PNY today rolled out the XLR8 GeForce RTX 3060 REVEL EPIC-X RGB Single Fan Edition, its third custom-design RTX 3060 graphics card. This one is targeted at compact gaming desktop builds, and is just 17 cm long, 12.5 cm tall, and strictly 2 slots thick. The card uses a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a single 100 mm fan. The cooler features an RGB LED-illuminated GeForce RTX logo along the top. The card pulls power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, which is sufficient for the 170 W typical board power for the card's NVIDIA-reference clock speeds of up to 1777 MHz GPU Boost, and 15 Gbps memory clock. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1 connectors. The company is backing the cards with 3-year warranties. It didn't reveal pricing.

As a world leading gaming brand, MSI is the most trusted name in gaming and eSports. We stand by our principles of breakthroughs in design, the pursuit of excellence, and technological innovation. Integrating gamers' most coveted extreme performance, realistic visuals, authentic sound, precise control and smooth streaming functions into its gaming rigs, MSI frees gamers from tedious trial and error and pushes gaming performance beyond limits. The determination to surpass past achievements has made MSI a True Gaming brand with gaming spirit throughout the industry!

MSI announced a gaming desktop equipped with Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S processor. The 11th generation Intel Core processor adopts Cypress Cove's new architecture, which changes hardware and software efficiency and improves their performance. This allows users to achieve the perfect balance between gaming and productivity. The graphics card comes with NVIDIA RTX 3090 specifications, allowing players to enjoy the most extreme gaming experience. MSI launched a total of five models this time, from the flagship Aegis Series to the eSport Gaming Infinite Series, as well as the compact-sized Trident Series, to meet the hardware needs of different players.

Razer, the maker of various gaming peripherals and gaming PCs/Laptops, has been a long-time user of Intel CPUs in their laptops devices. However, that might be changing just about now. According to some findings by @_rogame, there was a 3D Mark benchmark run that featured AMD Ryzen 5000 series "Cezanne" mobile processors. What is more interesting is the system it was running in. Called Razer PI411, this system is officially Razer's first AMD-powered laptop. While we don't have many details about it, we have some basic system configuration details. For starters, the laptop carries AMD's top-tier Ryzen 9 5900HX overclockable mobile processor. Carrying a configured TDP of 45 Watts (the maximum is 54 W), the system is likely not equipped with sufficient cooling for overclocking.

When it comes to the rest of the laptop, it features NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. Being that this laptop was codenamed PI411, it could indicate a 14-inch model. However, we still don't know if it is ever going to hit consumer shelves. Being that Razer never carried an AMD CPU option, this could just be an engineering sample that the company was experimenting with, so we have to wait to find out more.

ASUS has recently launched their first Ampere Series Phoenix card with the GeForce RTX 3060 Phoenix (PH-RTX3060-12G). The Phoenix features a 2.5 slot design with a single fan and measures just 17.7 x 12.8 x 5.1 cm which makes it the shortest Ampere GPU from ASUS. The card features the NVIDIA standard 1777 MHz boost clock but can be configured with the bundled ASUS software for 1807 MHz. The Phoenix includes three DisplayPort 1.4a connectors and one HDMI 2.1 along with a single 8-pin power connector. The card is now available to purchase from select retailers but official pricing and availability have not been released.

When NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, the company also introduced a new feature to go along with it. As the card is priced well, it is positioning itself as a very good value offer for mining. Given that NVIDIA has now separate products for mining, it naturally would like to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners. To achieve that, the company introduced an anti-mining algorithm that is essentially a handshake between the driver, RTX 3060 silicon, and the GPU VBIOS. This handshake checks those three components to detect if mining is going on, so it can limit the performance of the card.

