Video Cards

Source: Guru3D

If you have read our three reviews yesterday, you will have noticed that the factory tweaked versions of the 5600 XT cards received BIOS updates that make them substantially faster.

NVIDIA lowered RTX 2060 pricing to 299 USD. And there’s where AMD made an 180 degree turn and pretty much created two separated SKUs for the 5600 XT. That would be the reference product, and then the factory tweaked (OC models) with greatly enhanced specs like a 180 Watt power envelope (opposed to 150W), an increase of the maximum turbo clock as well as a bump in GDDR6 memory data-rate going from 12 towards 14 Gbps.

Some board obviously already made retail prior to that BIOS update. Below you can see a collection of board partner links, with the BIOS updates and flash utilities.

• GIGABYTE RX 5600 XT Gaming OC New FA0 BIOS Update
• PowerColor RX 5600 XT Unleashed BIOS
• MSI Dragon Center (firmware update pushes through this software)
• ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 | ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D2 | ASRock RX 5600 XT Challenger D
• Sapphire Pulse BIOS (look for the support -> vBIOS firmware update on the page)
• XFX Thicc II Pro 1460/1620 MHz 1560/1620 MHz
• XFX Thicc III Pro 1420/1600 MHz 1615/1750 MHz

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.3 beta drivers. These drivers add support for the new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card that’s hitting the shelves today; in addition to fixing a handful issues. To begin with, the drivers address a display signal loss noticed when performing parallel actions such as web browsing, gaming or watching video. Game crashes related to Nioh, Dragon Quest Builders 2, WWE 2K20, Dead or Alive 6 and Atelier Ryza were fixed. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus now appears correctly in Radeon Software. Text overflow in some UI elements have been fixed. Loss of fan-tuning settings when switching between available GPUs has been fixed. Another kind of intermittent black screen on desktop idling for extended periods has been fixed.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.3 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT is a third Navi-10 desktop model in RX 5000 lineup . This card features 2304 Stream Processors, so just as many as RX 5700 non-XT. This is undoubtedly, a very interesting decision by AMD, especially considering the price.

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT features 6GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit interface. The official specs put 12 Gbps memory cap on the cards, but board partners can now boost that number to 14 Gbps. This increases the bandwidth from 288 Gb/s to 336 Gb/s,

The RX 5600 XT has a game clock of 1375 MHz. The official boost clock is 1560 MHz, but again, AIB cards will go up to 1750 MHz, depending on a cooling solution and pre-configured graphics power. The TBP for 5600XT is officially 150W but there are models going up to 180W (Gigabyte Gaming OC).

The RX 5600 XT is available starting from today (January 21st) for 279 USD but of course, custom models will cost slightly more (Thanks Videocardz).

The hardware review embargo has been lifted on the Radeon RX 5600 XT,  so a number of reviews are now available, reviewing cards from AMD’s add-in board partners.  We have gathered up some of these reviews, which you can check out via the links below.

• ANANDTECH - Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse
• GURU3D - Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC
• GURU3D - ASUS STRIX Radeon RX 5600 XT TOP
• OVERCLOCKERS -  XFX RX 5600 XT Thick II Pro
• THINKCOMPUTERS - MSI RX 5600 XT Gaming X
• ETEKNIX - ASUS TUF Gaming RX 5600 XT OC

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA late Thursday released the GeForce 442.01 Hotfix driver. A hotfix driver is that which is pushed out to correct glaring bugs with the driver immediately, and tend to have much shorter change-logs than beta or WHQL releases. The driver fixes a bug with “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” streaming using StreamLabs OBS randomly stopping. Also fixed is a bug with “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine,” where a game-crash is observed in a specific cutscene. Lastly a minor stutter in SLI machines with G-Sync enabled has been fixed. The driver is otherwise identical to GeForce 441.87.

You can download the GeForce 442.01 Hotfix drivers via GeForce.com.

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD has released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.1.2 beta is released to the main driver update channel, and adds support for the new Vulkan 1.2 graphics API. This is in comparison to the GeForce 441.99 drivers with Vulkan 1.2, which were released as a “developer beta.” In addition, the drivers add optimization for “Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.” Among the two fixed issues with this releases are Unreal Engine 4 titles such as “KovaaK 2.0: The Meta,” “Tetris Effect” and “Snooker 19″ failing to launch with Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020; and a bug where single-display systems running Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards experience intermittent reboots when the system is left idle on the desktop.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.2 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

Source: TechPowerUp!

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the release of the Vulkan 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Multiple GPU vendors have certified conformant implementations, and significant open source tooling is expected during January 2020.

