During its "Xiamen HighFun" event in China, Minisforum announced the latest addition to its compact series of gaming PCs, this time with no official name. The 6-liter system, code-named "Project RPFXI" for Intel and "Project DRFXI" for AMD, will support up to 100 W TDP and utilize the most powerful Ryzen CPU, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. This hybrid mobile/desktop processor combines the desktop-level performance of 16 Zen 4 cores with 144 MB of 3D V-cache, all within a 55 W power limit. Minisforum confirmed the 7945HX3D would be available in the AMD platform version, positioned as a premium model compared to the existing 7945HX system.

Interestingly, the GPU support is literally external, as the potential GPU needs to be attached to the outside part of the case, which is then secured using screws. The case could accommodate the fastest GPUs like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with a powerful enough power supply. The 6-liter mini PC is expected to launch in late 2023, either in 24-core Intel (HX line) configuration, of 16-core AMD configuration.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading computer brand, is excited to announce its gaming sub-brand AORUS' presence at Gamescom 2023 in Cologne, Germany. Under the exciting theme of AORUSVERSE, AORUS is set to showcase its latest cutting-edge technology, including state-of-the-art motherboards, powerful gaming and creator laptops, PC systems, and stunning 4K gaming monitors. Attendees can expect an immersive journey into the vast gaming world of AORUSVERSE.

As a true gaming heaven, the AORUS booth will be brimming with the latest gaming hardware for enthusiasts to explore. The centerpiece of the exhibit will be the highly-anticipated Z790 X series motherboards, with the enthusiast-grade Z790 MASTER X leading the way to power Intel's next-generation processor. Additionally, AORUS will proudly unveil the Red Dot Design Award 2023 award-winning M6 wireless gaming mouse, allowing attendees to get a hands-on experience with this exceptional peripheral.

The verdict is in: A GeForce NOW Ultimate membership raises the bar on gaming. Members have been tackling the Ultimate KovvaK's challenge head-on and seeing for themselves how the power of Ultimate improves their gaming with 240 frames per second streaming.

The popular training title that helps gamers improve their aim fully launches in the cloud this week alongside a limited-time discount on Steam. KovaaK's leads over 20 new games joining the GeForce NOW library this week.

INNO3D's GeForce RTX 4070 Twin X2 OC White Edition graphics card introduces a novel approach to improve cable management by hiding power cables. By placing the power connectors on the back of the GPU, these cards provide a cleaner look for custom PC builds. This design simplifies the installation process and enhances the overall appearance of the build. It may become an industry trend, especially with the extra space for bending cables during installation. The design is visually appealing and the cards feature a stylish white aesthetic.

The GPU comes with a partially removable backplate for easy access to the 8-pin PCIe power connector, maintaining a streamlined look. They also come bundled with matching white power cables, enhancing their visual appeal. The mid-range GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs' design could lead to more widespread adoption across different GPU models. As cable management and aesthetics become priorities in PC builds, it's exciting to anticipate future innovations in the field. You can expect more variants of the INNO3D White with Stealth Cable Management to follow.

Overwatch 2 is Blizzard's always-on and ever-evolving free-to-play, team-based action game that's set in an optimistic future, where every match is the ultimate 5v5 battlefield brawl. To unlock the ultimate graphics experience in each battle, upgrade to a GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card, desktop PC, or laptop for class-leading performance, and unbeatable responsiveness courtesy of NVIDIA Reflex.

The invasion has begun in Overwatch 2's biggest season to date! Fight back in three co-op Player vs. Enemy Story Missions, play PvP as a new Support hero, and tier up the new Invasion Battle Pass to unlock new skins and cosmetics. And you can get the GeForce Overwatch 2 Invasion Ultimate Bundle with the purchase of select GeForce RTX 40 Series products at participating stores, starting today.

NVIDIA late Tuesday released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 536.99 WHQL adds optimization for "Baldur's Gate 3," besides "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and "Gord." Among the issues fixed with this release include screen-tearing and jitter noticed in cut-scenes of "Control," game stability issues with "Battlefield 2042" when applying GeForce Freestyle filters; general game stability issues when Freestyle filters are used with DLSS 3 enabled; stability issues with "Dead Space," and audio issues for Elgato Wave Link. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 536.99 WHQL

Each week, we bring you news of the latest DLSS and ray tracing integrations in games and apps. Last week, the phenomenally good Baldur's Gate 3 launched to critical acclaim, and GeForce RTX gamers are receiving the definitive experience thanks to the inclusion of DLSS 2 and DLAA.