However, even such a thing can be bypassed. Usually, miners put their GPUs in rigs where most of the GPUs don't use their video outputs. And the GPU can detect if it is connected to the monitor or not, triggering the anti-mining algorithm. A user from Quasar Zone forums has managed to bypass the restriction by simply installing a dummy HDMI plug. By using the dummy plug, the card thinks that it is connected to a monitor and thus runs normally. Using this workaround, the user was able to set-up a four-way GeForce RTX 3060 mining rig with 48 MH/s hashing power per GPU, for the total 192 MH/s hash rate. You can buy HDMI dummy plugs for as low as $5.99 on Amazon or at any other store.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 hash-rate limiter has been defeated, by the company itself, through a driver update. The RTX 3060 was announced by NVIDIA to be meant purely for gamers as it came with measures that make them unviable for mining. The card purportedly had a hash-rate limiter that detected workloads from typical crypto-currency mining algorithms, and spooled down GPU clock speeds, halving the mining efficiency of the card. The idea was to sour the milk for miners, so there could be inventory for gamers. PC Watch reports that the latest GeForce 470.05 drivers distributed by NVIDIA to developers through the Windows Insider Program defeats the hash-rate limiter, significantly improving mining performance of the RTX 3060. With this driver out in the open, miners are sure to pick up RTX 3060 cards to go with it; and simply ignore all future driver updates through NVIDIA's official driver channel.

HardwareLuxx.de and ComputerBase have each independently verified that GeForce 470.05 drivers "restore" mining performance on RTX 3060 cards back to levels their hardware is capable of—roughly matching that of the RTX 2070 Super. This development confirms that the hash-rate limiter was purely driver based, and NVIDIA hoped to artificially throttle mining performance of RTX 3060 cards by simply adding this limiter to all compatible versions of GeForce drivers since the card's launch; but those behind the 470.05 special drivers probably forgot to implement it. Probably because it is based on a different branch of the source code, which is developed in parallel. NVIDIA earlier claimed that the hash-rate limited is a much more sophisticated mechanism involving a "secure handshake between the driver and system-firmware that prevents tampering." So much for that.

GIGABYTE today introduced the GeForce RTX 3060 VISION graphics card targeted at creators. This is the company's fourth such card based on an "Ampere" series GPU. When paired with NVIDIA's GeForce Studio drivers, the card provides a formidable feature-set and optimization for content creation suites, making this a quasi-ProVis graphics card.

The design of the card is similar to most other RTX 30-series VISION cards—a large white cooler shroud hides an aluminium fin-stack heatsink. This shroud is topped off with a brushed aluminium plate. The cooler is optimized for low-noise, and idle fan-stop, and features fans with graphene-lubricated double ball-bearing fans. Airflow from the third fan flows through the card, and out from a cutout on the back-plate. The card pulls power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. You also get a handy factory-overclock of 1837 MHz boost (vs. 1777 MHz reference). Display outputs include two each of HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a connectors. The card is expected to be priced around $400.

Our initial support for "Resizable BAR" is available now for GeForce RTX 3060 desktop graphics cards and GeForce RTX 30 Series laptops. Utilizing an advanced feature of PCI Express, Resizable BAR can increase performance in certain games. Support for other desktop GPUs will follow in late March. Resizable BAR is an optional PCI Express interface technology. As you move through a world in a game, GPU memory (VRAM) constantly transfers textures, shaders and geometry via many small CPU to GPU transfers. With the ever-growing size of modern game assets, this results in a lot of transfers. Using Resizable BAR, assets can instead be requested as-needed and sent in full, so the CPU can efficiently access the entire frame buffer. And if multiple requests are made, transfers can occur concurrently, rather than queuing.

