EK, the premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is updating the current 3080/3090 reference Quantum Vector lineup with extended compatibility high-performance water blocks, created specifically for reference-design-based NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards. The EK-Quantum Vector RE RTX 3080/3090 high-performance water blocks are compatible most reference design 3080/3090 GPUs.

These water blocks are purpose-designed with a much thicker 11.2 mm copper base to clear the tall capacitors on most reference design graphics cards. This gives the water block advantage on the market of having a clean design and a wider compatibility list, without sacrificing any coolant flow restriction. The RE version of the block features additional cutouts on the base to accommodate non-standard fan-headers and additional PCB components that certain reference designs have.

According to the unknown manufacturer (AIB) based in Taiwan, NVIDIA is preparing to launch the new GeForce RTX 3000 series "Ampere" graphics card. As reported by the HKEPC website, the Santa Clara-based company is preparing to fill the gap between its top-end GeForce RTX 3090 and a bit slower RTX 3080 graphics card. The new product will be called GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. If you are wondering what the specification of the new graphics card will look like, you are in luck because the source has a few pieces of information. The new product will be based on GA102-250-KD-A1 GPU core, with a PG133-SKU15 PCB design scheme. The GPU will contain the same 10496 CUDA core configuration as the RTX 3090.

The only difference to the RTX 3090 will be a reduced GDDR6X amount of 20 GB. Along with the 20 GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards will feature a 320-bit bus. The TGP of the card is limited to 320 Watts. The sources are reporting that the card will be launched sometime in January of 2021, and it will come at $999. This puts the price category of the RTX 3080 Ti in the same range as AMD's recently launched Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, so it will be interesting to see how these two products are competing.

Alphacool presents three new Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N blocks for the NVIDIA RTX 3070, 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. The blocks offer outstanding cooling performance thanks to the full cover design. The new backplate, which is included with the coolers, also contributes to this. This stabilizes the graphics card and ensures an even contact pressure of the cooler. The cold plates are made of solid nickel-plated copper. The coolers cover all relevant components such as voltage converters and the graphics memory.

ASUS today announced ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards that are the product of a strategic collaboration between ASUS and EK and emphasize robust design, DIY convenience and high performance. Consisting of ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3070, 3080 and 3090 graphics cards, the series delivers an out-of-the-box solution for custom liquid-loop systems.

The precision of ASUS Auto-Extreme technology and stringent validation during manufacturing guarantees reliability, while the low hydraulic restriction split-flow cooling system maximizes thermal dissipation across critical components and demonstrates the very best of EK design. These high-powered solutions are elegantly combined to have a single-slot footprint, which enables compatibility with a wide range of chassis, including small-form-factor builds.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today announced the latest GeForce RTX 30 Series WATERFORCE graphics cards powered by NVIDIA Ampere architecture—AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 XTREME WATERFORCE WB 24G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 XTREME WATERFORCE WB 10G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 XTREME WATERFORCE 24G, and AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 XTREME WATERFORCE 10G. AORUS is the world's first manufacturer to include the patent-pending "Leak detection" in the WATERFORCE WB open-loop graphics cards. The built-in leak detection circuit covers the entire fitting and water block and can promptly alert users by flashing light at the first sign of leak, so users can deal with the leakage early and prevent any further damage to the system.

AORUS WATERFORCE WB is ideal for those who wish to build open-loop liquid cooling systems. GIGABYTE specializes in thermal cooling solutions, providing optimal channel spacing between the micro fins for enhanced heat transfer from the GPU via stable water flows. The sunk-designed copper micro fins also shorten the heat conduction path from the GPU, so that the heat can be transferred to the water channel area quickly. Moreover, the cover and backplate of the new-gen WATERFORCE WB feature customizable RGB lighting as users can create their own PC styles and bring creativity into the liquid cooling systems.

EK, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is proud to announce its latest collaboration with ASUS, the leading graphics card and motherboard manufacturer. The result is three GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards with a pre-installed full-cover EK water block. A match made in heaven for enthusiasts, demanding content creators, and gamers. This strategic collaboration between ASUS and EK brings new GPUs that emphasize minimalistic, robust design, DIY convenience, and high performance.

