NVIDIA released comparison benchmarks for its new AI-accelerated DLSS technology, which is part of their new Turing architecture's call to fame. Using the Infiltrator benchmark with its stunning real-time graphics, NVIDIA showcased the performance benefits of using DLSS-improved 4K rendering instead of the usual 4K rendering + TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing). Using a Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz CPU paired with 16 GB of Corsair DDR4 memory, Windows 10 (v1803) 64-bit, and version 416.25 of the NVIDIA drivers, the company showed tremendous performance improvements that can be achieved with the pairing of both Turing's architecture strengths and the prowess of DLSS in putting Tensor cores to use in service of more typical graphics processing workloads.

The results speak for themselves: with DLSS at 4K resolution, the upcoming NVIDIA RTX 2070 convincingly beats its previous-gen pair by doubling performance. Under these particular conditions, the new king of the hill, the RTX 2080 Ti, convincingly beats the previous gen's halo product in the form of the Titan Xp, with a 41% performance lead - but so does the new RTX 2070, which is being sold at half the asking price of the original Titan Xp.

MSI is working on its next-generation flagship graphics card, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z (going by previous naming conventions for the Lightning). The card will be positioned above its current Gaming X Trio, as well as the liquid-cooled SeaHawk series, and it's possible there could be a sub-variant with factory-fitted full-coverage water-block. As with previous generation cards that bear the name, the card could have the highest factory overclock in MSI's product stack, the strongest VRM setup that's voltmod-friendly, and a gargantuan cooling solution for its air-cooled sub-variant. There's no word on when MSI could roll the beast out. MSI teased the card with a final slide in one of its media events in China, which depicts lightning bolts captioned "Coming Soon."

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.

EVGA today introduced four new full-coverage water blocks compatible with its entire line of GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 graphics cards. The 400-HC-1189-B1 supports RTX 2080 XC/XC2/FE; and the 400-HC-1389-B1 supports RTX 2080 Ti XC/XC2/FE. Both these blocks are targeted at EVGA's custom-design PCBs that closely resemble those of NVIDIA's own Founders Edition (reference) PCB. And then, there's the 400-HC-1289-B1 designed for the RTX 2080 FTW3, and the 400-HC-1489-B1 for RTX 2080 Ti FTW3, which are based on EVGA's beefy and tall custom-design PCBs.

All four blocks feature nickel-plated copper as the primary material, and acrylic tops that are cleverly disguised with brushed metal and silicone accents. All four also feature RGB LED lighting over the transparent portion of the top and the sides. Depending on the model, the four are priced between USD $169 to $199, but are currently being offered at a discount on EVGA's own web-store.

With the latest release of NVIDIA's NVFlash, version 5.513.0, users can now read and write the BIOS on Turing based graphics cards. This includes the RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070. While this may seem mundane at first, due to the different power limits between graphics cards, there is some hope that cross flashing of the BIOS could result in tangible performance gains.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA NVFlash v5.513.0

MSI today rolled out the SeaHawk line of liquid-cooled graphics cards based on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 graphics processors. The lineup includes two key sub-variants - SeaHawk X and SeaHawk X EK. The former features a factory-fitted all-in-one closed loop liquid cooler; while the latter features a factory-fitted full-coverage water block by EK Water Blocks, which you plumb to your own liquid cooling loop. Custom-designed for MSI, this block features a nickel-plated copper primary material, mated to an acrylic top with MSI branding all around. Both come with aluminium back-plates.

The RTX 2080 Ti SeaHawk X and SeaHawk X EK are factory-overclocked with a GPU Boost frequency of 1755 MHz (vs. 1545 MHz, or a 13.5% OC). The RTX 2080 SeaHawk X and SeaHawk X EK series, on the other hand, ship with 1860 MHz boost clocks (vs. 1710 MHz, or an 8.8% OC). The cards could attract $200-250 premiums over SEP prices.

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.

Today, ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG), announced a collaboration with Activision and Intel to produce a range of limited edition Call of Duty : Black Ops 4 products in advance of the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on PC. Expanding on the recently announced partnership, with Activision, which allows consumers who purchase qualifying ASUS and ROG products access to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, similarly, consumers who purchase certain limited edition ROG Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 products will receive a game code that will allow them to access the Digital Standard Edition for PC at launch. In addition, a unique integration with ROG's AURA Sync technology allows the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 emblems and RGB lighting elements to echo what's happening during gameplay.

