NVIDIA has recently introduced a pair of special edition graphics cards of its fastest consumer GPU available at the moment: the GeForce GTX Titan Xp. The new cards, as you all know, have a Star Wars theme, ahead of the franchise's Episode VIII: The Last Jedi premiere in December. It would appear that these new designs - the Jedi Order and Galactic Empire editions - are simply re-skins of the already existing Titan Xp product, with added Red or Green LED colors according to your particular lean when it comes to The Force.

While these graphics cards certainly look the part - I'd say that the Galactic Empire edition is the better looking of the two, but that's neither here nor there - they likely signal the beginning of a trend. A trend where special edition graphics cards may move in to fill the void left by the absence of new products, while also allowing companies to re-purpose hitherto unsold inventory of a given graphics card.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced GT51CA, a powerful gaming desktop powered by a 6th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, with Turbo Gear for one-click full-core CPU overclocking to 4.6 GHz without having to reboot. In addition, ROG GT51CA supports up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X graphics with 2-Way SLI for smooth, stutter-free 4K UHD gaming at over 60 frames per second. It also features up to two 512 GB NVMe PCIe RAID 0 SSDs for data access speeds of up to 3.2 Gbps - up to six times (6X) faster than SATA SSDs. ROG GT51CA's DDR4 2133 MHz memory has been even overclocked to 2800 MHz for faster boot-up and game load times.

Effective cooling for stable marathon gaming sessions
ROG GT51CA delivers efficient heat management for stable high-performance gaming sessions. It boasts a multi-zone thermal solution that lowers the system's internal temperatures by up to 31%, even during heavy-load marathon gaming sessions.

It features the liquid-cooled Hydro Overclocking System for the CPU and dedicated air channels to draw cool air into the chassis for the graphics card. In addition, its power supply unit - situated in the bottom corner of the chassis - also has its own isolated airflow design for cooling.

MSI, innovator in graphics cards, is pleased to announce the availability of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z utilizing the world's most powerful GPU. With two Kepler GPUs and 12GB of dedicated frame buffer memory, GTX TITAN Z is engineered for next-generation 5K and multi-monitor gaming. With two GK110 chips, GTX TITAN Z is powered by a total of 5,760 processing cores. GTX TITAN Z gives you truly amazing performance-easily making it the fastest graphics card we've ever made. NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0 technology allows the core clock to be automatically adjusted on the fly for optimal in-game performance.

When used with the MSI Afterburner overclocking utility, the power limit and clock offset can be adjusted as well for better overclocking capability. A single card can also support NVIDIA 3DVision Surround technology for up to four monitors to give gamers the best viewing experience. The MSI GeForce GTX TITAN Z is the best choice for serious gamers.

Here's the first alleged picture of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN Black, a high-end SKU NVIDIA is working on, to restore the competitiveness of the $999 price-point it commands. Although referred to as "TITAN Black," the card is nowhere close to looking like the CGI renders that surfaced last November. The board looks identical to the original GTX TITAN, except its "TITAN" etching on the cooler shroud is painted in black. The GTX TITAN Black maxes out the 28 nm GK110 silicon, featuring 2,880 CUDA cores, 240 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. It also features full DPFP for the GK110 silicon, which is exclusive to the GTX TITAN, within the GeForce range. NVIDIA is expected to give the GTX TITAN Black a low-key launch some time next week.

NVIDIA's upcoming high-end graphics card, the GeForce GTX TITAN Black, scored its first listing by an online store. Finnish store Multitronic Webshop listed it for €974.90 (including all applicable taxes). The store mentions the pre-tax price at €786.21, which converts to roughly US $1071. These prices confirm the theory that the GTX TITAN Black is being designed to replace the current GTX TITAN from its $999 (pre-tax) price-point. The current GTX TITAN has been cannibalized by the GTX 780 Ti at gaming, and the only two straws it's been clutching onto are 6 GB of memory, and full double-precision floating point GPGPU performance.

The GeForce GTX TITAN Black is a maxing out of the feature-set of the GK110 silicon. It features the full complement of CUDA cores at 2,880 - same as the GTX 780 Ti - but also features full double-precision floating point GPGPU performance, and 6 GB of standard memory amount, which could help in 3DVision Surround, and 4K Ultra HD display setups. Other vital specs of the GPU include 240 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. There's no word on its clock speeds, but we expect it to be either on par with, or slightly higher than those of the GTX 780 Ti.

