Monthly Archives: September 2020

MSI has just announced the release of the AMD Combo PI V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS Firmware which adds offers improved support and compatibility with existing and next-generation Ryzen processors. AMD X570 chipset motherboards will be receiving the BIOS update first followed by B550 & A520 chipset-based motherboards.

MSI Rolls Out AMD Combo PI V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS Firmware For Its AM4 Lineup, Optimized Compatibility With Existing & Next-Gen Ryzen CPUs

According to MSI’s blog post, the AMD Combo PI V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS update will release in four phases A total of 10 MSI X570 motherboards will be receiving the BIOS update starting today while B550 & additional X570 motherboards will be added to the support list by the middle of October. MSI will also have the BIOS Firmware ready for its A520 series motherboards by end of October while MSI plans to phase out the BETA release with the official MP BIOS starting in early November.

Playstation 5 Backward Compatibility New Details, Forced Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers and More Revealed Through Store Website Source Code

This will be around the same time when AMD’s next-generation Ryzen 5000 “Vermeer” CPUs based on the new Zen 3 core architecture are launched. As for features of the new Combo PI V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS Firmware, you can read them below:

• Optimized compatibility for AMD Ryzen 3000-Series and Ryzen 4000 G-Series Desktop Processors and future AM4 socket processors
• Solve some specific OC failure issues
• Update SMU module
• Optimized DDR4 memory overclocking solution

MSI X570/B550 Motherboards With AMD Combo PI V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS:

Aside from just offering optimized compatibility for existing and next-generation AMD Ryzen CPUs, the new BIOS Firmware also improves overclocking support, specifically DDR4 OC. There is also a range of fixes including some overclocking specific failures that users might have encountered when performing manual overclocks. We will keep you updated as more information is revealed regarding support for AMD’s next-generation Zen 3 based Vermeer CPUs for 500-series boards. AMD will officially be lifting the curtains of its Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 CPU lineup on the 8th of October that comes next week.

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.

NVIDIA Officially Responds To GeForce RTX 30 Series Issues: SP-CAP vs MLCC Groupings Vary Depending on Design & Not Indicative of Quality

There’s more than one part to this story so let’s start with what NVIDIA has to officially say on the matter. The statement was given to PCWorld’s Senior Editor, Brad Chacos, and is as follows:

OnePlus Officially Discounts Prices of Its Latest OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro

“Regarding partner board designs, our partners regularly customize their designs and we work closely with them in the process. The appropriate number of SP-CAP vs. MLCC groupings can vary depending on the design and is not necessarily indicative of quality.”

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.

There have been recent reports suggesting that MLCC is the way to go with AIB cards as they offer the most stable experience but NVIDIA here is saying otherwise. The discussion of SP-CAP /MLCC groupings started when Igor Wallossek from Igor’s Lab posted in his technical report that the caps might be a possible reason behind the crashes that users were facing.

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.

SP-CAP / SP-CAP & MLCC Groupings on Various GeForce RTX 30 AIB Cards (Image Credits: Igor’s Lab):

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies Confirmed, Full Reveal Coming This Week

Differences Between SP-CAP & MLCC Capacitors:

The difference between the SP-CAP & MLCC capacitors is vast and Videocardz has explained it in a simpler way as stated below:

• The MLCC is cheap and small, they operate at current ratings, voltages, and temperates, but they are prone to cracking and piezo effects, they also have bad temperature characteristics.
• The SP-CAP is bigger and has lower voltage ratings and is worse at high frequencies. They are however stronger and not prone to cracking, they also have no piezo effects, SP-CAPs should also operate better at higher temperatures.

Since this discovery, there have been statements from various AIBs on the matter. We also have had several AIBs who have told us that they believe that the issue is mostly a hardware flaw that they’re rectifying while others believe that it can be solved through a driver fix but that would lead to lower clocks and voltages that could slightly affect the overall performance of the card. However, that remains to be seen. The following are the statements from the AIBs:

EVGA

Recently there has been some discussion about the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 series.

During our mass production QC testing we discovered a full 6 SP-CAPs solution cannot pass the real world applications testing. It took almost a week of R&D effort to find the cause and reduce the SP-CAPs to 4 and add 20 MLCC caps prior to shipping production boards, this is why the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 series was delayed at launch. There were no 6 SP-CAP production EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 boards shipped.