In another delay to NVIDIA's RTX 20-series launch, the company has announced, via email to buyers, that delivery and availability of the graphics card has been pushed for one week. The card, which had an already delayed release schedule set to September 27th, now has a delivery date that's set between the 5th and 9th of October.

It seems that US customers will receive their cards closer to October 5th, via an express delivery mechanism, while customers in other parts of the world (example, as per the source, in Germany) will receive them within the 5th-9th timeframe, which could be mirrored in other markets. Online retailers seem to have no indication as to when exactly will the RTX 2080 Ti be made available, with no set delivery/stock dates having been confirmed until now. What exactly is causing the delay is unknown at this point.

ASUS ROG Fan Connect is a feature that allows you to connect up to two of your case-fans to two standard 4-pin PWM fan headers present on an ASUS ROG Strix series graphics card, letting you synchronize your case's front intake and rear exhaust fans to the temperature of the GPU, and control them using the GPUTweak software. ASUS has introduced the feature with the Pascal and Vega architecture, and has since included it with its ROG Strix series graphics cards.

When we published our reviews of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its sibling based on the RTX 2080, we noticed something curious, and our readers were quick to spot it as well. ASUS did not add the Fan Connect 4-pin PWM case-fan headers on its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Strix card, while the company's RTX 2080 card had them. Adding to the confusion, the PCB of our review sample had blank traces where the headers are supposed to be. This got our readers asking if the final product has those headers. The box doesn't advertise those headers anywhere, neither does the ASUS website, so it isn't a case of false-marketing yet.

GIGABYTE has begun teasing their enthusiast-class AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 Extreme and RTX 2080 Ti Extreme graphics cards, which will stand at the pinnacle of the company's graphics cards lineup for the new NVIDIA series. The new AORUS graphics cards join the previously-announced five other RTX 20-series models. The later announcement of the flagship graphics cards likely means GIGABYTE was going through a time of GPU binning so as to only include the best silicon it could find on its top-of-the-line designs.

Manli Technology Group Limited, the major Graphics Cards and other components manufacturer, today announced the brand new RTX 20 series family graphics solution - Manli GeForce RTX 2080 Ti & RTX 2080 Gallardo with RGB Lights. Manli GeForce RTX 2080 Ti & RTX 2080 Gallardo delivers extremely cool, fast and smooth gaming experience. Powered by the latest NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture and revolutionary RTX platform. It also couples with real-time ray tracing, artificial intelligence and programmable shading.

NVIDIA's embargo on their Turing-based RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti ended Wednesday, September 19 and it appears that enthusiasts were not the only ones left wanting more from these graphics cards. In particular, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore shared a note today (Thursday, September 20) with company clients saying "As review embargos broke for the new gaming products, performance improvements in older games is not the leap we had initially hoped for. Performance boost on older games that do not incorporate advanced features is somewhat below our initial expectations, and review recommendations are mixed given higher price points." The NVIDIA Corporation share value on the NASDAQ exchange had closed at $271.98 (USD) Wednesday and immediately tumbled down to a low of $264.10 opening today before recovering to close at $266.28, down 2.1% over the previous closure.

The Morgan Stanley report further mentioned that "We are surprised that the 2080 is only slightly better than the 1080ti, which has been available for over a year and is slightly less expensive. With higher clock speeds, higher core count, and 40% higher memory bandwidth, we had expected a bigger boost." Accordingly, the market analyst expects a slower adoption of these new GPUs as well as no expectation of "much upside" from NVIDIA's gaming business unit for the next two quarters. Despite all this, Morgan Stanley remains bullish on NVIDIA and expects a $273 price point in the long term.

Phanteks are proud to announce the launch of their new Glacier G2080Ti and G2080 water-blocks. Designed with the enthusiast in mind, they're perfect for gamers looking to push their new NVIDIA RTX cards to the max! The G2080Ti are full-cover water-blocks with an optimized central channel structure, complete with 6mm thick nickel plated copper base for efficient heat exchange. The blocks are sealed with industry leading VITON O-RINGS, meaning a quality seal with resistance to even the most extreme temperatures.