Price wars between GPU makers are something to look forward to each year, as that's typically when you get the best bang for your buck. Such an optimal time to buy new graphics cards usually comes when both AMD and NVIDIA have launched a new graphics card lineup, each. AMD tends to launch its lineup first, followed by NVIDIA, which then begins a cycle of proactive and reactive price-cuts between the two, which churns up the $300 price-performance sweet-spot so well, that a purchase from that segment usually sets your PC up for the following three years. 2013-14 saw a major disruption to this cycle, Litecoin mining. Litecoin miners will hurt more than help brand AMD Radeon, here's why.

Two weeks after iBuyPower announced that it is building a Steam Machine another custom PC maker has revealed plans to release a gaming solution running Valve's Steam OS. Fremont-based Digital Storm is the latest Steam OS recruit and its plan is to unveil a Steam Machine next month at CES 2014.

Digital Storm's first Steam Machine is supposed to start at $1,469 (iBuyPower's offering has a base price tag of $499) and it will feature a liquid cooled Intel processor, an NVIDIA graphics card (up to a GeForce GTX Titan), and up to a 700 W power supply. As an option, Digital Storm will turn the Steam Machine into a dual-boot solution, loaded both with Steam OS and Microsoft Windows. More info coming at CES.

The GeForce GTX 780 Ti may be the fastest single-GPU graphics card that money can buy, by a long shot, but only to people who game and don't really care about double-precision floating point GPGPU performance. NVIDIA expects you to shell out $999 on the GTX TITAN for full double-precision FP performance at the moment. For all other intents and purposes, the GTX TITAN is cannibalized, but will it stay that way? VideoCardz spotted these pictures of a black-colored GTX TITAN graphics card in the wild, which retains the cooler design of the original, right up to the "TITAN" logo, but swaps out the silver for black. The publication is referring to the card as a sort of "Black Edition." Speculation is rife about what it could be, a GK110-based card with identical core-configuration to the GTX 780 Ti, 6 GB of memory, full double-precision floating-point performance and slightly higher clock speeds, perhaps?

Given that Radeon R9 290X trades blows with the $1000 GeForce GTX TITAN at just 55 percent its price, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, which NVIDIA teased just ahead of AMD's launch, had to be one of two things - cheaper than the GTX 780, or faster than the GTX TITAN, or end up a futile maneuver for NVIDIA. It turns out the chip will be the latter. Leaked 3DMark 11 scores posted on XtremeSystem claim that the GTX 780 Ti will be at least 5 percent faster than the GTX TITAN in the test, and so NVIDIA is aiming to make the chip a faster alternative to the GTX TITAN. What remains to be seen is if displaces the $1000 GTX TITAN, or the $650 GTX 780 from the product stack.

Here are results from the first formal review of the Radeon R9 290X, AMD's next-generation flagship single-GPU graphics card. Posted by Chinese publication PCOnline.com.cn, the it sees the R9 290X pitted against the GeForce GTX TITAN, and GeForce GTX 780. An out-of-place fourth member of the comparison is the $299 Radeon R9 280X. The tests present some extremely interesting results. Overall, the Radeon R9 290X is faster than the GeForce GTX 780, and trades blows, or in some cases, surpasses the GeForce GTX TITAN. The R9 290X performs extremely well in 3DMark: FireStrike, and beats both NVIDIA cards at Metro: Last Light. In other tests, its half way between the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN, leaning closer to the latter in some tests. Power consumption, on the other hand, could either dampen the deal, or be a downright dealbreaker. We'll leave you with the results.More results follow.

Radeon R9 290X is looking increasingly good on paper. Most of its rumored specifications, and SEP pricing were reported late last week, but the ones that eluded us were clock speeds. A source that goes by the name Grant Kim, with access to a Radeon R9 290X sample, disclosed its clock speeds, and ran a few tests for us. To begin with, the GPU core is clocked at 1050 MHz. There is no dynamic-overclocking feature, but the chip can lower its clocks, taking load and temperatures into account. The memory is clocked at 1125 MHz (4.50 GHz GDDR5-effective). At that speed, the chip churns out 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth, over its 512-bit wide memory interface. Those clock speeds were reported by the GPU-Z client to us, so we give it the benefit of our doubt, even if it goes against AMD's ">300 GB/s memory bandwidth" bullet-point in its presentation.