The Precision and Reliability of ASUS Engineering
Going the extra mile, the ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 and 3080 Series are built using Auto-Extreme technology to solder components to the PCB with extreme precision. All cards feature an aluminum backplate to prevent PCB flex and a single-slot mounting bracket made with 304 stainless steel for better corrosion resistance. Water block mounting is handled by ASUS during the manufacturing process, so each graphics card is ready right out-of-the-box to deliver high performance and reliability to customers.

NVIDIA's add-in-board partners announced bundling Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War with the latest inventories of their GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards. The bundle includes not just the Standard Edition of the game, but also the Woods Operator Pack (a jungle operator pack), and the Confrontation Weapons Pack.

NVIDIA also revealed that in addition to its RTX real-time raytracing technology, Black Ops: Cold War will support the DLSS performance enhancement feature; and NVIDIA Reflex, a whole-system latency reduction feature that should help with the game's competitive online multiplayer. The bundle will be limited to select markets, and through participating retailers.

GIGABYTE backed up its late September launch of the RTX 3080-based VISION OC graphics card targeted at creators, with one based on the GeForce RTX 3090 (model: GV-N3090VISION OC-24GD), a GPU that offers greater dividends to creators thanks to its 24 GB video memory. GIGABYTE's VISION brand of graphics cards and motherboards are targeted at creators, and the RTX 3090 VISION OC, when paired with NVIDIA's GeForce Studio drivers, provides a formidable solution halfway between the gaming and professional-visualization market segments.

The GIGABYTE RTX 3090 VISION OC comes with the same board design as the RTX 3080 VISION OC, but with the addition of the NVLink interface for explicit multi-GPU. The card comes with a mild factory-OC which sees the GPU boost up to 1755 MHz (vs. 1695 MHz reference), while the memory is left untouched at 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective), for 940 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Display interfaces include three DisplayPort 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1 connectors. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It uses a triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution with the VISION design scheme. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Puget Systems have recently released performance and testing data from their quad NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 workstation. Puget Systems has paired the four Gigabyte RTX 3090 TURBO 24G cards with a 10 core Intel Xeon W-2255, 128 GB 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, and an EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W P2 power supply. The power draw hit 1717 W being drawn from the wall when running DaVinci Resolve, this prompted the installation of a second EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W P2 power supply.

The performance of this system is extremely impressive for enterprise applications that natively support multiple GPUs as NVIDIA has limited SLI support to two cards with the RTX 3090 ruling out running any of the few games which still support the feature. Puget Systems noted that they had very few issues getting the four blower-style cards working in a desktop workstation with temperatures staying below 80°C even under full load.

EVGA has today published the "XOC" BIOS version for its GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics cards. The XOC BIOS version is designed for "extreme overclocking" purposes, as it boosts the power limit of the card by very a few additional Watts. This allows the overclockers to use the card to its full potential so the GPU core is not limited by power. To run XOC BIOS on your GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 GPU card, you need to have an adequate cooling solution and sufficient power supply. For power, EVGA recommends that you use at least 850w+ Gold PSU, at minimum. This is a sign that shows that XOC bios will boost the system power consumption by quite a bit. The XOC BIOS is enabling the GPU to have a power limit of 500 Watts. It is important to note that EVGA does not guarantee any performance increase or overclock while using this BIOS update.

You can download the EVGA XOC BIOS for GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics card here. To install it, unzip the file, run Update.exe, and after updating restart your PC. That is the complete update process for the BIOS update. EVGA uploads both the normal BIOS (so you can revert) and XOC BIOS there so be careful when choosing the right files. You can use TechPowerUp GPU-Z tool to verify the BIOS install.

Today, Alphacool presents its latest RTX 3080 GPU cooling block for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition to pre-order. Delivery is expected to start at the end of October. This cooler covers all the necessary components that require cooling. This includes the voltage converters, graphics memory and of course the GPU. All known hotspots of the graphics cards are completely cooled with water. Alphacool includes special 1 mm thick Ultra Soft thermal pads with this GPU cooler. As the name suggests, these are very soft and nestle perfectly to the components to be cooled. When the thermal pads heat up, the consistency and behavior is more like a thermal paste than a thermal pad. This of course has a positive effect on heat dissipation and is thermally far superior to standard thermal pads.

ASUS has held its Republic of Gamers (ROG) day, and at the event, there was a special graphics card. Spotted there was a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU in the form of ASUS ROG STRIX GUNDAM edition. With an appeal based on a famous anime series GUNDAM, ASUS has decided to launch a new product line made up of a motherboard and a graphics card. The new ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 ROG STRIX GUNDAM Edition features the same specifications as the regular RTX 3090 edition, just with an increased clock speed of 1890 MHz, three 8-pin power connectors, and a maximum power limit of 480 Watts.