But, due to the time crunch, some of the reviewers were sent a pre-production version with 6 SP-CAPs, we are working with those reviewers directly to replace their boards with production versions.
EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 series with 5 SP-CAPs + 10 MLCC solution is matched with the XC3 spec without issues.

Also note that we have updated the product pictures at EVGA.com to reflect the production components that shipped to gamers and enthusiasts since day 1 of product launch. Once you receive the card you can compare for yourself, EVGA stands behind its products!
— Jacob Freeman, EVGA Forums

ZOTAC

Regarding the recent RTX 3080 issue, the investigation is undergoing and we will update you shortly. For those who had purchased our RTX 3090/3080 Trinity, please submit the form at the link below. We will keep in touch with you personally.

Source

GALAX (KFA2 in European Market)

About the SP-CAP capacitors and MLCC capacitors of GALAXY RTX 3080/3090 products

Dear player friends:

Hello, everyone. Recently, many users have come to inquire about the specific usage of the capacitors on the back of the GALAXY RTX 3080/3090 series of graphics chips. After verification, about the RTX 3080/3090 released by GALAXY. The capacitors used on the back of the model chip are as follows:

1. GALAXY RTX 3080 Heijiang/Metal Master product, the number of SP-CAP capacitors on the back of the chip: 5, the number of MLCC capacitors: a set of 10. This version is currently on sale and is the original commercial version.

2. GALAXY RTX 3090 General/Metal Master product, the number of SP-CAP capacitors on the back of the chip: 4, the number of MLCC capacitors: two groups of 20. This version is currently on sale and is the original commercial version.

3. GALAX RTX 3090 GAMER trial production samples, currently only 6 pieces are in the hands of the media and KOL. The first batch of this sample uses 6 SP-CAP capacitors. After confirmation, the GAMER products officially produced and sold will be used for capacitor materials. Make optimization improvements. Note: This product is not currently on sale.

I am very grateful to the players and friends for their support and love to GALAXY. GALAXY is also consistent in its pursuit of product quality. It is our glorious mission to provide you with better and stronger hardware. In addition, the current full range of GALAXY graphics card products support three-year warranty and personal warranty service. If you have other doubts or questions, please feel free to leave us a message to discuss, thank you!
Source

GAINWARD

Announcement on SP-CAP Capacitors and MLCC Capacitors of Gainsun 30 Series Graphics Card Products

Dear Gainward consumer players:

Thanks to the friends who bought and supported Gainward. Recently, we received the voice of market players’ inquiries. Many players are very concerned about our company’s just released 30 series products. Regarding the specific usage of the capacitors on the back of the chip, we hereby explain the situation:

All the RTX 3080 10GB graphics cards released by Gainward currently use 5 SP-CAP capacitors on the back of the chip and 10 MLCC capacitors. The versions currently on the market are all the original commercial versions.

All the RTX 3090 graphics cards released by Gainward currently use 4 SP-CAP capacitors on the back of the chip and 20 MLCC capacitors. The versions currently on the market are all the original commercial versions.

As a long-term AIC partner of Nvidia, Gainward has always been adhering to the product standard to design and produce completely according to Nvidia’s requirements. Therefore, currently players are concerned about the problem of capacitors and new product failures on the Internet. Currently Gainward has not generated such feedback. .

In addition, all Gainward graphics card products support three-year warranty and personal warranty service. Thank you consumers and players for your support and love to Gainward.
Source

Were AIBs Constrained By Time & Rushed To Launch Their Custom Designs?

In the meantime, MSI and ASUS have started updating their product pages for the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards with retail board pictures. Previously, the product pages had pictures from the pre-production models which were still using older designs with a different SP-CAP /MLCC layout. The new ones show an increased number of MLCC caps on the back then before.

We know for a fact that several AIBs were finalizing clock speeds even after the GeForce RTX 3080 was announced and clock speeds for RTX 3080 custom variants were revealed just a few weeks prior to launch. So it could be that AIBs didn’t get the time they needed to evaluate the clock speeds extensively or even their board designs. The same is true for the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3070 custom models since their clock speeds have not been finalized yet either.