Vulkan continues to evolve by listening to developer needs, shipping new functionality as extensions, and then consolidating extensions that receive positive developer feedback into a unified core API specification. Carefully selected API features are made optional to enable market-focused implementations. Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications, including: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA today released its first developer beta drivers that support the new Vulkan 1.2 3D graphics API. Labeled GeForce 441.99, under the R440-series, the drivers extend Vulkan 1.2 support to all NVIDIA graphics architectures going back to “Kepler.” That would include GTX 600/700-series “Kepler,” GTX 700/900-series “Maxwell,” GTX 10-series “Pascal,” and GTX 16/RTX 20-series “Turing,” along with TITAN and Quadro graphics cards based on these architectures. NVIDIA states that its API support for Vulkan 1.2 is “full,” including including support for timeline semaphores, descriptor indexing, buffer device address and SPIR-V 1.5 features.

You can download the GeForce Software 441.91 Beta drivers via GeForce.com.

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.1.1 Beta comes with follows up on the previous 19.12.3 release with an equally long list of fixes and stability improvements in the wake of AMD radically updating its driver software, particularly the Radeon Software application. Before that, 20.1.1 includes performance optimization for “Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.” The company has also fixed SETI@Home result errors when using RX 5700 series GPUs. To begin with, AMD removed audible beeps for toggling of Radeon Chill, Boost, and Anti-Lag features (the beep is now optional). Radeon ReLive indication on screen timer during recordings has been disabled by default. V-sync settings now hide or disappear when Enhanced Sync is enabled, so as to not conflict with it and destabilize your gaming session. ReLive experiencing performance issues with high-resolution cameras has also been addressed. Radeon Game Advisor causing in-game CPU usage spikes has also been resolved. Issues with software updates through Radeon Software have been fixed. Also fixed is abnormal CPU usage with DuplicateDesktop process when gaming. A Radeon Software (application) crash when resuming from machine sleep has been fixed.

Radeon Software Overlay toast message persisting even when disabled, has been fixed. Stuttering issues with “Lost Ark” have been fixed. Custom stream hotkey failing to stream with Radeon ReLive has been fixed. Radeon R9 200, R9 300, and R9 Fury series GPUs experience instability in a number of games with over 120 Hz refresh-rates. This has been fixed. MJPEG video payback on RX 5700 series experiencing a green tint when viewed with WMP or Movies & TV application has been fixed. “MechWarrior 5″ crashing with DXGI dialog error when using FreeSync displays over HDMI, has been fixed. DouYu live streaming with hardware-acceleration on RX 5700 series was experiencing display corruption, which has been fixed. Excessive fog/smoke effects in “Trials Rising” has been fixed. Right-eye display corruption with “Boneworks” VR has been fixed. “Resident Evil 2″ flashing screen at start up in DirectX 12 mode has also been fixed.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD has posted the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 19.12.3 ships with a “focus on stability improvements,” according to Terry Makedon, who heads the company’s software strategy and user-experience. The company addressed close to two dozen issues related to the first Adrenalin 2020 Edition release (version 19.12.2). To begin with game and boost clocks incorrectly reporting for RX 5500 XT has been fixed. A bug with the installing failing to detect AMD graphics hardware when a certain WiFi adapter is enabled in the system has been fixed. A “Rocket League” application crash when task-switching has been fixed. The Radeon Overlay shortcut appearing in fullscreen 3D apps even after disabling Overlay, has been fixed.

A bug with streaming, where audio from custom scenes continues to play after recording has stopped, is fixed. The volume of the installer’s splash screen audio has been reduced. Bugs with tessellation-related settings in Radeon Software have been fixed. ReLive missing or not being available for installation on some machines with Hyper-V enabled, has been fixed. Also fixed are buges related to newly added game profiles failing to enable. Performing an auto-update from Adrenalin 2019 (19.12.1 and older) to Adrenalin 2020 fails with an error code, which has been fixed now. Radeon Chill experience with “gaming mice” has been fixed. Stuttering observed when switching between borderless to fullscreen display modes in some games with Overlay enabled, has been fixed.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 19.12.3 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

AMD today announced the Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card.  The new Radeon RX 5500 XT has launched exclusively through its add-in board partners. A large number of reviews are now available, and we have gathered up some of these reviews, which you can check out via the links below.

• GURU3D - MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT GamingX 8GB
• GURU3D - ASUS Dual Radeon RX 5500 XT EVO 8GB
• GURU3D - PowerColor Radeon RX 5500 XT Red Dragon 8GB
• GURU3D - Gigabyte Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming 8GB
• GURU3D - Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB
• TECHPOWERUP! - Sapphire Radeon RX 5500 XT Pulse 4 GB
• TECHPOWERUP! - MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X 8 GB
• ANANDTECH - Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB
• KITGURU - ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger OC 8GB