NVIDIA is celebrating 20 years of the GeForce 8800 GTX, which hit store shelves on November 8, 2006, with a free tech demo on Steam. Called GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend, it was created by Unreal Engine artist Dylan Browne, the developer of Through The Ages, with support from NVIDIA. The semi-interactive demo puts players in a 2006-era PC gaming room, where they can unbox the 8800 GTX, inspect it up close, and install it in an era-accurate PC tower, with GeForce easter eggs scattered around. The scene is rendered with path tracing, DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and RTX Mega Geometry. It is available now on Steam and is coming soon to GeForce NOW for Ultimate members.

Naturally, the 8800 GTX itself can't run any of this, which is quite ironic, to say the least. Steam lists an RTX 4070 as the bare minimum and recommends an RTX 5080, alongside 32 GB of system RAM and 30 GB of storage. That RAM figure alone is over 40 times the 8800 GTX's 768 MB of video memory. The recommended RTX 5080 is far from cheap right now either, with TechSpot's October survey putting its lowest US price at around $2,200. So a demo built around the thrill of unboxing a new GPU in 2006 wants one of the priciest gaming cards of 2026 to look its best.

NVIDIA is giving away a GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition with a custom Hogwarts Legacy wrap to celebrate DLSS 5 arriving in the game on November 5. To enter, users need to find the official giveaway post on one of NVIDIA GeForce's accounts on X, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok and comment with #RTXON. Only one entry per person is allowed across all four platforms. The giveaway runs until November 12 at 11:59 PM PT, with a single winner drawn at random on or around November 13. NVIDIA values the prize at $2,599, which covers $1,999 for the card and $600 for the wrap. Entrants must be 18 or older and live in an eligible country, a list that includes the US, UK, Canada (excluding Quebec), Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, among others. No purchase is necessary.

The $1,999 figure is NVIDIA's MSRP, though actual retail prices are much higher. TechSpot's October survey put the RTX 5090's normalized global price at $7,240, with the cheapest in-stock US model at $9,400. Supply has also been extremely tight. Reports last month claimed NVIDIA had stopped allocating GB202 GPUs to the RTX 5090, and Jeff Fisher, NVIDIA's senior vice president of personal computing, responded that the card has not been discontinued, while acknowledging constrained supply. NVIDIA has run similar wrapped RTX 5090 giveaways for games like Battlefield 6 and 007 First Light. With prices several times above MSRP and supply this constrained, giveaways like this one seem like the only realistic way for many gamers to have a chance at obtaining an RTX 5090 at the moment.

Police in Oakland, California, are investigating the theft of six pallets of NVIDIA hardware worth $11.4 million that were bound for Fort Worth, Texas, the Bay Area News Group reports. A truck carrying a food transportation company's logo picked up the cargo in Oakland on August 29 as planned, but the truck and its drivers then went off the grid heading south. According to authorities, the truck made several multi-hour stops before police lost track of it in San Bernardino County. Apparently, nobody realized the cargo was gone until early September, and Oakland police say the theft was reported to them on September 13. No arrests have been announced.

What exactly was on those pallets hasn't been disclosed, so we don't know if it was AI accelerators, complete systems, or GeForce graphics cards. Speaking to ABC7, UC Berkeley professor Olaf Groth said NVIDIA chips can sell for roughly double their US price abroad, with a $550,000 compute system going for $1 million or more. He added that the heists are getting bigger and more complex, which points to increasingly professional crews.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is now close to double its $749 MSRP in the US. According to price tracking by VideoCardz, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti at major US retailers was $1,339.99 on November 6, about 79% above MSRP, up from $1,179.99 on October 29. That's a $160 jump in just eight days. Some models have already crossed the 2x mark, like the ASUS TUF Gaming OC at $1,499.99 on B&H. Prices are also moving fast. At the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti sold by Newegg itself is an MSI SHADOW RTX 5070 Ti at $1,409.99. Things aren't much better in Germany, where the cheapest listing on Geizhals sits at €1,300 for a PNY model, roughly 48% above the €879 MSRP.

