Hopper is an upcoming compute architecture from NVIDIA which will be the first from the company to feature a Multi-Chip-Module (MCM) design similar to Intel's Xe-HPC and AMD's upcoming CDNA2. The Hopper architecture has been teased for over 2 years but it would appear that it is nearing completion with a recent leak suggesting the product will tape out soon. This compute GPU will likely be manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm node and could feature two dies each with 288 Streaming Microprocessors which could theoretically provide a three-fold performance improvement over the Ampere-based NVIDIA A100. The first product to feature the GPU is expected to be the NVIDIA H100 data center accelerator which will serve as a successor to the A100 and could potentially launch in mid-2022.

A closed beta of "New World," an MMO in development by Amazon Game Studios, is found damaging NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards. Apparently the game causes a catastrophic failure of RTX 3090 graphics cards, even before it begins rendering the scene. "I just bricked a 3090 in the main menu after setting my graphics quality to medium and hitting save," wrote one user on Reddit.

Amazon in a statement on Wednesday, said that it has received two reports from RTX 3090 users on high GPU usage when playing the game, "consistent with playing a graphically rich game." It is said to be working on a patch that addresses the issue, but in the meantime, urged users to dial down their graphics settings. EVGA has come out with a statement of its own, saying that its RTX 3090 graphics cards getting bricked for playing the game would be "completely under warranty."

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 471.41 WHQL comes with support for Windows 11, including a WDDM 3.0 compliant display driver, making it NVIDIA's first official driver for the upcoming operating system. In addition, the drivers introduce DLSS performance enhancement on Red Dead Redemption 2 and Chernobylite. The drivers also introduce CUDA 11.4 support.

Among the issues fixed are lack of hardware acceleration on Capture One; HUD loss issues on Valorant; a game freeze noticed with DOOM Eternal; League of Legends failing to launch; mouse pointer issues with certain DSC monitors in HDR mode; blurry Ansel depth-of-field in certain games; display resolution being limited to 640x480 on some monitors after updating from older drivers; distorted HDMI audio playback on 8K displays connected via HDMi 2.1, and HDMI audio drop-outs on LG C9 OLED TVs.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 471.41 WHQL

NVIDIA at GDC dropped a major hint at where it wants to take PC gaming post the Arm acquisition. The company is demonstrating its RTX real-time raytracing technology, and the DLSS performance enhancement, on an Arm processor by MediaTek. To the PC, this means NVIDIA is laying the foundations of gaming in the post-x86 world where it holds Arm IP; foundations that were dug up by Apple and its mighty M1 chip, based on Arm CPU technology.

Making this unequivocal, was MediaTek. "RTX is the most groundbreaking technology to come to PC gaming in the last two decades," said PC Tseng, general manager of MediaTek's Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit."MediaTek and NVIDIA are laying the foundation for a new category of Arm-based high-performance PCs." The Taiwan-based Arm SoC major has developed a new Arm-based PC processor called Kompanio 1200, which it hopes will power PC platforms much like the Apple M1 or the Qualcomm Compute Platforms.

Laptop manufacturer XMG Has recently reported that the supply of AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile processors has increased considerably in the past weeks with this availability expected to continue through the coming months. These supply improvements come after an ongoing period of global chip shortages which has resulted in price increases for various electronics devices. XMG also reports that the supply of components from Intel and NVIDIA is expected to remain stable but ICs from Realtek and Cypress continue to fluctuate in availability and pricing.

XMGThe availability of AMD's current mobile processors from the Ryzen 5000 series has improved significantly over the past few weeks. The coming months continue to promise a reliable CPU supply.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced the next generation of Razer Blade 17 gaming laptops, built-on the latest 11th Gen Intel Core H-series Processors and featuring up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. Making a first-time debut in the Blade 17 is the Intel Core i9-11900H, the most powerful Intel processor ever found in a Razer Blade. With its many improvements, the new ultra-thin Blade 17 continues to be a powerhouse desktop replacement for gamers and creators alike.