Following are the GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio, GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X, and ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 pictures from before and after showcasing the updated layouts on the back of the PCB (Image Credits: Videocardz):

NVIDIA’s New Driver Offers A Preliminary Fix While AIBs Evaluate Their Custom Designs With The First NVIDIA Test Drivers

There have also been reports that users are facing fewer issues after installing the new GeForce 456.55 drivers compared to the older ones on the same cards. Users have stated that their cards run at lower clock speeds but are more stable and don’t spike as often and as high as they were before. So if you were one of the users facing crashes or issues with the cards, you can try out the new drivers. The cards we were running (MSI RTX 3080 / RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio) didn’t produce any issues while our tests before and the new drivers hardly impact the clock speeds of the cards.

With that said, AIBs have confirmed to me that they are indeed working with the first test drivers from NVIDIA. The 456.55 release doesn’t specifically state any fixes for the issues and only adds in fixes for a certain number of games. NVIDIA might have introduced a preliminary measure to halt the crashes for now but a more fine-tuned approach in the form of a driver is still a couple of days away. We will keep you posted within this article for any more information we get related to the RTX 30 series issues.

KINGPIN himself has given us a first look at the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card from EVGA, the GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hybrid. The graphics card features a design that is made solely for enthusiasts and overclockers. KINGPIN even demonstrated the insane overclocking potential of the card last week by breaking the 3DMark Port Royal world record with a massive 2580 MHz overclock on the same card.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hybrid Pictured, 360mm AIO Liquid Cooler For This Beast Of A Card

There are definitely a lot of interesting details to talk about regarding the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hybrid. We already got to see how the card looks like when EVGA officially announced its RTX 30 series lineup but other details have been kept a secret. Well, it looks like KINGPIN just went ahead and posted the first full picture of the card itself.

EVGA’s GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Shatters 3DMark Port Royal World Record, Overclocked To An Insane 2580 MHz

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN Hybrid will be the flagship design in the GeForce RTX 30 line from the company. It features a dual-slot design with a wide PCB that is covered by the massive shroud. The wide PCB is used to accommodate more electrical components & a beast of circuitry that is used to power this card. The card features a matte black shroud with mesh grills at the front and a large 9 blade fan that pushes air through the internal assembly.

The heatsink for the GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN consists of a large copper block that covers the electrical components while the GPU sits underneath the copper cold-plate of the pump. The card is a hybrid design that makes full use of liquid cooling and is attached to a 360mm radiator with three 120mm fans included. This should allow for some cool operating temperatures whether running at stock or overclocked.

Another interesting feature of the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 KINGPIN graphics card is the small LCD display which can be seen on the side by the end of the shroud. This LCD should provide some useful functionality and maybe even some tuning options to users. In teaser shorts, it can be seen that the card will feature three 8-pin power connectors featured on the back of the PCB.

Display outputs include the standard three DP and a single HDMI 2.1 ports. There’s no word on the pricing and availability yet but we can definitely see the card being a hit amongst overclockers and enthusiasts when it launches.

NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series launched to a ton of fanfare and jaw-dropping levels of performance claims and specifications – but somewhere between all the hype and third-party reviews, the promised doubling in performance vanished without a trace. Today, we are going to be investigating a very interesting phenomenon plaguing  NVIDIA GPUs and why not everything is as it seems. Nothing is presented as the gospel truth for you to believe and you are encouraged to use your own judgment according to taste.

NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series has more than twice the TFLOPs, so where did all the performance go?

The argument is simple, Jensen promised twice the graphics power in Ampere GPUs so we should see roughly twice the shading performance in most titles (without any bells and whistles like DLSS or RTX). This, most curiously, isn’t happening. In fact, the RTX 3090 is anywhere from 30% to 50% faster in shading performance in gaming titles than the RTX 2080 Ti even when it more than twice the number of shading cores. TFLOPs is, after all, simply a function of shading clocks multiplied by the clock speed. Somewhere, somehow, performance is being lost.

One of three things is happening:

1. The lone shading core of Ampere is somehow inferior to Turing and the cards can’t actually deliver that FP32 TFLOPs number (in other words Jensen lied).
2. There is something wrong in the bios/microcode or low-level drivers of the card
3. The high-level drivers / gaming engines / software stacks can’t scale up to properly utilize the mass of shading cores present in Ampere cards.

