It seems like hoarders of GPU-based crypto-mining cards hoping for mining to return, have relented, causing a deluge of cards that need to be somehow sold. Chinese off-brand VGA vendors have netted volumes of such cards, and with a little bit of retrofitting, have repurposed them into usable gaming graphics cards. Mining cards tend to be "headless," in that they lack display connectors and SMDs needed to drive the display I/O. At least two examples of such cards surfaced, which include "RTX 3080 20 GB Blower AI" and "Radeon RX 580 16 GB." Repurposed mining cards are given a new display I/O if they're missing one, a new cooler (since the mining card's older cooler would've been worn out from the rigors of its past life), and made to look "new," with some PCB cleaning. Such cards are frequently popping up on Chinese marketplaces such as AliExpress.

AMD on Monday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 21.10.2 beta comes with optimization for "The Riftbreaker," and "Back 4 Blood." The company seems to be fixing a lot of driver-timeout bugs off late, and the latest fixes surround "Assassins Creed Origins" on certain GPUs based on the "Polaris" architecture. A rare game-freeze with "Dota 2" in OpenGL mode, has also been fixed. A bug that forced OBS to continue running in the background even after the end of a recording session and the user closing the application, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.10.2 beta

While AMD is giving all signs of being preparing to release their latest entries into the midrange graphics card market in the form of theRX 5500 and RX 5300 series of graphics cards based on Navi, AMD's AIB partners are giving the slow burn on existing inventories of AMD's Polaris graphics chips. MSI, in this case, seems to have bet on a slight redesign of their previously-released RX 580 Armor and Armor MK2.

Changed is the color scheme - MSI went full black on this one. There's also a redesigned PCB, a redesigned I/O bracket (which keeps four display connectors), and a new cooler shroud. The heatsink's surface area also seems to have been increased, which should provide lower operating temperatures (anything beyond that, such as higher overclockability and longer lifespan, are speculations). The redesigned Armor keeps the single 8-pin PCIe power connector. No other details are available at time of writing.

Yeston have revealed an addition to their AMD graphics-card lineup in the form of the "CUTE PET" RX 580. The name implies exactly what this card is all about: a colorful, teenage theme in blue and pink with PCB cutouts that resemble a... well... Cute pet. There are RGB elements in the cut-outs for the eyes, ears and mouth of the "CUTE PET", the eyes are confused spirals built from the dual-fan cooling design, there's a blue backplate with cloudy cut-outs...

Steam's latest hardware survey has been released, and while there is no real head scratching changes, it does continue to give us a glimpse into current market trends. In regards to CPU adoption, both six-core and eight-core processors now account for 12.2% and 2.2% respectively. Looking at just Windows data shows six-core processors gained a bit over 2% market share in 3 months. Meanwhile, eight-core offerings saw a market share increase of roughly 0.5%. Speaking of processors, Intel still dominates the market capturing an 82% share. AMD, while competitive in many tasks besides gaming still only has an 18% share. Looking at the data would lead one to believe AMD is gaining back market share; however looking at previous hardware surveys their current share is mostly holding steady. Considering Intel still offers better gaming performance for the time being its unlikely AMD will make any real gains in the Steam hardware survey until gaming performance reaches true parity.

Looking at graphics cards, NVIDIA still reigns supreme holding the same 75% market share they have been clutching for quite some time. AMD, on the other hand, continues to struggle, holding a paltry 15% share with Intel and their integrated graphics still managing to hold a 10% share. Considering AMD's only release as of late was the Radeon VII it is not all that surprising to see no change here. That said, NVIDIA's dominance is indeed not a good thing as it means competition is minimal, and pricing is likely to remain high. Right now according to the Steam hardware survey, NVIDIA currently holds the first 12 spots in regards to today's most popular graphics cards, which combine for a 52.8% share. The most popular of these being the GTX 1060. You have to go all the way down to 13th place to find an AMD graphics card which just so happens to be the Radeon RX 580 with its 1.1% share. To find the next AMD graphics card you have to go all the way down to 19th where the companies Radeon R7 Graphics holds steady at 0.87%. Hopefully, AMD's upcoming Navi graphics architecture can bring them back to prominence and drive more competition.

