Here are the first pictures of Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 960 G1.Gaming graphics card. This factory-overclocked card is designed to woo mid-range graphics card buyers with a hefty, high-end looking package. To begin with, Gigabyte deployed its large WindForce 3X cooling solution on this 120W TDP chip, the same one it used on the GTX 970 and GTX 980 G1.Gaming products. This cooler may seem overkill, but Gigabyte may set a temperature-activated fan profile, which keeps the fans off until the GPU hits a temperature threshold, which we imagine will be very high, given this chip's thermals, and the size of this cooler's heatsink.

The GTX 960 G1.Gaming from Gigabyte will also be different from other offerings based on this chip, due to its display I/O. While most other GTX 960 cards will feature two dual-link DVI and one each of HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2, this card features an I/O that looks identical to Gigabyte's GTX 980 G1.Gaming, with two dual-link DVI, three DisplayPort 1.2, and one HDMI 2.0 connectors. NVIDIA will launch the GeForce GTX 960 on the 22nd of January, 2015. Looks like some stores are already stocked-up.

Ahead of its January 22nd launch, Chinese PC community PCEVA members leaked performance figures of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 960. The card was installed on a test-bed driven by a Core i7-4770K overclocked to 4.50 GHz. The card itself appears to be factory-overclocked, if these specs are to believed. The card scored P9960 and X3321 in the performance and extreme presets of 3DMark 11, respectively. On standard 3DMark FireStrike, the card scored 6636 points. With some manual overclocking thrown in, it managed to score 7509 points in the same test. 3DMark Extreme (1440p) was harsh on this card, it scored 3438 points. 3DMark Ultra was too much for the card to chew, and it could only manage 1087 points. Looking at these numbers, the GTX 960 could be an interesting offering for Full HD (1920 x 1080) gaming, not a pixel more.

Here's what NVIDIA's upcoming performance-segment GPU, the GeForce GTX 960, could look like under the hood. Key slides from its press-deck were leaked to the web, revealing its specs. To begin with, the card is based on NVIDIA's 28 nm GM206 silicon. It packs 1,024 CUDA cores based on the "Maxwell" architecture, 64 TMUs, and possibly 32 ROPs, despite its 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, which holds on to 2 GB of memory. The bus may seem narrow, but NVIDIA is using a lossless texture compression tech, that will effectively improve bandwidth utilization.

The core is clocked at 1127 MHz, with 1178 MHz GPU Boost, and the memory at 7.00 GHz (112 GB/s real bandwidth). Counting its texture compression mojo, NVIDIA is beginning to mention an "effective bandwidth" figure of 9.3 GHz. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, the chip's TDP is rated at just 120W. Display outputs will include two dual-link DVI, and one each of HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2. In its slides, NVIDIA claims that the card will be an "overclocker's dream" in its segment, and will offer close to double the performance over the GTX 660. NVIDIA will launch the GTX 960 on the 22nd of January, 2015.

Taking advantage of the low TDP of GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980, several NVIDIA add-in card (AIC) partners such as ASUS, MSI, and Palit, innovated their VGA cooling solutions to feature idle fan-off. Such a feature lets the card turn its fans completely off, when the GPU is idling, or is below a temperature threshold, making the card completely silent when not gaming. NVIDIA plans to standardize this with its next-generation GeForce GTX TITAN X graphics card.

Given that its TITAN family of super high-end graphics cards never get to be custom-designed by AICs, NVIDIA has decided to standardize an idle fan-off feature of its own. Unlike AICs, who have used specialized fan-controller chips that take auxiliary temperature input to decide when to turn the fan off, NVIDIA's approach will be more driver-based. Future drivers accompanying the GTX TITAN X will offer a new feature, which when enabled, lets you choose between a non-linear fan curve that keeps the fan off; and one that runs it at low speeds. This should let the driver power the fan of a GTX TITAN X completely off, until it reaches a temperature threshold, and only then begin to ramp up speeds. It could help not just idle (desktop), but also light-gaming scenarios (think League of Legends).

KFA2 is readying as many as three graphics cards based on NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 960 GPU. The first one is a vanilla NVIDIA reference design board, featuring the same cooling solution found on the GTX 760, and several older cards. This card will stick to reference clock speeds, and will be the cheapest. The next card is the GTX 960 OC, which retains the NVIDIA reference PCB, but tops it off with a factory-overclock, and a custom, compact dual-fan cooling solution.

The third, and topmost variant is the GTX 960 EXOC, which is based on a custom-design PCB that draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, with a meatier VRM to support even higher factory OC, a bigger dual-fan cooling solution, and a back-plate to cool memory chips on the reverse side of the PCB. The three will launch on the GPU's expected launch date, that's 22nd January, 2015.More pictures follow.