Fortunately for us, this is a problem that we can easily investigate using the scientific method. If the Ampere cards’ shader cores are somehow inferior to Turing, then we should not be able to get twice the FP32 performance using *any* application. Simple right? If however, we can get the claimed performance on *any* application then it becomes slightly tricky. While it would absolve the hardware of any blame, we would then need to find whether the software stack/high-level drivers are at fault or whether its a microcode issue. While you can resolve hardware vs software with a very high level of certainty, you cannot do the same for the software side. You can, however, make a very good guess. Our logic flow diagram is as follows:

Rendering applications are designed to use a ton of graphics horsepower.  In other words, their software is coded to scale exponentially more than games (there have actually been instances where games refused to work on core counts higher than 16 in the past). If *a* rendering application can demonstrate the doubling in performance than the hardware is not to blame. The cores aren’t inferior. If *all* rendering applications can take full advantage then the low-level driver stack isn’t to blame either. This would point the finger at APIs like DirectX, GameReady drivers, and the actual code of gaming engines. So without any further ado, let’s take a look.

VRAY is one of the most shading intensive benchmarks for GPUs. It is essentially the Cinebench for GPUs. It also helps that the program is optimized for CUDA architecture so represents a “best case” scenario for NVIDIA cards. If the Ampere series can’t deliver the doubling in performance here, it will not do so anywhere else. The RTX 3090 in VRAY achieves more than twice the shading performance of the RTX 2080 Ti quite easily. Remember our flow diagram?

Since we have a program that can actually output double the performance in a ‘real world’ workload, it obviously means that Jensen wasn’t lying and the RTX 30 series is actually capable of the claimed performance figures – at least as far as the hardware goes. So we know now that performance is being lost on the software side somewhere. Interestingly, Octone scaled a little worse than VRAY – which is slight evidence for lack of low-level drivers. Generally, however, rendering applications scaled a lot more smoothly than gaming applications.

We took a panel of 11 games. We wanted to test games on shading performance only, no DLSS, and no RTX. There wasn’t a particular methodology to picking the titles – we just benched the games we had lying around. We found that the RTX 3090 was on avg 33% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti. This means, for the most part, the card is acting like a 23.5 TFLOPs GPU.  Performance is obviously taking a major hit as we move from rendering applications to games. There is a vast differential between the performance targets the RTX series should be hitting and the one its actually outputting. Here, however, we can only guess. Since there is a lot of fluctuation between various games, game engine scaling is obviously a factor and the drivers don’t appear to be capable of fully taking advantage of the 10,000+ cores that the RTX 3090 possesses.

So what does this mean? Software bottleneck, fine wine and the amazing world of no negative performance scaling in lineups

Because the problem with the RTX 30 series is very obviously one that is based in software (NVIDIA quite literally rolled out a GPU so powerful that current software cannot take advantage of it), it is a very good problem to have. AMD GPUs have always been praised for being “fine wine”. We posit that NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series is going to be the mother of all fine wines. The level of performance enhancement we expect to come for these cards through software in the year to come will be phenomenal. As game drivers, APIs, and game engines catch up in scaling and learn how to deal with the metric butt-ton (pardon my language) of shading cores present in these cards, and DLSS matures as a technology, you are not only going to get close to the 2x performance levels – but eventually, exceed them.

While it is unfortunate that all this performance isn’t usable on day one, this might not be entirely NVIDIA’s fault (remember, we only the problem is on the software side, we don’t know for sure whether the drivers or game engines or the API is to blame for the performance loss) and one thing is for sure: you will see chunks of this performance get unlocked in the months to come as the software side matures. In other words, you are looking at the first NVIDIA Fine Wine. While previous generations usually had their full performance unlocked on day one, NVIDIA RTX 30 series does not and you would do well to remember that when making any purchasing decisions.

Fine wine aside, this also has another very interesting side effect. I expect next to no negative performance scaling as we move down the roster. Because the performance of the RTX 30 series is essentially being software-bottlenecked and the parameter around which the bottleneck is revolving appears to be the number of cores, this should mean that less powerful cards are going to experience significantly less bottlenecking (and therefore higher scaling). In fact, I am going to make a prediction: the RTX 3060 Ti for example (with 512 more cores than the RTX 2080 Ti) should experience much better scaling than its elder brothers and still beat the RTX 2080 Ti! The less the core count, the better the scaling essentially.

While this situation represents uncharted territory for NVIDIA, we think this is a good problem to have. Just like AMD’s introduction of multiple core count CPUs forced game engines to support more than 16 cores, NVIDIAs aggressive approach with core count should force the software side to catch up with scaling as well. So over the next year, I expect RTX 30 owners will get software updates that will drastically increase performance.