3DFX is a well-known name for most in our community, I'd wager (I don't have the data to back me up on that, but bare with me). The company is one of the highest-profile defunct companies that vied for a place in the desktop, high-performance GPU space back in the day, and brought its guns bearing on NVIDIA and then ATI. The Rampage was the last GPU ever developed by the company, and looked to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce3. That never saw the light of day, though, with the company shutting its doors before development became viable for market release.

DSOGaming has some images of some of the Rampage GPUs that survived 3DFX's closure, though, and the graphics card is shown running Max Payne, Unreal Tournament & 3DMark 2001. For those of you that ever had a 3DFX graphics card, these should bring you right down memory lane. Enjoy.

For those doing a fresh install of Microsoft's latest Windows 10 operating system (version 1809 October 2018 Update), you may encounter an issue with NVIDIA graphics drivers. Namely, a message may pop up when you install the graphics driver, telling you "The standard NVIDIA graphics driver is not compatible with this version of Windows". The issue is caused by the operating system automatically installing the GeForce 398.36 DCH graphics driver through Windows Update, immediately after first log-on. DCH drivers are also known as "Universal Windows Driver", "UWD", "DCHU", and "Declarative, Componentized, Hardware Support App", and leverage the Windows UWP platform for driver control panels while promising simpler updates and maintainability.

If networking is available during the Windows 10 installation, the operating system will automatically look for a graphics driver on Windows Update, which is a good thing, as it simplifies the setup process for the majority of users. At this point, everything will appear to be fine, however, once you attempt to update from that driver to the newest version from NVIDIA's driver download page, the error will appear. This is highly frustrating for some users, who have been reporting the issue on several online forums, including NVIDIA's own, with little attention paid thus far from their developers. We encountered the problem ourselves today, during the setup of our 2019 SSD review benchmarking install and got motivated to investigate this further.

With NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series having already released for desktops, it was only a matter of time until laptops got the RTX treatment as well. Current rumors are suggesting that Nvidia will officially launch their GeForce RTX 20-series mobility GPUs on January 6th at CES with the RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Max-Q taking center stage. An embargo date of January 26th has also been set, with NVIDIA delaying their final release drivers until then. Meaning final performance results for the new mobile GPUs won't be available until after the embargo date, which should coincide with the general availability of RTX 20-series equipped laptops.

Along with the RTX 2070 and 2070 Max-Q mobility parts, the flagship RTX 2080 Max-Q which isn't expected at the show, is still in the works, with its TU104M 1eab device ID having been leaked earlier. The rest of the GeForce 20-series mobility GPUs are likely to use the GTX moniker if NVIDIA's desktop lineup is anything to go by; however, that is merely speculation at this point.

GIGABYTE looks to expand their NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti lineup with the AORUS Turbo. This new offering features a blower-style cooler with a plastic shroud and no backplate. Considering the AORUS brand is typically enthusiast focused along with the fact GIGABYTE themselves already offer an RTX 2080 Ti with a blower-style cooler makes the AORUS Turbo a bit of a head-scratcher. Comparing the two shows the plastic shroud has been altered, however, outward appearance aside it is likely that the AORUS Turbo uses the same cooler as the GIGABYTE RTX 2080 Ti Turbo, which features a large vapor chamber cooler paired with a high-efficiency aluminium heatsink.

Meanwhile, power delivery is handled by two 8-pin PCIe connectors which are the standard for RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. Display connectivity consists of three Displayport connectors, one HDMI connector, and a USB-C connector with VritualLink support. Other than that, full specifications and pricing are currently unknown. However, it can be speculated that the AORUS Turbo RTX 2080 Ti will feature stock clocks of 1545 MHz on the core and 14000 MHz on the memory with a price that should be close to MSRP at least in theory.

