Chinese GPU manufacturer Moore Threads has unveiled another S-series GPU in its consumer lineup. This time, it has debuted a mid-range model dubbed the S50, featuring 8GB of VRAM and 2,048 MUSA cores.
The S50 sits firmly in the middle of Moore Threads' consumer GPU product stack, flanked by the S60, S70, and S80 at the top and the S30 (4GB, 2GB) and S10 at the bottom. Specs-wise, the S50 is incredibly similar to the S60. The S50 features 2,048 cores, 8GB of memory, and a 256-bit memory bus, which are the exact same specifications as the S60. Both GPU variants also come packaged in a single-slot graphics card form factor.
Despite boasting identical specs, Moore Threads rates the S50 with less computing horsepower than the S60. The S50 is rated at 5.2 Teraflops of FP32 computing power and 20.8 TOPS of INT8 performance (a metric for AI-based workloads). In contrast, the S60 is rated with 15% more FP32 computing power, boasting 6 Teraflops of FP32 crunching power. For comparison, the S50's FP32 performance lands between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 6GB from eight years ago.
Frustratingly, Moore Threads does not list all the specs for the S60 or the S50 to allow us to find the main difference between the two. But we suspect it is down to power consumption and clock speeds. A large enough gap in power consumption and clock speeds would cause a 15% disparity in performance. The S50 comes with an 85W TGP, but we don't have a listed TGP spec for the S60.
Moore Threads advertises the S50 as having excellent 1080p performance in lightweight titles such as CS: GO and Dota 2 on Linux operating systems specifically. These unorthodox advertisements are probably a result of Moore Threads' fragile graphics drivers, which have been the Achilles heel of its mainstream graphics cards.
Moore Threads' driver problem is similar to Intel's driver problems of the past but on steroids. For perspective, the company's S80 flagship struggled to compete with Nvidia's GT 1030 (that's not a typo) at its worst gaming performance a year ago. Recent driver updates this year have done little to rectify Moore Thread's massive disparity in gaming performance compared to Intel, AMD, and Nvidia's offerings.
The S50 also boasts support for all mainstream graphics APIs, such as DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES. Resolution support peaks at 8K, and the GPU has a single MUSA encoder and decoder that supports AV1, H.265 (HEVC), and H.264 video recording and playback.
The pricing for the S50 is unknown for now. The graphics card is currently available for free trial for corporate consumers. The S50 hasn't hit the retail market yet.