As well as quality cooling performance, the Glacier range also offers digital addressable RGB lighting, compatible with ASUS Aura SYNC and the Phanteks Digital RGB Controller (available separately).

NVIDIA today released the GeForce 411.64 WHQL "Game Ready" driver to go along with the embargo release for their latest and greatest Turing-based RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. These drivers come with optimization for upcoming AAA game launches including Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Forza Horizon 4, and Fifa 19. For those of you who pre-ordered the new GPUs, or are going to purchase them imminently, this is the driver you will need to get the most out of the hardware.

Other new features include support for CUDA 10.0, NVIDIA RTX technology, and the new Vulkan 1.1 API. As with any GeForce driver released after April 1, 2018, the driver adds performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes only on Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal and Volta series GPUs. NVIDIA reaffirms that critical security updates will continue to be available on Fermi series GPUs through January 2019. Full release notes, as well as the download options to the driver, can be found in the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 411.63 WHQL

MSI is looking to introduce their Trident pre-built desktop systems paired with was is going to be (at least for a while) the world's highest-performance gaming graphics cards. The Trident X revisits MSI's "console-sized" PC take, packing seriously powerful innards in what can only be thought of as insultingly small quarters (10 liters in volume, anyone?).

Of course, the Trident X features MSI's "Silent Storm Cooling" system to allow for this hardware to be cooled without a hassle. The Trident X will follow on previous Trident iterations with a front HDMI port for VR aficionados. Expect pricing to be substantially higher than previous iterations of the Trident, though - just remember the RTX 2080 Ti's retail pricing for a punch in the gut and a throwback to reality land.

The online results database for the Final Fantasy XV Benchmark has been partially updated to include NVIDIA's RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti. Scores for both standard and high quality settings at 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 are available. While the data for 1920x1080 and lite quality tests are not.

Taking a look at the RTX 2080 Ti results, show it beating out the GTX 1080 Ti by 26% and 28% in the standard and high quality tests respectively, at 2560x1440. Increasing the resolution to 3840x2160, again shows the RTX 2080 Ti ahead, this time by 20% and 31% respectively. The RTX 2080 offers a similar performance improvement over the GTX 1080 at 2560x1440, where it delivers a performance improvement of 28% and 33% in the same standard and high quality tests. Once again, increasing the resolution to 3840x2160 results in performance being 33% and 36% better than the GTX 1080. Overall, both graphics cards are shaping up to be around 30% faster than the previous generation without any special features. With Final Fantasy XV getting DLSS support in the near future, it is likely the performance of the RTX series will further improve compared to the previous generation.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostics utility. Version 2.11.0 introduces support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20-series "Turing" graphics cards, including the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070. Support is also added for a few exotic OEM variants we discovered over the months, including GTX 750 Ti (GM107-A), GTX 1050 Ti Mobile 4 GB, Quadro P1000, Tesla P100 DGXS, GeForce 9200. From the AMD stable, we add support for "Vega 20," "Fenghuang" semi-custom SoC for Zhongshan Subor, Ryzen 5 Pro 2500U, 5 Pro 2400G, 3 Pro 2200G, 3 Pro 2300U, 3 2200GE, Athlon 200GE, and Embedded V1807B. Intel UHD 610, UHD P630 (Xeon), Coffee Lake GT3e (i5-8259U), are now supported.

Among the new features are system RAM usage sensors, temperature monitoring offsets for AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2000 series processors, and the ability to identify USB-C display output, GDDR6 memory standard, and 16 Gbit density memory chips. Several under-the-hood improvements were made, including WDDM-based memory monitoring for AMD GPUs, replacing ADL sensors that tend to be buggy. GPU-Z also cleans up QueryExternal files from your Temp folder. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.11.0

The change-log follows.

While working on GPU-Z support for NVIDIA's RTX 20-series graphics cards, we noticed something curious. Each GPU model has not one, but two device IDs assigned to it. A device ID is a unique identification that tells Windows which specific device is installed, so it can select and load the relevant driver software. It also tells the driver, which commands to send to the chip, as they vary between generations. Last but not least, the device ID can be used to enable or lock certain features, for example in the professional space. Two device IDs per GPU is very unusual. For example, all GTX 1080 Ti cards, whether reference or custom design, are marked as 1B06. Titan Xp on the other hand, which uses the same physical GPU, is marked as 1B02. NVIDIA has always used just one ID per SKU, no matter if custom-design, reference or Founders Edition.