Razer, the leading lifestyle brand for gamers, announced today the release of their redesigned 13-inch ultraportable laptop line consisting of three new configurations. The new Razer Blade Stealth is now available with individually calibrated micro edge thin-bezel displays with up to 4K resolution, increased battery life of up to 13 hours, and available NVIDIA GeForce dedicated graphics.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce software suite. Version 417.22 refines optimization for "Battlefield V," with specific game-ready tuning for Battlefield V Tides of War Chapter 1: Overture Update. The drivers also introduce fixes to a number of bugs, including display corruption noticed on some high refresh-rate monitors connected via DisplayPort, and a blank screen noticed on BenQ ZOWIE XL2730 monitors when the refresh-rate is set to 144 Hz. A game crash noticed on "Hellblade" with RTX 2080 Ti is also addressed. Also fixed are incorrect memory clock speed reporting, and incorrect application of RGB color formats in NVIDIA Control Panel.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 417.22 WHQL

The change-log follows.

It has been confirmed by Seasonic that their FOCUS PLUS power supplies are experiencing potential conflict with a select number of graphics cards. In regards to NVIDIA, the compatibility issue is currently limited to the ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX. In limited instances, this particular graphics card can encounter a black screen under heavy load. Testing by Seasonic has determined that the issue is caused by higher than normal ripple when the GPU is heavily stressed. They also determined that solving the problem simply required using modified PCIe cables that feature enhanced shielding.

When it comes to AMD GPUs things are a bit more problematic. Both of AMD's Vega 56 and Vega 64 series of graphics cards with serial numbers before January 2018, can experience system shutdowns when paired with a FOCUS PLUS power supply. The issue is caused by higher than normal peak current being emitted by these graphics cards when under heavy load. This results in the power supply's internal protection safety being triggered. Considering Seasonic's popularity the fact these power supplies are encountering problems is likely going to be a hit to their brand image. At least they are stepping up to the plate having admitted to the problem while also investigating the root causes. They are also encouraging anyone that is encountering issues to contact them for assistance.

NVIDIA today reported revenue for the third quarter ended Oct. 28, 2018, of $3.18 billion, up 21 percent from $2.64 billion a year earlier, and up 2 percent from $3.12 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $1.97, up 48 percent from $1.33 a year ago and up 12 percent from $1.76 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.84, up 38 percent from $1.33 a year earlier and down 5 percent from $1.94 in the previous quarter.

"AI is advancing at an incredible pace across the world, driving record revenues for our datacenter platforms," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Our introduction of Turing GPUs is a giant leap for computer graphics and AI, bringing the magic of real-time ray tracing to games and the biggest generational performance improvements we have ever delivered.

NVIDIA, via a blog post on its forums, has confirmed widespread reports of failures affecting their flagship RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. The issues, which resulted in "crashes, black screens, blue screen of death issues, artifacts and cards that fail to work entirely," started cropping up throughout tech forums, before reaching a critical mass that warranted coverage - just in case this was exactly what it seemed, ie, a production issue.

It seems this was just so, and that the problem was luckily limited to some early manufacturing issues or QA controls. As NVIDIA themselves put it, "Limited test escapes from early boards caused the issues some customers have experienced with RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition." The company then says that they stand ready to help customers who are experiencing problems - but nothing else was to be expected, really.

Square Enix has just updated their Final Fantasy XV Benchmark to version 1.2, adding support for NVIDIA's DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling) technology. The new release will still allow users to test any graphics card(s) they have just as it did before. That said, owners of NVIDIA's RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti get the benefit of having access to DLSS for improved image quality and performance. NVIDIA claims that performance will improve by up to 38% with DLSS alone. In order to verify that we ran a few tests of our own to find out.

Preliminary testing was done using Corsair's Vengeance 5180 Gaming PC, which is equipped with an Intel i7-8700, 16 GB 2666 MHz DDR4 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080. At 3840x2160 with the highest possible settings, DLSS offered a 36% increase in performance. This is very close to NVIDIA's specified increase and within the expected margin of error. When compared to the older GTX 1080 Ti which was paired with a stock Intel i7-8700K, and 32 GB of 3466 MHz memory we see the GeForce RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti offer roughly the same level of performance. Therefore DLSS really is the difference maker here allowing for better performance and image quality. It should also be noted both systems used the same NVIDIA 416.94 WHQL drivers.

MSI's most recent addition to their NVIDIA GeForce based line up has appeared. The newly minted RTX 2070 AERO ITX is as you may have guessed a graphics card that targets the mini-ITX market. It is currently the smallest RTX series graphics card to be spotted thus far, with it being perfect for this form factor as it lacks a few features seen on the higher end RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti that add complexity. Essentially the lack of NVlink on all RTX 2070 offerings allows for a simpler PCB design that is better suited for this design. There is also the fact anyone wanting SLI would not be looking at ITX focused cards anyway.