Additionally, DLSS 3 was added to DESORDRE: A Puzzle Game Adventure, and Remnant II added support for DLSS 3 and DLAA, giving PC players an even better experience in the action game that's already sold over a million copies. Today, we're announcing that Gord, SPRAWL and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will all launch with DLSS 2 in the near future, and if you're looking for a new DLSS game to play, Deadlink is available now.

Low profile graphics cards have always been something of a niche market, but they've found homes in many HTPC builds over the years, especially passively cooled cards. Now Gigabyte has launched a rather odd looking low profile NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 based graphics card that simply goes under the name of GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8G. The 182 x 69 x 40 (D x H x W) mm card still manages to pack in three fans and requires an 8-pin power connector to work, which somewhat unfortunately plugs in at the rear of the card, although there wouldn't have been too many other locations to place it. This means that this card might not work in some Mini-ITX builds, due to the card being too long once the power connector is plugged in.

The card width should've given away that we're looking at a dual slot card, which is also pretty obvious from the pictures. Gigabyte provides a full height and a low profile bracket with the card, which not all low profile cards have shipped with in the past, so this is a plus. Connectivity wise, the GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8G comes with two DP 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1a ports, making this a card well suited for HTPC usage. Gigabyte has even overclocked the GPU from 2460 MHz to 2475 MHz, which seems quite pointless and is unlikely to bring any huge performance advantages over stock clock speeds.Update Aug 24th: During a recent meeting with Gigabyte we had a chance to go hands-on with their new RTX 4060 Low Profile card, here's some photos.

The Ultimate upgrade is complete - GeForce NOW Ultimate performance is now streaming all throughout North America and Europe, delivering RTX 4080-class power for gamers across these regions. Celebrate this month with 41 new games, on top of the full release of Baldur's Gate 3 and the first Bethesda titles coming to the cloud as the NVIDIA and Microsoft partnership benefits gamers everywhere.

And catch GeForce NOW at QuakeCon - the popular bring-your-own-PC mega-event running Aug. 10-13 - where the in-person and digital GeForce NOW Ultimate challenge will kick off. Plus, game on with gaming peripherals and accessories company SteelSeries, which will be giving away codes for three-day GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority memberships, along with popular GeForce NOW games and in-game goodies.

Each week, we bring you news of the latest DLSS and ray tracing integrations in games and apps. Last week, Remnant II launched with DLSS 2, new DLSS 3 integrations were revealed, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart launched with NVIDIA DLSS 3, NVIDIA DLAA, NVIDIA Reflex, and NVIDIA RTX IO. August looks to be another great month for DLSS and RTX, headlined by the official launch of Baldur's Gate 3, enhanced with DLSS 2 and DLAA.

Additionally, DLSS 3 has been added to DESORDRE: A Puzzle Game Adventure and Remnant II, and will be available at the launch of Lost Soul Aside. And as for DLSS 2, Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival has just launched with support for frame rate accelerating technology. For gamers with GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS ensures you receive the definitive experience in each title, and thanks to GeForce RTX Ray Tracing Cores, you'll enjoy the highest possible frame rates when enabling ray-traced effects in DESORDRE: A Puzzle Game Adventure and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 and RX 700 series based on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPU architectures have been benchmarked by folks over at ComputerBase. However, these weren't regular benchmarks of performance but rather power consumption. According to their latest results, they discovered that enabling Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) can lower the power consumption of AMD Radeon cards in idle. Using a 4K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, ComputerBase benchmarked Radeon RX 6800/6700 XT and RX 7900 XT, both last-generation and current-generation graphics cards. The performance matrix also includes a comparison to Intel Arc A770, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4080.

Regarding performance figures, the tests compare desktop idle consumption, dual monitor power consumption, window movement, YouTube with SDR at 60 FPS, and YouTube with HDR at 60 FPS, all done on a 4K 144 Hz monitor setup. You can see the comparison below, with the most significant regression in power consumption being Radeon RX 7900 XTX using 81% less power in single and 71% less power in dual monitor setup.

AMD's China exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE has been put through its paces by Expreview and the US$740 equivalent card should in short not carry the 7900-series moniker. In most of the tests, the card performs like a Raden RX 6950 XT or worse, with it being beaten by the Radeon RX 6800 XT in 3D Mark Fire Strike, even if it's only by the tiniest amount. Expreview has done a fairly limited comparison, mainly pitching the Radeon RX 7900 GRE against the Radeon RX 7900 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070, where it loses by a mile towards AMD's higher-end GPU, which by no means was unexpected as this is a lower tier product.