With the inclusion of the i9-11900H processor, packed with eight cores and 16 threads, the Blade 17 reaches new levels of performance that were previously unheard of in an Intel-based Razer Blade. The CPU clocks in with a max turbo frequency of up to 4.90 GHz, meaning users can expect drastically improved speeds both in-game and in multi-threaded workloads. By pairing it with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU and display options up to a 4k Touchscreen, Razer has created one of the most powerful 17-inch gaming laptops on the market.

Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the highest-rated games of all time, with over 275 perfect scores and over 175 Game of the Year Awards. Its PC release is also one of the platform's best-looking titles, with an amazingly rendered and realistic open world that tests the mettle of any PC when effects and rendering resolutions are ramped up.

To boost performance on GeForce RTX PCs and laptops, Rockstar has today released a NVIDIA DLSS update for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online. If you're unfamiliar with NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), it's a groundbreaking AI rendering technology that increases graphics performance using dedicated Tensor Core AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs, without compromising image quality.

Lenovo today announced the next generation of its family of entry-level desktop workstations - the ThinkStation P350 Tower, Small Form Factor (SFF) and Tiny. This trio of workstations hosts a technology upgrade - each one is equipped with support for PCIe Gen 4 for faster access to cutting-edge storage technologies, as well as enhanced professional graphics support. This latest generation of desktop workstations becomes Lenovo's most powerful entry-level offering and delivers a complete package of size options that can scale across a variety of industries and their respective workflows. From engineering and architecture, to finance, STEM/higher education and medical, these new desktop workstations offer versatile, flexible and ISV-certified performance at whatever size is best suited for users' needs and working environment.

Built with the latest high-performance Intel Core or Xeon processors with support up to 11th Gen Intel Core or Intel Xeon W processors, the ThinkStation P350 Tower and SFF are tailored for mission-critical tasks that require superior reliability and powerful performance. Both the Tower and SFF also offer NVIDIA RTX professional graphics, with the Tower now able to support up to the NVIDIA RTX A5000 graphics card. In addition to the 500 W power supply, the tower chassis now boasts a new 750 W PSU option - enabling high-end GPU users with the power needed to tackle sophisticated workflows. The ThinkStation P350 Tiny is the industry's smallest workstation at less than 1L and offers uncompromising performance within a form factor 96% smaller than a traditional desktop. Powered by 11th Gen Intel Core processors, it is uniquely qualified for enabling OEM solutions, and can be used as a host for like-local remote workstation power.

NVIDIA at Bilibili World 2021 showcased some custom RTX 3080 graphics cards - customizations which it commissioned to known modders. In total, three custom graphics cards were shown in a variety of colors, even though all of them shared the same base shroud design. The modders then played with illustrations and color coordination, which resulted in one orange RTX 3080 (featuring the Chengdu Hunters Overwatch clan insignia) and two turquoise/petrol graphics cards with differentiated accents (black and turquoise for the card inspired on Chinese role-playing game The Legend of Sword and Fairy, and white and petrol for the card celebrating the 9th anniversary of the Luo Tianyi anime series).

These graphics cards likely won't be put to sale in any way by NVIDIA; however, they could eventually decide to give them away as a prize for any sort of online competition, much like they did with the gorgeous, Cyberpunk 2077 interpretation of the RTX 2080 Ti some time ago - which the winner eventually sold at auction for $5,200 (at a time where graphics card pricing was actually saner). One could argue that NVIDIA should have just sent these towards the retail channel, but at least we got to see three RTX 3080's at the same time.

ASUS today has extended their hybrid-cooling technology to NVIDIA's top-tier graphics cards by officially listing ROG Strix LC versions of NVIDIA's RTX 3080 Ti to market availability. Initially only offered in AMD's RX 6000-series lineup, the new cards from ASUS feature a hybrid cooling system and aggressive aesthetics. The cooling system in itself features a hybrid air and liquid cooling solution: a single fan in the graphics' card shroud is responsible for cooling the VRM subsystem and 2.5-slot aluminium heatsink, while the GA-102 chip at the heart of the RTX 3080 Ti is handed a more premium way of offloading heat via a watercooling solution - itself guaranteed by a 240 mm radiator and dual 120 mm fans. As is par for the course these days, there's an RGB bonanza in both the shroud and the radiator fans.