AMD today released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.1.1 beta drivers. This latest release brings performance improvements for Fortnite of up to 4% for the Radeon RX 580 at 1080p and up to 3% for the Radeon RX Vega 64 at 1080p compared to the previous 18.12.3 drivers. On top of this there are numerous fixes this time around including; Virtual Super Resolution not showing up on 1440p Ultra-Wide displays, system lag when using Alt-Tab during gameplay, performance metrics overlay feature not scaling correctly when changing resolution in-game just to name a few.

That said, AMD still has a few bugs to squash, as of right now Battlefield V players may still experience character outlines being stuck on screen after they are revived. Meanwhile uninstalling the Radeon Software may result in its failure to remove the Radeon settings. For full details, you can view the entire changelog after the break.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.1.1 Beta

It's no news that AMD's Radeon RX 570 graphics card is carved out of the same "Polaris 20" silicon as the RX 580, by disabling 4 out of 36 GCN compute units. AMD kicked a controversy recently, when it launched a China-specific Radeon RX 580-branded SKU with the core-configuration of the cheaper RX 570, confusing Chinese consumers. It turns out that this RX 580 2,048 SP SKU is based on the same exact ASIC variant of the "Polaris 20" silicon as the RX 570, with the only difference being device ID.

We watch a lot of GamersNexus content. Our GPU Database curator noticed something interesting in their recent teardown of a Dataland Radeon RX 580 (2,048 SP) graphics card directly imported from China. The unique ASIC sub-variant code etched on the GPU's aluminium reinforcement brace matches that of the RX 570. AMD internally refers to the RX 570 as "Polaris 20 XL," and its ASIC code etched is supposed to be "215-0910052." For the RX 580, the real one, aka "Polaris 20 XTX," the code etched is "215-0910038." Thanks to GamersNexus' high-resolution filming, our curator was able to spot the ASIC code for "Polaris 20 XL" on the Dataland card's GPU. This confirms that AMD merely took an RX 570 and gave it a different device ID to create the RX 580 2,048 SP, leaving consumers to wade through the confusion.

With AMD's announcement of the new Radeon RX 590 graphics card we've learned something interesting: any user who buys a Radeon RX graphics card or a Radeon RX powered PC will get up to three games for free. "Tom Clancy's The Division 2", "Resident Evil 2" and "Devil May Cry 5", with a retail value of up to $180, will be the titles available for those users.

As mentioned on the press release, "gamers who purchase an AMD Radeon RX Vega or RX 590, or an eligible Radeon RX Vega or RX 590 powered PC, will receive free copies of all three games. Gamers who purchase an AMD Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 graphics card, or an eligible Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 powered PC, can choose two of these games for free".

AMD late Monday updated its Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1 beta drivers, without changing version numbers, to support some of the new regional SKUs the company launched over the weekend, including a variant of the Radeon RX 580 with only 2,048 stream processors instead of the normal 2,304; and the RX 580G and RX 570G. Besides this, the driver is unchanged from the original 18.10.1 drivers AMD released late last week. We have uploaded these latest drivers to our Downloads section.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1

In a silent event that occurred earlier today, AMD's Chinese product page for the Radeon RX 580 graphics card now shows a new addition- the RX 580 2048SP. Contrary to every other RX 580 on the website, including OEM and system integrator solutions, this new SKU has 256 fewer stream processors (2304 vs 2048, respectively). As it turns out, this appears to be a China-only graphics solution that launched on October 15, 2018 and TechPowerUp can confirm this is a Polaris 20-based Radeon product as well.

Looking purely at the specifications, this appears to be an RX 570 with a higher boost frequency (up to 1284 MHz vs 1244 MHz), so this is a confusing strategy by AMD to call it an RX 580 instead. The tinfoil hat nearby suggests that this may well be taking advantage of consumers who go simply by the name scheme and do not look up what a stream processor is, and indeed this is similar to what AMD did last year with the downgraded Radeon RX 560 that started out to be a Chinese-region product and then found its way elsewhere as well. Retailers have started listing this as a product available for consumer purchase already, and a search for RX 580 brings up both these and the other versions together. Not cool, AMD, not cool.

This news post really does serve as a symbolic gesture for the state of the GPU market in the last months (going on to a year now, really). Mainly due to increased demand from crypto users looking to farm and mine their way to financial security and shortages of GPUs, the time to buy a new or even second-hand, latest generation graphics card hasn't been the best. However, now, we're seeing something that wasn't seen for a long time: actual decent pricing in graphics cards. It's still a process, but in that process, this Gigabyte AORUS RX 580 deal at Amazon is the proverbial pin in a haystack.

