A new rumor about Nvidia's Pascal chips and some evident info coming from AMD.

FOUR DIFFERENT NVIDIA PASCAL GRAPHICS CARDS SPOTTED

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-graphics-cards-spotted/

All four Nvidia graphics boards in question are described as “COMPUTER GRAPHICS CARDS”. However, all four carry very similar per unit values and as such we could be looking only at the circuit boards and not necessarily graphics cards but there’s really no way of telling for sure.

All four boards start with the same 699 serial number and the earliest record of a board carrying that serial number appears in December. So we know that we’re looking at Nvidia graphics boards that are new and did not exist at any point before December. This could potentially explain Pascal’s absence from CES and why Nvidia chose to showcase the Pascal Drive PX2 module with Maxwell GPUs instead.

AMD’S POLARIS GRAPHIC CARDS WILL MAKE THE ‘MINIMUM VR SPEC’ MORE AFFORDABLE FOR EVERYONE – TARGETING PRICE POINTS BELOW $349

http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-architecture-vr-minimum-spec/

The shift to 14nm becomes highly significant in this aspect. Not only does the die shrink allow for more transistors to be placed on the same surface area, it increases economies of scale – lowering cost. Not only that but the maturity of the process (14nm LPP has a 20nm backbone) would allow good yields and more volume to be shipped. AMD hopes to exercise this advantage by lowering the cost of “minimum spec VR” to a point below the $349 mark – making VR available to everyone and increasing the Total Available Market for VR.

"AMD has just completed the shrink to 14 nanometer [with Polaris Architecture]. What this means is, and this is where it comes home to everyone in this room, is that we can produce GPUs that will run the minimum spec of VR at a lower cost, in larger volume, consuming less power and running faster. That means in the second half of this year and going forward more people will be able to run those headsets which will make a larger for everybody in the room [VR Industry]. – "
AMD’s Roy Taylor

I lavel this story as a "no sh!t, Sherlock" kind of story. I mean, if today's cards for VR are $349 and the new ones will be faster, it's obvious that the entry cost has to be lower, right?

I really wish next year would come sooner so I can build a new CPU/GPU build, I also hope they bring enough power for their no doubt insane pricing.

Also I got paid so I should probably order that AOC monitor.

I finally figured out what was wrong ...

I'm enjoying my new build. I have the CPU overclocked to 4.5Ghz, it's super fast ...

I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the price of the new components, not because I belive that they'll be cheaper, but because I think the'll be about the same as current hardware.

Let's remember this little slide:

Yes, it's true that we're a bit late, but the important point is that cost won't go up. So I With that and t

Because of that, and also because I think that the launch cards won't have large chips like those inside the 980Ti/Titan X or the Fury cards, I believe that prices will mostly remain the same.

Even more, if AMD's Zen does actually perform as they say, we could see CPU prices going a bit down (I'm looking at you, Intel's i7 & K chips!)

fatslob-:O said: I finally figured out what was wrong ... I'm enjoying my new build. I have the CPU overclocked to 4.5Ghz, it's super fast ...

A new build is always exciting .

Well if I remember correctly I got my 980 for around the £400 mark, is it safe to say the enw flagships will cost that much?. £400 is the absolute max I'm willing to spend ona  single GPU, if the new line is £600+ then I'm just going to skip the new build or go AMD if they do things cheaper but still retain the power.

It's hard to say as the $ or € to £ conversions never makes sense, but I don't see them going much higher than those £400.

Of course it will also depend on when they launch. If AMD launches first and Nvidia feels like they have better hardware, they won't hesitate to price it higher. But if it's on par, then they'll be more reasonable.

WCCFTech has posted some interesting news/rumors that are worth posting:

XFX’S LATEST RADEON R9 380 CRIMSON EDITION UNLOCKS TO A FULL R9 380X “TONGA XT” WITH BIOS SWITCH

http://wccftech.com/xfx-r9-380-crimson-edition-unlock/

XFX has launched their latest Radeon R9 380 Crimson edition graphics card which is exclusively made for the Chinese market.