We reached out to industry sources and confirmed that for Turing, NVIDIA is creating two device IDs per GPU to correspond to two different ASIC codes per GPU model (for example, TU102-300 and TU102-300-A for the RTX 2080 Ti). The Turing -300 variant is designated to be used on cards targeting the MSRP price point, while the 300-A variant is for use on custom-design, overclocked cards. Both are the same physical chip, just separated by binning, and pricing, which means NVIDIA pretests all GPUs and sorts them by properties such as overclocking potential, power efficiency, etc.

NVIDIA announced delays to the shipping (and availability) of its first GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards. The availability date of the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti is now set at September 27, from its original date of September 20. The company had also recently changed the review publication date of both cards to September 19. Reviews of the RTX 2080 were supposed to be published on the 17th, with the RTX 2080 Ti on the 19th.

NVIDIA could launch successors to its GeForce GTX 1060 series and GTX 1050 series only by 2019, according to a statement by an ASUS representative, speaking with PC Watch. This could mean that the high-end RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070, could be the only new SKUs for Holiday 2018 from NVIDIA, alongside cut-rate GeForce GTX 10-series SKUs. This could be a combination of swelling inventories of 10-series GPUs, and insufficient volumes of mid-range RTX 20-series chips, should NVIDIA even decide to extend real-time ray-tracing to mid-range graphics cards.

The way NVIDIA designed the RTX 2070 out of the physically smaller TU106 chip instead of TU104 leads us to believe that NVIDIA could carve out the GTX 1060-series successor based on this chip, since the RTX 2070 maxes it out, and NVIDIA needs to do something with imperfect chips. An even smaller chip (probably half-a-TU104?) could power the GTX 1050-series successor.

The EVGA Trim Kit Promotion offers you a great way to customize your new EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or 2080 graphics card. Although each eligible card ships with one Trim color, you can now have a chance to pick another for FREE! EVGA Trim Kits are easy to install and covered by warranty.

To enter, please answer our survey at the link below. Please state which EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or 2080 graphics card you pre-ordered or plan to buy from an authorized reseller. Once you receive your new card, register the product on EVGA.com and upload a valid proof of purchase. When Trim Kits are available, we'll send you an email to confirm which Kit you want. Offer good while supplies last. For more information, visit this page.

Videocardz is reporting that NVIDIA has moved their NDA dates for reviews on their RTX 2080 graphics cards to be published. They cite difficulties for review websites in securing samples, delays in shipment, and even unavailable driver stacks that would allow for reviewers to conduct their jobs with the usual professionalism. Remember that the original NDA timeframe for reviews, as reported by Videocardz, was set at September 17th, which would leave reviewers from today with less than a full week to conduct their testing.

The website reports that "only a handful" of reviewers have gotten their cards already, and that reviews for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 have now lined up with the NDA set for the RTX 2080 Ti, on September 19th, leaving reviewers with two huge card launches and a single deadline, just before the cards' general availability on September 20th.

EVGA has gone and revealed their entire RTX 20-series lineup, adding to the already showcased XC and FTW3 air-cooled SKUs. EVGA is following the SKU alignment of their previous series, with two hydro copper models being prepared: the Hydro Copper FTW3, the higher-performance part which features a wider watercooling waterblock; and the Hydro Copper XC, which trades some of that extra performance for a smaller, leaner footprint on your system case of choice.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia based water cooling gear manufacturer, is introducing its new generation of high-performance water blocks for the newly announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX series graphics cards, based on Turing TU104 and Turing TU102 graphics processor. The inspiration for the new GPU block name "Vector" came from the sheer computing power of the graphics cards that are on the market today. Naming a water block "Full Cover" isn't enough these days, when the product is packed with unique features, such as these.

The EK Vector RTX water block is specially designed for multiple NVIDIA GeForce RTX Turing based reference design graphics cards. The water block itself uses the signature EK single slot slim look, and it covers the entire PCB length. This sophisticated cooling solution will transform your beefy graphics card into a minimalist, elegant piece of a hardware. The block also features a unique aesthetic cover over the block Terminal which is designed to reveal the graphics card model, visible from the side.