The Gigabyte AORUS Radeon RX 580 8GB (GV-RX580AORUS-8GD) is available now from Amazon for $209.99 (after a $20 mail-in rebate). If you're in the states and looking for a graphics card that guarantees 1080p performance at max settings, or a decent 1440p experience with somewhat reduced IQ, this could be the graphics card for you - and judging by its Best Seller status, it may very well be the same for many other customers. And for now, there's even stock - how about that. If you're shopping from outside the states and still find this deal mesmerizing (here in Portugal a similar graphics card would go for $410 so... yeah. Take the deal). Here's hoping this is a sign of the incoming times, and not just a freak event.

It was only a matter of time before ASICs turned the tide on GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining. Bitmain announced the Antminer E3, an ASIC miner purpose-built for Ethereum mining. Priced at $800 (or less than the price of an AMD Radeon RX 580 in January), this ASIC draws about 800W of power, and offers a hash-rate of 180 MH/s. To put that into perspective, an RX 580 only has about 30 MH/s, and draws around 200W at typical mining load. Bitmain has begun accepting orders for the Antminer E3, with shipping to commence in July. At its price, no GPU in the market can match the economics of this ASIC, and hence, VGA prices could begin to cool down, and GPU miners could find it hard to hodl on to their overpriced VGAs.

GIGABYTE today rolled out the RX 580 Gaming Box, an external graphics enclosure with a factory-fitted graphics card. The company's Gaming Box line of external graphics enclosures made their debut with Aorus-branded boxes based on GeForce GTX 1070 graphics cards. The company later launched an Aorus-branded GTX 1080 Gaming Box. The new RX 580 Gaming Box (model: GV-RX580IXEB-8GD) encloses a Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card, with its core clocked at reference clocks of 1257 MHz core and 1340 MHz boost, out of the box, although a software-toggled "OC Mode" spools up the boost clock to 1355 MHz. The memory is untouched, at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective).

The enclosure takes in a Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) connection, with which it drives not just the graphics card, but also a 3-port USB 3.0 hub. A fourth (orange) USB 3.1 port lacks any data connection, but is a Quick Charge 3-compliant USB port, for charging your devices. Powering the enclosure is a 450W internal PSU with over 90% efficiency. GIGABYTE claims this meets 80 Plus Gold efficiency standards, although is not certified with the 80 Plus logo. Display outputs from the graphics card include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0. The enclosure features mesh side windows, and an RGB LED strip controlled with GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.2 Beta, its second significant driver release for this month. These drivers include heavier optimization for "Final Fantasy XV." This includes up to 4 percent higher frame-rates at 1080p compared to the older 18.3.1 drivers, when tested with a Radeon RX Vega 64; and up to 7 percent higher frame-rates at the same resolution, when tested with the RX 580 8 GB. It also fixes a stuttering issue noticed in the game, when rendering scenes with heavy particle effects. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.2 Beta

The change-log follows.

French company Qarnot has unveiled their QC-1 crypto heater, which is an extension of their Q.rad computing heater that was released in 2013. The new QC-1 allows consumers to mine cryptocurrencies and utilize the generated heat for heating their homes. It features a high-end passive cooling solution and noiseless design as the unit doesn't require the use of fans or mechanical hard drives. A pair of Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 graphics cards are responsible for the cryptomining duties. Together, they can generate a hash rate around 60MH/s. In normal mode, the QC-1 produces 450W of heat. However, customers can activate the booster mode via the provided mobile app for another 200W which brings the total to 650W. The mobile app also serves as a tool for QC-1 owners to monitor the crypto markets.

According to the manufacturer, the QC-1 is capable of heating a 20 square-meter room. Qarnot is marketing their crypto heater as a plug-n-play device which customers can setup in 10 minutes. Installation consists of plugging the unit into the wall outlet and router and entering the crypto-wallet address into the mobile app. The QC-1 is designed to mine Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. The Qarnot QC-1 comes with a 1 year warranty. The unit currently costs 2900 euros which by today's exchange rate is $3575 plus another $300 shipping fee. If you order a QC-1 before March 20th, Qarnot will deliver the QC-1 to your doorstep before June 20th.