The other feature removed likely for cost savings is the VirtualLink (USB-C) connector that delivers power, video, and data for virtual reality headsets. While not entirely a deal breaker it still makes using it for a small form factor VR system a bit more difficult going forward. That said, considering the slow adoption of VR its removal is still a relatively safe bet for MSI for now. Taking a closer look at the packaging shows no indication of a pre-applied overclock, meaning MSI's RTX 2070 AERO ITX should come with NVIDIA reference clock speeds of 1410 MHz base / 1620 MHz boost on the core. The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory should have clocks of 1750 MHz (14000 MHz effective). As for the graphics card's TDP, it should also keep to the reference specification of 175-watts. Currently, pricing and availability are still unknown.

Today, NVIDIA released their GeForce 416.81 drivers, which among others, contains the following changelog entry: "[Turing GPU]: Multi-monitor idle power draw is very high. [2400161]". Back at launch in September, Turing was plagued with very high non-gaming power consumption, in both single-monitor and multi-monitor idle.

The company was quick to fix single-monitor power consumption, which we tested promptly. Unfortunately, at the time, multi-monitor power draw wasn't improved and people were starting to get worried that there might be some kind of unfixable issue present on Turing that would prevent NVIDIA from fixing multi-monitor power draw.

As a follow up to last week's all-in-one liquid cooling based product, GIGABYTE today released the Aorus Xtreme GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 WaterForceWB. These cards are targeted at enthusiasts with DIY liquid cooling setups, and come with a factory-fitted full-coverage water block, instead of the AIO cooler. The block's primary material is nickel-plated copper with mirror finish, while its top is mainly acrylic, with opaque embellishments, a part of which is an addressable RGB LED diffuser that takes input from a standarized aRGB header. The opaque portion of the top also features a glowing Aorus logo.

The underlying PCB of the RTX 2080 Ti WaterForce WB packs a 16+3 phase VRM that draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, 1770 MHz GPU Boost frequency, and a memory overclock of 14140 MHz (vs. 14000 MHz). The RTX 2080 WaterForce WB features the same PCB as its AIO-equipped twin, with a 12+2 phase VRM, 1890 MHz GPU Boost, and 14140 MHz memory OC. While the block itself is around 1-slot thick, a second row of display connectors makes the card 2-slot. Among these connectors are three each of DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b, and VirtualLink.

Gigabyte is now readying a new hybrid cooled graphics card, based on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080. Dubbed the Aorus Xtreme WaterForce (GV-N2080AORUSX W-8GC). It uses an all-in-one liquid cooler based design that makes use of a 240 mm radiator. The copper baseplate is quite large and receives heat from the cards VRM via a copper heat pipe, thus cooling all major components. The fans are of course RGB LED-equipped, which goes with the illuminated translucent wing on the shroud. Overall it is an attractive card if you have the extra space for its cooling solution.

This model isn't just a standard offering with a fancy cooler, Gigabyte has equipped it with a sizable overclock, pushing the card to 1890 MHz the same core clocks as the Aorus Xtreme air and the waterblock equipped WaterForce WB. Memory speeds see a speed bump as well of 140 MHz which pushes the overall memory clock speed up to 14140 MHz. The board design is also based on the Aorus Xtreme and Aorus Xtreme Waterforce WB cards and comes with a 12+2 phase design and dual 8-pin power connectors. Display connectivity is also the same as the other models and includes; 3x DisplayPort, 3x HDMI, and a single USB TypeC.

Thanks to some photographs by Andreas Schilling, of HardwareLuxx, it is now confirmed that AMD's Radeon RX 590 will make use of the 12 nm FinFET process. The change from 14 nm to 12 nm FinFET for the RX 590 brings with it the possibility of both higher clock speeds and better power efficiency. That said, considering it is based on the same Polaris architecture used in the Radeon RX 580 and 570, it remains to be seen how it will impact AMDs pricing in regards to the product stack. Will there be a price drop to compensate, or will the RX 590 be more expensive? Since AMD has already made things confusing enough with its cut down 2048SP version of RX 580 in China, anything goes at this point.

