The NVIDIA Broadcast app gains two AI-powered beta features for live streamers: Studio Voice, which upgrades microphone audio, and Virtual Key light, which relights faces for polished streams. Streamlabs is introducing the Intelligent Streaming Assistant, powered by NVIDIA ACE and Inworld AI, which acts as a cohost, producer and technical assistant to enhance live streams.

For desktop users, the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU with 3,352 AI TOPS and the GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 1,801 AI TOPS will be available on Jan. 30 at $1,999 and $999, respectively. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU with 1,406 AI TOPS and GeForce RTX 5070 GPU with 988 AI TOPS will be available starting in February at $749 and $549, respectively. The NVIDIA Founders Editions of the GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 GPUs will be available directly from nvidia.com and select retailers worldwide.

Stock-clocked and factory-overclocked models will be available from top add-in card providers such as ASUS, Colorful, Gainward, GALAX, GIGABYTE, INNO3D, KFA2, MSI, Palit, PNY and ZOTAC, and in desktops from system builders including Falcon Northwest, Infiniarc, MAINGEAR, Mifcom, ORIGIN PC, PC Specialist and Scan Computers.

Laptops with GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPUs will be available starting in March, and RTX 5070 Laptop GPUs will be available starting in April from the world’s top manufacturers, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, GIGABYTE, HP, Lenovo, MECHREVO, MSI and Razer.

Continue Reading

Gadgets

ZOTAC GAMING Unveils NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series with Blackwell Architecture

Published

on

ZOTAC Technology has introduced its latest generation of graphics cards, the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 50 Series, powered by NVIDIA Blackwell architecture. Designed for gamers and creators, the RTX 50 Series promises enhanced AI capabilities, next-level graphics fidelity, and faster performance with NVIDIA DLSS 4. This series also supports NVIDIA NIM microservices, enabling advanced AI models for various applications.

The RTX 50 Series focuses on key features like cooling efficiency, noise reduction, and durability. At launch, the series includes the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti in AMP Extreme INFINITY and SOLID (OC) models, while the 5070 will be available in SOLID (OC) models.

The flagship AMP Extreme INFINITY model offers top-tier performance and aesthetics, featuring a die-cast metal backplate, SPECTRA 2.0 ARGB lighting, and a stunning Infinity Mirror. The SOLID models deliver high performance in a minimalist design with powerful fans and a full-length heat sink.

ICESTORM 3.0 Cooling System
The new RTX 50 Series features the IceStorm 3.0 cooling system, which includes a 34% larger vapour chamber, high-performance cooling fans, copper composite heat pipes, and a full-length aluminium heat sink. This system ensures GPUs remain cool under heavy loads.

Acoustic and Fan Innovations
To enhance gaming immersion, the RTX 50 Series includes noise-reducing features like an  Automatic Fan Stop. The RTX 5090 models debut ACTIVE FAN CONTROL 2.0, allowing independent control of the three GPU fans.

Durability and Enhancements
The series includes durability features such as a die-cast metal backplate, rear retention bracket, and mid-frame reinforcement. It also offers a metal GPU support stand for additional reinforcement. The power connector includes a Safety Light and gold-plated connection pins for better conductivity.

Dual BIOS and SPECTRA Lighting
The Dual BIOS feature allows users to switch between performance modes easily. The SPECTRA 2.0 ARGB lighting system enhances gaming ambience, and select models include a SPECTRA Link interface for synchronized lighting with compatible RGB motherboards.

The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 50 Series is set to deliver unparalleled performance and innovative features, making it a top choice for gamers and creators alike.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Latest Reviews

Follow us on Facebook