However, when it comes the GeForce RTX 4070, AMD struggles to keep up at 1080p, where NVIDIA takes home the win in games like The Last of US Part 1 and Diablo 4. In games like F1 22 and Assassin's Creed Hall of Valor, AMD is only ahead by a mere percentage point or less. Once ray tracing is enabled, AMD only wins in F1 22 and it's by less than one percent again and Far Cry 6, where AMD is almost three percent faster. Moving up in resolution, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE ends up being a clear winner, most likely partially due to having 16 GB of VRAM and at 1440p the GeForce RTX 4070 also falls behind in most of the ray traced game tests, if only just in most of them. At 4K the NVIDIA card can no longer keep up, but the Radeon RX 7900 GRE isn't really a 4K champion either, dropping under 60 FPS in more resource heavy games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last of Us Part 1. Considering the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti only costs around US$50 more, it seems like it would be the better choice, despite having less VRAM. AMD appears to have pulled an NVIDIA with this card, which at least performance wise, seems to belong in the Radeon RX 7800 segment. The benchmark figures also suggests that the actual Radeon RX 7800 cards won't be worth the wait, unless AMD prices them very competitively.

Update 11:45 UTC: [Editor's note: The official MSRP from AMD appears to be US$649 for this card, which is more reasonable, but the performance still places this in in a category lower than the model name suggests.]

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the new ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D, the perfect fusion of cutting-edge silicon and ROG engineering. Featuring the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D mobile processor equipped with AMD 3D V-Cache technology for the very first time, the Strix SCAR 17 X3D takes performance to a whole new level. By doubling the L3 cache of the mighty Ryzen 9 7945HX processor, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D gives users a boost in games that are hungry for this onboard ultrafast memory. Paired with a 240 Hz QHD display, Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal on the GPU, and a vapor chamber, the Strix SCAR 17 X3D is ready to dominate the leaderboards.

Making great processors even better
While the original 2023 ROG Strix SCAR 17 came equipped with AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is truly in a league of its own. It leverages the power of AMD 3D V-Cache technology, a stacking of extra ultra-high-speed L3 cache vertically on top of one of the two core compute dies (CCD). This extra cache enables the eight cores to perform certain calculations quickly and efficiently, notably in gaming. For situations where increasing CPU frequency simply doesn't show significant performance gains, 3D V-Cache technology holds the potential to unlock extra compute power.

We witnessed an exciting concept during the Computex 2023 show in late May. ASUS has developed a GPU without an external power connector called GC_HPWR. Unlike current solutions, this connection type doesn't require additional cables. Using the GC_HPWR means that power is being supplied directly from the motherboard and that these special-edition GPUs also require special-edition motherboards. Thanks to the latest information from the Bilibili content creator Eixa Studio, attending Bilibili World 2023 exhibition in Shanghai, China, we have information that ASUS is preparing mass production of these zero-cable GPU solutions. Scheduled to enter mass production in Fall, ASUS plans to deliver these GPUs and accompanying motherboards before the year ends.

Additionally, it is worth noting that the motherboard lineup is called Back To Future (BTF), and the first GPU showcased was the GeForce RTX 4070 Megalodon. The PSU connectors are placed on the back side of the BTF board, while the CG_HPWR connector sits right next to the PCIe x16 expansion slot and looks like a PCIe x1 connector. You can see images of both products below.

Every week, we bring you news of the latest DLSS and ray tracing integrations in games and apps. Last week, we celebrated the launch of Portal: Prelude RTX, a path-traced remaster of a classic mod, made in NVIDIA RTX Remix and enhanced with full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3, NVIDIA Reflex, and our new, game-changing NVIDIA RTX IO GPU-accelerated storage technology. The good times keep rolling this week with the arrival of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC on July 26th, featuring NVIDIA DLSS 3, NVIDIA DLAA, NVIDIA Reflex, ray tracing, and NVIDIA RTX IO, giving GeForce RTX gamers the definitive PC experience, with the fastest possible PC frame rates, the most responsive gameplay, and the highest levels of detail.

And DLSS is also coming to more of your favorite games. Today, the eagerly anticipated Remnant II launches with DLSS 2. Additionally, the action game SYNCED is launching this Summer with DLSS 3, and Wuthering Waves announced that it will launch with DLSS 3, too. Finally, the ever-popular DLSS 2-enhanced NARAKA: BLADEPOINT celebrates its second anniversary with a special event and by transitioning to a free-to-play model, enabling even more people to play.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced collaboration centered around EVA-02 and Asuka from the long-celebrated Evangelion anime series. PC DIY builders and anime lovers can now enjoy a second impact of premium ROG components and peripherals elevated by the classic EVA-02 red and orange colorway with a variety of custom Evangelion-themed decals and graphics. The new powerhouse arsenal includes a ROG Maximus motherboard, ROG Strix GeForce RTX graphics card, ROG Ryujin AIO cooler, ROG Hyperion gaming case, graphics card holder, peripherals and other gear.