Among the tests run on the card include frame-rates and frame-latency for Aliens vs. Predators, Battlefield 3, Crysis 3, GRID 2, Tomb Raider (2013), RAGE, and TESV: Skyrim, in no-antialiasing, FXAA, and MSAA modes; at 5760 x 1080 pixels resolution. An NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN was pitted against it, running the latest WHQL driver. We must remind you that at that resolution, AMD and NVIDIA GPUs tend to behave a little differently due to the way they handle multi-display, and so it may be an apples-to-coconuts comparison. In Tomb Raider (2013), the R9 290X romps ahead of the GTX TITAN, with higher average, maximum, and minimum frame rates in most tests.

Multi-GPU liquid-cooling setups can be tricky business, and if not done well, could look ugly. To address this, Koolance launched the CNT-VDBx series of connecting blocks for multi-GPU setups running GeForce GTX 780 or GeForce GTX Titan graphics cards, with the company's VID-NXTTN full-coverage block. These connector-blocks each relay coolant in "parallel" over multiple graphics cards, while looking good. The connecting blocks are little more than metal tubing covered by acetal tops to match full-coverage blocks. These blocks are sold in pairs, for 2-point (two card, CNT-VDB1), 2-point over 3 slots (two card, CNT-VDB2), 3-point (three card, CNT-VDB3), and 4-point (four card, CNT-VDB4) variants, priced at $39.49, $42.49, $50.99, and $59.99, respectively.

Inno3D expanded its GeForce GTX 780 lineup with two additions, taking the count to four; the iChill Black GTX 780 Accelero Hybrid, the iChill GTX 780 HerculeZ 3000 X3 Ultra, iChill GTX 780 HerculeZ 2000 OC, and GTX 780 NVIDIA-reference. The iChill Black GTX 780 Accelero Hybrid, is practically identical to the company's iChill Black GTX TITAN Accelero Hybrid, combining an NVIDIA-reference PCB with Arctic's Accelero Hybrid closed-loop liquid cooling solution. The cooler uses a liquid cooling block to cool the GPU, and a fan-heatsink to cool other components, like the memory and VRM. With lack of memory chips on the reverse side of the PCB, we imagine the card to lack a back-plate.

The iChill Black GTX 780 Accelero Hybrid ships with factory-overclocked speeds of 1020 MHz core, 1059 MHz GPU Boost, and 6280 MHz (GDDR5-effective) memory; compared to NVIDIA reference speeds of 863 MHz core, 900 MHz GPU Boost, and 6008 MHz memory. Inno3D claims this to be the fastest GTX 780 card out-of-the-box that money can buy. Moving on, the company also unveiled the air-cooled iChill GTX 780 HerculeZ 3000 X3 Ultra. Redundant-sounding naming aside, the card features the same beefy HerculeZ 3000 cooling solution featured on several others of the company's products. It ships with factory-overclocked speeds of 1006 MHz core, 1046 MHz GPU Boost, and 6200 MHz memory. Both these cards are claimed by the company to be as fast, or faster, than a GeForce GTX TITAN, out of the box. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Given that our friends at Colorful never fail to surprise us with over-the-top custom-design cooling solutions for even the most mid-range GPUs, NVIDIA's lifting of restrictions on custom GTX TITAN designs was bound to come as their eruptive moment. Their take? Strap the GTX TITAN with a full-coverage phase-change cooler. Designed explicitly for open-air benches, and for people with a know-how of hardware volt-mods, the new iGame GTX TITAN Ultra from Colorful is a bundle of a reference design GTX TITAN PCB, and a phase-change cooler.

The cooler consists of the compressor assembly inside a separate case the size of a micro-ATX tower, insulated refrigerant pipes, and the dual-slot block itself, which cools everything on the obverse side of the PCB, and makes contact with the back-plate, so some of its heat can be transferred to the subzero obverse side. A phase-change cooler works on the same principle as deep-freezers, refrigerators, and air-conditioners, only that in this case, the block takes up the role of the evaporator. Colorful claims the cooler can sustain temperatures as low as minus 50°C. Out of the box crate, the iGame GTX TITAN Ultra comes with 954 MHz core, 1006 MHz GPU Boost, and 6.00 GHz memory.

While NVIDIA's recently launched GeForce GTX 780 is available in a plethora of custom-designs, the GeForce GTX TITAN, which is based on the same reference-design PCB, is limited to those with factory-fitted water-blocks, or NVIDIA's reference-design cooler, that's not to say that we don't like the sexy space-age cooler. GIGABYTE is itching to circumvent NVIDIA's restriction on custom-design air coolers, with an interesting bundle. The company plans to bundle its new WindForce 3X 450W VGA cooler, with select batches of NVIDIA reference design GTX TITAN cards, with instructions on how end-users can replace NVIDIA's cooler with GIGABYTE's, without affecting warranty from GIGABYTE's side. One such user-retrofitted GeForce GTX TITAN was spotted at Computex, which looks nearly identical to the GeForce GTX 780 WindForce OC, and the GTX 770 WindForce OC. The bundle will be marketed as GV-NTITAN-6GDB.

