Details Leak on Nvidia’s Upcoming GTX 1660, 1650 GPUs
Nvidia’s Turing refresh cycle has been continuing apace these past few months, with new lower-end GPUs replacing the Pascal holdovers from earlier in the cycle. GPUs like the GTX 1660 Ti lack the Turing-specific features like ray tracing and DLSS support, the 1660 Ti was also the only GPU of the family that comes with a significant improvement in performance per dollar as well as raw performance. As such, there’s interest in seeing if the 1660 and 1650 will replicate this trend.
New leaks from VideoCardz showcase both the new GPUs and the stats expected for the new hardware.
The 1650 is a bit more interesting. If the rumors of its configuration are accurate, the part looks positively underwhelming in comparison with the GPUs it will compete against. The bump from 768 GPU cores on the 1050 Ti to 896 on the 1650 will be welcome, but the RX 570 is an average of 1.42x faster than the 1050 Ti, and moving from 768 GPU cores to 896 is a gain of just 1.16x. That’s to say nothing of the RX 580, which has moved down to the <$200 price point and offers even more cores, memory bandwidth, and RAM to compete.
Assuming these are the configurations Nvidia brings to market, it doesn’t look as though the company intends to particularly challenge AMD below the $200 price point. To be fair, there isn’t much sign it needs to do so. The latest figures from Jon Peddie Research show AMD losing significant market share in Q4 2018 compared with Q3, and performing even more poorly against Q4 2017.
Clearly, holding on to the <$200 price points, even if AMD does it well, is no substitute for a competitive GPU stack top-to-bottom. Right now, that’s the one thing AMD doesn’t have. The price for a new Vega 56 has returned to $400 after a short discount, while a new Vega 64 runs $500. That’s simply not competitive against the current crop of RTX GPUs from Nvidia. Until AMD slashes its prices or brings Navi to market, it’s going to be effectively locked out of the higher band price segments.
Continue reading
Intel Launches New Xe Max Mobile GPUs for Entry-Level Content Creators
Intel has launched a new consumer, mobile GPU — but it's got a very specific use-case, at least for now.
MIT Creates Battery-Free Underwater GPS
GPS radio signals dissipate quickly when they hit water, causing a headache for scientific research at sea. The only alternative is to use acoustic systems that chew through batteries. A team from MIT has devised a battery-free tracking technology that could end this annoyance.
Intel Details XPU Strategy, Launches New Server GPU, OneAPI Gold
Intel made a pair of announcements today regarding its OneAPI initiative and the launch of its first server GPU based on Xe graphics.
Nvidia Unveils Ampere A100 80GB GPU With 2TB/s of Memory Bandwidth
Nvidia announced an 80GB Ampere A100 GPU this week, for AI software developers who really need some room to stretch their legs.