AMD's next flagship single-GPU graphics card, codenamed "Fiji," could feature High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The technology allows for increased memory bandwidth using stacked DRAM, while reducing the pin-count of the GPU, needed to achieve that bandwidth, possibly reducing die-size and TDP. Despite this, "Fiji" could feature TDP hovering the 300W mark, because AMD will cram in all the pixel-crunching muscle it can, at the expense of efficiency from other components, such as memory. AMD is expected to launch new GPUs in 2015, despite slow progress from foundry partner TSMC to introduce newer silicon fabs; as the company's lineup is fast losing competitiveness to NVIDIA's GeForce "Maxwell" family.

Aorus X5 is the company's latest gaming notebook, featuring one of the industry's sharpest displays, based on the IGZO technology. This 15.6-incher offers Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) display resolution. Driving the display is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M SLI setup, with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory per GPU. Based on the GM204 silicon, the GTX 965M features 1024 CUDA cores running at 945 MHz, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus, running at 5.00 GHz. Our educated guess is that GTX 965M SLI should offer performance comparable to a single, overclocked GTX 980, if not more. By Aorus' own benchmarks, this notebook yields P12000 in 3DMark 11. Other chops of the Aorus X5 include a Core i7 CPU, up to 32 GB of dual-channel memory, M.2 SSD storage, 2.29 cm thickness with the lid closed, and just under 2.5 kg of weight.

Ahead of its launch, and after teasing it early last week, EVGA showed off its flagship single-GPU graphics card, the GeForce GTX 980 Classified Kingpin Edition. Based on a meatier version of the company's ACX 2.0 cooling solution, the card features clear acrylic cutouts around its shroud, rather than a frosty translucent one, featured on its GTX 780 Ti based predecessor.

It features a massive 10-phase VRM that draws power from two 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connectors, which in addition to stabilizing your record-seeking overclock, power a defrosting circuit that keeps key areas of the PCB warm enough to prevent frosting, when cooling with subzero solutions, such as liquid nitrogen. The other big card is the GeForce GTX 970 FTW, the company's top-tier card based on NVIDIA's second fastest GPU. The card features a strong VRM that draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin connectors. It features a standard-size ACX 2.0 cooler, and a back-plate cools memory chips on that side.

With the GeForce GTX 980 HydroCopper, EVGA changed the "HydroCopper" brand. In earlier generations, HydroCopper denoted a factory-overclocked reference PCB, with a factory-fitted, full-coverage water-block, which you added to a liquid-cooling loop of your own. The new card comes with its very own closed-loop cooler, much like AMD's reference Radeon R9 295X2.

The card's cooler features a metal base-plate which conveys heat drawn from the memory and VRM, in part to the centrally located pump-block, and in part to an aluminium fin stack. A common lateral-flow blower ventilates the two. The central pump-block looks typical Asetek fare, with a pair of tubes driving coolant to and from the reservoir+radiator assembly, which is ventilated by a single 120 mm fan. The underlying PCB appears to be reference NVIDIA.

EVGA teased its upcoming flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX 980 Classified K|ngp|n Edition. Designed by the famed overclocker associated with the company, this card combines the best overclocking GTX 980 chips, with the fastest GDDR5 memory, and the strongest VRM in the industry, letting you chase overclocking and performance benchmark records. It retains the translucent cooler shroud theme from its predecessor based on the GTX 780 Ti, although the cooler appears to be a beefier ACX 2.0.

The card draws power from a combination of two 8-pin, and one 6-pin PCIe power connectors, giving you an idea of just how much juice the card can take in, to keep your overclock stable. The card is prepped for liquid cooling, and has electricals to negate cold-bugs, and an active electrical trace that keeps the PCB heated, to prevent frosting. EVGA also gave us a glimpse of the card's abilities with a jaw-dropping 3DMark FireStrike score of 20,816 pts. There's no idea on when the company plans to launch this card, or if it even will, especially given that NVIDIA's next-generation GTX TITAN is just around the corner. Maybe EVGA is betting on NVIDIA keeping that card vanilla (preventing AICs from coming up with custom-design cards).

Here's the first picture of NVIDIA next chip based on its "Maxwell" architecture, GM206-300. Powering the upcoming GeForce GTX 960 graphics card, the silicon appears to have half the die-size of the company's current flagship GM204, which powers the GTX 980 and GTX 970. The package itself is smaller, with its much lower pin-count, owing to half the memory bus width to the GM204, at 128-bit, and fewer power pins. No other specs are leaked, but we won't be surprised if its CUDA core count is about half that of the GTX 980. NVIDIA plans to launch the GeForce GTX 960 on the 22nd of January, 2015.