Colorful was the first graphics card maker to announce a factory-overclocked GeForce GTX TITAN, only it held back with adding its own customization because manufacturers are not permitted to modify reference-design GTX TITAN, with the exception of pre-installing full-coverage water-blocks, such as in the case of EVGA GTX TITAN HydroCopper. Colorful followed this path, by innovating a full-coverage block of its own.

Pictured below are two iterations of Colorful's card, one with a see-through acrylic top, and another with a classy POM-acetal top. The underlying block appears to use nickel-plated copper, and features a dense micro-channel stack over the GPU area, where the highest heat is generated and needs to be dissipated. The coolant channel appears to flow through the entire VRM area; the block actively cools all memory chips on the obverse side of the PCB. Colorful is running opinion polls on Chinese social-media on which block better suits the PCB, which ultimately is an NVIDIA-reference design one. Colorful plans to deploy factory-overclocked speeds of 954 MHz core, 1006 MHz GPU Boost, while leaving the memory untouched at 6.00 GHz.

ZOTAC International, a global innovator and manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards, mini-PCs and accessories, today supercharges the TITAN with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX TITAN AMP! Edition, the world's fastest single GPU graphics card.

"Gamers have always depended on the ZOTAC GeForce AMP! Edition series for the best performance within a given series. With the ZOTAC GeForce GTX TITAN AMP! Edition, we're able to deliver the absolute best performance from a single GPU in this generation," says Carsten Berger, senior director, ZOTAC International.

With NVIDIA clamping restrictions on graphics card makers' ability to make custom design PCBs for its flagship GeForce GTX TITAN GPU, the likes of GIGABYTE are opting for the next best thing - creating accessories that enthusiasts can mod their GTX TITAN graphics cards with, at the cost of product warranties. A little earlier this month, the company unveiled its WindForce 450W VGA cooler, which is capable of handling GTX TITAN. At a more recent event, it showed of G-Power, a supplementary voltage regulation module, which is similar in principle to EVGA EPower and ASUS Matrix PWM.

The device is a small PCB with high-capacity power leads on one-end, which need to be soldered on to the reference GeForce GTX TITAN PCB, and a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors on the other. Between them is a 6+1 phase VRM, with components that appear similar to the ones used on GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 motherboards, consisting of 60A ferrite core chokes, International Rectifier PowIRstage IR3550 driver-MOSFETs, and International Rectifier IR3563A controller. The G-Power module stabilizes power on the GTX TITAN PCB, preventing voltage droop from breaking the overclock. There's no word on how GIGABYTE plans to sell these.

For those not sold on the looks and cooling performance of NVIDIA's reference design for the GeForce GTX Titan, GIGABYTE could have an alternative DIY cooling solution concept. The company is working on a new high-performance air graphics card cooler, which it could deploy on upcoming high-end graphics cards. Named WindForce 450W, the cooler is designed to handle thermal loads as high as 450W. GIGABYTE strapped it on to the GeForce GTX TITAN and GTX 680, to show it off, at its "New Idea Tech Tour" event held in Berlin.

WindForce 450W is a triple-slot graphics card cooler. It uses a pair of dense aluminum fin stacks to dissipate heat. Three thick (10 mm thick?) copper heat pipes convey heat to these stacks, which is drawn directly from the GPU die. The two stacks are ventilated by three 80 mm fans. When strapped to a GeForce GTX 680, GIGABYTE claims the cooler keeps its noise below 28.3 dB, with Furmark running. On the GTX Titan, it works to provide higher GPU Boost frequencies, or helps sustain set frequency offsets better. With NVIDIA clamping down restrictions on modifying reference design GeForce GTX TITAN (with exceptions for liquid-based custom cooling solutions), we won't see a card that combines the chip with WindForce 450W any time soon.

ASUS today announced that the ASUS GeForce GTX Titan graphics card has established four new 3DMark world records, supervised by in-house ROG overclocking experts Andre Yang and Shamino. The ASUS GeForce GTX Titan is the most powerful single-GPU graphics card currently available, as demonstrated with record-breaking 3DMark11 scores of 36658 marks in the Entry preset, 37263 marks in the Performance preset, and 22076 marks in the Extreme preset. It has also set a world record of 21818 in 3DMark Fire Strike, the latest and most demanding benchmark from Futuremark.