MSI today introduced its Radeon RX 580 Armor MK2 graphics card series, available in standard and OC variants. Both feature 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. The two cards feature the same Armor MK2 product design that the company debuted with the RX 570 Armor MK2 series, earlier this month. The standard variant offers out of the box clock speeds of 1353 MHz core, which is slightly higher than AMD-reference clocks of 1340 MHz. The OC variant tops that with 1366 MHz out of the box. Both variants leave the memory untouched at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective).

The Armor MK2 series is positioned a notch above the original Arsenal-series Armor SKU, in featuring a pair of updated TorX 2.0 fans, red-colored accents in place of white on the cooler shroud, and the addition of a metal back-plate with red accents. It hence sits in between the Armor and Gaming series. TorX 2.0 fans feature double ball-bearings, and an improved fan blade design for higher air-flow, allowing MSI to lower the fan speeds, and with it, noise. The fans stay off when the GPU is idling. The PCB design is unchanged between the Armor MK2 and the original RX 580 Armor series. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD took to CES 2018 with a smattering of partner products and designs that take advantage of the company's mobile implementation of its Ryzen CPUs (and ZEN architecture). At its CES 2018 booth, AMD showcased products from HP and Lenovo, and our lucky coverage agents even managed to catch AMD CEO, Lisa Su, in her visit/inspection to her company's CES 2018 presence (extra Easter-egg after the break).

The products on display included one HP AIO, one Dell AIO, one HP and one Lenovo laptop, as well as pre-built systems from the likes of Dell (under its own brand and the Alienware brand) and Lenovo. The HP Pavilion AIO 24 makes use of AMD's Ryzen Mobile 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 graphics, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 2 TB HDD. The other AIO in the house, a Dell Inspiron 7775, packs a desktop-class Ryzen 7 1700, discrete Radeon RX 580 graphics, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, a 256 GB SSD, and a 1 TB HDD for all your storage needs.

AMD released the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.6.1 beta drivers. The drivers come with optimization for "DiRT 4," including an AMD CrossFire profile, and up to 30 percent improvement in frame-rates with 8x MSAA cranked up. The drivers also improve performance of "Prey" (2017) by up to 4 percent, as tested on a machine with a Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card.

The drivers also fixed a number of issues, including virtual super-resolution (VSR) not correctly enabling on certain Radeon RX 400 and RX 500-series GPUs; HDR not correctly enabling on certain WQHD or higher-resolution displays; flickering noticed on some WQHD or higher-resolution displays connected via HDMI; fast mouse movements causing a frame-rate drop in "Prey" (2017); "Mass Effect: Andromeda" noticing a stutter with multi-GPU systems; and a system hang noticed on Radeon R9 390 series GPUs with the memory overclocked using a third-party application. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.6.1

The change-log follows.

SAPPHIRE Technology is unveiling brand new products at Computex 2017. The SAPPHIRE NITRO Gear Series will provide SAPPHIRE users with more customization options than ever, with LED fans as well as new backplate & shroud sets. After the enthusiastic reception of the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition, SAPPHIRE will offer a Special Edition version with blue shroud and backplate, and high factory overclock as part of its regular offer. For ultrabook owners, SAPPHIRE is bringing new Thunderbolt 3 dongles with 2x DisplayPort or 2x HDMI outputs.

Accessories for NITRO-charged gamers
Demand for personalization in PC gaming hardware is increasing. To meet it, SAPPHIRE is introducing a brand-new NITRO Gear Series of accessories. To begin with, the company will offer extra LED fans (with dual-ball bearing) in 3 backlight colors - white, red and blue. SAPPHIRE users can easily swap their stock fans with the SAPPHIRE Quick Connect system. Packs with one 95 mm fan in selected colors will be available to buy. The fans are compatible with all SAPPHIRE NITRO+ and Pulse RX 580 / 570 models as well as NITRO/NITRO+ RX 480 / 470 models.