The card features a white triple slot body with three fans cooling the heatsink. When it comes to the availability of this card, it is said to be a limited edition only sold to the Asian market. The price tag will carry a premium over the regular ROG STRIX model, with a cost of 16,999 Yuans (~2530 USD). The standard ROG STRIX model comes at a 1799 USD price tag, meaning that you will pay 730 USD more for this limited edition product. The availability is supposedly going to be even worse than with current cards, meaning that only a few people will get their hands on these if the current situation is any reference.More pictures follow.

EK, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is launching its premium high-performance GPU water block for the EVGA XC3 edition of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards. The new water block is named EK-Quantum Vector XC3 RTX 3080/3090 D-RGB and is exclusively engineered for the EVGA XC3 RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 GPUs. The EK-Quantum Vector XC3 RTX 3080/3090 water block is compatible with EVGA XC3 RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. This Vector water block actively cools the GPU, top-facing VRAM, and inductors and MOSFETs in the VRM section.

These newly developed XC3 water blocks feature optimized flow paths that reduce hydrodynamic instabilities and vortexing (dead spots) inside of them. An Open Split-Flow cooling engine design is implemented, which proved to be a superior solution for GPU water blocks. It is characterized by low hydraulic flow restriction, meaning it can be used with weaker water pumps or pumps running on low-speed settings, and still achieve top performance. The jet plate and fin structure geometry have been optimized to provide even flow distribution with minimal losses and optimal performance when used in any given coolant flow orientation, unlike some products that are currently available on the market.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the popular graphics sub-system information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.35.0 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a number of bugs. To begin with, GPU-Z adds support for AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs based on the "Navi 21" silicon. Support is also added for Intel DG1 GPU. BIOS extraction and upload for NVIDIA's RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPUs has finally been introduced. Memory size reporting on the RTX 3090 has been fixed. The latest Windows 10 Insider Build (20231.1000) made some changes to DirectML, which caused GPU-Z to report it as unavailable, this has been fixed.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.35.0 also makes various improvements to fake GPU detection for cards based on NVIDIA GT216 and GT218 ASICs. Hardware detection for AMD Radeon Pro 5600M based on "Navi 12" has been fixed. Among the other GPUs for which support was added with this release are NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core PCIe, Intel UHD Gen9.5 graphics on the i5-10200H, and Radeon HD 8210E and Barco MXRT-6700. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.35.0The change-log follows.

A report straight from DigiTimes claims that NVIDIA is looking to upgrade their Ampere consumer GPUs from Samsung's 8 nm to TSMC's 7 nm. According to the source, the volume of this transition should be "very large", but most likely wouldn't reflect the entirety of Ampere's consumer-facing product stack. The report claims that TSMC has become more "friendly" to NVIDIA. This could be because TSMC now has available manufacturing capacity in 7 nm due to some of its clients moving to the company's 5 nm node, or simply because TSMC hadn't believed NVIDIA to consider Samsung as a viable foundry alternative - which it now does - and has thus lowered pricing.

There are various reasons being leveraged at this, none with substantial grounds other than "reported from industry sources". NVIDIA looking for better yields is one of the appointed reasons, as is its history as a TSMC customer. NVIDIA shouldn't have too high a cost porting its manufacturing to TSMC in terms of design changes to the silicon level so as to cater to different characteristics of TSMC's 7 nm, because the company's GA100 GPU (Ampere for the non-consumer market) is already manufactured at TSMC. The next part of this post is mere (relatively informed) speculation, so take that with a saltier disposition than what came before.

Alphacool presents the Eisblock ES Acetal GPX-N RTX 3080/3090 GPU watercooling block The block is specially developed for the server sector. Nevertheless, it also fits into normal desktop computers or small form factor cases. Of course, it is also available to our end customers. A special feature of this block is the terminal with the G1/4" ports is located at the rear end of the cooler. This arrangement saves space and makes it much easier to lay and connect the tubing, especially in server cases.

Alphacool naturally only uses copper in its water coolers. In the Eisblock ES Acetal GPX-N RTX 3080/3090 the copper is nickel-plated. Compared to the previous models, Alphacool has improved the type of nickel plating again, which significantly increased the acid resistance.

