Tag: GPU

Intel discrete GPU struggles: won’t compete against NVIDIA or AMD

Raja Koduri could be the next one on Intel’s chopping block according to new rumors on DG1

Intel has been going through all sorts of issues over the last couple of years, with its troubled modem division selling to Apple for $1 billion, the constant world of hurt AMD is hitting them with in the consumer/HEDT/server CPU markets, and now it seems their discrete GPU is in trouble.

A fresh new rumor has floated online saying that Intel’s upcoming DG1 is in trouble, cementing in some of the whispers I’ve been hearing from my own industry sources. A new post on Reddit suggests that “DG1 is not shaping up very well at all”, and that the thermals and power is “looking to be dismal as Koduri is having a hard time reigning in DG1’s power envelope. Anyone that has followed his GPU designs know that this has been his downfall forever”.

A new graphics card with a 25W TDP isn’t going to get anywhere near even the lowest-end Radeon or GeForce graphics card from competitors to Intel in AMD and NVIDIA, and if DG1 is this bad at this long away from release — Koduri won’t look good at all. He was the man behind the failed launch of Radeon RX Vega under AMD and Radeon Technologies Group at the time, with the Reddit post continuing: “The real question now is should we expect to see Koduri still be working for Intel after Q3’20? If not, you can expect to never see DG2 make its way to a retail product”.

AMD might unveil a new GPU with ray tracing support at CES

It’s only a matter of time before AMD rolls out a GPU architecture with hardware-based real-time ray tracing support (though not in time for any Black Friday deals), to take on Nvidia’s growing army of GeForce RTX graphics cards. But might we see something in that regard at CES in January, 2020? According to the latest rumor mill chatter, the answer is yes.

Take this with a dose of skepticism, but according to Chiphell forum member Wjm47196, AMD will be previewing a second-generation Radeon DNA (RDNA) Navi GPU architecture at the annual convention in Las Vegas, as spotted by WCCFTech.

I can see your eyes rolling in the back of the head, but there are couple of things that make this rumor at least plausible. One is Wjm47196’s track record. The same user had posted accurate information about AMD’s first generation Navi architecture before it launched. Same goes for some other GPU launches.

Secondly, we know AMD will implement ray tracing support into a future Navi GPU architecture, because both Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s next Xbox (Project Scarlett) will feature one, based on custom silicon.

A CES announcement also doesn’t mean the GPU would launch soon after. The past several years, AMD has announced products and disclosed roadmaps in December in January for products that eventually launched in June or July. So an initial preview even in January, six months before availability, would be perfectly in line with AMD’s previous GPUs.

Assuming nothing in AMD’s roadmap has changed, the next high-end version of Navi (Navi 20) will be built on an enhanced 7nm manufacturing process (7nm+). As these things go, we can assume it will have faster clocks and better power efficiency, probably more GPU cores, and of course ray tracing.

Beyond that, there is not much in the way of official information. There are also plenty of questions to go around, though. For example, will Navi 20 be competitive with Nvidia’s top cards, or slot in a peg or two below whatever Nvidia’s fastest cards will be at the time? How much will they cost? And will Intel have a discrete GPU for gaming when Navi 20 actually launches?

Strap in, 2020 could be a wild ride.

Aorus’ New PCIe 4 SSD Gobbles Up 16 Lanes of PCIe, Might Make Your GPU Jealous

Even though it’s not really a secret anymore, Gigabyte now formally announced this week the Aorus Gen4 AIC SSD 8TB. This is a PCIe add-in-card which houses four 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs, which turns it into, for lack of better words, an absolute storage monster.

Add those numbers up, and you’ve got an 8TB NVMe SSD that runs over the new PCIe 4.0 standard with access to 16 lanes. Gigabyte claims that it should manage a throughput (read and write) of about 15,000 MBps. The unit is rated at 430,000 random read IOPS and 440,000 random write IOPS.

Putting Things in Perspective

Let’s just put this into perspective. The typical 2.5-inch SATA SSD has a throughput of around 550 MBps, and if you’ve got a fancy PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD, you might have a read speed of about 3,500 MBps. This makes Gigabyte’s new AIC almost 30 times as fast as the SATA SSDs many users have.

Gigabyte’s new AIC SSD does need some cooling, though. It comes with a blower-style cooler that pulls air in and exhausts it out the back of the card, outside the PC case. On its way, it cools a copper heatsink placed over the quadruplet of M.2 SSDs installed inside the unit. Inside Gigabyte also fitted the unit with eight temperature sensors, which can be monitored from within the Aorus Storage Manager software. Interestingly, this SSD is one of the few Aorus-branded products that doesn’t come with RGB lighting (though we doubt that’s a primary concern of anyone looking at this offering). 

The M.2 SSDs inside the unit are built with Toshiba BiSC4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND, which enable a transfer rate of up to 800 MTps. The NAND on each SSD is brought together by a Phison PS5016-E16 controller. Durability is rated at 3,600 TBW per 2TB SSD. Because we expect this to be a rather costly purchase that any user would want to last, it’s fortunate Gigabyte offers a 5-year warranty with it.

This all sounds good, but is there is a caveat. As noted, the Aorus Gen4 AIC SSD 8TB runs on PCIe 4.0. So the only platform you can currently use this with is an an AMD X570 motherboard paired with an AMD Ryzen 3000 CPU. The Ryzen 3000 CPUs have 24 PCIe lanes – four of which are downstream to the chipset. Consequently, from the 20 lanes left, you’d eat up 16 with the Aorus SSD. That leaves only 4 lanes, which may be enough for a graphics card (given that PCIe 4.0 is effectively twice as fast as PCIe 3.0), but the PCIe 4.0 interface is so new it’s hard to know for sure without testing. 

Thankfully, the rumor mill has been working hard and the TRX40 platform for AMD’s Ryzen 3000 Threadrippper CPUs is set to launch next month. Given that the CPUs will carry similar specs as AMD’s Epyc line of CPUs, which have 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, we’re confident that the Ryzen 3000 Threadripper will have a sufficient number of lanes for utilizing Gigabyte’s new Aorus Gen4 AIC SSD 8TB.

No pricing has been revealed yet.