NVIDIA today released the latest version of their GeForce drivers, which enable your green-powered card to run smoothly and without issues. This latest driver release is a Game-Ready WHQL one, which aims to enable the smoothest possible experience on recently-released game titles. The focus for this 38.28 version of NVIDIA's GeForce drivers was on Agents of Mayhem, Crossout and Killing Floor: Incursion, while also introducing a number of fixes. You can grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 385.28 WHQL Game-Ready Drivers

NVIDIA today reported record revenue for the second quarter ended July 30, 2017, of $2.23 billion, up 56 percent from $1.43 billion a year earlier, and up 15 percent from $1.94 billion in the previous quarter.

• Record revenue of $2.23 billion, up 56 percent from a year ago
• GAAP EPS of $0.92, up 124 percent from a year ago
• Non-GAAP EPS of $1.01, up 91 percent from a year ago
• Broad growth across all platforms
• GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.92, up 124 percent from $0.41 a year ago and up 16 percent from $0.79 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.01, up 91 percent from $0.53 a year earlier and up 19 percent from $0.85 in the previous quarter.

The EVGA SC17 1080 G-SYNC Gaming Laptop has arrived. Featuring a 4K-ready IPS panel with NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, this high performance laptop was meticulously crafted from the ground up for hardcore gamers, performance enthusiasts, and overclockers alike. Breaking away from the conventional brick form factor, a unique in-house EVGA designed power supply delivers up to 240 watts of power when needed, without sacrificing function or aesthetics.

The SC17 1080 pairs an unlocked Intel Core i7 7820HK CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 capable of being overclocked to offer the performance you always wanted from a gaming laptop. With performance and overclocking in mind, the EVGA SC17 1080 G-SYNC Gaming Laptop features a BIOS with mouse function to give you complete control over all aspects of performance, voltage and advanced settings to customize your gaming machine. A Clear CMOS button directly on the chassis helps you recover from an unstable overclock, and custom fan curve control keeps your laptop cool and quiet. This is the world's first TRUE overclocking laptop.

It's confirmed: no 144 Hz 4K gaming with HDR in 2017 for NVIDIA gamers who want to make use of G-Sync t avoid screen tearing in their games. Acer last week announced that its 4K HDR Predator X27 gaming display would be delayed to Q1 2018 (meaning, no such thing below your Christmas tree or on your fireplace sock, sadly.) But it isn't Acer's fault, apparently: ASUS's ROG Swift PG27UQ, which features virtually the same specifications, has also been delayed to 2018. Both these monitors are based of an NVIDIA reference design showcased at Computex 2017 (you may remember a slight foul play there as well.)

The Acer Predator X27 and the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ are based on AU Optronics' M270QAN02.2 AHVA panel, which offers a 3840×2160 resolution and can reach a 144 Hz refresh rate. Something that really should make these monitors shine is the usage of a direct LED backlighting system with 384 zones, which can be individually dimmed or brightened as needed, which allows the panel to deliver much higher levels of contrast, needed for true HDR display. At least until OLED panels make their way to high-performance gaming monitors, these are expected to be the best of the crop.

TweakTown has put forth an article wherein they claim to have received info from industry insiders regarding the upcoming Vega 56's performance. Remember that Vega 56 is the slightly cut-down version of the flagship Vega 64, counting with 56 next-generation compute units (NGCUs) instead of Vega 64's, well, 64. This means that while the Vega 64 has the full complement of 4,096 Stream processors, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 2048-bit wide 8 GB HBM2 memory pool offering 484 GB/s of bandwidth, Vega 56 makes do with 3,548 Stream processors,192 TMUs, 64 ROPs, the same 8 GB of HBM2 memory and a slightly lower memory bandwidth at 410 GB/s.

The Vega 56 has been announced to retail for about $399, or $499 with one of AMD's new (famous or infamous, depends on your mileage) Radeon Packs. The RX Vega 56 card was running on a system configured with an Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz, 16 GB of DDR4-3000 MHz RAM, and Windows 10 at 2560 x 1440 resolution.