Bitspower today released its Classic series full-coverage water blocks for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics cards (model numbers: BP-VG3090FE and BP-VG3080FE). The two cards take advantage of the short PCB length of NVIDIA's Founders Edition PCBs, and position their coolant terminals at the tail ends, rather than at the top.

The blocks use nickel-plated copper as primary material, with mirror finish at the GPU and memory contact areas. The top is clear acrylic, and studded with addressable RGB LEDs. A back-plate is included with the block. The main coolant channel passes through nearly all hot-zones on the obverse side of the PCB, including the GPU, the up to 24 memory pads, and DrMOS. Even the RTX 3080 variant includes a back-plate, possibly in anticipation of the 20 GB variant that has memory chips on the reverse side of the PCB. The BP-VG3080FE is priced at USD $158, while the BP-VG3090FE goes for $202.

The supply of NVIDIA's newly announced GeForce RTX Ampere lineup has been quite controversial since the beginning. Demand for the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 GPUs has been rather high and NVIDIA experienced big "demand issues" as the CEO Jensen Huang says. The company didn't expect such high demand and thus hasn't stocked up the chips for that many orders. NVIDIA's AIBs have also seen this problem with GPU demand, as it is too high in ratio to supply. As more chips are manufactured, we can expect this problem only to settle down over time. Today, we got an interesting piece of information regarding the availability of Founders Edition (FE) GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards. NVIDIA has posted on the forums stating the following:

Suroosh@NVIDIAWe have heard your feedback regarding the NVIDIA online store and are working to improve the experience.

In the meantime, we will be selling our GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition through other partners. In the US, you can shop for Founders Edition at Best Buy - GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090. In Europe, we continue to review Founders Edition fulfillment options.

Founders Edition units are limited, and more will be available in the coming weeks alongside an increasing supply of boards from our global board partners.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today announced the highest level of AORUS GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards powered by NVIDIA Ampere architecture. GIGABYTE launched 4 AORUS graphics cards - AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 XTREME 24G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3090 MASTER 24G, AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 XTREME 10G, and AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10G. The 4 graphics cards are all equipped with top-of-the-line overclocked GPU that certified by GIGABYTE GPU Gauntlet sorting technology.

Based on the previous generation of AORUS graphics card, GIGABYTE has released a new generation of more advanced MAX-Covered Cooling technology to meet the high-wattage cooling requirements of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 GPUs. There is an embedded powerful LCD monitor on the side of the graphics card, which can display the status of the graphics card, customized GIFs, text and picture. With RGB Fusion 2.0, the lighting effects of the entire AORUS graphics card can be adjusted according to your preferences.

NVIDIA could update the higher end of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" product stack with two new additions in December 2020. Sources tell VideoCardz that the company is preparing to launch a 20 GB variant of the GeForce RTX 3080, and a 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070. The RTX 3080 20 GB will come with double the memory of the RTX 3080 the company debuted last month, over the same 320-bit wide GDDR6X memory interface, possibly by using two 8 Gbit memory chips per 32-bit path (which is how the RTX 3090 achieves 24 GB, over its 384-bit memory bus). The RTX 3070 16 GB will likely use a similar approach, albeit with GDDR6 memory. Meanwhile, the mid-range "RTX 3060 Ti" could debut in November, following the late-October introduction of the RTX 3070 8 GB. Much of NVIDIA's product stack adjustments could be in preparation for AMD's late-October reveal of the Radeon RX 6000 RDNA2 series.

Let's skip ahead of any "Can it run Crysis" introductions for this news piece, and instead state it as it is: Crysis 3 can absolutely run when installed directly on a graphics card's memory subsystem. In this case, an RTX 3090 and its gargantuan 24 GB of GDDR6X memory where the playground for such an experiment. Using the "VRAM Drive" application, distributed in an open-source manner via the GitHub platform, one can allocate part of their GPU's VRAM and use it as if it was just another system drive. After doing so, user Strife212 (as per her Twitter handle) then went on to install Crysis 3 on 15 GB of the allocated VRAM. The rest of the card's 9 GB were then available to actually load in graphical assets for the game, and VRAM consumption (of both the installed game and its running assets) barely crossed the 20 GB total VRAM utilization.