Things are probably going to get worse, too. NVIDIA's board partners in China are reportedly raising RTX 5070 Ti prices by around 1,000 RMB (about $150) this week, with retail prices expected to follow within a week or two. Unlike the RTX 5090 and 5080 16 GB, which have reportedly been discontinued, the RTX 5070 Ti is still officially in production. After reports of an end of production in January early this year, NVIDIA said it was still shipping all GeForce SKUs, and ASUS denied the card was end-of-life, while admitting that memory supply was hurting production and restocking. The card is still listed at major retailers, unlike the RTX 5080, which vanished from NVIDIA's US Marketplace two weeks after the RTX 5090 did the same. Anyone shopping for an RTX 5070 Ti should probably expect these prices to keep rising for a while.

NVIDIA has released NVIDIA App 11.0.9.585, a small update that adds DLSS Override profiles for 19 games and Optimal Settings profiles for six. The list mixes older titles like PUBG: Battlegrounds, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Dragon's Dogma 2 with Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Gears of War: E-Day, and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, all of which were scheduled to launch in September or October. Oddly enough, 007 First Light was already listed in the main 11.0.9 release, and Active Matter showed up back in 11.0.8. NVIDIA doesn't explain the repeats, and it doesn't say which overrides each game supports either.

The changelog otherwise only mentions "various stability/security fixes" without any details. This build follows two bigger ones that added significantly more features. The main 11.0.9 release brought DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and per-game Resizable BAR controls, while 11.0.9.565 added RTX Spark support, a local MCP server for AI agents, and a faster Performance Mode for DLSS Frame Generation. As a refresher, DLSS Override lets GeForce RTX owners use newer DLSS models, or modes like DLAA, that a game may not offer on its own. It sits under Graphics > Program Settings > Driver Settings. Below is the full list of games.

NVIDIA is bringing its DLSS 5 neural rendering technology to three more games this month, starting with Hogwarts Legacy on November 5. According to NVIDIA, War Thunder will follow in mid-November, while Where Winds Meet is scheduled to receive support on November 23. NVIDIA is also bringing DLSS 4.5 to several games, and has updated DLSS 4.5 Unreal Engine plugin. NVIDIA was also keen to note that its October 2026 update has significantly reduced the footprint, decreased VRAM usage, and increased performance.

DLSS 5 introduces what NVIDIA calls 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, using AI to enhance lighting, shadows and material details based on information from the game engine. The technology operates as a final rendering stage, using the original frame, geometry, textures and lighting data as its foundation. According to NVIDIA, this approach allows developers to introduce more realistic lighting and material effects without having to explicitly model and render all the additional detail. The company also provides developers with controls to adjust how the technology affects individual scenes, objects and characters, using different AI models, intensity settings and semantic masking to preserve the original artistic direction.

In a big surprise to no one, graphics card prices went up again in October. TechSpot's latest survey across 10 countries shows GPU prices rising 11% month over month, following a 15% jump in August and 7% in September, or roughly 35% over three months. On average, cards now sell for 44% above MSRP, climbing to 58% in the US and Canada. Keep in mind these numbers track the lowest in-stock price in each region, so most models cost even more. Moreover, there is another GeForce RTX 50-series price hike on the horizon, so these numbers will rise again pretty soon.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is in a league of its own. It got 32% pricier in a month, and its normalized global price of $7,240 sits a staggering 262% above its $1,999 MSRP, almost double the 136% figure from early September. In the US, the cheapest in-stock model now costs $9,400, or 370% over MSRP, and most models now sit above $11,000 comfortably. The RTX 5080 is following a similar path, up 22% in a month to $2,200 in the US, while Newegg had none of its own in stock when the data was collected. TechSpot argues the GDDR7 memory crisis can't explain a jump that big, and some retail sources apparently told them wholesale RTX 5080 costs have gone up recently too.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50-Series "Blackwell" gaming graphics cards are expected to see significant price adjustments this week. According to Chinese ChannelGate, add-in card (AIC) partners have confirmed that price hikes are scheduled due to the ongoing demand for these GPUs outstripping supply. Some major AIC partners, like Colorful and Galax, have reportedly already started sharing information about these price increases. The most significant example is expected to be for SKUs based on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 DV2, which will see an increase of up to 3,300 RMB, translating to nearly $500. Even entry-level GPUs are not exempt, as the GeForce RTX 5060 is expected to see around a $30 price increase on existing models. These changes are anticipated to be implemented this week for retail partners, meaning that consumer prices might take a week or two to reflect the new listing prices.Below is the list of price hikes in China, expected to be the norm.