At SIGGRAPH 2017, NVIDIA announced it is working with a number of partners towards the development of external graphics enclosures that can power - and increase mobility - of their professional-geared GPU solutions. Namely, NVIDIA has announced external GPU solutions featuring the powerful Titan Xp and Quadro graphics cards. These external GPU solutions are meant to upgrade the capability of notebooks to support new workflows such as video editing, interactive rendering, VR content creation, AI development and more. Such has been enabled by the latest, high-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 protocol. For the Quadro eGPU program specifically, Nvidia is working with established manufacturers like Sonnet, Magma, Akiti, and Bizon. The company says there are more to come.

Pricing information has not been revealed for now, but Titan Xp can already be ordered, while the Quadro solutions will see availability in a few weeks.Sources: NextPowerUp, Tom's Hardware

At SIGGRAPH 2017, NVIDIA introduced the latest version of their AI-based, GPU-enabled ray-tracing OptiX API. The company has been at the forefront of GPU-powered AI endeavors in a number of areas, including facial animation, anti-aliasing, denoising, and light transport. OptiX 5.0 brings a renewed focus on AI-based denoising.

AI training is still a brute-force scenario with finesse applied at the end: basically, NVIDIA took tens of thousands of image pairs of rendered images with one sample per pixel and a companion image of the same render with 4,000 rays per pixel, and used that to train the AI to predict what a denoised image looks like. Basically (and picking up the numbers NVIDIA used for its AI training), this means that in theory, users deploying OptiX 5.0 only need to render one sample per pixel of a given image, instead of the 4,000 rays per pixel that would be needed for its final presentation. Based on its learning, the AI will then be able to fill in the blanks towards finalizing the image, saving the need to render all that extra data. NVIDIA quotes a 157x improvement in render time using a DGX station with Optix 5.0 deployed against the same render on a CPU-based platform (2 x E5-2699 v4 @ 2.20GHz). The Optix 5.0 release also includes provisions for GPU-accelerated motion blur, which should do away with the need to render a frame multiple times and then applying a blur filter through a collage of the different frames. NVIDIA said OptiX 5.0 will be available in November. Check the press release after the break.

In a bid to preempt sales of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition, and the Pro WX 9100, NVIDIA expanded the feature-set of its consumer-segment TITAN Xp graphics card, with certain features reserved for its Quadro family of graphics cards, through a driver update. NVIDIA is rolling out its latest GeForce software update, which adds professional features for applications such as Maya, unlocking "3X more performance" for the software.

Priced at USD $1,199, the TITAN Xp packs a full-featured "GP102" graphics processor, with 3,840 CUDA cores, 240 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and 12 GB of GDDR5X memory across the chip's 384-bit wide memory interface. At its given memory clock of 11.4 GHz (GDDR5X-effective), the card has a memory bandwidth of 547.6 GB/s, which is higher than the 484 GB/s of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 385.12 for TITAN XpSource: NVIDIA

AMD is reportedly scaling down efforts on its end to support and promote multi-GPU technologies such as CrossFire, and not in favor of open-standards such as DirectX 12 native multi-GPU, either. Speaking to GamersNexus, an AMD representative confirmed that while the new Radeon RX Vega family of graphics cards support CrossFire, the company may not allocate as many resources as it used to with older GPU launches, in promoting or supporting it.

This is keeping up with trends in the industry moving away from multi-GPU configurations, and aligns with NVIDIA's decision to dial-down investment in SLI. This also more or less confirms that AMD won't build a Radeon RX series consumer graphics product based on two "Vega 10" ASICs. At best, one can expect dual-GPU cards for the professional or GPU-compute markets, such as the Radeon Pro or Radeon Instinct brands.Source: GamersNexus.net

The Khronos Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies, announces from the SIGGRAPH 2017 Conference the immediate public availability of the OpenGL 4.6 specification. OpenGL 4.6 integrates the functionality of numerous ARB and EXT extensions created by Khronos members AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA into core, including the capability to ingest SPIR-V shaders.

SPIR-V is a Khronos-defined standard intermediate language for parallel compute and graphics, which enables content creators to simplify their shader authoring and management pipelines while providing significant source shading language flexibility. OpenGL 4.6 adds support for ingesting SPIR-V shaders to the core specification, guaranteeing that SPIR-V shaders will be widely supported by OpenGL implementations.

MSI, the leading gaming motherboard brand, is proud to announce the all-new X399 GAMING PRO CARBON AC with the launch of new high-end AMD's flagship Ryzen Threadripper processors. Built on the SocketTR4 platform, featuring up to 16 cores and 32 threads, the new Ryzen Threadripper 1950X CPU is capable of scoring over 3000 points in Cinebench, showing its true colors as the new ultra-premium desktop processor.