ROG overclocking expert Andre Yang set the new 3DMark11 records using liquid nitrogen-cooled ASUS GeForce GTX Titan cards in a four-way NVIDIA SLI configuration with an ROG Rampage IV Extreme motherboard and an Intel Core i7-3970X processor. Additional information on these world records and the configurations used can be found here. The 3DMark Fire Strike world record was achieved by Andre Yang and fellow ROG team member and overclocker Shamino using two ASUS GeForce GTX Titan cards in NVIDIA SLI. This achievement also used an ROG Rampage IV Extreme motherboard and an Intel Core i7-3970X processor.

FinalWire announced AIDA64 v2.85, the popular system diagnostic and benchmarking suite is updated with 64-bit benchmarks optimized for AMD's "Richland" APUs, improved support for "Kaveri," "Kabini," and "Temash" APUs; and Intel "Haswell" and "Valleyview" CPUs; early support for AMD "Beema" APU, Intel "Avoton" SoC, "Crystalwell," "Ivy Bridge-E," and "Haswell-E" CPU, "Haswell-ULT" SoC; preliminary support for DDR4 and GDDR5 system memory types; and GPU support for AMD Radeon HD 8000 series and NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 v2.85 Installer (EXE), Archive (ZIP)

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is proud to officially introduce two additional EK-FC Titan water blocks to cater to the different needs and taste of members of the water cooling community. Looks and port configuration is the only thing that separate these two newcomers from the pack as the cooling engine remained the same. As a result these new products offer the very same excellent thermal- and hydraulic characteristics.

EK-FC Titan - Nickel (Original CSQ) offers the same original CSQ looks introduced in June 2012. It is therefore compatible with EK-FC Bridge & Link CSQ system multiple cards interconnect, which come in both satin finish Acrylic- as well as black POM Acetal version. The water block itself is compatible with EK-FC Titan Backplate but cannot be interconnected to other EK-FC Titan (using EK-FC Bridge & Link CSQ or EK-FC Terminal system) series water blocks apart from the Original CSQ version. This product comes with the MSRP of 99.95€ (incl. VAT) and is readily available for purcahse through EK Webshop as well as Partner Reseller Network.

Koolance rolled out its full-coverage water block for NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, the VID-NXTTN. Made of nickel-plated copper (main block), nickel-plated brass (ports), and POM-acetal (top), the block features a micro-fin lattice to dissipate heat from the GPU to the coolant. The main block covers hot components on the obverse side of the PCB, including the GPU, memory chips, and VRM; while a back-plate is included to cover memory chips on the reverse side. Standard G 1/4 BSPP threading is provided. Measuring 17.15 x 11.43 x 1.91 cm (WxDxH), the block weighs about 1.02 kg. Available on Koolance' online store, it is priced at $129.99 a piece.

NVIDIA may decisively hold on to the single-GPU performance lead, with its GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, but at roughly $1000, it could attract a very small market. According to a SweClockers report, NVIDIA is looking to woo gamers just ahead of Summer with the second GK110-based GeForce GTX graphics card. Similar in specifications to the fabled Quadro K6000, the new SKU could feature 13 out of 15 streaming multiprocessors on the GK110 silicon, working out to 2,496 CUDA cores, 208 texture memory units, a 320-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 5 GB of memory, and 40 ROPs. Given that there's a deep ravine between the ~$450 GeForce GTX 680 and ~$1000 GTX Titan, NVIDIA could pick a price-point in the middle. The report claims the new SKU could launch some time between July and August, 2013.

Inno3D rolled out its newest flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX Titan iChill Black Series. The card ships with Arctic's Accelero Hybrid cooling solution pre-fitted to an NVIDIA reference design GTX Titan PCB. The cooler uses a combination of a closed-loop liquid block to cool the GPU, and fan-heatsink to cool other hot components on the card, such as memory chips and VRM.

The GTX Titan iChill Black series ships with factory-overclocked speeds of 937 MHz core, and 980 MHz GPU Boost, against NVIDIA reference speeds of 837 MHz core and 876 MHz GPU Boost. Memory clock speed stays at 6.00 GHz. Based on the 28 nm GK110 silicon, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan features 2,688 CUDA cores, 224 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. The card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors, display outputs include a pair of dual-link DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The company did not release pricing or availability information.