While GALAX has introduced numerous solid graphics cards over the years, their product names are a bit of a mouthful, or in some cases just odd. The latest example being their EX OC "White Gamer" line, which, let's face it, is a tad off-putting to say the least. Of course we know that GALAX aren't racist, but you have to wonder how something like this happens. It probably comes down to marketing focusing too much on buzzwords, forgetting the context of said words in the process. In my humble opinion you can trace it back to the fact every company has to stick "Gaming" in every product name or on every box. In this case you would think the fact the product is a graphics card for gaming would be enough to get the point across.

It all started with MSI in 2013, when NVIDIA Kepler was all the rage. They released the "MSI GTX 780 Gaming", which was an amazing product, better than what most other graphics cards vendors had to offer. Competitors were surprised by the success of MSI's new cards and instead of searching into the reasons for their own products failures, their conclusion was that it must be the "Gaming" name, that drove the sales, so suddenly everybody started to fluff up their product names.

Well this here is something that we don't see every day (read, never): an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card for $999. NVIDIA did announce pricing starting at that value for this particular graphics card, but pricing, as always with NVIDIA's Founder Editions, has always creeped towards the company's self-set $1,199. EVGA, however, has just put up a product page for their GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING, a dual-fan solution (much like NVIDIA's own Founders Edition) with EVGA's iCX 2 cooling expertise that's being marketed at the unicorn-like $999 price-point, with a limit of 1 per household.

NVIDIA today released GeForce 416.34 WHQL "Game Ready" drivers. These drivers provide optimization for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 4" (retail), "Soulcaliber VI," and "GRIP." Among the fixed issues with this release are buggy shadows in "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds," some games launching to a black screen when DSR is enabled, a colorful shimmering line noticed in some games when playing full-screen with G-SYNC enabled, Surround display not being available from NVIDIA Control Panel with Edge browser running, and green screen display corruption on certain games with HDR enabled. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 416.34 WHQL

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA is giving finishing touches to its first GeForce RTX 20-series Mobility GPUs for notebooks, based on the "Turing" architecture, with product launches expected from Q1-2019. The company could debut the series with a high-end part first, the GeForce RTX 2080 Mobility Max-Q. The rest of the lineup includes the RTX 2070 Mobility Max-Q, RTX 2060 Ti Mobility, RTX 2060 Mobility, RTX 2050 Ti Mobility, and RTX 2050 Mobility. What's interesting about this list is that NVIDIA is limiting the Max-Q design to its top-tier RTX 2080 Mobility and RTX 2070 Mobility parts.

Max-Q is an all-encompassing laptop thermal-design methodology, which allows gaming notebook designers to come up with thinner notebooks with higher performance. One of the key aspects is special Max-Q ready variants of the GPUs, which are probably binned to run the coolest, and least voltages. With a device ID 1eab, the RTX 2080 Mobility Max-Q is based on the TU104M chip, while other SKUs could be carved from the TU106M or a chip even smaller. It's being reported that with this generation, NVIDIA is playing a more active role in helping its partners engineer their Max-Q notebooks, and helping them meet NVIDIA's strict Z-height minimums.

Back on September 27th, MSI talked candidly with PConline at the MSI Gaming New Appreciation Conference, in Shanghai. Multiple MSI executives were available to answer questions regarding products, launches, and potential issues. The first question asked was about the brewing US-Chinese trade war and if it will affect prices of graphics cards and CPUs. To which, Liao Wei, Deputy General Manager of MSI Global Multimedia Business Unit, and MSI Headquarters Graphics Card Products gave an actual answer. Stating that the since NVIDIA's GPU core is handled by a TSMC in Taiwan and memory is handled by Samsung and Hynix in South Korea and the United States respectively, there is little chance of further graphics card price hikes. However CPU side prices may increase on the Intel side, however, AMD is expected to be unaffected.