Like AMD, MSI continuously strives to push the gaming industry forward and emphasizes on gamers' demand. To deliver pure, unprecedented, power and great efficiency when using the new high-end 16-core Threadripper processor, the MSI X399 GAMING PRO CARBON AC is built on a massive 13 phase (10+) DrMOS power design. This not allows for better overclocking, it also helps harness all the power and temperature generated by the massive number of cores. The X399 GAMING PRO CARBON comes with the strongest power design when comparing it to other brands and their current offerings. Besides this, it also features plenty of genuine gaming features and exclusive technologies.

Nordic Hardware is running a piece where they affirm their sources in the Swedish market have confirmed some retailers have already received first pricing information for AMD's upcoming RX Vega graphics cards. This preliminary pricing information places the Radeon RX Vega's price-tag at around 7,000 SEK (~$850) excluding VAT. Things take a turn towards the ugly when we take into account that this isn't even final retail price for consumers: add in VAT and the retailer's own margins, and prospective pricing is expected at about 9,000 SEK (~$1093). Pricing isn't fixed, however, as it varies between manufacturers and models (which we all know too well), and current pricing is solely a reference ballpark.

There is a possibility that the final retail prices will be different from these quoted ones, and if latest performance benchmarks are vindicated, they really should be. However, Nordic Hardware quotes their sources as saying these prices are setting a boundary for "real and final", and that the sentiment among Swedish retailers is that the pricing "Feels wrong". For reference, NVIDIA's GTX 1080 Ti is currently retailing at around 8,000 SEK (~971) including VAT, while the GTX 1080, which RX Vega has commonly been trading blows with, retails for around 5600 SEK (~$680) at the minimum. This should go without saying, but repare your body for the injection of a NaCl solution.Source: Nordic Hardware

NVIDIA CEO over the weekend, held a special event recognizing the efforts of some of the world's foremost AI researchers, and gifted each one of them the first production Tesla V100 GPU compute accelerators. Based on the company's latest "Volta" GPU architecture, the V100 features special "tensor cores," components that speed up deep-learning neural net training, which should have a significant impact on AI research as it cuts down hours or even days of neural net training in a typical project.

At the NVAIL (NVIDIA AI Labs) meetup hosted by NVIDIA, CEO Jen Hsun Huang stressed on the importance of supporting AI research. "AI is the most powerful technology force that we have ever known," said Jen Hsun, "I've seen everything. I've seen the coming and going of the client-server revolution. I've seen the coming and going of the PC revolution. Absolutely nothing compares," he said.Source: NVIDIA Blogs

NVIDIA today released the latest version of their GeForce drivers, which enable your green-powered card to run smoothly and without issues. This latest driver release is a Game-Ready one, which aims to enable the smoothest possible experience on recently-released game titles. The focus for this 384.94 version of NVIDIA's GeForce drivers was on Lawbreakers and the official release of ARK: Survival Evolved. In addition, under the "Game Ready VR" moniker, NVIDIA is also providing the "optimal gaming experience for EVE: Valkyrie's "Ultra" graphics update."

SLI profiles for ARK: Survival Evolved, IL-2: Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad and Lawbreakers were added or updated, and 3D Vision profiles were updated for "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" (Not Recommended), Lawbreakers (Fair), and ARK: Survival Evolved (Not Recommended). As always, you can grab the drivers right here on TPU. Just follow the link below, and feel free to peruse fixed and current issues after the break.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 384.94 Game-Ready Drivers

On the first stop in AMD's two-continent spanning RX Vega tour (which really only counts with three locations), the company pitted their upcoming RX Vega graphics card (we expect this to be their flagship offering) against NVIDIA's GTX 1080 graphics card. The event itself was pretty subdued, and there was not much to see when it comes to the RX Vega graphics card - literally. Both it and the GTX 1080 were enclosed inside PC towers, with the event-goers not being allowed to even catch a glimpse of the piece of AMD hardware that has most approximated a unicorn in recent times.