Valve's October 2026 Steam Hardware & Software Survey shows much of September's odd data snapping back. After 32 GB system RAM overtook 16 GB last month, the 16 GB tier is back in first place at 41.42% (up 3.60 points), while 32 GB dropped 5.16 points to 37.06%. The GeForce RTX 3060 is the most common GPU again at 3.62% across all platforms, a spot it held before September, while the RTX 5070 fell from 5.86% to 3.56%. It looks like the survey sample played a big part. Simplified Chinese fell 9.41 points to 21.98%, while English rose 4.84 points to 39.04%. The survey is voluntary, so a change in who responds can move the numbers without an actual hardware change behind it. We can't confirm that, but it would explain why so many categories shifted at once.

Windows 11 rose 1.17 points to 72.51%, and Linux climbed 0.90 points to 3.95%. The 1440p share dropped 5.22 points to 21.82%, while 1080p sits at 50.23%. On Windows, Intel gained 0.89 points to reach 53.48% CPU share, with AMD at 46.51%. Valve's Steam Frame, which launched in September, now holds 4.13% of surveyed VR headsets, up 3.72 points, while Meta Quest 3 continues to dominate with a 27.27% share. However, headset owners are only 1.75% of the survey, so it's a small group. The interesting bit is still the system RAM split, and while 32 GB RAM had been slowly gaining on 16 GB, it looks like September was the outlier. November's data should give us a better idea of the split.

NVIDIA's board partners reportedly still lack the supply of GeForce RTX 5080 24 GB design kits, making a nearby launch seemingly impossible. According to BenchLife, design kits have not yet been provided to NVIDIA's add-in card partners. These design kits typically include a GPU die and memory modules shipped directly from NVIDIA. NVIDIA negotiates GDDR7 module pricing and supply while also receiving GPU die shipments from TSMC. The company then packages these together and sends them to board partners for assembly on their custom PCBs and designs. Since this process takes time to validate and test new designs, board partners might be unable to meet the previously assumed launch in January.

Earlier rumors suggested that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 24 GB might arrive sooner than expected, with a post from Board Channels' ChannelGate account claiming NVIDIA is speeding up the launch, with availability now expected around January 2027. Apparently, NVIDIA has already cleared out its RTX 5080 16 GB GPU inventory, and the remaining stock should last around two months. However, since board partners aren't receiving those GPU kits yet, this timing might be impossible to meet, and the window would be around Q1 2027, but not in January.

NVIDIA's US Marketplace no longer lists the GeForce RTX 5080. The GPU filter on the store's graphics card page now tops out at the RTX 5070 Ti, followed by the RTX 5070, RTX 5060 Ti, RTX 5060, and RTX 5050, with partner RTX 5080 models gone as well. The same thing happened to the RTX 5090 about two weeks ago and, barring a brief cameo at $5,599, the card still hasn't returned. NVIDIA has since denied that the RTX 5090 is discontinued, though it hasn't said anything about the RTX 5080 yet. Oddly enough, its RTX 5080 product page still says "Starting at $999."

The removal seems limited to the US for now. NVIDIA's UK Marketplace still has 13 RTX 5080 listings and two RTX 5090 cards. Of course, a missing listing could simply mean there's no stock left, since the RTX 5080 already costs close to $2,000 at US retailers, roughly double its MSRP. That leaves the RTX 5070 Ti as the fastest card on NVIDIA's US store, and it isn't cheap either. The seven listings there range from $1,269.99 to $1,499.99, well above its $749 launch price.