Corsair, a world leader in high-performance PC hardware, today announced the all-in-one Hydro Series H110i GT , the company's most advanced liquid CPU cooler, and a new Hydro Series HG10 N780 Edition GPU cooling bracket for NVIDIA GeForce 700 Series graphics cards.

The Hydro Series H110i GT liquid CPU cooler pairs two 140mm fans with a 140x322 millimeter radiator to deliver extreme CPU cooling in the most processor-intensive applications or quiet operation when the PC is idle. The H110i GT also features a new generation, high-efficiency cooling block with a striking new look with logo inserts on the block and radiator. Integrated Corsair Link support provides monitoring and customization of built-in logo lighting, fan speed, pump speed. As with all Hydro Series CPU coolers, the H110i GT is completely self-contained, requires no maintenance or filling.

MSI Computer Corp, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, blasts into 2015 with an award winning lineup of gaming solutions, including the GT80 Titan SLI, the world's first gaming laptop with an integrated mechanical keyboard; CES Innovation award recipient GS30 Shadow with Gaming Dock, GT72 Dominator Pro, AG240 4K All-In-One gaming PC, and X99A GAMING 9 ACK motherboard; along with a new and redesigned GE62 Apache for the next generation of MSI's GE Series gaming laptops and others.

"PC gaming is constantly evolving and our new lineup of battle machines are ready to take on any challenge," says Andy Tung, President of MSI Pan America. "We've thrown down the gauntlet with a selection of outstanding choices for every type of gamer."

Here are some of the first pictures of MSI's upcoming GeForce GTX 960 graphics cards. Both variations of essentially the same card, the GTX 960 Gaming OC and GTX 960 100ME (100 million edition) cards are based on NVIDIA's new GM206 silicon. The only specs we have at hand are 2 GB of memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface, and a very low power footprint. These two cards feature a 4+1 phase VRM, which draws power from just a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Reference cards may feature just a single 6-pin. Both cards feature a compacted variant of MSI's TwinFrozr V cooling solution, which debuted with the GeForce GTX 980/GTX 970 Gaming series. The two are expected to launch on the 22nd of January, 2015.

SYBER, a new division of CyberPowerPC, is announcing three new Vapor Models at CES in Las Vegas, as part of Syber's open platform PC gaming console line, along with a new limited edition color model. "For gamers who want to break out of the bedroom and into the comfort of the living room, the Syber Vapor PC gaming console series offers the best performance at an affordable price," said Eric Cheung, CEO, CyberPowerPC.

Steam machines will run on SteamOS, an operating system based on Ubuntu Linux and produced by Valve. Steam machines will exist primarily to play Linux games that can be downloaded through SteamOS. What makes the Syber Vapor PC gaming console unique, however, is that it is coming out before the SteamOS is finished. The Vapor connects via HDMI to your HDTV, has 4K capabilities and uses Windows 8.1 that will launch gamers directly into Steam's Big Picture mode.

Transporting the world closer to a future of auto-piloted cars that see and detect the world around them, NVIDIA today introduced NVIDIA DRIVE automotive computers -- equipped with powerful capabilities for computer vision, deep learning and advanced cockpit visualization. NVIDIA will offer two car computers: NVIDIA DRIVE PX, for developing auto-pilot capabilities, and NVIDIA DRIVE CX, for creating the most advanced digital cockpit systems. These automotive-grade in-vehicle computers are based on the same architecture used in today's most powerful supercomputers.

"Mobile supercomputing will be central to tomorrow's car," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder, NVIDIA. "With vast arrays of cameras and displays, cars of the future will see and increasingly understand their surroundings. Whether finding their way back to you from a parking spot or using situational awareness to keep out of harm's way, future cars will do many amazing, seemingly intelligent things. Advances in computer vision, deep learning and graphics have finally put this dream within reach.

Somebody sent our GPU-Z validation database a curious looking entry. Labeled "NVIDIA Quadro M6000" (not to be confused with AMD FirePro M6000), with a device ID of 10DE - 17F0, this card is running on existing Forceware 347.09 drivers, and features a BIOS string that's unlike anything we've seen. Could this be the fabled GM200/GM210 silicon?