ZOTAC is preparing to launch another tier to its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards lineup with the AMP Extreme series. Sitting above their now historic AMP Series (at least in computer hardware terms, it's already historic), the new lineup will bring much improved factory overclocking numbers, so these are certainly part of those cherry-picked chips for maximum performance. Core clocks aren't known at the time, but memory clocks have been upped to 14.4 Gbps, some 400 MHz above the factory specifications for the RTX 2080 - the only confirmed card until now.

The rest of the design is relatively straightforward, with a metallic backplate, a tri-90 mm fan design, 2x 8-pin power connectors, a 16+4 phases power delivery system, and a much increased TDP of 280 W (over the reference 215 W). Of course, there's RGB lighting as well, but that's not the important thing here: the cherry-picked chips are. It's unclear os of yet when this series will hit the market, but expect them sooner rather than later. ZOTAC is apparently also working on a AMP Core series, which should find its differentiation over the factory overclocking specifics.

Gigabyte is a little bit late to the party, but better late than never, for sure. The company has launched four new graphic cards -AORUS Geforce RTX 2080 Ti XTREME 11G, AORUS Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11G, AORUS Geforce RTX 2080 XTREME 8G. All of them are equipped with "top-of-the-line" overclocked GPUs, and the AORUS Engine software makes it easy to control clock speeds, fan performance or power target. These cards feature the RGB three-ring light effect, WINDFORCE 3x 100mm Stack Fan, and 7 video outputs.

Those fans allow to reduce the graphics card length, but they also generate more wind pressure and therefore improve dissipation not only for the GPU but also for VRAM and MOSFET. According to Gigabyte these are the only GeForce RTX20 Series products that offer 7 video outputs: 3 HDMI, 3 DP and one USB-C for greater flexibility when connecting different monitors without any adaptors. There's a new aero-space graded PCB for these cards, that have a 12+2 Phase PCB design (RTX 2080 Xtreme) with a 16+3 phase PCB design for the RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme.

Lenovo unveiled the Titanium Enterprise NCC-1701A, a gaming PC with the phrase "enterprise" in its name. Only they aren't referring to the market-segment, but arguably the most famous ship, real or fictional, to bear the name "USS Enterprise." This gaming desktop looks like a scale-model of the Star Trek starship USS Enterprise from TOS (the original series) cinematic renditions, in which Captain Kirk and his motley crew get an upgrade to a modernized starship bearing the Starfleet registry NCC-1701-A. Perhaps the only perfectly-overlookable bits Lenovo got wrong is that bulge near the drive section, between the warp nacelles, because it accommodates some cutting-edge hardware.

Its warp-core so to speak, is a 9th generation Intel Core processor, which could very well be 8-core. In charge of its fire-power is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. Other drool-worthy specs include 32 GB of DDR4 memory, 1 TB M.2 SSD + 2 TB HDD in charge of storage, Killer DoubleShot networking, and RGB LED embellishments all around its body. Lenovo is serious about bringing the Titanium Enterprise NCC-1701A to market, even if in small quantities. This is not a concept. Now if only the saucer section opened up from the top to reveal a Blu-ray drive, Discman-style.

In a continued effort to support the PC platform, BANDAI NAMCO previously announced they would be releasing Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on PC. At the time, there was no mention of what the game's system requirements would be. However, thanks to an NVIDIA blog post, we now know not only the game's system requirements but an estimate on system performance as well- at least with their own graphics solutions.

Overall, the minimum and recommended requirements appear to be quite reasonable. BANDAI NAMCO even went so far as to make note that the recommended requirements are representative of what is needed to run the game at the 1920x1080 resolution with max settings. NVIDIA's own testing backs up those claims with the GeForce GTX 1060 offering a comfortable 100 FPS at 1920x1080, and 60 FPS at 2560x1440 resolutions. Meanwhile, those wanting to push the game at 4K will need a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or better which should offer a steady 60+ FPS.

While conducting our first reviews for NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti we noticed surprisingly high non-gaming power consumption from NVIDIA's latest flagship cards. Back then, we reached out to NVIDIA who confirmed that this is a known issue which will be fixed in an upcoming driver.

Today the company released version 411.70 of their GeForce graphics driver, which, besides adding GameReady support for new titles, includes the promised fix for RTX 2080 & RTX 2080 Ti.

We gave this new version a quick spin, using our standard graphics card power consumption testing methodology, to check how things have been improved.