Last week, modders found a way to double the tensor throughput of GeForce RTX 20, RTX 30, and RTX 40 cards, though Zagitta's original tool only ran on Linux. Now, Chinese modder physicsdolphin has released nv-uefi-unlocker, a UEFI tool that lifts the same limit on Windows. NVIDIA runs FP16, BF16, and TF32 tensor math with FP32 accumulation at half rate on GeForce cards, while the same silicon in professional cards runs at full speed. The tool removes that cap before the driver even loads, without any VBIOS flashing. An earlier Windows port from impacifist targeted a single RTX 3090 system, while this one covers all three generations.

The gains look substantial. One user's RTX 4070 Ti Super went from 57.00 to 150.93 TFLOPS in FP16 (2.65x), though board power also climbed from 227 W to nearly 292 W. An RTX 2070 reportedly jumped from 36 to around 60-63 TFLOPS. Not every card has been tested; RTX 20 owners have to enable GSP firmware mode first, and RTX 50 isn't supported at all. The unlock resets on every power-off, so it runs from a USB stick on each cold boot, with Secure Boot disabled or a self-signed certificate enrolled. That could be a problem for games whose anti-cheat requires Secure Boot.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 24 GB might arrive sooner than expected. A new post from Board Channels' ChannelGate account claims NVIDIA is speeding up the launch, with availability now expected around January 2027 and December 2026 as the earliest option. Earlier this month, various sources relayed that the card was reportedly planned for Q1 2027. The same post says NVIDIA will stop supplying the RTX 5080 16 GB and the RTX 5090 D V2 to China, leaving the 24 GB RTX 5080 as the only flagship model in that market. The report only covers China, so there's no word yet on whether the 16 GB card is going away globally. If the January window pans out, a CES 2027 reveal seems likely, though NVIDIA hasn't confirmed anything.

Apparently, NVIDIA has already cleared out its RTX 5080 16 GB GPU inventory, and the remaining stock should last around two months. That roughly matches a leaker's claim that NVIDIA has January discontinuation dates set for the 16 GB card. The post is machine-translated, so some wording may be off. Specs are still unknown, though 24 GB on the same 256-bit bus would most likely mean 3 GB GDDR7 modules instead of 2 GB ones. Board Channels previously suggested the card could cost around 19,999 yuan (nearly $3,000) in China, while the 16 GB model already sells for close to $2,000 at U.S. retailers, double its $999 MSRP. With the memory shortage expected to get worse in 2027, it's reasonable to expect the 24 GB card to be both expensive and hard to find.

This Halloween week, GFN Thursday is delivering a fresh batch of gaming treats. Something wicked this blade comes. S-GAME's Phantom Blade Zero launches on GeForce NOW today, bringing a scarily good blend of martial arts and punk fantasy to the cloud. There's also something on the horizon for adventurers: World of Warcraft: Forever arrives Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. PST, with a launch-week access reward coming for GeForce NOW members.

This week's lineup also includes nine games streaming from the GeForce NOW library, alongside new mod support for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered. That means more options to play, with no downloads or installs to haunt gamers' devices. There's another sweet update for gamers in India: The option to sign up for four-month Performance and Ultimate memberships is launching tomorrow. Visit the GeForce NOW website for more information.

Palit issued a statement today to address and dismiss current industry rumors that GALAX GPU factories are winding down. The rumor suggested that GALAX and its European-focused KFA2 brand were experiencing supply issues with NVIDIA. However, Palit has clarified that these reports are inaccurate. As one of NVIDIA's largest add-in card partners, Palit sells a significant volume through its brands. The speculation that GALAX factories are shutting down due to supply problems with NVIDIA would imply a risk to NVIDIA's entire business with its AIC partners, which doesn't make much sense. Palit explained that since Palit and GALAX are now operating under one roof, they share some manufacturing facilities, and GALAX products continue to be sold.