The Vega-powered system also made use of a Ryzen 7 processor, and the cards were running Battlefield 1 (or Sniper Elite 4; there's lots of discussion going on about that, but the first image below does show a first-person view) with non-descript monitors, one supporting FreeSync, the other G-Sync. The monitor's models were covered by cloth so that users weren't able to tell which system was running which graphics card, though due to ASUS' partnership in the event, both were (probably) of ASUS make. The resolution used was 3440 x 1440, which should mean over 60 FPS on the GTX 1080 on Ultra. It has been reported by users that attended the event that one of the systems lagged slightly in one portion of the demo, though we can't confirm which one (and I'd say that was AMD's intention.)

MAINGEAR continues its partnership with RAZER, today announcing the launch of the MAINGEAR R2 | RAZER Edition gaming desktop. Built for compact performance with award-winning craftsmanship, the R2 pushes the boundaries of small form factor gaming. The R2 | RAZER Edition features a much smaller, radically engineered design that is more than fifty percent smaller than the original R1 case. Performance is uncompromised, as the R2 comes with the latest gaming components to drive 4K quality graphics. The R2 is available with the latest NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards along with the fastest processors on the market: Intel's Core i7 and i9, and AMD Ryzen.

Harnessing the newest SSDs and huge 10 TB HDDs, gamers will have fast and reliable storage along with support for up to 32 GB of premium DDR4 memory. MAINGEAR's eSports and VR-ready configurations take the guesswork out of building a system. Livestreamers who demand quiet systems will appreciate the R2's quiet open loop cooling system that is able to run virtually silent at ultra-settings for most games. "MAINGEAR and RAZER have a joint vision to develop ground breaking products designed specifically for gamers," says Wallace Santos, MAINGEAR CEO. "No matter your needs, our combined culture of obsessively pushing ourselves to create the best performing hardware possible is a core part of the R2's DNA."

MSI's flagship Lightning series made a comeback to the green side with the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti GPU, and they are now available for purchase on Newegg.com in the USA. In a relatively pleasant surprise, they are also selling for a lot lower than what we were originally told by MSI, and at $869.99 for the top-of-the-line Lightning Z, it comes in at $170 more than what the NVIDIA reference (no more Founders Edition price hike, if you may recall) is listed for.

We took a detailed look at the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z earlier this week and were quite impressed with the overall build quality and cooler: "MSI's GTX 1080 Ti Lightning is huge, having three slots, taking up 32 cm in length and 14 cm in height - make sure your case has room for it. As expected, a powerful thermal solution is included, which seems to be the best cooler I've seen in a long time. Temperatures are outstanding and better than any other GTX 1080 Ti, even with the overclock out of the box, which is higher than any other GTX 1080 Ti. At the same time, fan noise also matches the quietest GTX 1080 Tis (33 dBA), which clearly adds up to 'best cooler'."

There seems to be no end in sight for current high-performance, discrete graphics cards' supply constraints. If you've been looking for a specialized graphics processing unit to push eye-candy on your favored 3D experiences to the max, you've probably been having trouble for a while now. It all stems from a crazy, dizzying wave of cryptocurrency mining. And the fact that this mining spree has already taken global mining power consumption to levels close to a 17 million population country, as one of our editors puts it, kind of has a human problem. And it would seem that not even NVIDIA and AMD's partners' attempts to sate current miners' appetite for profit-generating graphics cards has put a dent on demand.

So, yes, the headline is accurate. We all know that cryptocurrency mining has now reached an all time high, which has affected availability and pricing of most graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA. Who doesn't want to make a quick buck here and there? So long as it's profitable, right?

Well, that kind of thinking has already brought the global mining power consumption to unprecedented levels (some might also say demented.) The two top cryptocurrencies right now (by market-cap), Bitcoin and Ethereum, are each responsible for 14.54 TWh and 4.69 TWh power consumption figures. As of now, Ethereum consumes almost as much power as the 120th most power-consuming country, Moldova, which has a population of around 3 million. Bitcoin, on the other hand, stands at 81st on the list, in-between Mozambique and Turkmenistan, the latter of which has a population estimated at 5.17 million people. Combined, Ethereum and Bitcoin consume more power than Syria, which had an estimated 2014 population above 17 million.

An update to the Steam survey results is always worth noting, especially with the added, tremendous growth Valve's online store service has seen recently. And it seems that in the Steam gaming world at least, quad-core CPUs, NVIDIA graphics cards, and Windows 10 reign supreme.

