NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series has been caught up in a major controversy ever since the lineup launched. A botched launch for both RTX 3080 & RTX 3090 graphics cards was soon followed by user reports where several cards were crashing during gaming. It was soon highlighted that the cause of these issues could be related to the GPUs boosting algorithm but more recent reports suggest that the issue could have more to do with the hardware design that AIB[*] partners have implemented on their custom products. NVIDIA has now come forward with an official statement regarding the matter.
[...] In the statement, NVIDIA specifically states that their partner cards are based on custom designs and that they work very closely with them during the whole design/test process. NVIDIA does give AIBs reference specs to follow and gives them certain guidelines for designing customized boards. That does include the limits defined for voltages, power, and clock speeds. NVIDIA goes on to state that there's no specific SP-CAP / MLCC grouping that can be defined for all cards since AIB designs vary compared to each other. But NVIDIA also states that the number of SP-CAP / MLCC groupings are also not indicative of quality.
[...] In our previous report, it was pointed that the GeForce RTX 30 series generally crashed when it hits a certain boost clock above 2.0 GHz. Some users also found out that cards with full SP-CAP layouts (Conductive Polymer Tantalum Solid Capacitors) were generating more issues compared to boards that either use a combination of SP-CAP / MLCCs (Multilayer Ceramic Chip Capacitor) or an entire MLCC design.
[*] AIB: "Add In Board". Cf: Terminology: All graphics cards are AIB.
See also: EVGA Says Nvidia RTX 3080 Cap Issues Caused Crashes, Confirms Stability Issues
Previously: Nvidia Announces RTX 30-Series "Ampere" GPUs
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Nvidia has announced its latest generation of gaming-oriented GPUs, based on the "Ampere" microarchitecture on a customized Samsung "8nm" process node.
The GeForce RTX 3080 ($700) has 10 GB of GDDR6X VRAM and will be released on September 17. TDP is up significantly, at 320 Watts compared to 215 Watts for the RTX 2080. The GeForce RTX 3070 ($500) has 8 GB of GDDR6 and a TDP of 220 Watts. The GeForce RTX 3090 ($1500) is the top card so far with a whopping 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM. The GPU is physically much larger than the other two models and it has a 350 Watt TDP.
Nvidia's performance benchmarks should be treated with caution, since the company is often using ray-tracing and/or DLSS upscaling in its comparisons. But the RTX 3070 will outperform the RTX 2080 Ti at less than half the launch price, as it has 35% more CUDA cores at higher clock speeds.
Nvidia also announced some new features such as Nvidia Reflex (4m53s video), Broadcast, Omniverse Machinima, and RTX IO. Nvidia Broadcast includes AI-derived tools intended for live streamers. RTX Voice can filter out background noises, greenscreen effects can be applied without the need for a real greenscreen, and an autoframing feature can keep the streamer centered in frame while they are moving. Nvidia RTX IO appears to be Nvidia's response to the next-generation consoles' use of fast SSDs and dedicated data decompression.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series | Official Launch Event (39m29s video)
Previously: Micron Accidentally Confirms GDDR6X Memory, and Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 29 2020, @03:06AM (1 child)
Not all of them. The extremely limited number of "Founders Edition" GPUs are made (or at least designed) by Nvidia.
One theory is that Nvidia kept information away from the AIB partners until the last minute, resulting in a rush to manufacture these GPUs and the resulting problems. Or maybe it comes down to power consumption being way up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 29 2020, @12:59PM
Power consumption is usually the problem - not just total amps, but spike delivery.
Back in the '90s I "upgraded" to Autodesk Inventor, took the officially sponsored training, got the officially approved "best" graphics card on the market for it, installed it in the officially approved "best" system, and... on average, about once a week I would stumble into a particular manipulation of a drawing - usually a 3D rotation of a part with lots of curvy surfaces - that would hard crash my PC. I could reboot, restore, bring it right to the same point again, and the same operation would reliably crash the PC every single time. Decided it was a bus power failure - this was just before graphics cards started getting their own dedicated power connections.
Solution? 1) save often, particularly before rotating the view of a complex part, and 2) rotate differently the 2nd time, that usually worked.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 29 2020, @03:54AM (1 child)
Early adopters are those enthusiastic enough to pay through their nose and act as beta testers. I can afford to wait.
(I don't plan to be in the first few millions to take the first release of a COVID vaccine either, I can afford to WFH. I can even offer an altruistic motivation for doing so: it is the first responders that need the vaccine more than me; I'd be willing to financially sponsor the cost of the vaccine for some of them, if they want to have a go)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 29 2020, @01:51PM
Yeah, and somebody has to be around to reboot civilization after the zombie apocalypse. ;->
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29 2020, @06:40AM
Is this more takyone stuff about life extension, or playing games in that extended life? Boring! Games are for Children. Adults have more important things to do, like research, and World of Warcrap!! But if SN is reduced to yet another Kotaku, with exaeta hentai, so be it. I, for one, reject our new pervert overlords!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29 2020, @05:12PM
Yet the cards seem to work perfectly fine under Linux:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GearSeekers/status/1310427073337384962 [twitter.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29 2020, @06:19PM
that's what you vile whores get for buying Nvidia.