GeForce RTX 30 Series laptops with Resizable BAR-capable Intel and AMD CPUs are available now. Check with each laptop manufacturer to discover if Resizable BAR is supported on a particular model. For desktops, you will need a compatible CPU, compatible motherboard, motherboard SBIOS update, GPU VBIOS update (the GeForce RTX 3060 already ships with the necessary BIOS) and new GeForce Game Ready driver to enable Resizable BAR.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce drivers. Version 461.72 WHQL introduces support for the new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, and adds optimization for "Outriders" demo. In addition DLSS support is added for "Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition" and "Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord." NVIDIA Reflex support is added for "Rainbow Six Siege." Among the issues fixed are stuttering noticed with "Hitman 2" and "Edge of Eternity" with G-SYNC enabled and in windowed mode; a performance drop noticed in Vulkan apps when switching between windowed and fullscreen modes with G-SYNC enabled; an application crash for "X4: Foundations" with Windows 10 1803; a legacy bug with Blu-ray playback flickering with HDMI display output; Chrome and Edge experiencing random TDR on "Ampere" graphics cards; and LG CX OLED TVs not being recognized as being G-SYNC capable.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 461.72 WHQL

"Neonpunk style emanates in the darkness from the glimmer of high quality metals, showcasing futuristic aesthetics in the darkness of the night. The new era of esports has arrived." This is how Gigabyte describes their latest RTX 3060 AORUS ELITE design. Apart from the apparent attempt at coining a new nomenclature for RGB lighting and dark materials, Gigabyte have announced that their to-be-launched graphics card features the company's well-known Windforce 3X cooling system.

The card features a 1x 8-pin and 1x 6-pin power delivery subsystem, a black metal backplate, dual-BIOS capabilities with a (default) OC and a Silent mode, and LED power indicators to easily troubleshoot power delivery issues. No word on pricing or clockspeeds were available at time of writing.

Benchmark performance for NVIDIA's yet-unreleased RTX 3060 graphics card have already started doing the rounds - even if it's one of the currently less-representative benchmarks for actual GPU performance, Ashes of the Singularity. Videocardz has gone through the trouble of collating benchmark results from the same user that uploaded the results for this RTX 3060 graphics card, hence the 19% performance differential in favor of the RTX 3060 results compared to the same users' RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 results.

The RTX 3060 was tested in the 1080p Crazy benchmark preset. It then scored a total of 6600 points and 67.8 average framerate in the first test; the second test, which might've been run with increased power or clocks, achieved 6800 points and 69.8 FPS on average. The first test's score (so, prior to any eventual overclocking) puts the RTX 3060's results 19% above those of the RTX 2060 (which scored 5,650 points) and even achieving a 7% performance advantage over the RTX 2070's 6,166 points.

The NVIDIA RTX 3060 isn't even released yet, but as you might've heard, cards are already doing the rounds throughout the secondhand market at ridiculous prices. And now, to sour the pot even more, one crypto enthusiast going by the name of CryptoLeo on YouTube has shown that he already has his hands on the card - and performed a quick mining test on it. The user showcases the cards' serial number, so I hope NVIDIA is reading this post so as to know exactly which distributor this graphics card came from; breaking time-to-market likely isn't to be taken lightly by the company.

The test, done without the RTX 3060's release drivers (which are still a week away), showcases the graphics card capping its own mining performance a little after the mining algorithms begin to be processed. The card, identified in the below screenshots as tagged "1", shows a decline in performance from the initial 41.5 MH/s down to 24-24 MH/s. The card tagged as "2" is a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which doesn't show the same performance decline (naturally). That the card exhibited this behavior sans release drivers goes to show that NVIDIA's solution is, at the very, very least, BIOS-based, and isn't a shoestring-budget driver-based solution that was haphazardly thrown in for good measure. And once again, it's a ZOTAC card in the mining spotlight. Is this a pattern?

NVIDIA's yet-to-be-released GeForce RTX 3060 "Ampere" graphics card has already hit the second-hand graphics card market, as those with early access to RTX 3060 inventory have begun re-selling it. Belarusian tech marketplace Onliner listed these GIGABYTE RTX 3060 Eagle OC custom-design graphics cards for 2,800 BYN (USD $1,080) a piece, from a lot of three cards.