ASUS is introducing a vanilla, NVIDIA-reference clock version (the ROG Strix LC RTX3080Ti-12G Gaming, at 1,665 MHz) and an OC version (ROG Strix LC RTX3080Ti-O12G Gaming) which ups the reference clocks to 1,860 MHz. Both cards feature custom-engineered PCBs, and power delivery is handled by 3x 8-pin connectors. I/O is taken care of by 3x DisplayPort 1.4a and 2x HDMI 2.1 connectors. Expect pricing to completely disregard MSRP and to float according to market conditions - which while much improved in recent weeks, still carries the added chaff of months of mining and scalping demand.

Rockstar Games, the developer behind plenty of AAA titles, including Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), is preparing an interesting update for all the RDR2 players. Called the "Blood Money" update, it brings new player activities to the Red Dead Online community. As Rockstar describes it, you will "Step into the criminal underworld of Red Dead Online: Blood Money on July 13, and prove you are willing to get your hands dirty in service to notorious and well-connected members of Saint-Denis society." While the update brings interesting content, it also integrates new technologies for visual/graphics improvements. NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is also landing on July 13, allowing you to play the game with better performance and image quality if you have a GeForce RTX graphics card.Check out the Red Dead Online: Blood Money trailer below.

NVIDIA today officially launched Cambridge-1, the United Kingdom's most powerful supercomputer, which will enable top scientists and healthcare experts to use the powerful combination of AI and simulation to accelerate the digital biology revolution and bolster the country's world-leading life sciences industry. Dedicated to advancing healthcare, Cambridge-1 represents a $100 million investment by NVIDIA. Its first projects with AstraZeneca, GSK, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, King's College London and Oxford Nanopore Technologies include developing a deeper understanding of brain diseases like dementia, using AI to design new drugs and improving the accuracy of finding disease-causing variations in human genomes.

Cambridge-1 brings together decades of NVIDIA's work in accelerated computing, AI and life sciences, where NVIDIA Clara and AI frameworks are optimized to take advantage of the entire system for large-scale research. An NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD supercomputing cluster, it ranks among the world's top 50 fastest computers and is powered by 100 percent renewable energy.

TechPowerUp is hosting a repository of NVIDIA DLSS client libraries that game developers pack with their DLSS-compatible games. This library goes by the file name "nvngx_dlss.dll." Recent discussions on tech forums and Reddit revealed that the DLSS libraries, which are usually located in the game's installation folders, are user-swappable, meaning that one can replace their DLSS library file for a different version that enables a different set of features or potentially even image quality or performance improvements. So far people have shared these files through sites like Mega, which of course introduces a malware risk. That's why we decided to host these files ourselves, located in our Downloads section. We currently have 23 versions, all hand-verified to be the unmodified originals, ranging from 1.0.0 to 2.2.10. Click on the "show older versions" link below the "Download" button to list the other versions. We will keep adding to the collection as we come across more of these. Have something we don't? Comment below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA DLSS DLL

The German media outlet, 3D Center, has today published an updated report for July, measuring graphics card pricing in Germany and Austria, showing some pretty interesting results. The report is only measuring the pricing index of these two countries and their retailers, so it does not apply to other regions. An interesting discovery is that GPU prices have now hit the lowest point since February of this year when the sharp price incline started. At the time of reporting, GPU prices are exaggerated by around 53% over the MSRP listed prices. Not only did the prices drop, but the supply of GPUs like AMD Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti became much better, as consumers can get their hands on these now.

