AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB

The best card for mainstream gaming right now

The RX 580 8GB trades blows with the GTX 1060 6GB, [with RX580] typically winning by a few percent in performance .. the midrange [GPU] category is largely determined by local pricing, with the US market currently favoring the RX 580

SemiAccurate will go out on a limb here and say that 10nm yields won’t be close to 14nm for the first year of it’s volume production. We will go further out on that limb and say that production costs for 10nm chips will be significantly higher than 14nm devices of similar performance.

When we wrote the original piece there were four fabs slated to transition to 10nm. One of these has been backported to 14nm, .. Two of the remaining fabs installed lots of EUV tools which are meant for the 7nm process, not the 10nm process. This effectively precludes these facilities from producing 10nm.

This left one fab which was slated for 10nm

AMD CEO confirms [7nm] Navi for 2019

During the earnings call, AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, confirmed that [7nm] Navi GPU will launch this year, with launches in Q2 2019.

..the rumor was that the 7nm GPU looks better than expected, whether in terms of 7nm yields or the actual performance/power is still left to be seen

..the upcoming 7nm Navi architecture could first target the mid-range graphics market, becoming a successor to the Polaris GPU, as that is where the bread and butter is. High-end graphics cards are great for marketing but mid-range is what mostly matters.

TSMC thrashes Intel on semi tech

TSMC has beaten Intel on nodes, throwing Chipzilla's proud boasts of being ahead in the semiconductor market into deep disarray.

Intel has since the 20th century had the lead in the microprocessor market and now is dominating the datacentre market and has vast coffers of cash. But it is not invincible. Think about IBM, for example.

AMD Radeon VII 7nm GPU Makes Its Way To Reviewers Test Benches

With only a week away from its launch the AMD Radeon VII 7nm GPU appears to have made it’s way to reviewers hands. .. Radeon VII launches next Thursday (2/7/2019)

AMD Navi 7nm GPUs Based Radeon RX Graphics Cards Reportedly Delayed Till October 2019

Radeon VII utilizes the 7nm architecture but it is essentially a die shrunk of an existing architecture. The Navi GPUs will be designed around 7nm from the start and that would definitely help AMD take full advantage of the 7nm process node.

[The delay] may be attributed to the 7nm supply as the Radeon VII, a high-end chip is already available in lower quantities than expected and is out of stock almost globally.

Radeon RX 580 with 2048 cores

The elusive and unique product called Radeon RX 580 2048SP will soon be added to MSI offer. This SKU is one of the most criticized products in the AMD portfolio. Rather than call it RX 570, the RX 580 name is used. This product is not available in all regions. It could go against some regulations, such as misleading product naming. That said, the RX 580 2048 SP ARMOR from MSI will likely only be available in Asia.

There are two variants, the 8GB and 4GB models. The cards are (surprise, surprise) identical to Radeon RX 570 ARMOR. Basically, it is the same card with a new box.

AMD Radeon VII To Get Radeon Pro Software For Enterprise Support Soon, Also Receives BIOS Update To Support UEFI

The main highlight of the driver is the “One Driver” feature. This allows many of AMD’s consumer Radeon cards, including the recently released Radeon VII, to be compatible with the Radeon Pro software stack. Features such as commercial software support, stability, commercial application performance, standard feature set, and enterprise security features will all be available with the consumer end cards

the Radeon VII is getting some if not full Radeon Pro Software support. It comes with a lot of FP64 (Double Precision Floating Point Operations) performance rated at 3.5 TFLOPs. It was confirmed by AMD that due to the broad market nature of the Radeon VII graphics card, they decided to increases the double precision performance to 1/4 SP compared to 1/16 SP of before.

NVIDIA Answers Burning DLSS Questions, Promises Constant Work Over Time to Improve Image Quality

The main purpose of deep learning super-sampling, or DLSS for short, has always been to help GeForce RTX cards deliver playable frame rates at high resolutions when coupled with the taxing ray tracing effects. So far, while there is indeed a performance boost [with DLSS] .. there’s also a significant compromise to image quality..

AMD Ryzen 3000 Desktop CPUs, Radeon Navi GPUs and X570 Motherboards With PCIe Gen 4.0 Allegedly Launching on 7th July

The source reports that just like Radeon VII that got the 7th February release date which clearly highlighted the 7nm process technology featured on the card, the 7th July (7/7/2019) release to emphasize the use of 7nm across all AMD mainstream families (GPU & CPU). It’s a really great marketing approach for AMD. Also what’s interesting to note here the mentioned date is for the release which means AMD would probably make an announcement earlier.

Metro Dev: Ray Tracing Is Doable via Compute Even on Next-Gen Consoles, RT Cores Aren’t the Only Way

[developer quote] "In terms of the viability of ray tracing on next generation consoles, the hardware doesn’t have to be specifically RTX cores.... Those calculations can be done in standard compute if the computer cores are numerous and fast enough (which we believe they will be on the next gen consoles). In fact, any GPU that is running DX12 will be able to “run” DXR since DXR is just an extension of DX12. ..fast compute cores and memory which lets you get at your bounding volume data quickly is also a viable path to doing real-time RT."

We’ll likely know more about the feasibility of ray tracing via compute when AMD reveals more details about the Navi GPU architecture, which is believed to have been chosen by Sony and Microsoft to power their next consoles.

TSMC $550 Million Blunder Destroyed Thousands Of NVIDIA GPU Wafers

Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co (NYSE:TSM 39 1.40%) confirmed Friday that a manufacturing defect caused the Taiwanese foundry to scrap tens of thousands of wafers at their 12nm/16nm Fab 14 facility. TSMC investigated the matter and found that a ‘photoresist’ layer used an improperly treated compound that contained foreign polymers.

Several companies have been cited as affected, perhaps most importantly graphics chip-maker NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA 158.55 1.22%).

All of NVIDIA’s current Geforce video cards..are fabricated on these production lines

[The times to fabricate a GPU] are increasing from roughly 40 days at 28nm, to 60 days at 14nm/10nm, to 80 to 85 days at 7nm.. [Consequently, Nvidia GPU] supplies may .. [become less available] in the May-June timeframe.

AMD Drops The Price Bomb on Radeon RX Vega 56 Graphics Card, Now Available For $279 US To Tackle NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

The RX Vega 56 graphics card is definitely a good card with 8 GB of HBM2 VRAM and lots of compute prowess. It has some great features such as Rapid Packed Math, Shader Intrinsics, and support for Freesync 2.

[Includes 3 games] These titles are Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devil May Cry 5 and the Division 2 which is $180 US worth of value

When this article was posted, the one card that is available for the $279 US price, the MSI Radeon RX Vega 56 with the Air Boost blower cooler design was out of stock. It looks like the deal was so popular that buyers rushed and bought off all the stock. It is not known when the new stock would be available