The specs certainly look plausible - 3,072 CUDA cores, 50 percent more than those on the GM204; a staggering 96 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 12 GB of memory. The memory is clocked at 6.60 GHz (GDDR5-effective), belting out 317 GB/s of bandwidth. The usable bandwidth is higher than that, due to NVIDIA's new lossless texture compression algorithms. The core is running at gigahertz-scraping 988 MHz. The process node and die-size are values we manually program GPU-Z to show, since they're not things the drivers report (to GPU-Z). NVIDIA is planning to hold a presser on the 8th of January, along the sidelines of the 2015 International CES. We're expecting a big announcement (pun intended).

Originally expected to launch its mid-range GeForce GTX 960 graphics card on the sidelines of the 2015 International CES, in early January, NVIDIA is now expected to launch the card on the 22nd of the month. The card will be based on NVIDIA's new GM206 silicon, that's based on its "Maxwell" architecture. Among its known features are a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 2 GB of memory, and significantly lower power draw compared to its predecessor. The card will draw power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. It's expected to be priced around the $200 mark.

Close to X'mas eve, NVIDIA posted what could be it's final GeForce WHQL driver release for the year, with the GeForce 347.09 WHQL. These "Game Ready" drivers are essentially last week's GeForce 347.09 Beta, with a WHQL certification. Version 347.09 WHQL comes with optimizations for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Elite: Dangerous, along with the usual load of GeForce Experience profiles, SLI profiles, and 3D Vision Surround compatibility test recommendations. Grab them from the link below.DOWNLOAD NVIDIA GeForce 347.09 WHQL Game Ready Driver

NVIDIA released its latest "Game Ready" driver, this one being marked Beta, instead of WHQL. The new GeForce 347.09 Beta introduces performance optimizations for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and Elite: Dangerous. It adds a GeForce Experience application profile for Project: Cars; and tags along PhysX System Software version 9.14.0702, and GeForce Experience 16.18.9.0. Grab the driver from the links below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 347.09 Beta for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, and Windows XP 64-bit

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing to launch its mid-range GeForce GTX 960 graphics card some time in January, 2015; according to a SweClockers report. The card could be launched in the sidelines of the 2015 International CES. The card will be based on the company's new GM206 silicon, and it won't be a cut-down GM204. Its only specifications doing rounds are the memory bus width of 128-bit, and standard memory amount of 2 GB. Out of the box, the card could offer performance comparable to a GeForce GTX 770, with much lower power draw, and a $200-ish price.

AMD released Catalyst 14.12 Omega, its annual feature-set upgrading driver update. This driver introduces new video image quality enhancement features, game image-quality enhancements, and a usual load of game-specific performance updates, and bug-fixes. Features that stand out include Virtual Super Resolution, which is essentially identical in function to NVIDIA's Dynamic Super Resolution, which lets you "simulate" higher game display resolutions than your display is capable of; and frame-pacing improvements that make certain games seem more fluid.

Among the video quality enhancements are Fluid Motion Video, which adds fluidity to Blu-ray playback using PowerDVD 14, Video Contour Removal, which removes artifacts from compressed video, 1080p detail enhancement, and a brand new 1080p to 4K video upscaling algorithm, which reduces upscaling artifacts. Game specific performance improvements target Batman: Arkham Origins, Bioshock Infinite, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Grid 2, Sniper Elite III, and Rome: Total War, among others. AMD is promising up to 19 percent performance improvement, compared to, and we kid you not, Catalyst 13.12. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is proud to introduce a new Full-Cover water block, designed and engineered specificaly for GIGABYTE Gaming G1 series NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards - the EK-FC970 GTX WF3.

EK-FC970 GTX WF3 - with WF3 standing as WindForce 3X abbrevation - is a high-performance Full-Cover water block, designed for GIGABYTE non-reference design GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards. The cooler actively cools the GPU, RAM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks.

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is proud to introduce a new Full-Cover water block, designed and engineered specificaly for ASUS Strix series NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics cards - the EK-FC980 GTX Strix.

EK-FC980 GTX Strix is a high-performance Full-Cover water block, co-developed with ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) engineering team. The cooler actively cools the GPU, RAM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks.

Is the snow outside thicker than you think? Prefer crafting to building a snowman? Is your idea of the holiday a hot chocolate and some of the latest games NVIDIA and AMD badgered us for driver updates every week? Then TechPowerUp and GIGABYTE got you covered. By simply "Liking" our Facebook page, and filling in a tiny form (or having Facebook fill it for you), you could stand a chance to win a rad GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 970 G1.Gaming SOC graphics card, which combines this season's hottest GPU (pun not intended), with GIGABYTE's latest WindForce 3X cooling solution. The contest is open to everyone. Good Luck!

For more details, and to participate, visit this page.