When looking at the graph below, note that MSRP is listed as 100%, and the percentage shown is the increase over that MSRP. When it comes to complete price reduction to the MSRP, 3D Center expects it to happen in 3-4 weeks possibly. If current data is to be believed, MSRP is slowly decreasing and supply is increasing rapidly. For more details and per-card pricing situation, head over to 3D Center website here. Here is an important statement from 3D Center about the current situation:

3D Center (translated from German)Of course, this means that current street prices for graphics cards are (mostly) still exaggerated - and above all that this is the worst possible time to buy a graphics card. Because the (now clearly verifiable) tendency points to clearly lower graphics card prices in the next few weeks, with a similar pace, street prices at list price level could be in sight in 3-4 weeks. It is possible that there will be a certain braking effect in the downward price movement beforehand - but at least the way up to that point should definitely be taken with you. Apparently the delivery quantities are currently sufficient, maybe the need is a bit lower because of the summer times (and no longer available on the part of the crypto miners)so that retailers receive more cards than they sell. Since the retailers usually bought their cards from the distributors at an exaggerated price, the big game is now about who can get rid of the expensive stock goods in time to make a profit at all in the face of constantly falling sales prices.

Total Graphics Power, or TGP, is a way of constraining the power of a GPU to a certain level, so it can adjust to the use case. In laptops and other mobile systems, TGP can be dynamically adjusted using technologies such as NVIDIA Dynamic Boost and AMD Smart Shift, which bring unused CPU power envelope to the GPU and allowing it to boost to much higher frequencies. By boosting to higher frequencies, the total power output of GPU increased, and the cooling system of a laptop can only handle a limited amount of heat. That is why these technologies from AMD and NVIDIA allow the CPU to reduce its heat output and offer the GPU more room for boosting and power output.

Acer has today announced that the company will offer a simple firmware update for their Nitro 5, Helios 300, Triton 300, and Triton 300 SE gaming laptops, which is going to boost the TGP of NVIDIA graphics card present in these systems anywhere from 5-30 Watts. There is a nicely compiled list available on the ComputerBase website that highlights the exact power increase for a specific model. If you happen to own one of these models, you can download the latest firmware update from Acer's website here.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of NVCleanstall, our handy, lightweight utility that lets you customize your NVIDIA drivers installation to a much greater degree than the "Custom" install option in the NVIDIA Installer, letting you toggle components and features you didn't even know exist. The latest version 1.10.0 introduces several updates. For starters, it fixes ShadowPlay not working (even though selected), due to a missing reference to NvModuleTracker. We've introduced an additional driver signing mode that's compatible with EasyAntiCheat. NVCleanstall now discards the generated private key once the signature rebuild is complete, for additional security.

We've introduced a feature that lets you create a self-contained EXE installer with the installation options you've selected. The option to disable NVContainer has been introduced, however, this may break GeForce Experience, and removes NVIDIA's Desktop context menu. You can configure MSI (message-signaled-interrupt) CPU selection and priority. NVCleanstall also makes sure MSI only gets activated on NVIDIA GPU devices. An option has been added letting you disable HDCP. The app now warns you that UWP apps can't be installed in Safe Mode, if you request the Control Panel app while running in Safe Mode. The app also warns about installation of GeForce Experience in Safe Mode. Both these limitations are due to Safe Mode, not NVCleanstall. When customizing your install, you can now also provide hooks to run programs before and after installation. Grab NVCleanstall from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.10.0The change-log follows.

NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology has been developed to upscale lower resolutions using artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms. By using this technique, users with RTX cards can increase their framerates in supported games, with minimal loss in image quality. Recently, AMD introduced FidelityFX Super Resolution, a competing technology, which in one aspect might be technologically better than the DLSS competition. How you might wonder? Well, at the "quality" setting, NVIDIA's DLSS renders the game at 66.6% of the resolution, upscaling it 1.5 times. At the same "quality" preset, AMD FSR renders the game at 77% of the resolution and upscales the image by 1.3 times. This is technically providing an advantage to AMD FSR technology, as the image is posed to look better with less upscaling. DLSS on the other hand uses much more information, because it considers multiple frames in its temporal algorithm.