ROG Maximus Z790 Hero EVA-02 Edition motherboard
This special version of the feature-packed ROG Maximus Z790 Hero arrives with EVA-02's signature red and orange theme, with traces of green. The backplate design comes with EVA-02 Beast Mode and Evangelion patterns, supporting this motherboard's immense power and control, as it takes 13th Gen Intel Core processors and DDR5 memory kit to the next level. And an A.T. Field design around the CPU socket and Polymo lighting on the I/O cover switches between Asuka and regular EVA-02 as another artistic flourish.

As the leading brand in the enthusiastic graphics market, Gainward proudly presents the brand-new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Panther video card, powered by NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace GPU architecture.

The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti lets you take on the latest games and apps with the ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture. Shunning all the bells and whistles, the Gainward GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Panther OC 16 GB presents itself in a sleek black finish with simple line patterns that add a touch of dynamics in the darkness. The minimalist design allows it to seamlessly blend into any builds. Powered by NVIDIA DLSS 3, ultra-efficient Ada Lovelace arch, and full ray tracing.

Palit Microsystems Ltd. as the leading graphics card manufacturer is excited to announce the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB version JetStream Series built with the ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is an enhanced iteration of its predecessor, the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB. With its doubled memory capacity, the new 16 GB variant provides users with abundant power to tackle graphically demanding games. Furthermore, users can fully leverage game-changing technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS 3, NVIDIA Reflex, real-time ray tracing, and more.

Sedate, silent, yet powerful. The Palit GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB JetStream fashioned in jet-black with geometric block patterns demonstrates a performance-focused design that remains the essences to achieve any gaming and creator application. Restrained from flashy lights, the JetStream reveals the philosophy of Less is More. Its stealthy approach intends to suit users who prefer function over form, or fancy to keep their pcs in dark presence.

Portal remains a timeless classic; in December we released Portal with RTX, a fully ray-traced reimagining of Valve's award winning game, which used the performance multiplication of NVIDIA DLSS 3 to power the most realistic path-traced lighting ever seen in a real-time game. Portal with RTX was created using NVIDIA RTX Remix, a free, upcoming modding platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse, which enables modders to quickly create and share #RTXON mods for classic games, each with enhanced materials, full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3, and NVIDIA Reflex.

Now, RTX Remix has been used to remaster Portal: Prelude, the highest rated Portal mod, the 2008 Portal ModDB winner, and #3 overall Player's Choice mod of 2008. Created by Nicolas "NykO18" Grevet and others, Portal: Prelude is an unofficial Portal prequel, set before the time of GLaDOS, featuring a new extremely challenging 8-10 hour campaign composed of 19 new test chambers, new advanced gameplay mechanics, a fully voiced story with NPCs, and a whole lot more. Portal: Prelude RTX is available today to download from Steam, for free!

Every week, we bring you news of the latest DLSS and ray tracing integrations in games and apps. This week, Jagged Alliance 3 and Testament: The Order of High Human launch with support for DLSS 2; SlavicPunk: Oldtimer and DESORDRE: A Puzzle Game Adventure are available now with DLSS 2, and Dying Light 2 Stay Human's Good Night, Good Luck update is available with DLSS 3. To cap it all off, Blizzard has announced the details of Diablo IV's Season of the Malignant! Read on to learn more.

Diablo IV: Season of the Malignant Starts July 20th
Get ready to continue your journey through Sanctuary in Diablo IV with Season of the Malignant on July 20th. A new form of Lilith's corruption has spread throughout Sanctuary, creating Malignant Monsters and opportunities for players to create powerful new builds. Partner with Cormond, a former priest of the Cathedral of Light, in a new questline to stop the spread of these Malignant Monsters, collect new items and earn rewards.

A few weeks ago, we reported that NVIDIA is already shipping its GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition cards with an improved 12VHPWR connector called 12V-2x6. However, today we learn that NVIDIA is also now shipping GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition with an improved 12V-2x6 connector. Thanks to the Reddit user u/prackprackprack posting in r/NVIDIA, the user reported that his Founders Edition RTX 4090 has shortened sensing pins on the connector. If not adequately plugged in, the sensing pins will not allow the card to draw full power and melt the connector. Besides RTX 4070 FE, the RTX 4090 FE is now updated as well, which makes sense as it is the most power-hungry card in the family. However, this may be a partial 12V-2x6 implementation. Below, you can see images showing shortened sensing pins.

