News articles by Debbie Wiles

AMD launched the Radeon HD 8970M notebook graphics card on May 15. Built around the GCN architecture, it is hailed as the fastest available notebook graphics solution at the time of launch. It has 1280 shaders, or processing cores, clocked at 850 MHz, with a boosted clock speed of 900 MHz. This gives it a single precision compute capability of 2304 GFLOPS, almost as fast as the mainstream Radeon HD 7870 on the desktop.   [Full story]

The latest reports from Fudzilla indicate that the first 700 series GeForce graphics cards from NVidia will be launched later this month, and that the series will have a top down launch schedule. The first to market will be the GK110 based GTX 780, launching on May 23. It will be slower than the Titan, but will be known internally as the Titan LE. Next up will be the GTX 770 on May 30, based on the GK104-425 core, an improved GK104 GPU.   [Full story]

Details of a new GCN based entry level graphics card from AMD have surfaced around the web. Named the Radeon HD 7730, it is the slowest and cheapest GCN based card to date, and is believed to be based on the Cape Verde GPU. The reference card is a single slot design, and sports one DVI port, one HDMI and one DisplayPort outputs. It is 168 mm long, and has a TDP of 55 W.   [Full story]

AMD this week officially launched the Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, using a pair of Tahiti XT GPUs. As the first cards with HD 7990 part number were introduced around 8 months ago, this seems like a marketing ploy, although it also opens the door for more AIB manufacturers to release dual-GPU GCN based products. Of note is the fact that with the launch, AMD are bundling cards with 8 games - many of them are popular, but none will fully tax the card.   [Full story]

Earlier this week, NVidia launched five new mobile graphics cards in the 700M series. The new cards include the GT 720M and GT 735M, which extend the range offered for the mainstream segment, and the GT 740M, GT 745M and GT 750M for the performance segment. All models support the latest NVidia mobile technologies, including GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, and GeForce Experience software.   [Full story]

AMD this week introduced a new member of its GCN based 7700 series GPUs, the Radeon HD 7790. Instead of reusing an existing die, such as perhaps a Pitcairn GPU with faulty compute units disabled, they have built a new die, codenamed Bonaire. Bonaire has 14 compute units, in a 160 mm² die, and it was designed to fit between the HD 7770 and HD 7850.   [Full story]

NVidia launched a range of workstation graphics cards based on the Kepler architecture. The Kepler based Quadro series GPUs previously included only the Quadro K5000 and the Quadro K5000 for Mac. The new cards add a Quadro K4000 at the high end, K2000 and K2000D for mainstream workstation graphics, and the K600 for entry level graphics. With the introduction of new cards, the Quadro K series covers the full spectrum of users from entry level up to high-end with compute and graphics capabilities.   [Full story]

AMD have launched the AMD FirePro R5000 remote graphics card, designed to enable remote graphics applications over IP networks. The FirePro R5000 is a combination of AMD's current generation GCN architecture and Teradici's PCoIP technology, that can serve 3D graphics over an IP network. This is useful for mid-range multi-monitor computing such as CAD, financial and medical applications, and it has the added benefit of providing secure access to information.   [Full story]

NVidia today announced the launch of the GeForce GTX Titan, a graphics card firmly targeted at gamers with money to burn. With 2668 CUDA cores spread over 14 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMX), it has 75% more processing power than NVidia's previous high-end single GPU desktop graphics card, the GTX 680. It also has 6 GB GDDR5 memory, more than any other single GPU card.   [Full story]

Prior to the release of the first Kepler based graphics cards, there were rumors that the high-end cards would be based on the GK110 GPU core. In the end, we only saw GK104 for the consumer market, with GK110 coming later and only for the professional GPGPU market. A rumor from Swedish website SweClockers suggests that we may see a new high-end consumer graphics card in the 600 series, based on the GK110 core, and known as GeForce Titan. Other sites also suggest it may be called the GTX 680 Ultra.   [Full story]

This week AMD launched the next generation Radeon HD 8000M mobile GPUs. The top end HD 8000M series cards feature 10 GCN Compute Units and 640 Stream Processors, while all other models have 6 Compute Units and 384 Stream Processors. Similar to previous GPU generations, there are models with DDR3 memory and others with GDDR5 memory, giving a wide range of products with little change other than clock speeds.   [Full story]

AMD have officially announced details of the first mobile GPUs in the Radeon HD 8000M series, the first of which are due in Q1 2013. Following the success of the HD 7000/7000M GPUs and the GCN architecture, the new SKUs belong to the second generation of GCN based products, with many enhancements in both performance and power saving features.   [Full story]

NVidia this week unveiled the Tesla K20 series graphics solution for GPGPU applications. Billed as the fastest available single-GPU graphics card, the K20 was already in use in some HPC systems, including the world's fastest supercomputer, as of December 2012. Built around the new GK110 GPU, which is not yet available for desktop SKUs, the K20 offers around 2.6 times the processing power of their previous top single GPU solution, and the K20X triples the older cards throughput.   [Full story]

AMD have launched a cut-down version of the Tahiti GPU core, named Tahiti LE. The rumors circulate that there is no reference design for the new core. However, new cards have the same features, suggesting that there is a standard set of specs. The new GPU also has a boost clock, meaning the GPU is based on the Tahiti XT2 core and not on the original Tahiti core.   [Full story]