Palit has also confirmed that the company is developing next-generation GALAX Hall-of-Fame (HOF) graphics cards, along with regular GALAX and KFA2-branded GPU models. While the current generation of GPUs remains available, the mention of next-generation GPUs in development is particularly intriguing. This indicates that the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 60-Series "Rubin" gaming GPUs will also be available in GALAX HOF and KFA2 variants, providing extreme overclockers with more HOF generations in the future.

The latest in the saga of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 discontinuation rumors is that OEMs are no longer able to order GPUs or VRAM for the 5090 from NVIDIA, however it seems as though Zotac is undeterred, having just published a restock of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Solid OC in Japan. The new listing on Zotac's official online store in Japan was spotted by @momomo_us on X, a popular leaker and hardware insider.

While the GPU appears to be in stock, and selling for as much as 1,190,000 JPY (~$7 558,17 converted), there's no telling if this will remain the case for the foreseeable future. It appears as though Zotac may have had some stock ready to go, but it's also entirely possible that the lack of supply or back-order availability that was previously reported by other board partners could have been due to regional or AIB limitations on GPU allocation by NVIDIA. It may also be an indication that previous reports of the RTX 5090 being end-of-life were inaccurate.

Although NVIDIA has officially denied the discontinuation of the GeForce RTX 5090, more rumors are emerging that substantiate claims about the flagship gaming GPU being discontinued. This time, NVIDIA board partners are reporting that NVIDIA has officially stopped accepting orders for the 5090, according to a recent report by Der8auer on YouTube, and it appears as though it's not just a temporary freeze on GB202 supply, as has been the case prior, since pre-orders are also not available to buyers.

Unnamed AIB partner via Der8auer on YouTubeNo, NVIDIA did not inform us that the RTX 5090 is EOL. But currently we cannot purchase GB202 together with 32 GB GDDR7 as a complete set, and we also don't know if ordering will be possible in again in future. Similar supplier shortages already happened several times before. But in the past NVIDIA always allowed us to place backorders, which is currently not possible anymore.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30-series and RTX 40-series graphics cards are based on the same dies as their professional-grade GPUs. This means the compute potential of consumer-oriented RTX GPUs is restricted by NVIDIA's firmware stack, but modders have managed to unlock the instruction issuing rate equivalent to their professional GPU counterparts. Starting with the GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere," a researcher developed an unlock that effectively doubles the instruction issuing speed of FP/BF16 FMA into FP32 operations on GA102, GA103, GA104, and GA106 cards. As a result, cards like the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti experience up to 80% faster matrix multiplication in BF16, which is crucial for running nearly all neural networks. The unlock supports GA102, GA103, GA104, and GA106-based GeForce RTX graphics cards.

Next, we have the GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada Lovelace" with another project that has demonstrated a massive 2× speedup in FP16 and BF16 tensor throughput with FP32 accumulation. When the GeForce RTX 4090 was tested with FP16 tensor throughput and matrix accumulation, the GPU achieved 165.6 TeraFLOPS, while the unlock pushed that number to 331.6 TeraFLOPS. This is intriguing as these computational performance numbers are typically reserved for the higher-end professional segment like the NVIDIA RTX 6000 "Ada Lovelace." It seems NVIDIA artificially limited the AD102 silicon's performance in compute-sensitive matrix multiplication and accumulation, affecting the performance of running large language models. For this unlock, AD102, AD103, and AD106 are officially unlocked.

Three airport workers have reportedly been identified as the people behind the disappearance of two pallets of ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5090 cards from Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, Brazil, and at least one of those cards has already popped up for sale online. The shipment belonged to Oderço, a distributor based in Maringá, which imported the cards from the US and puts their cost at around R$2.5 million (roughly $470,000). According to a police report filed by the airport operator, two outsourced forklift operators moved the pallets out of the cargo terminal's warehouse on September 21, which security cameras recorded, while a third employee, a checker, released the goods in the electronic system so they could get past the airport's controls. The cards were then loaded onto a truck and haven't been seen since.