As you might expect, graphics memory is one of the fastest memory subsystems on your PC, being even faster (in pure performance terms) than system RAM. Loading up of game levels and asset streaming from VRAM "disk-sequestered" pools to free VRAM pools was obviously much faster than usual, even more than the speeds achieved by today's NVMe drives. Crysis 3 in this configuration was shown to run by as many as 75 FPS in 4K resolution, with the High preset settings. A proof of concept more than anything - but users with a relatively powerful (or memory-capable) graphics card can perhaps look at this exotic solution as a compromise of sorts, should they not have any fast storage options, and provided the game install size is relatively small.

Shortages in supply of GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards could persist until 2021, according to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, responding to a question in a Q&A session of the GTC 2020 (Fall) conference. "The 3080 and 3090 have a demand issue, not a supply issue," said Huang. "The demand issue is that it is much much greater than we expected—and we expected really a lot," he added.

Jen-Hsun predicts that the Holiday 2020 shopping season will only compound availability woes. "I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year. Remember, we're also going into the double-whammy. The double-whammy is the holiday season. Even before the holiday season, we were doing incredibly well, and then you add on top of it the "Ampere factor," and then you add on top of that the "Ampere holiday factor," and we're going to have a really really big Q4 season." He likened the demand of the RTX 3080 to that of the Intel Pentium in the mid-1990s. "Retailers will tell you they haven't seen a phenomenon like this in over a decade of computing. It hearkens back to the old days of Windows 95 and Pentium when people were just out of their minds to buy this stuff. So this is a phenomenon like we've not seen in a long time, and we just weren't prepared for it."

When NVIDIA introduced its Ampere consumer graphics cards, they launched three models - the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090 GPUs. Both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 have seen the light of the day as they are now available for purchase, however, one card has remained. The GeForce RTX 3070 launch was originally planned for October 15th launch, but it has officially been postponed by NVIDIA. According to the company, the reason behind this sort of delay in the launch is the high demand expected. Production of the cards is ramping up quickly and the company is quickly stocking up the cards. Likely, NVIDIA AIBs are taking their time to stock up on cards, as the mid-range is usually in very high demand.

As a reminder, the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card features 5888 CUDA cores running at a base frequency of 1.5 GHz and boost frequency of 1.73 GHz. Unlike the higher-end Ampere cards, the RTX 3070 uses older GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The GPU features a TDP of 220 W and will be offered in a range of variants by AIBs. You will be able to purchase the GPU on October 29th for the price of $499.

MSI became aware of reports from customers, reviewers, and system integrators that there may be instability when GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards core clocks exceeded a certain amount. The latest GeForce driver (456.55) includes fixes for the issue. As such, MSI recommends owners of GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards update to the latest driver release which can be downloaded from the NVIDIA GeForce website.

MSI stands behind its design decisions for its GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards catalog which consists of GAMING models and VENTUS models. MSI utilizes a mixed capacitor grouping in its designs to benefit from the strengths of both SP-Caps and MLCCs. All MSI GeForce RTX 30 Series cards that have shipped out since the beginning of production, which include media review samples, feature the PCB configurations as shown in the updated images below.

[Update, September 29, 2020: We now have a good first look at the card courtesy the man himself. It confirms what we already knew, with a 360 mm AIO cooler and a flip-up OLED screen paired to the flagship offering from EVGA this generation.]

It's only been moments after the RTX 3090's release, but professional overclockers are already unleashing the power available on NVIDIA's GA-102 chip by resorting to exotic cooling techniques. Renowned overclocker Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido, who works in close proximity with NVIDIA AIB EVGA, tamed the RTX 3090's temperature by resorting to liquid nitrogen. This, alongside tweaks to Vcore (1069 mV) allowed the card to reach a startling 2.58 GHz core clock (a staggering 52.2% increase over NVIDIA's base clock), and 10.750 MHz (21.5 Gbps) memory clocks on the GDDR6X subsystem, which in itself is a 10.3% increase over reference clocks.

The 16.673 3D Mark Port Royal score was achieved with a fully custom design made by EVGA with Vince Lucidos' input. This über 3090 ultimately delivered a performance increase of around 30% more than the stock RTX 3090 would be able to, which isn't a bad equilibrium between the core and memory clock increases. Some might say this is the performance delta one would expect between the 3090 and the 3080 (an overall 40% performance increase, considering the 3090 is already an average of 10% faster than the 3080 at stock clocks).