NVIDIA announced that the company plans to tackle the problem of crypto-currency miners soaking up inventory of GeForce "Ampere" graphics cards, beginning by designing the GeForce RTX 3060 to be bad at mining, putting out half the hash-rate it normally should, with the specs at its disposal. The company claims to be using an elaborate mechanism to enforce this hash-rate limiting, so miners can't work around by modifying the drivers. We're also hearing that the company could revise other RTX 30-series "Ampere" products with hashrate limiters, so they become unviable for crypto mining.

Yesterday NVIDIA announced the company's first Crypto Mining Processor (CPM) that serves the purpose of having a dedicated processor only for mining with no video outputs. Alongside the new processors, the company has also announced that in the next driver update the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU will get Etherium mining performance halved, limiting the use of this GPU SKU by miners. However, up until now, we have thought that NVIDIA is limiting the mining performance of this card by simply having a driver detect if crypto mining algorithms are in place and limit the performance. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. According to Bryan Del Rizzo, director of global PR for GeForce, more things are working behind the driver.

According to Mr. Del Rizzo: "It's not just a driver thing. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter." This means that essentially, NVIDIA can find any way to cripple the mining hash rate even if you didn't update your driver version. At the same time, according to Kopite7Kimi, we are possibly expecting to see NVIDIA relaunch its existing SKUs under a different ID, which would feature a built-in anti-crypto mining algorithm. What the company does remains to be seen.

This is a big one: NVIDIA has officially announced a new family of products specifically designed to satiate the demand coming from cryptocurrency mining workloads and farms. At the same time, the company has announced that the RTX 3060 launch driver will include software limitations for cryptocurrency mining workloads specifically correlated with Ethereum mining, essentially halving the maximum theoretical hashrate that could be achieved from a purely hardware perspective. The new family of products, termed CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) series, will see its products under the HX branding, and will be available in four different tiers: 30HX, 40HX, 50HX and 90HX. These products will not have any display outputs, and therefore are not applicable for gaming scenarios.

NVIDIA's stance here is that their new product will bring some justice in the overall distribution of its GeForce graphics cards, which are marketed and meant for gaming workloads. The new cryptocurrency-geared series will be distributed by NVIDIA authorized partners in the form of ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and PC Partner (more may be added down the line). There is currently no information on what silicon actually powers these graphics cards; and of course, the success of this enterprise depends on A) the driver restrictions not being limited to the RTX 3060 graphics card - it isn't clear from NVIDIA's press release if other RTX 30-series graphics cards will see the same performance cap. Even if NVIDIA did release those drivers, however, cryptocurrency miners would just opt to, well, not update them. So it is possible that NVIDIA will release a revision of the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti with silicon enhancements that will only work with the latest GeForce drivers - after allowing the channels to move all of their existing, cryptocurrency-enabled stock.

AMD is expected to launch its Radeon RX 6700 XT performance-segment graphics card on March 18, 2021, according to French tech publication Cowcotland. This would put the launch over two weeks after NVIDIA's February 25 launch of the GeForce RTX 3060. The new RX 6700 series is expected to compete against the RTX 3060 series, and debuts the new 7 nm "Navi 22" silicon that's based on the RDNA2 architecture, and features 40 compute units (2,560 stream processors). The card comes with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory bus, much like the RTX 3060. Cowcotland expects availability of the RX 6700 XT to be "very limited" at launch. Who knew?

Schenker Technologies presents the E21 model generation of the SCHENKER KEY and SCHENKER MEDIA series. The slim and compact 15.6 and 17.3 inch laptops each target different price and performance classes and are characterized by a discreet design. Measuring less than 20 mm in z-height, the SCHENKER KEY 15 and KEY 17 feature an Intel Core i7-10870H and graphics cards up to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU, whereas the SCHENKER MEDIA 15 and MEDIA 17 pack either AMD or Intel 8-core CPUs with an RTX 3060. Alongside the standard Full HD displays, SCHENKER also offers optional WQHD and UHD panels, depending on the model series.

