The Chinese have achieved support for their Windows OS video cards. Why is it important?
Advanced graphics chips and adapters with them are produced by a few companies, including Nvidia and AMD. Now manufacturers from China are also entering this industry. One of them is Moore Threads, a startup that operates in the development and production industry. electronics from 2020.
The startup produced good graphics adapters that functioned only under Linux. Now the situation has changed: video cards from Moore Threads are now supported Windows 10 and Windows 11. The company has released an updated driver with index 260.70.1, which makes it possible to work with Microsoft OS and increases the performance of accelerators.
What is the achievement?
Modern powerful video cards are quite expensive, and deliveries of new models from AMD and Nvidia are now not so easy to organize. Another picture with adapters from Moore Threads. Firstly, they are relatively inexpensive, and secondly, they are productive. They cannot compare with the latest models of video cards from the same Nvidia, but they can cope with fairly “heavy” content.
Now about the price. One of the graphics accelerator models from this company, namely the S80, costs about $250. The chip for this model is manufactured using 7nm technology; the developers have introduced support for the DirectX and OpenGL APIs (that is, the video card is suitable for games). Included The GPU has 4,096 cores for FP32 operations and 128 tensor cores. The video card received 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with a speed of 14 Gbit/s per contact, support for a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. For additional power, the card uses one 8-pin PCIe connector.
The card is equipped with a PCIe 5.0 interface. At the time of its release, it was the first system to support it. True, the developers added the “five” only as a PR move, since a high-speed interface is not needed for a map of this level.
The news here is that video cards from the Chinese company allow you to play modern games. Previously, this was only possible if the system had graphics adapters from Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon. Models from Moore Threads were supported by Linux and in test mode with reduced capabilities Windows 10. Now they work without problems with OS Windows, which increases the number of potential buyers.
To ensure that the video card is accurately supported, its creators recommend using any release of Windows 10. But the version of Windows 11 should not exceed 23H2; it was released at the end of 2023. Otherwise, the company does not guarantee full functionality. In the next version of the drivers, the manufacturer promised to expand support for Windows 11.
By the way, the startup has more and more video cards. In addition to the already mentioned S80 model, there are S70, S30, S60 and S2000. These adapters have been tested in conjunction with new drivers that are supported by Windows, and there are no particular problems with them. Moreover, with the release of the update, the performance of the video card has been optimized. Thus, in the game The Tide, the frame rate increased by more than 125%. The developers also mentioned that support for the games Whitethorn Corridor, World of Tarris, Fallout 76 and The Legend of the Living Sword has also been improved.
Not only Moore Threads
There are other companies in China that produce graphics chips. In May 2024, Lingjiu Microelectronics released the GP201 video accelerator, which is available only in the Middle Kingdom. It can only compete with the AMD E8860 from 10 years ago. But this is still an achievement, since even such chips are quite suitable for laptops and office PCs.
Here are the new features:
3D. The GP201 can handle 3D models, scenes, and effects quite well in games, virtual reality, and other graphics applications.
Drawing 2D polygons and ellipses. This is important for application interfaces and other user interface elements, web pages.
The movement of pixels and images that affects the smoothness and responsiveness of animations, scrolling, and other moving elements in the user interface.
Window rendering and application support on the OpenCL platform are a necessary set of functions for working with graphics and computing applications. For example, image processing, scientific computing and machine learning.
The GP201 also supports 4K resolution output at a 60Hz refresh rate and enables H.265 video format decoding. This is relevant given the prevalence of this format in modern video files and streaming services.
Another Chinese company, Loongson, promised to release RX 550 video card, which is also applicable only in relatively weak PCs.
China is striving for independence from foreign suppliers and seems to be gradually moving towards its goal. Of course, the huge domestic market helps with this. Without it, China's e-business would have fewer opportunities to develop.