NVIDIA is reported to be taking a hands off approach prior to the launch of its GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB GPU next week—rumored to take place on July 18. Murmurs from last week posited that add-in card (AIC) partners were not all that confident in the variant's prospects, with very little promotional activity lined up. NVIDIA itself is not releasing a Founders Edition GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB model, so it will be relying on board partners to get custom design units sent out to press outlets/reviewers. According to Hardware Unboxed, as posted on Twitter earlier today, no hardware will be distributed to the media: "Now there's no official review program for this model, there will be no FE version and it seems that NVIDIA and their partners really don't want to know about it. Every NVIDIA partner I've spoken to so far has said they won't be providing review samples, and they're not even sure when their model will be available."

Their announcement continued: "So I don't know when you'll be able to view our review, but I will be buying one as soon as I can. I expect coverage will be pretty thin and that's probably the plan, the release strategy here is similar to that of the RTX 3080 12 GB." TPU can confirm that test samples have not been sent out by NVIDIA's board partners, so a retail unit will be purchased (out of pocket) for reviewing purposes. Previous reports have theorized that not many custom models will be available at launch, with the series MSRP of $499 not doing it many favors in terms of buyer interest. MSI has prepared a new white GAMING X design for the 16 GB variant, so it is good to see at least one example of an AIB putting the effort in...but it would be nice to get a press sample.

A few days ago, we reported that NVIDIA and PCI-SIG have been doing some work around the existing controversial 12VHPWR power connector to make some improvements and prevent issues that happened along the way. Called 12V-2x6, the connector features minor revisions, and you can read more about it here. Today, we learn that NVIDIA has already been shipping implementations of the new 12V-2x6 connector in GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards, confirmed by Igor's Lab. Majority of RTX 4070 cards from AIBs shipped with 8-pin PCI connector; however, it turns out that cards that didn't use the reference 12-pin connection carried a new 12V-2x6 revision.

Below, you can see the picture comparison with the connectors from the Founders Edition of GeForce RTX 4070 and RTX 4080. The new connector on the RTX 4070 has shorter sensing pins, which can detect whether the connector is fully plugged in. If not plugged all the way, the card will not draw the required maximum power load. This should, in theory, solve connector burning issues happening in the past; however, we are still left to see. In addition, we are not sure if this is the final implementation of the new connector, as the labeling refferest to it as "H+", whereas the new connector should carry the label "H++" on its module. Igor's Lab article notes, "Since the GeForce RTX 4070 FE, NVIDIA has already been using a modified 12VHPWR connector with significantly recessed pins! While the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition still relies on the header from the CEM 5.0 with only 0.45 mm offset, the GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition has been using a modified variant with 1.7 mm inward offset since its launch, similar to the 12V-2x6 connector."

Last week (June 29), NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 4060 "Ada" graphics card targeting a majority of PC gamers who still play at 1080p Full HD resolution. Reception to the new card was somewhat lukewarm, only 6% of our polled readers are interested in buying one (poll results). We crunched thousands of benchmark runs in our new 2023H2 test suite and managed to review ten different models of the 4060, six of which are available at the NVIDIA MSRP of $299, and we followed up with four more reviews of premium custom-design cards priced above the MSRP. Our results confirm that GeForce RTX 4060 is designed for maxed out gaming at 1080p; gameplay with ray tracing is possible at 25-50 FPS at 1080p, which can be increased by dialing down graphics settings, or through use of DLSS and DLSS 3 Frame Generation, in supported games. On the other hand, there were concerns with the small performance gains and high pricing, which makes many other options a viable choice.

We've put together a video presentation which compares all the cards tested, and that also serves as a really quick executive summary of the RTX 4060, and whether you should get one.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today launches GeForce RTX 4070 Ti series water-cooled graphics cards powered by NVIDIA ADA Lovelace architecture. GIGABYTE launches two AORUS WATERFORCE graphics cards - AORUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE 12G and AORUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE WB 12G. Both graphics cards are equipped with the top-of-the-line GPU cores that have overclocking capabilities and are certified by GIGABYTE GPU Gauntlet sorting technology. AORUS provides the all-around cooling solution for all key components of the graphics card. In addition to cooling the GPU, AORUS also takes care of the VRAM and MOSFET, ensuring stable overclocking performance and enhanced durability.

The AORUS WATERFORCE graphics cards features RGB Fusion, protection metal backplate, aerospace-grade PCB coating for dust and moisture protection, Ultra-Durable top-grade components, and extended warranty for registered members. These features make the AORUS WATERFORCE graphics cards the best choice for enthusiasts who desire both silent operation and high performance.