Almost every high-end or custom graphics card features a dual/triple BIOS design these days. Accessed by a small switch that is ideally located on the PCB, these BIOS allows users to save custom overclock profile, use factory configured settings for clock speeds / fan speeds or revert back to a stock profile if overclocking goes haywire. We have seen manufacturers store OC profiles in a second “OC BIOS” before but XFX went one step ahead and added a custom profile that let’s you unlock the card to a full R9 380X graphics card for the price of a custom Radeon R9 380 graphics board.

>>Why do these cool things launch only in China? Something like that would be great to hae here .

eBay LISTING OF 18 CORE Xeon E5-2600 V4 Broadwell-EP ES PROCESSOR SPOTTED – SELLING FOR $999 US, COMPATIBLE WITH X99 MOTHERBOARDS

http://wccftech.com/ebay-xeon-e5-2600-v4-broadwell-ep-listing/

The listing on eBay shows a 18 core chip with 36 threads since it is a hyper-threaded processor. The chip clocks in at a base clock of 2.20 GHz with a maximum turbo frequency of 3.0 GHz and 2.60 GHz across all cores. Intel’s Xeon E5-2600 V4 lineup is based on the company’s 14nm Broadwell architecture so there are some key change overs to the design which add to the efficiency of the new lineup.

The seller has clearly mentioned that the chip is an engineering sample but runs fine in all workloads. The stepping mentioned is A0 which means this chip is past the early sampling stages. The chip packs 2.5 MB L3 cache per core and has a total of 45 MB LLC in the die package and TDP of 145W.

The chipset support list includes X10DR series from Supermicro, X99/Z10PE series from ASUS and X99 motherboards from Gigabyte. A list of these is shown below as the seller has detailed:

• Supermicro: X10SR series with BIOS R 2.0, X10DR series with BIOS R 2.0
  
• Asus: X99 series with BIOS 2101, Sabertooth X99 with BIOS 2101, Z10PE series with BIOS 3101
  
• Gigabyte: GA-X99 series with BIOS F20

>>Anyone needs more cores/threads?

AMD 14nm FinFET POLARIS GPU SIZE LEAKS OUT – 232mm² LARGE DIE

http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-gpu-die-size-232-mm-2/

Details of AMD’s upcoming 14nm GPU have finally started leaking out. Some good detective work by the user AnarchX over at Beyond3D 3DCenter forums has revealed what appears to be the LinkedIn profile of a senior engineer at AMD. Interestingly, the engineer lists multiple projects, one of which is the Polaris die. The size of the chip will be 232mm² and (assuming the information is accurate) will constitute one tier of the Polaris architecture.

"According to the information we have about the 14nm LPP process, and based on transistor density increase, a 232mm² GPU would be roughly equivalent to a  464mm² 28nm processor – at the same TDP levels. Since we already know that AMD is going to be focusing not just on performance but power efficiency as well – this number could be be much higher, in fact we will discuss the number AMD is using below. We can however safely say that this die is more than capable of meeting the ‘minimum VR spec that AMD promises."

>>As a reference, AMD's 290/390 chips are 438 mm², so if that assumption is true and we add the performance increases from the new architecture and other improvements, get we a chip that will bring a nice improvement in performance and power consumption while also leaving room for bigger chips down the road (either for the Fury brand or a 5x0 series)

Gaming laptop, not a custom built rig.

(I jest though).

I would also like to seriously suggest that a gaming laptop probably isn't the best route to take towards PC gaming, I know ebcause I tried it for a few years in the past and it didn't really go as well as the prebuilts I also had back then.

I know there is the incentive to get that desktop GPU connected to your laptop idea but really that just adds to the overall expensies that could be added towards a custom rig in the end anwyay.

I'm probably going to sound like a broken record but I honestly put up with low end settings with my PC gaming for a very long time and now I;ve finally gotten out of that low area, I never really want to go back. I know PC gaming is all about options but I honestly look at it as options but also a means to try evolving and getting away from constantly being stuck on medium to low settings all the time. I mean I would easily suggest going with a console if that's a new to PC gamers overall plan for their entire life. (trying not to sound cynical but that's how I see it)