Apparently, one of them later turned up on OLX for R$32,000 (about $6,000), and Brazil's Jornal da Band reported that its serial number matched one of the imported cards. The listing has since been pulled, and it's not clear who posted it or whether that person was involved. There's no word on arrests either. Oderço's president, Oderço Matos, said two pallets don't just vanish on their own inside an international airport. GPU shipments have gone missing before, including containers of MSI RTX 3090 cards and a truck full of EVGA cards. However, this haul is worth a lot more on the street right now, with some RTX 5090 listings going for well past $8,000 as the card remains in heavy demand for AI workloads.

GALAX has unveiled the specifications for its GeForce RTX 5080 Hall Of Fame Extreme edition graphics card, the only RTX 5080 model featuring two 12V-2x6 power connectors. Interestingly, the card has a TGP of 400 W, and the official GALAX announcement states that the two power connectors are not required for simultaneous use. Instead, they are offered as alternatives to suit different PC builds and cable management preferences, so even if both connections are used, only one will be active. One standard connector is located on the top of the GPU, in the usual spot. The second 12V-2x6 power cable is positioned at the bottom of the card, concealed behind a GPU shroud near the PCIe x16 connector. This serves as an alternative power supply, allowing system builders to hide visible cables for a cleaner look.

For the GPU itself, GALAX has implemented a 20-phase power delivery system for the GPU and a 4-phase power delivery design for the GDDR7 memory, along with a digital PWM controller, eFuse, and HOF-branded inductors. All of this is mounted on a customized white PCB with gold plating on key connections. In OC Mode, which raises the TGP to 400 W, the GPU clock speed reaches 2,805 MHz. In regular Gaming Mode, the TGP is reduced to NVIDIA's reference 360 W, with clock speeds at 2,655 MHz. Since the 12V-2x6 connector is sufficient for these TGP designs, a second power source is unnecessary. GDDR7 memory is running at 30 Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus for a total of 960 GB/s memory bandwidth.

Earlier this month, leakers claimed NVIDIA had stopped allocating GB202 silicon to the GeForce RTX 5090, effectively discontinuing the Blackwell flagship. NVIDIA denied it a few days later, with SVP Jeff Fisher saying the RTX 5090 hasn't been discontinued and will keep shipping. Now, Moore's Law Is Dead (MLID) says the plans are still in place, and the RTX 5080 is part of them too. In the latest Broken Silicon episode, MLID read out a message from what he calls one of his oldest sources, apparently a major retailer, saying NVIDIA has set discontinuation dates for both cards in the first half of January 2027.

According to that source, the last RTX 5090 shipments arrived in September, while the final RTX 5080 batch should land by the end of October and sell through Thanksgiving. We recently reported that Micro Center has already marked its RTX 5090 listings as "Not Carried," which could be further evidence of the RTX 5090 leaving shelves. The retailer from MLID's video also says its system already has a placeholder SKU for an RTX 5080 24 GB, which aligns with BenchLife's earlier report of a Q1 2027 launch.

Anyone holding out for an affordable next-gen NVIDIA card might have a long wait. Hardware leaker Kepler_L2 claims on NeoGAF that the GeForce RTX 6060 will "launch much later," adding that, based on recent trends, he doubts it will even match the PlayStation 6. He was replying to a forum member who argued the PS6 would compete with the RTX 6060, in the same thread where he claimed the console's RAM and storage alone cost over $680. Kepler didn't give an actual date, and the 2029 figure going around seems to be an extrapolation. Both Kepler and kopite7kimi have placed NVIDIA's Rubin-based RTX 60 series in 2028, and the x60 cards usually trail the flagship by a few months. The RTX 5060 arrived under four months after the RTX 5090, while the RTX 4060 took over eight months to follow the RTX 4090.