That newfound competition could be what made NVIDIA re-think their options and today we are getting some exciting news regarding DLSS. In the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) documentation, there is a placeholder for "Ultra Quality" DLSS mode, which is supposed to rival AMD's "Ultra Quality" mode and offer the best possible image quality. Currently, the latest DLSS version is 2.2.6.0, which is present in some DLSS supported games, and can be added to others using a DLL-swap. The updated version with the Ultra Quality preset is already present in UE5, called DLSS 2.2.9.0. Mr. Alexander Battaglia from Digital Foundry has made a quick comparison using the two versions, however, we are waiting for more in-depth testing to see the final results.

Using our graphics card database, which is managed by our very own T4CFantasy, reddit user u/Vito_ponfe_Andariel created some basic charts mapping out the data points from our expansive, industry-leading GPU database. In these charts, the user compares technological innovation for both AMD and NVIDIA's GPUs in the last ten years, plotting out the performance evolution of the "best available GPU" per year in terms of performance, performance per dollar (using the database's launch price metric), energy consumption, performance per transistor, and a whole lot of other data correlation sets.

It's interesting to note technological changes in these charts and how they relate to the overall values. For example, if you look at the performance per transistor graph, you'll notice that performance per transistor has actually declined roughly 20% with the transition from NVIDIA's Pascal (GTX 1080 Ti) to the Turing (RTX 20-series) architecture. At the same time, AMD's performance per transistor exploded around 40% from Vega 64 to the RX 5700 XT graphics card. This happens, in part, due to the introduction of raytracing-specific hardware on NVIDIA's Turing, which takes up transistor counts without aiding in general shading performance - while AMD benefited from a new architecture in RDNA as well as the process transition from 14 nm to 7 nm. We see this declining performance behavior again with AMD's introduction of the RX 6800 XT from AMD, which loses some 40% in this performance per transistor metric - likely due to the introduction of RT cores and other architectural changes. There are of course other variables to the equation, but it is nonetheless interesting to note. Look after the break for the rest of the charts.

EA DICE on Tuesday named NVIDIA as the official partner for Battlefield 2042 on the PC platform. To gamers, this means that Battlefield 2042 will feature support for NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex. DLSS integration will allow gamers to increase performance with minimal loss to image quality, while NVIDIA Reflex integration will be key to the game's online multiplayer component, as it works to cut down input latency. There is no word on whether Battlefield 2042 will feature RTX real-time raytracing, but given that Battlefield V was the pioneering title for RTX, some form of raytracing for Battlefield 2042 cannot be ruled out.

Among the other companies named as partners by EA DICE are Xbox Series X/S, as the "official console partner." Logitech has been named the official gaming peripherals partner, which means we'll see plenty of Battlefield 2042 co-branded gear from Logitech G. Western Digital, specifically its WD_Black brand, is the storage partner, with co-branded SSDs and external storage devices on the anvil, both for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

EVGA Corporation, or simply EVGA as it is known in the community, is the maker of various PC components and peripherals. As many of you are aware, EVGA has historically been focused on making products based on silicon coming from NVIDIA and Intel. The company has used NVIDIA products exclusively for its GPU portfolio and used Intel chipsets for its motherboard solutions. In the past, EVGA made motherboards for AMD processors, however, these boards used NVIDIA's chipset so they weren't technically full AMD motherboards. Starting today, that is about to change as we got some very juicy teasers from EVGA. In the nine-second video teaser on YouTube titled "A new Darkness is coming...", EVGA showcased a simple animation showing the AMD Ryzen logo surrounding EVGA's.

And of course, that only means one thing. EVGA will officially be joining the ecosystem of AMD and offering motherboards for their Ryzen processors. While the company is "one of the top NVIDIA authorized partners" in GPUs, on the CPU front it is officially joining Team Red and marking an important milestone for everyone. It is still not clear what kind of motherboard we will be getting, however, we can expect to see EVGA's best engineering applied in the form of a possible X570 Dark motherboard.Below, you can see the video teaser.