The SCHENKER KEY laptops focus on an ideal balance between high performance and good portability. Thanks to their aluminium chassis, the KEY 15 (357.5 x 238 x 19.8 mm, 1.99 kg) and the KEY 17 (395.5 x 264.95 x 19.9 mm, 2.3 kg) are lightweight and slim, yet robust. They also boast plenty of performance thanks to Intel's Core i7-10870H with 8 cores, in addition to a mobile NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or 3070 with 16 or 8 GB GDDR6 memory respectively. Both GPUs operate at a TGP of 90 watts, plus a dynamic boost of an additional 15 watts.

NVIDIA made the product page of the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card active on its website. The card is shown starting at USD $329, and NVIDIA confirmed some basic specs. The RTX 3060 is endowed with 3,584 CUDA cores, and comes with GPU frequency of 1.32 GHz, and maximum GPU Boost frequency of 1.78 GHz. It is confirmed to feature 12 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface. The card's typical board power is confirmed to be 170 W, with the reference card making do with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. The RTX 3060 should be available from February 25.

In XMG's product line-up, the XMG CORE 15 and CORE 17 gaming laptops embody first-class hardware adoption in the upper-mid performance bracket. The new E21 model generation not only brings an update with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060, but also introduces for the first time an optional 165 Hz IPS display with WQHD resolution. Featuring both current AMD and Intel 8-core processors, the laptops offer versatile memory and storage options. With their discreet and solid design, they provide a classic aesthetic counterpoint to the playful RGB lighting and aggressive gaming-biased design trend.

In contrast to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, the RTX 3060 in the XMG CORE laptops from the new E21 model generation shows a significant performance increase: with 3840 CUDA Cores, opposed to previously just 1920, the GPU is prepared for more demanding tasks than simply Full HD gaming at high quality settings. This explains why, for the first time, XMG now also offers the CORE 15 and CORE 17 with optional high-resolution WQHD displays. Since the graphics card operates at the maximum TGP specified by NVIDIA of up to 115 watts, it can unleash its full potential. XMG continues to offer both models with processors from AMD and Intel. However, the Intel version gets an upgrade to the Core i7-10870H, meaning that 8-core CPUs are now used across the board. The AMD-based laptops will utilise a Ryzen 7 5800H in the future, but until the Cezanne processors are more readily available, XMG is still planning on offering a transitional generation that combines the GeForce RTX 3060 with a Ryzen 7 4800H.

The availability of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series "Ampere" graphics cards has been a problem ever since it launched. High demand paired with insufficient supply has caused quite some disturbance in the supply chain and has caused the MSRP of the GPUs to increase. Firstly, we were promised that the situation would resolve around May when NVIDIA is expecting to match the supply with the demand. However, according to the recent report, that might not be the case. Alternate, a European retailer operating in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, has spoken to NVIDIA about the supply of the GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere graphics cards.

According to the retailer, the situation with the card is such that the availability is scarce. When it comes to the GeForce RTX 3090, there are very few deliveries, but only a few open orders. The RTX 3080 sees very few cards coming with many open orders. The RTX 3070 has few cards incoming, but few open orders. And last but not least, the RTX 3060 Ti has very few cards coming, and a moderately high amount of open orders. If you are aiming to buy a card, your best chances would be with RTX 3090 and RTX 3070, as they do not have such high demand. On the other hand, RTX 3080 and RTX 3060 Ti cards are almost impossible to source as they all have a big waiting list. Alternate says that they work on a "first in first out" principle of delivering cards to consumers, so if you are not on the list you are likely going to wait for even longer.

NVIDIA is slated to launch its performance-segment GeForce RTX 3060 "Ampere" graphics card on February 25, 2021, according to a WCCFTech report. The company launches the card at an MSRP (starting price) of USD $329. 12 GB is the standard memory size for the RTX 3060. The card marks the debut of the new 8 nm "GA106" silicon, NVIDIA's 4th chip based on the GeForce "Ampere" graphics architecture.