With a flagship launch around mid-2028 or later, that could push the RTX 6060 into 2029. That said, the "much later" comment seems to be relative to the PS6, which is reportedly targeting late 2027, so the exact timing is still anyone's guess. Kepler didn't say why, but the ongoing memory shortage looks like the obvious suspect. NVIDIA reportedly postponed its RTX 50 SUPER refresh earlier this year to prioritize AI products that use the same GDDR7 memory, and the company recently admitted that RTX 5090 supply is tight. Of course, NVIDIA hasn't announced the RTX 60 series officially yet, so treat this as a rumor. Anyone looking to buy a new NVIDIA GPU should probably expect the current RTX 50 lineup to stick around for quite a while.

GALAX has officially teased its GeForce RTX 5090 Hall of Fame Edition GPU, featuring unique details with Swarovski crystals. What the company originally showcased at Computex 2026 now appears to be a product scheduled for launch on October 22. The GeForce RTX 5090 HOF maintains the distinctive white aesthetic that GALAX GPUs are known for. However, this time, the design is enhanced with Swarovski crystals embedded across the GPU shroud, adding a nuanced touch. This should help the GPU stand out in all-white builds, especially when RGB lighting hits the crystals, reflecting and bursting in multiple directions.

Another interesting aspect is that the card is expected to feature dual 12V-2×6 power connectors, providing significant power headroom. GALAX has already offered its flagship GeForce RTX 5090D HOF Edition GPUs with dual 12V-2x6 power connectors, but this will be the first time an overclocking-focused graphics card receives such a luxurious finish with crystals. Initially, the GPU's appearance at Computex 2026 was thought to be a preview for the GeForce RTX 6090. However, it is now clear that the item will be more of a collectible, as GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs have become extremely expensive on their own.

A developer who goes by Panchovix has released three tools that let NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50, RTX 40, and RTX 30-series owners run a modified VBIOS without writing anything to the card's flash chip. The first is a VBIOS editor for Windows and Linux that can change power limits, voltage ceilings, current (OCP) limits, fan channels, and the core and memory offset ranges. Edited images keep NVIDIA's original signature, which no longer matches, so they can't be flashed with nvflash. Patched tools did break NVIDIA's BIOS signature lock for crossflashing back in 2023, but this approach skips flashing altogether. On Windows, the loader stores the edited image in the GPU's driver registry key, where the driver picks it up as an override every time the device starts, and it only needs a quick GPU restart. The Linux loader instead patches NVIDIA's open kernel modules so the GSP firmware starts with the custom image, with Fedora 43 being the only distro tested on real hardware so far.

The screenshots show how this works in practice. On what appears to be an RTX 5090 Founders Edition ROM, the board power ceiling went from 600 W to 700 W and the NVVDD and MSVDD voltage ceilings from 1,110 mV to 1,150 mV. An RTX 4090 ROM had its power ceiling raised from 666 W to 750 W and its core offset range doubled to +2,000 MHz, and nvidia-smi later confirmed that card's power limit going from 550 W to 671 W. Apparently, an RTX 5090 reached 800 W, an RTX 5080 went from 360 W to 500 W, and an RTX 5060 Ti from 185 W to 300 W in the developer's own testing. Laptop RTX 40 GPUs can't be edited yet, and memory timings can't be changed since the card reads them directly from the flash chip.

NVIDIA has finally responded to reports that the GeForce RTX 5090 is being discontinued. Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of NVIDIA's personal computing business, told Taiwanese media after the RTX Spark launch party in Taipei on October 16 that the rumors aren't true, as reported by 4Gamers and the Central News Agency (CNA). The whole thing kicked off last week when leakers claimed NVIDIA had stopped allocating GB202 silicon to the RTX 5090, and BenchLife later added that board partners were no longer receiving GB202 chips for the card. The RTX 5090 also seemingly vanished from NVIDIA's own marketplace and from Micro Center shelves, which only added fuel to the fire. Here's what Fisher said, translated from 4Gamers' Chinese report:

The supply chain (capacity) is indeed somewhat constrained, but NVIDIA is going all out to bring products to market. Although there are other variants of the RTX 5090 (chip), it has definitely not been discontinued. NVIDIA will continue to ship it, and this is very important.