AMD released the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.5.2 drivers. These drivers improve performance of "Prey" a further 4.5 percent, compared to 17.5.1 drivers, as tested on a Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card. The drivers also address some critical bugs, beginning with random hangs or application crash noticed on "NieR: Automata," excessive level load times noticed on "Forza Horizon 3," a bug related to multi-GPU setups where displays plugged into the second graphics cards where the first (primary) graphics card disappears from the device list; and a bug with Radeon RX 550 which causes the system to hang when entering sleep or hibernate states. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.5.2

BIOSTAR introduced its first custom-design Radeon RX 580 graphics card, the RX 580 8 GB Dual Cooling (model: VA5805RV82). The company had announced its foray into AMD Radeon graphics cards with a reference-design RX 580, in April. The new RX 580 Dual Cooling combines an AMD-reference design PCB with a custom-design cooling solution. This cooler features an aluminium heatsink with a copper core over the GPU; ventilated by a pair of 80 mm fans, which stay off when the GPU is idling.

The card sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 1257 MHz core, 1340 MHz boost, and 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. It features 8 GB of memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Based on the 14 nm "Lexa" (Polaris 20) silicon, the Radeon RX 580 features 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0, and a dual-link DVI. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Not to let itself be outshined by arch-rival NVIDIA, AMD today released a new driver suite that introduces support for the impending release of Arkane Studios' Prey. A totally new IP in an era of sequels and re-releases, which has been paired - even if only so slightly - with AMD's own Vega teaser campaign, Prey promises to offer a mix of Bioshock and System Shock, with Arkane's own peculiar blend of game mechanics and art direction. Go on ahead fighting the invasion - I'll be joining you shortly.

These drivers promise an up to 4.7% performance improvement measured on Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics when compared to Radeon Software Crimson ReLive edition 17.4.4, as well as multi GPU profile support. As always, you can grab these right here on your favorite hardware site on the universe. Just follow the link below, and catch some more details like fixed and current issues after the break.Download: AMD Radeon Crimson Relive 17.5.1 Beta Drivers

In an AMA (ask me anything) session with Tom's Hardware community, AMD desktop processor marketing exec Don Woligrosky answered a variety of AMD Ryzen platform related questions. He did not shy away from making a key comment about the company's upcoming high-end graphics card, Radeon Vega, either. "Vega performance compared to the Geforce GTX 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp looks really nice," Woligrosky stated. This implies that Radeon Vega is in the same league of performance as NVIDIA's two top consumer graphics SKUs, the $650 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and the $1,200 TITAN Xp.

It is conceivable that AMD's desktop processor marketing execs will have access to some privileged information from other product divisions, and so if true, this makes NVIDIA's recent memory speed bump for the GTX 1080 a failed gambit. NVIDIA similarly bumped memory speeds of the GTX 1060 6 GB to make it more competitive against the Radeon RX 580. Woligrosky also commented on a more plausible topic, of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync becoming the dominant adaptive v-sync technology, far outselling NVIDIA G-Sync.

BIOSTAR is thrilled to announce its latest lineup of graphics card for gamers featuring the 2nd-generation Polaris architecture from AMD coupled with excellent gaming performance and higher clock speeds. Introducing the new BIOSTAR RADEON RX 500 series GPUs designed to be the perfect graphics upgrade for those looking to play modern games and experience VR at compelling prices and the prodcuts will be exclusively for Asia Pacific and China region.

The new BIOSTAR RADEON RX 500 series GPUs include the latest flagship RX 580, together with the mainstream RX 570 and RX 550. The new GPUs feature support for DX12 and Vulkan API. Combined with technologies to help improve visual performance and display technologies to improve the overall gaming experience, gamers will fully enjoy their gaming experience with the new RADEON RX 500 series.

VisionTek, a company whose last graphics card announcement we've posted here was on June 2015 with its Fury X and R9 300 line of graphics cards, has announced its vision for the RX 500 series graphics cards. This one seems a throwback to the RX 400 series, though, with Visiontek's "Overclocked Edition" GPUs carrying clockspeeds more in line with the prevous AMD series: 1,366 MHz for the RX 580, and 1264 MHz for the RX 570, respectively.

The VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8 GB comes with a slightly unoriginal take on the AIB partner design, sporting custom dual-fan cooler with a black-nickel aluminum shroud with 2x 8 mm and 2x 6 mm heatpipes for increased cooling capacity. The Radeon 570 4GB makes use of what is basically AMD's RX 480 reference design cooler, with a blower-style fan that ensures the GPU's heated air output exits the back of your case instead of lingering inside your system. VisionTek's Radeon RX 500 Series cards are now available through the company's website, with retailer availability to follow.