Windows 10 64-bit is the most used operating system, with 50.33% of the survey. That the second most used Windows OS is the steady, hallmark Windows 7 shouldn't come as a surprise, though it does have just 32.05% of the market now. OS X has a measly 2.95% of the grand total, while Linux comes in at an even lower 0.72%. While AMD processor submits may have increased in other software, it seems that at least in Steam, those numbers aren't reflected, since AMD's processor market share in the survey has decreased from 21.89% in February to just 19.01% as of June, even though the company's Ryzen line of CPUs has been selling like hotcakes. Quad-core CPUs are the most used at time of the survey, at 52.06%, while the next highest percentage is still the dual-core CPU, with 42.23%.

NVIDIA rolled out the GeForce 384.80 Hotfix drivers. These drivers address an application crash noticed when trying to start up "Watch_Dogs 2," after updating to the GeForce 384.76 WHQL drivers, which were released earlier this month. The rest of its feature-set is consistent with the 384.76 WHQL driver release. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 384.80 Hotfix

EK Water Blocks, the market leader in PC custom liquid cooling, is announcing the first expansion of its new brand created for PC gamers called EK Fluid Gaming. Bringing the best price/performance ratio imaginable, EK Fluid Gaming is already becoming a number one choice for many gamers who want to join the ultimate liquid cooling club in the world.

Following the release of EK Fluid Gaming kits, many of you have asked us about the availability of separate aluminum parts. You can rest assured, we are officially announcing the first expansion of the EK Fluid Gaming lineup today! And more will follow in the near future.

NVIDIA's GeForce 384 series drivers seem to have quite a few secrets, beginning with DirectX 12 API support on 5-plus year old GeForce "Fermi" GPUs, and now 4K Ultra HD support for Netflix UWP app without the need of new-generation CPUs (namely Intel "Kaby Lake," AMD "Summit Ridge," and AMD "Bristol Ridge."). The new-generation CPUs feature a host of hardware-level DRM features which the Netflix app needs to playback 4K Ultra HD content. The new GeForce 384 series drivers let you circumvent that requirement.

Reddit user aethervisor discovered that the Windows Store (UWP platform) app of Netflix could play back content at full 4K Ultra HD resolution on their machine with an older CPU and GeForce GTX 1080 graphics. New-generation CPUs had become a requirement for this to happen, besides the latest Windows 10 version, an HDCP 2.2-compliant 4K display (and no active secondary displays that don't satisfy HDCP 2.2), a powerful enough GPU, and either the UWP app or the Netflix website on Microsoft's Edge web-browser. NVIDIA struck down a big requirement that opens up Netflix 4K to a much wider user-base.Source: Reddit

PNY Technologies (PNY) considered one of the worldwide leaders in consumer electronics market and flash memory products, is ready to take on the gaming industry by storm with the launch of the Gaming Series to Asia market. The PNY Gaming Series offers best-in-class PC components to deliver gaming performance ranging from affordable to the most intense for die-hard gamers. Scheduled to be released in the 2nd half of 2017, the product categories will include gaming grade graphics cards, SSDs, and PC memory products that promise to deliver the competitive edge advantage in PC gaming.

GIGABYTE, which had two variants of its flagship GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, the air-cooled Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition, and the WaterForce WB Xtreme Edition, that comes with a factory-fitted full-coverage water-block; introduced a third variant, the WaterForce Xtreme Edition. Unlike the WaterForce WB Xtreme Edition, which you plumb to your own water-cooling loop, this card comes with a self-contained AIO liquid-cooling loop. The cooling solution consists of an pump-block base which makes contact with the GPU and a base-plate that draws heat from the VRM and memory; and a 120 mm radiator with an included 120 mm fan. The cooler-shroud features some groovy acrylic windows, and RGB LED lighting controlled by GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software.

The card is based on the same exact PCB as its two other siblings, with the same clock speeds of 1607 MHz core, 1721 MHz GPU Boost, and 11.2 GHz (GDDR5X-effective) memory out of the box, against NVIDIA-reference clocks of 1480 MHz core, 1582 MHz GPU Boost, and 11.00 GHz memory. The software-enabled "OC mode" runs the card at 1632 MHz core, 1746 MHz GPU Boost, and 11.44 GHz memory. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4, three HDMI ports (two on the rear panel, one internal HDMI port for VR headsets); and a dual-link DVI connector. The company didn't reveal pricing.