FSP, one of the world's leading power supply manufacturers, is pleased to announce two new high-power models: the DAGGER PRO 850 W and DAGGER PRO 750 W. The DAGGER PRO power supplies are fully modular and is SFX 12 V V3.3 standard compliant. The DAGGER PRO can easily be integrated into any ATX or SFX standard chassis thanks to the included chassis adapter.

The DAGGER PRO 750 W/850 W is ideal for ultra-small gaming rigs, creator PCs, and workstations. The new DAGGER PRO enables users to build Mini-ITX and small form factor chassis with the latest high-end PC hardware. It offers full power capabilities available through a single +12V rail design. Both units come with a single cable that splits to provide two 4+4-pin CPU power cables, plus another two cables that splits to provide four 6+2-pin PCI-Express power cables. The DAGGER PRO can be used with the most demanding hardware, including CPUs such as the new Intel K-series and AMD 16-core processors. It's also capable of powering the latest NVIDIA RTX 30XX series GPU's and AMD Radeon 6000 series graphics cards.

NVIDIA's $40 billion takeover of Arm Holdings plc from SoftBank, got a shot in the arm, as three major licensees of the IP came out in support of the bid. These include Broadcom, MediaTek, and Marvell Technology Group. This development is key for NVIDIA to fight the perception built up by a rival faction, that the democratized nature of the Arm IP would get lost if a chipmaker like NVIDIA owns it. This rival faction is primarily led by Qualcomm.

It's interesting to note the individual backers of the NVIDIA takeover. There is nothing but love between Broadcom and Qualcomm, especially after the former's failed bid to acquire the latter. MediaTek is a major smartphone and IoT SoC maker, dominating the low-cost and mainstream smartphone segments. Marvell is big in datacenter and storage IP. Each of the three are results of huge IP consolidation over the past decade.

During this year's ISC 2021 event, as a part of the company's exhibition portfolio, NVIDIA has decided to launch an updated version of the A100 accelerator. A couple of months ago, in November, NVIDIA launched an 80 GB HBM2E version of the A100 accelerator, on the SXM2 proprietary form-factor. Today, we are getting the same upgraded GPU in the more standard dual-slot PCIe type of card. Featuring a GA100 GPU built on TSMC's 7 nm process, this SKU has 6192 CUDA cores present. To pair with the beefy amount of computing, the GPU needs appropriate memory. This time, there is as much as 80 GB of HBM2E memory. The memory achieves a bandwidth of 2039 GB/s, with memory dies running at an effective speed of 3186 Gbps. An important note is that the TDP of the GPU has been lowered to 250 Watts, compared to the 400 Watt SXM2 solution.

To pair with the new upgrade, NVIDIA made another announcement today and that is an enterprise version of Microsoft's DirectStorage, called NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage. It represents a way of allowing applications to access the massive memory pool built on the GPU, with 80 GB of super-fast HBM2E memory.

NVIDIA today announced it is turbocharging the NVIDIA HGX AI supercomputing platform with new technologies that fuse AI with high performance computing, making supercomputing more useful to a growing number of industries.

To accelerate the new era of industrial AI and HPC, NVIDIA has added three key technologies to its HGX platform: the NVIDIA A100 80 GB PCIe GPU, NVIDIA NDR 400G InfiniBand networking, and NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage software. Together, they provide the extreme performance to enable industrial HPC innovation.

NVIDIA has released a public beta for their Canvas AI/Deep Learning program which can turn simple brushstrokes into realistic landscape images. The tool has been in development by NVIDIA for several years and allows users to paint a simple scene using 15 different materials such as grass, rock, water, fog, snow, and trees. The program uses this sketch to generate a photorealistic background in nine different styles. The program can also export the results as an Adobe Photoshop PSD file for further enhancement and refinement. The application requires a NVIDIA RTX, Quadro RTX, or TITAN RTX graphics card with driver version 460.89 or later and is only available for Windows 10. You can now download the NVIDIA Canvas Beta from the link below.