While the "GA106" silicon features up to 3,840 CUDA cores across 30 streaming multiprocessors, the RTX 3060 is reportedly being carved out by enabling 28 SM, working out to 3,584 CUDA cores. It features 12 GB of 15 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface, which means 360 GB/s memory bandwidth, slightly higher than the 336 GB/s of the RTX 2060. The card has a typical board power rating of 170 W, which means plenty of custom-design graphics card models should come with single 8-pin PCIe power connector configurations. NVIDIA's design goal for the RTX 3060 could be doubling performance over the GTX 1060 "Pascal," and a significant performance uplift over the RTX 2060.

The "GA106" will be NVIDIA's third GeForce "Ampere" silicon, following the "GA102" and "GA104." It will power several mid-range GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards, including the recently announced GeForce RTX 3060. VideoCardz scored the first picture of the "GA106" ASIC. The chip is estimated to have a die-are of 272 mm², while its package (fiberglass substrate) is of the same size as the "GA104," possibly even with some degree of pin-compatibility.

Built on the 8 nm silicon fabrication process, the "GA106" physically features 3,840 "Ampere" CUDA cores, 120 3rd Gen Tensor cores, and 30 2nd Gen RT cores. Its memory bus width is unknown, but on the RTX 3060, it features a 192-bit wide interface, holding 12 GB of memory, using 16 Gbit GDDR6 memory chips. Besides the RTX 3060, NVIDIA is expected to carve out other SKUs, such as the RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050, out of this silicon. The "GA106" could also be prominently featured in upcoming RTX 30-series Mobile SKUs.

We are just a few weeks away from the launch of NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards based on the new Ampere architecture, and there is already some news regarding the lineup position and its possible distortion. According to multiple sources over at Overclocking.com, NVIDIA is set to re-introduce its previous generation GeForce RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 SUPER graphics cards to the market. Once again. The source claims that NVIDIA is already pushing the stock over to its board partners and system integrators to use the last-generation product. So far, it is not clear why the company is doing this and we can only speculate on it.

The source also claims that the pricing structure of the old cards will be 300 EUR for RTX 2060 and 400 EUR for RTX 2060 SUPER in Europe. The latter pricing models directly competes with the supposed 399 EUR price tag of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 Ti model, which is based on the newer Ampere uArch instead of the last-gen Turing cards. The possibility for such a move is a possible scarce of GA106/GA104 silicon needed for the new cards, and the company could be aiming to try and satisfy the market with left-over stock from the previous generation cards.

It seems that Mini-ITX lovers will finally be able to get their due Ampere injection to their HPC or small form factor systems. MSI, Palit and Gainward have announced Mini-ITX versions of NVIDIA's RTX 3060 graphics card, enabling higher performance (especially in RTX workloads) than last generation's mainstream RTX 2060 graphics cards. MSI's Aero ITX will be available in base and OC variants, and there's currently no confirmation on how many power connectors are built into those cards (though a standard 8-pin would suffice).

ASUS today revealed their latest flagship iteration on the NVIDIA RTX 3060, the ASUS RTX 3060 ROG STRIX. the graphics card follows ASUS' tried and true ROG STRIX design with a triple-fan cooling solution (that features 0 dB technology when in light use) and an RGB strip detailing alongside the shroud. The RTX 3060 ROG STRIX features a single 8-pin power connector, palatable for this card's expected performance profile, and the company has managed to decrease the footprint of their cooling solution to a 2.7-slot design, which should be more than enough for the card's 170 W TDP.

ASUS has fitted the card with an abundance of connectors that are sure to stand the test of time: 2x HDMI 2.1, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4. ASUS expects the card to be available near the end of February, in both OC and non-OC versions. No word on pricing was available at time of writing - though it will surely be higher than NVIDIA's $329 MSRP.